What do they look like?

White-tailed deer have different colors depending on the season and their location. Usually they have greyish fur in winter and reddish-brown fur in summer. They have white patches of fur on their face and lower legs. The tail is brownish-red above and white below. When startled the deer lift this tail as they bound away, making the white patch prominent. Males have antlers that begin growing in April or May with a layer of velvety fur on them. In August and September the antlers shed this velvety covering for the mating season. The antlers fall off in January and are re-grown the next year. With each year of age a male will grow larger antlers with more points.

Where in the world do they live?

White-tailed deer are native to both the Nearctic and Neotropical regions. They inhabit most of southern Canada and all of the mainland United States except portions of the west central states to the California coast. Their range extends throughout Central America to Bolivia.

What kind of habitat do they need?

White-tailed deer are able to survive in a variety of land habitats, from the forests of northern Maine to the swamps of Florida. They also inhabit farmlands, brushy areas, and the cactus and thornbrush deserts of southern Texas and Mexico. White-tailed deer prefer forest edges that are close to farmlands, old fields, and brushland. These kinds of habitats are commonly created by humans by forest cutting and clearing and through agricultural practices. As a result white-tailed deer do well near human habitations.

How do they reproduce?

Most white-tailed deer mate in their second year, though some females occasionally mate as young as seven months. Mating occurs between October and December and females are pregnant for 6 and 1/2 months. In her first pregnancy, a female will usually only have one baby (fawn), but after that she may give birth to 2 or 3. Fawns are able to walk at birth. They are nursed several times a day until they are 8 weeks old, after which they begin to add vegetation to their diet. Fawns are weaned by 10 weeks old.

White-tailed females are very protective of their babies. When looking for food, females leave their offspring in a hiding place for about four hours at a time. While waiting for their mother to return, fawns lay flat on the ground with their necks outstretched, well camouflaged against the forest floor. Fawns begin to follow their mother on her foraging trips once they are about 4 weeks old and are fully ruminant at two months old. White-tailed deer fawns are nursed for 8 to 10 weeks before they are weaned. Young males leave their mother after one year but young females often stay with their mother for two years.

How long do they live?

Most white-tailed deer live about 2 to 3 years. Maximum life span in the wild is 20 years but few live past 10 years old.

How do they behave?

White-tailed deer are very nervous and shy; they wave their tails from side to side when they are startled and fleeing. They are extremely agile and may bound at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. White-tailed deer are also good swimmers and often enter large streams and lakes to escape predators or insects or to visit islands.

White-tailed deer often live in either matriarchal social groups or in male groups made up of a dominant male and occasionally first-year males (Smith, 1991). Females and their fawns may graze together in herds of up to hundreds of individuals. In September, males begin to establish dominance hierarchies so that they can mate. They will fight each other to have the right to mate with certain females. White-tailed deer are not territorial but do have well-defined home ranges.

How do they communicate with each other?

White-tailed deer have scent glands between the two parts of the hoof on all four feet, outside of each hind leg, and on the inside of each hind leg. Scent from these glands is used to communicate with other deer and secretions become especially strong during the mating season.

White-tailed deer produce several types of vocalizations such as grunts, wheezes, and bleats. These vocalizations, along with other sounds and postures, are used for communication (Smith, 1991). Injured deer utter a startlingly loud "blatt" or bawl. Whistles or snorts of disturbed white-tailed deer are the most commonly heard sounds.

What do they eat?

White-tailed deer feed on a variety of vegetation, depending on what is available in their habitat. In eastern forests, buds and twigs of certain trees and shrubs are eaten. In desert areas, certain cacti and other plants are eaten. Evergreen trees are eaten in the winter when other sources of food are not available. White-tailed deer feed mainly from before dawn until several hours after, and again from late afternoon until dusk.

What eats them and how do they avoid being eaten?

White-tailed deer have good eyesight and acute hearing, but depend mainly on their sense of smell to detect danger and their ability to run and bound quickly through dense vegetation to escape danger. White-tailed deer are preyed on by large predators such as humans, wolves, mountain lions, bears, jaguars, and coyotes.

What roles do they have in the ecosystem?

White-tailed deer can greatly influence the composition of plant communities through their grazing, especially where they are abundant. In severe winters white-tailed deer can be responsible for girdling and killing large numbers of trees. White-tailed deer are also important prey animals for a number of large predators.

Do they cause problems?

White-tailed deer will eat and destroy crops, vegetable gardens and fruit trees if they come into contact with them. When their numbers become too high, white-tailed deer can cause serious damage to forest vegetation because there are so many deer eating the plants. They are also involved in accidents with cars, often resulting in serious injury to the human occupants of the vehicles.

How do they interact with us?

White-tailed deer are commonly hunted for meat and sport. Early settlers and Native Americans also used deer hides to make buckskin leather. White-tailed heads are also commonly mounted on the walls of lodges and other places of outdoor recreation.

Are they endangered?

White-tailed deer are common throughout their habitats. Exact counts of their numbers have not been made, but there are probably somewhere between 8 and 15 million on this continent. Although they were in danger of extinction at the turn of they century due to overhunting, they have recently reached their highest numbers.

Contributors

Tanya Dewey (author, editor), Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. Animal Diversity Web Staff (author).

References

Banfield, A.W.F. 1974. The Mammals of Canada. University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

Darymple, B.W. 1985. North American Big-Game Animals. Outdoor Life Books, New York.

Nowak, R.M. and J.L Paradiso. 1983. Walker's Mammals of the World. 4th edition. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.

Geist, V. 1979. Hoofed mammals. In: Wild Animals of North America. National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.

"White-tail World.Com" (On-line). Accessed May, 2001 at http://www.kerrlake.com/deer/index.htm.

Smith, P. 1991. Odocoileus virginianus. Mammalian Species, 388: 1-13.