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White-tailed deer (Male (buck or stag)

Odocoileus virginianus

Photo by LucBertrand
Published on Project Noah
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45.4005, -71.8837

Field Notes

Description:

The North American male deer (also known as a buck or stag) usually weighs 130 to 300 pounds (60 to 130 kg) but, in rare cases, bucks in excess of 375 pounds (159 kg) have been recorded. In 1926, Carl J. Lenander, Jr. took a Whitetailed buck near Tofte, MN, that was estimated at 511 pounds live weight.

Habitat:

White-tailed deer are generalists and can adapt to a wide variety of habitats.[11] The largest deer occur in the temperate regions of Canada and United States. The Northern white-tailed deer (borealis), Dakota white-tailed deer (dacotensis), and Northwest white-tailed deer (ochrourus) are some of the largest animals, with large antlers. The smallest deer occur in the Florida Keys.

Although most often thought of as forest animals depending on relatively small openings and edges, white-tailed deer can equally adapt themselves to life in more open prairie, savanna woodlands, and sage communities as in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico, These savanna-adapted deer have relatively large antlers in proportion to their body size and large tails. Also, there is a noticeable difference in size between male and female deer of the savannas. The Texas white-tailed deer (texanus), of the prairies and oak savannas of Texas and parts of Mexico, are the largest savanna-adapted deer in the Southwest, with impressive antlers that might rival deer found in Canada and the northern United States. There are also populations of Arizona (couesi) and Carmen Mountains (carminis) white-tailed deer that inhabit montane mixed oak and pine woodland communities.

Notes:

Deer have dichromatic (two-color) vision; humans have trichromatic vision. So what deer do not see are the oranges and reds that stand out so well to people.

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Photographed
PublishedAugust 1, 2011

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