White-tailed Deer
Odocoileus virginianus
44.8907, -93.1704
Field Notes
Description:
White-tailed deer vary in size across their range with the smallest subspecies living in southern Florida and ranging to animals that on the average are twice that size in the northern part of their range. They are reddish brown in the summer and tend toward gray/brown in the winter. Males are larger than females and have have forked antlers that are shed and regrown annually.
Habitat:
Forested areas of North America, but ranging as far south as northern South America. Increasingly common in suburban areas.
Notes:
It's the rutting season for deer in our area right now and they are very active as bucks pursue does. In the second photo, a buck has just refreshed a scrape on the ground. A scrape is a location that bucks use to signal their presence. They will use both front feet to scrape leaves away and down to bare earth. They will then urinate onto their hocks which contain scent glands with the resulting mixture then dribbling onto the scrape. Scrapes are nearly always located under a branch or twig that the buck can reach. They smear scent from their pre-orbital glands (next to the eye) onto this twig. Scrapes, in this way, provide information to other deer as to the presence of each other. The buck in the second photograph has refreshed his scrape, of which he will have several, and is in the process of either sniffing the overhanging twig for the presence of other bucks or perhaps refreshing it with his own scent.
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