White Tailed Deer

The white tailed deer (cottontail deer or Odocoileus virginianus) is also known as Virginia deer. It is a common American deer that ranges from the Arctic Circle in western Canada to 18 degrees south of the Equator in Bolivia and Peru. It belongs to the Cervidae family (order Artiodactyla). The white tailed deer gets its name from the long white hair present on the underside of the rump and tail.

The hair is flared and kept aloft like a signalling flag during the flight. It belongs to the subfamily of the New World deer. Although the white tailed deer of both South and North America are currently recognized as one species, these deer are genetically further apart than are black and white deer in North America.

Physical Characteristics

While this deer differs greatly in size, it changes a bit in its external appearance over its huge range. In cold regions and on fertile agricultural soils, its antlers and body are the largest, while in the tropics, on small islands, and in deserts, they are modest. Large males may reach a shoulder height of 106 cm (42 in) and weigh up to 180 kg (400 pounds). The Key deer of Florida, the smallest variety, stands 76 cm (30 in) at the shoulder and weighs about 23 kg (50 pounds). The adult white tailed deer (cottontail deer) contains a bright reddish summer coat with a duller greyish-brown winter coat; the underparts are white. The male contains forward-curved antlers, which bear numerous unbranched tines.

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The white tailed deer is defined as a specialist in exploiting the disrupted forest ecosystems, but it is a poor competitor when faced with any other species. For example, it has not held its own against European deer after introducing it to Europe and New Zealand. Chital and sika have outcompeted it locally in North America.

The white tailed deer (or cottontail deer) usually predates the Ice Ages, and it is the oldest extant deer species. It became abundant only after the last glaciation, the time when the indigenous Ice Age fauna of the Americas became extinct and predation and competitive pressures were lifted. Its legendary abilities to hide, run quickly, and move quietly reflect the extreme strain it faced from extinct American Ice Age predators.

During the mating season in November and December months, much of the courtship is carried on at a run; several males try to keep up with the speedy female. Mating is unceremonious and quick. The mates and buck guard with the female for a day before searching for the other female in heat. Females become territorial before they give birth. The typical gestation duration is 202 days, and twins are frequently delivered. In the tropics, reproduction can take place at any time of year. Mothers may bring their daughters to maturity and then leave their home range to their daughters.

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In the summer, white tailed deer can live alone, but in the winter, they can gather in large herds in woods or on open prairies. They trample down the snow in an area, which is then called "deer yard." Food includes twigs, leaves, nuts and fruits, and lichens, fungi as well. When available, white tailed deer go to orchards and other planted plants. In urban areas, these deer can become dangerous pests.

Formerly, the white tailed deer was greatly reduced in its abundance and range by unrestricted hunting. However, by the mid-twentieth century, game-management techniques across North America had returned it to great abundance. Now, the white tailed deer is said to be a popular game animal.

However, its overabundance, where it is protected from predation and from adequate hunting, has led to severe damage to agriculture and forestry, to high levels of collisions with trucks and cars, as a result, there have been more injuries and deaths among motorists, as well as an increase in hazardous transmissible infections like Lyme disease. Parasites carried by the white tailed deer have severely decreased the populations of moose, woodland caribou, and elk, as well as cattle.

Antlers

Males regrow their antlers annually. Also, around one in 10,000 females has antlers, although this is usually associated with freemartinism. Bucks without branching the antlers are often termed as "spiked bucks," "spike bucks," "spike horn," or simply "spikes/spikers." The spikes can be very short or quite long. The length and branching of antlers can be determined by age, nutrition, and genetics. Rack growth tends to be most essential from late spring until around a month before the velvet sheds.

Healthy deer in a few areas, which are well-fed, can contain eight-point branching antlers as yearlings (1.5 years old). Although typically, the antler size increases with age, antler characteristics (for example, number of points, thickness, or length of the antlers) are not good indicators of buck age, generally, because the antler development is influenced by the local environment. The nutritional needs of individual deers for antler growth are dependent on the diet of the deer, specifically the protein intake. A few say spiked-antler deer should be culled from the population to produce the larger branching antler genetics (the antler size does not indicate overall health), and a few bucks' antlers never will be wall trophies.

Good antler-growth nutritional needs (such as calcium) and good genetics combine to produce the wall trophies in a few of their range. Spiked bucks are quite different from "nubbin' bucks" or "button bucks," which are male fawns and are, in general, around 6 - 9 months of age during their first winter. They contain skin-covered nobs on their heads and can have bony protrusions up to a half-inch in length, but this is a very rare case, and they are not the same as spikes.

Reproduction

Females enter estrus, colloquially known as the rut, in the autumn, normally either in late October or early November, triggered primarily by the declining photoperiod. The sexual maturation of the females depends upon the population density and availability of food as well. Often, the young females flee from an area heavily populated with males. A few may be as young as 6 months when they reach sexual maturity, whereas the average age of maturity is given as 18 months. Copulation is comprised of a brief copulatory jump.

Female ones give birth to either one to three spotted young, referred to as fawns, in mid to late spring, in general, either in May or June. Fawns lose their spots during the first summer and they weigh ranging from 44 to 77 lb (20 to 35 kg) by the first winter. Male fawns tend to be a bit heavier and larger than females. For the first 4 weeks, fawns are hidden in the vegetation by their mothers, who nurse them 4 - 5 times a day.

To prevent predators, this approach maintains smell levels low. Then, after around a month, the fawns are able to follow their mothers on the foraging trips. Normally, they are weaned around 8–10 weeks, although rehabilitators and other studies have found situations where moms have allowed nursing long after the fawns had lost their markings (either for several months or till the end of fall). Males leave their mothers after a year and females leave after two years.

Distribution

In North America, the species is distributed widely east of the Rocky Mountains and in southwestern Arizona and most of Mexico as well, aside from Lower California. Except in the river valley bottomlands and mixed deciduous riparian corridors, it is mostly replaced by mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) or black-tailed deer from that point west. In addition, the lower foothills of the northern Rocky Mountain area, including the foothill grasslands and Montana valley, from South Dakota west to eastern Oregon and eastern Washington, north to northeastern British Columbia and southern Yukon.

Texas is the home to most white tailed deer of any United State's states or Canadian province, with an estimated population of around four million. Notably, high populations of white tailed deer take place in the Edwards Plateau of Central Texas. Minnesota, Michigan, Mississippi, Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, Maryland, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana also boast high deer densities.

The conversion of land near to the Canadian Rockies to agriculture usage, as well as partial clear-cutting of coniferous trees (resulting in extensive deciduous vegetation), has benefited the white tailed deer, expanding its range as far north as Yukon. Also, the deer populations around the Great Lakes have expanded their range northwards due to the conversion of land to agricultural uses favouring more deciduous vegetation and the local caribou and moose populations declining.

The Columbian white tailed deer, the species' westernmost population, was previously common in the mixed woods in the Willamette and Cowlitz River valleys in southwestern Washington and western Oregon, but its numbers have since plummeted, and it is now classed as near-threatened. This particular population is separated from the other white tailed deer populations.

Diet

The white tailed deer eats excessive amounts of food, commonly eating legumes and foraging on the other plants, including leaves, shoots, cacti (in deserts), grasses and prairie forbs. Also, they eat acorns, corn and fruit. Their special stomachs allow them to eat few things that humans cannot, such as poison ivy and mushrooms. Their diets differ by season as per the availability of food sources. In addition, they eat hay, white clover, grass, including other foods they can find in a farmyard.

Though almost entirely herbivorous, the white tailed deer have been well-known to opportunistically feed on the nesting songbirds, field mice, and birds trapped in mist nets if the need arises. A grown deer can eat up to 2,000 lb (910 kg) of vegetable matter per one year. A foraging area of up to 20 deer per square mile can start to destroy the forest environment.

The white tailed deer is a ruminant that means it contains a four-chambered stomach. Every chamber has a distinct purpose, allowing the deer to consume a wide variety of meals while digesting them later in a safe area of cover. The stomach is home to a diverse collection of microorganisms that shift with the seasons and the deer's diet. If the microbes required for the digestion of a specific food (for example, hay) are absent, they will not be digested.