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.
Communication Channels: visual ; tactile ; acoustic ; chemical
Other Communication Modes: pheromones ; scent marks
Perception Channels: visual ; tactile ; acoustic ; chemical
Whitetail deer are extremely common throughout their ranges and are the most numerous of the large North American mammals. Precise estimates of their numbers have not been made, but there are probably somewhere between 8 and 15 million on this continent. Although their populations were decimated to the point of extinction in many areas at the turn of the century (due to overhunting), they have recently reached their highest numbers due to the improvement of their habitat by the cutting of climax forests, providing them with a greater amount of brush and shrubs on which to forage.
US Federal List: no special status
CITES: no special status
State of Michigan List: no special status
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: least concern
Whitetail deer are destructive to crops, vegetable gardens, fruit trees, and ornamental plants where their ranges overlap with human habitation. When their numbers become too high, whitetail deer can cause serious damage to forest vegetation through overbrowsing. They are involved in accidents with cars, often resulting in serious injury to the human occupants of the vehicles.
Whitetail deer are important as vectors disease because they serve as hosts to the ticks which carry the bacteria responsible Lyme disease. This has become an increasingly common disease in certain parts of the United States, especially the northeastern states.
Whitetail deer are commonly hunted for meat and sport. Early settlers and Native Americans also utilized whitetail deer hides to make buckskin leather. Whitetail heads are also commonly mounted on the walls of lodges and other places of outdoor recreation.
Positive Impacts: food
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.
Whitetail deer feed on a variety of vegetation, depending on what is available in their habitat. In eastern forests, buds and twigs of maple, sassafras, poplar, aspen and birch (to name a few) are consumed, as well as many shrubs. In desert areas, plants such as huajillo brush, yucca, prickly pear cactus, comal, ratama and various tough shrubs may be the main components of a whitetail's diet. Conifers are often utilized in winter when other foods are scarce. Whitetail deer are crepuscular, feeding mainly from before dawn until several hours after, and again from late afternoon until dusk.
Primary Diet: herbivore
Whitetail deer inhabit most of southern Canada and all of the mainland United States except two or three states in the west. Their range reaches throughout Central America to Bolivia.
Biogeographic Regions: nearctic (Native ); neotropical (Native )
Whitetail deer are able to survive in a variety of terrestrial habitats, from the big woods of northern Maine to the deep saw grass and hammock swamps of Florida. They also inhabit farmlands, brushy areas and such desolate areas of the west such as the cactus and thornbrush deserts of southern Texas and Mexico. Ideal whitetail deer habitat would contain dense thickets (in which to hide and move about) and edges (which furnish food).
Habitat Regions: temperate ; tropical
Terrestrial Biomes: chaparral ; forest ; rainforest ; scrub forest
Wetlands: swamp
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.
Typical lifespan
Status: wild: 10.0 (high) years.
Average lifespan
Status: wild: 2.0 years.
Average lifespan
Status: captivity: 16.0 years.
Average lifespan
Status: captivity: 23.0 years.
Head and body length is 150 to 200 cm, tail length is 10 to 28 cm, and height at the shoulders is between 80 and 100 cm.
Odocoileus virginianus dorsal coloration differs in shading locally, seasonally, and among subspecies; however in general it is grayer in the winter and redder in the summer. White fur is located in a band behind the nose, in circles around the eyes, inside the ears, over the chin and throat, on the upper insides of the legs and beneath the tail. Whitetail deer have scent glands between the two parts of the hoof on all four feet, metatarsal glands on the outside of each hind leg, and a larger tarsal gland on the inside of each hind leg at the hock. Scent from these glands is used for intraspecies communication and secretions become especially strong during the rutting season. Males possess antlers which are shed from January to March and grow out again in April or May, losing their velvet in August or September. At birth, fawns are spotted with white in coloration and weight between 1.5 and 2.5 kg. Their coats become grayish lose their spots by their first winter. Whitetail deer have good eyesight and acute hearing, but depend mainly on their sense of smell to detect danger.
Range mass: 57.0 to 137.0 kg.
Range length: 160.0 to 220.0 cm.
Other Physical Features: endothermic ; homoiothermic; bilateral symmetry
Sexual Dimorphism: male larger; ornamentation
Average basal metabolic rate: 123.447 W.
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.
Known Predators:
Mating System: polygynous
Most whitetail deer (particularly males) mate in their second year, although some females occasionally mate as young as seven months. Bucks are polygamous although they may form an attachment and stay with a single doe for several days or even weeks until she reaches oestrus. Does are seasonally polyestrous and usually come into heat in November for a short twenty-four hour period. If a doe is not mated, a second estrus occurs approximately 28 days later. Mating occurs from October to December and gestation is approximately 6 and a half months. In her first year of breeding, a female generally has one fawn, but 2 per litter (occasionally 3 or 4) are born in subsequent years. Fawns are able to walk at birth and nibble on vegetation only a few days later.
Breeding interval: White-tailed deer breed once yearly.
Breeding season: Breeding occurs from October to December, fawns are born in the spring.
Range number of offspring: 1.0 to 3.0.
Average gestation period: 6.5 months.
Range weaning age: 8.0 to 10.0 weeks.
Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female): 2.0 years.
Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male): 2.0 years.
Key Reproductive Features: iteroparous ; seasonal breeding ; gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate); sexual ; fertilization ; viviparous
Average birth mass: 3000 g.
Average gestation period: 198 days.
Average number of offspring: 2.
Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male)
Sex: male: 417 days.
Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female)
Sex: female: 309 days.
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.
Parental Investment: precocial ; pre-fertilization (Provisioning, Protecting: Female); pre-hatching/birth (Provisioning: Female, Protecting: Female); pre-weaning/fledging (Provisioning: Female, Protecting: Female); pre-independence (Protecting: Female); post-independence association with parents
