Description: In summer, the deer have red-brown fur that changes to gray-brown in winter. The tail is characteristically long and is white underneath. It is one of the most popular targets of American big-game hunters, but because of strict conservation laws regulating deer hunting, the total number of these deer remains almost constant. The full-grown antlers of the male are arched forward and have five or six points. The animals are very swift and canter with their heads and tails erect.

Range/Habitat: Farmlands, brushy areas, woods. Southern half of south tier of Canadian provinces; most of U.S. except most of California, Nevada, Utah, northern Arizona, southwest Colorado, and northwest New Mexico.

Adaptations: If alarmed, the Whitetail raises, or �flags,� its tail, exhibiting a large, bright flash of white; this �hightailing� communicates danger to other deer or helps a fawn follow its mother in flight.

Courtship/Gestation/Birth:

Two fawns, born in the spring, comprise a typical brood; the young have red-brown fur flecked with white spots that disappear during their first winter.

Diet: Herbivore. Although primarily nocturnal, deer may be active at any time, grazing on green plants, including aquatic ones in the summer; eating acorns, beechnuts and other nuts and corn in the fall; and in winter, browsing on wood vegetation, including the twigs and buds of viburnum, birch, maple and many conifers.

Remarks: Females have no antlers. Males begin growing them several months after birth, shed them each winter, and develop them anew each spring and summer. The age of a deer cannot be told by the size of the antlers or the number of pints (tines), for antler development is determined by nutrition, not age.

Card by Henson Robinson Zoo Education Department.

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