White Tail Deer

Description:

Also known as the Virginia deer or simply as the whitetail, is a medium-sized deer native to the United States. The deer's coat is a reddish-brown in the spring and summer and turns to a grey-brown throughout the fall and winter. The deer can be recognized by the characteristic white underside to its tail, which it shows as a signal of alarm by raising the tail during escape.

Habitat:

In North America, the species is most common east of the Rocky Mountains, and is absent from much of the western United States, including Nevada, Utah, California, Hawaii, and Alaska (though its close relatives, the black-tailed or mule deer Odocoileus hemionus, can be found there). While black-tailed deer prefer rough, open areas with hills, the white-tailed deer is a woodland species. It does, however, survive in aspen parklands and deciduous river bottomlands within the central and northern Great Plains, and in mixed deciduous riparian corridors, river valley bottomlands, and lower foothills of the northern Rocky Mountain regions from South Dakota and Wyoming to southeastern British Columbia, including the Montana Valley and Foothill grasslands.

Notes:

Saw this large doe while hiking part of the Appilican Trail. Approx. 50 yards off trail.