White-tailed Deer

Emilymarino-Thank you!! Its funny and I'm not sure whether you've noticed anything similar in your observations with Elk but our White-tailed Deer appear to have strong variations in body size, fur coloring, facial shapes, legs lengths and antler shapes. I'm not sure if this what I'm seeing are different subspecies in White-tailed or simply genes. We have shorter, stockier deer with dark-brown almost black fur and more compact faces. Deer that I call "elven" due to their lighter fur, longer legs, ears and snouts. And a branch off the elven deer that take on a gray cast to their facial fur and have more angular faces that slope to the snout instead of a horizontal drop or bridge. Have you noticed dramatic differences in your observations with the Elk? Just curious... :-)))

What a beauty she is! I'm so used to seeing mule dear with their freakishly large ears and tiny tails that seeing white-tails with the opposite features always catches me off guard! Lovely portrait!

BrandonBlount-Images one, two and three are all males. Not sure about image four, as its a fawn, but I believed him to be male. Image five is female or Doe. Goatee or Go for short was a newcomer to our herd but was too large, I believe, to be a fawn. Go arrive post-shed so I never got to see his rack. Number three, Bad Bad Leroy Brown (Leroy for short) had the largest rack, was taller than all the other males and appeared to be the dominant male although two others were larger in width or berth. :-)

The first two and the fourth images are the ones I was referring too. Although looking closely at the first two images it appears that, that deer may be male as well. The second picture in particular, if you look at the head, it looks as if there is a tiny "nub" where the antlers would be. It's awesome that you are able to get so close to them, and not have them flee out of fear!

BrandonBlount-Thank you! The third image is definitely a Buck, as I shot images of him all fall and well into the winter after he'd shed his large antlers. Perhaps you're referring to the first two images in the series? I know the fourth image is a fawn from the previous spring and the fifth image is a Doe, as she was pregnant for many months this winter...

Great Series Janelle! Looks like a yearling doe. One way to tell the young ones apart from the adults is that the body of the young animals is more square, and the muzzle of the animal is short, creating a square from the base of the jaw, upward to the tips of the ears and out to the nose and back along the jaw again. In adults these features will be elongated into a rectangular shape. :-)

KarenL.-Thank you so much!

Beautiful series Janelle!