White-tailed deer are the most-studied big game animal in North America. There are volumes of literature available on whitetails, and hunters are more savvy than ever on information pertaining to their favorite quarry. With all of this information, it may seem that hunters know a whitetail inside and out, and yet research continually adds to our knowledge or changes what we previously believed. Here are some interesting facts about whitetails established by research.
Did you know:
• The average adult whitetail consumes one ton of food per year.
• Deer sleep in short bouts, alternating between a doze and full alertness, and they can sleep with their eyes open or closed and with their head up or in a resting position.
• Fawns are not scentless – they have a scent, as that’s how their mother recognizes them, and fawns may even rub-urinate when only days old.
Or how about:
• Approximately 20 to 25 percent of twin fawns have different fathers.
• 50 to 70 percent of bucks disperse 1 to 5 miles from their birth area when
they are 12 to 18 months of age.
• During their life, most bucks sire fewer than five fawns that reach 6
months of age.
Regarding does, did you know:
• You can determine the peak of the rut in your area by measuring fetuses
from harvested does.
• Does also use scrapes during the breeding season, and they may use
them on a regular basis.
• 82 percent of fetal growth occurs during the final trimester of pregnancy. This time frame corresponds perfectly with spring green-up in northern herds.
How are you with numbers? Did you know:
• Fawns average about 300 white spots.
• Except for nursing two to four times a day, a fawn spends the first four weeks of life in hiding, separate from the doe.
• Healthy fawns average 4 to 8 pounds at birth and they will double their weight in two weeks and triple it within a month.
• Healthy fawns can outrun a man when only a few days old but it generally takes three to six weeks before they can elude most predators.
You’re more knowledgeable about bucks? Did you know:
• Pheromones deposited at signposts (rubs and scrapes) by mature bucks may have a “bio-stimulating” or trigger effect on the breeding season.
• Older bucks may also produce “controlling” or “priming” pheromones that yearling bucks are not physically mature enough to produce.
• Areas with mature bucks can have 10 times as many rubs as areas without them,
• Mature bucks make about 85 percent more scrapes and 50 percent more rubs than yearling bucks.
• Young bucks can sire up to a third (30 percent) of fawns even in populations where mature bucks comprise over 50 percent of the bucks.
Regarding communication, did you know:
• Bucks of all ages use scrapes, and the same scrape may be
used by many individuals.
• Scraping activity peaks just prior to peak of the rut, but
active scrapes may be found over several months.
• Most scraping activity (85 percent) occurs at night.
• Scrapes only a few hundred yards apart may be used by
completely different groups of bucks, which brings into
question the idea of a “scrape line.”
How is your antler knowledge? Did you know:
• Deer antlers can grow an inch or more per day, making
them the fastest normal growing tissue known to man.
• In photoperiod-controlled experiments, deer can grow
up to three sets of antlers per year or retain their antlers
for more than one year.
• Transplanting material from a buck’s pedicle to other
skeletal regions results in growth of antler tissue in the
transplanted area (such as on the forehead of mice or the
leg of a deer).
• Bucks “steal” minerals from their skeleton to harden
their antlers in late summer – thus they experience a
yearly form of osteoporosis.
