White Tailed Deer

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The Importance of White-tailed deer Observing and caring for white-tailed deer has been a hobby and a passion of mine throughout my childhood. I’ve cared for white-tailed deer for six years and each one has their own unique personality. My experience with whitetail deer has range from, working at a deer farm, to having one as a pet, to just observing them in nature. They have been a major part of my life. White-tailed deer, the smallest of the North American deer family, are a major part of the Adirondack ecosystem. Characteristics of whitetail as they are commonly known as, is reddish-brown fur in the summer, grey-brown fur in winter, white spots on young fawns, antlers on males, and, of course, white fur on the underside of their tails. At one time endangered, white-tailed deer are now one of the most wide-spread mammals of North America with population numbers of over twenty million. White-tailed deer have been a crucial part of keeping plant and animal life in check. White-tailed deer have their young in the spring and can have anywhere from one to three fawns. Fawns nurse for eight to ten weeks before being weaned to solid foods. The mother or doe will care for and teach her fawn to survive till the beginning of next spring. The diet of whitetail includes leaves, twigs, fruits and nuts, grass, corn, alfalfa, and even lichens and other fungi. During the late fall whitetail will start their mating season or rut, at this time a doe ready to mate will leave her fawn in a patch of woods for two to three days looking for a suitable mate, and then return back to her fawn. The first year a buck fawn leaves it’s mother it begins to grow his first set of antlers. These antlers are two one to five inch points called spikes because of their resemblance to rail road spikes. Each year bucks will grow their antlers in the spring and lose them in winter.

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