Ask The Deer Biologist A Question
I always thought deer poop was deer poop. In the last month I have had two different people ask me if it was true that female deer poop was shaped differently than male deer poop. Now I would think deer poop would depend on what they had to eat. Am I right?
What comes out of a deer is simply a function of what goes in. Deer pellet shape is not determined by sex of the animal, but by their diet. Deer mostly on browse or other fibrous material will produce pellet piles consisting of loose, individual pellets. When deer are eating less browse and more green and succulent vegetation, the individual pellets may form into a single clump.
How long do deer usually live in the wild and how long do they live in captivity?
Deer can be very long lived. In the wild, there have been documented cases of deer as old as 10.5 years (PA), 18.5 years (NJ), and 20 years (NY). But with hunting pressure and other mortality factors (like disease and injury), the average age in the wild is usually 2 to 3 years. In captivity, deer have lived up to 25 years.
I hunt in the Wildlife Management Units 2F and 2D. As management goals are met for deer, when can you foresee a cutback in doe tags and an increase in the deer population?
In order to recommend a deer population increase in any WMU, 3 things need to occur. The first two things, deer AND forest habitat health need to be at target levels (see Deer Management
Plan goals and measures). The third piece, people have to want more deer. The goals of deer and forest habitat health are evaluated by data collected on an annual basis. These evaluations are presented every year to the Board of Commissioners at the April commission meeting and subsequently posted on the PGC website for each WMU (Annual WMU Population Assessments & Antlerless Allocations). As for the views of people with regard to deer populations, the Game Comission uses a citizen survey. The last survey was conducted in 2011 and can be found here.
Can whitetail deer breed with mule deer and vice versa?
Yes, interbreeding may occur in areas where their ranges overlap and this hybridization has occurred in captivity. However, the offspring are at a severe disadvantage in terms of predator evasion. The mule deer’s strategy for escaping predators is the stott, a specialized form of locomotion slightly slower than a gallop. Unless the deer is 100% mule deer, it cannot stott. The whitetail aims for speed in predator evasion. A hybrid has difficulty jumping obstacles and does not run from or attack a predator. The instinct of how to evade danger successfully is a genetic trait, not a learned behavior. In one experiment, when deer were confronted with a large leashed dog, whitetails fled; mule deer assembled and attacked stotting around the wouldbe predator; hybrids approached the dog at a walk, stopped, looked, turned, looked over their shoulders and generally acted confused. This type of predator evasion is not very successful in the wild. -
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Game Commission. ttps:// www.pgc.pa.gov/wildlife/wildlifespecies/white-taileddeer/ Pages/askadeerquestion.aspx