Sneaking across the creek

by Rick Hansen

Original - Not For Sale

Price

Not Specified

Dimensions

14.000 x 14.000 inches

Title

Sneaking across the creek

Artist

Rick Hansen

Medium

Photograph - Photograph

Description

White tail deer about to cross the open water creek in winter.
This photo was taken on one of the backroads at the Big Rock Creek Farm, north of St Croix Falls, Wisconsin.

From Wikipedia:

White-tailed deer
White-tailed deer.jpg
Male (buck or stag)
Deer female in wild.jpg
Female (doe)
Conservation status

Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification edit
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Cervidae
Subfamily: Capreolinae
Genus: Odocoileus
Species: O. virginianus
Binomial name
Odocoileus virginianus
(Zimmermann, 1780)
Subspecies
38, see text

Odocoileus virginianus map.svg
White-tailed deer range map
Synonyms
Dama virginiana Zimmermann, 1780
Dama virginianus Zimmermann, 1780
The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia.[2] It has also been introduced to New Zealand, all the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean (Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico[3]), and some countries in Europe, such as the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Romania and Serbia.[4][5] In the Americas, it is the most widely distributed wild ungulate.

In North America, the species is widely distributed east of the Rocky Mountains as well as in southwestern Arizona and most of Mexico, except Lower California. It is mostly displaced by the black-tailed or mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) from that point west except for mixed deciduous riparian corridors, river valley bottomlands, and lower foothills of the northern Rocky Mountain region from Wyoming west to eastern Washington and eastern Oregon and north to northeastern British Columbia and southern Yukon, including in the Montana valley and foothill grasslands. The westernmost population of the species, known as the Columbian white-tailed deer, was once widespread in the mixed forests along the Willamette and Cowlitz River valleys of western Oregon and southwestern Washington, but current numbers are considerably reduced, and it is classified as near-threatened. This population is separated from other white-tailed deer populations.[citation needed]

Texas is home to the most white-tailed deer of any U.S. state or Canadian province, with an estimated population of 5.3 million.[6] High populations of white-tailed deer exist in the Edwards Plateau of central Texas and all of Pennsylvania. Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Illinois, Wisconsin, Maryland, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, and Indiana also boast high deer densities. The conversion of land adjacent to the Canadian Rockies to agriculture use and partial clear-cutting of coniferous trees, resulting in widespread deciduous vegetation, has been favorable to the white-tailed deer and has pushed its distribution to as far north as Yukon. Populations of deer around the Great Lakes have expanded their range northwards, also due to conversion of land to agricultural use, with local caribou, elk, and moose populations declining.
White-tailed deer are generalists and can adapt to a wide variety of habitats.[22] The largest deer occur in the temperate regions of North America. The northern white-tailed deer (O. v. borealis), Dakota white-tailed deer (O. v. dacotensis), and northwest white-tailed deer (O. v. ochrourus) are some of the largest animals, with large antlers. The smallest deer occur in the Florida Keys and in partially wooded lowlands in the Neotropics.

Although most often thought of as forest animals depending on relatively small openings and edges, white-tailed deer can equally adapt themselves to life in more open prairie, savanna woodlands, and sage communities as in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. These savanna-adapted deer have relatively large antlers in proportion to their body size and large tails. Also, a noticeable difference exists in size between male and female deer of the savannas. The Texas white-tailed deer (O. v. texanus), of the prairies and oak savannas of Texas and parts of Mexico, are the largest savanna-adapted deer in the Southwest, with impressive antlers that might rival deer found in Canada and the northern United States. Populations of Arizona (O. v. couesi) and Carmen Mountains (O. v. carminis) white-tailed deer inhabit montane mixed oak and pine woodland communities.[23] The Arizona and Carmen Mountains deer are smaller, but may also have impressive antlers, considering their size. The white-tailed deer of the Llanos region of Colombia and Venezuela (O. v. apurensis and O. v. gymnotis) have antler dimensions similar to the Arizona white-tailed deer.


White-tailed deer during late winter
In some western regions of North America, the white-tailed deer range overlaps with those of the mule deer. White-tail incursions in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas have resulted in some hybrids. In the extreme north of the range, their habitat is also used by moose in some areas. White-tailed deer may occur in areas that are also exploited by elk (wapiti) such as in mixed deciduous river valley bottomlands and formerly in the mixed deciduous forest of eastern United States. In places such as Glacier National Park in Montana and several national parks in the Columbian Mountains (Mount Revelstoke National Park) and Canadian Rocky Mountains, as well as in the Yukon Territory (Yoho National Park and Kootenay National Park), white-tailed deer are shy and more reclusive than the coexisting mule deer, elk, and moose.

Central American white-tailed deer prefer tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests, seasonal mixed deciduous forests, savanna, and adjacent wetland habitats over dense tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests. South American subspecies of white-tailed deer live in two types of environments. The first type, similar to the Central American deer, consists of savannas, dry deciduous forests, and riparian corridors that cover much of Venezuela and eastern Colombia.[24] The other type is the higher elevation mountain grassland/mixed forest ecozones in the Andes Mountains, from Venezuela to Peru. The Andean white-tailed deer seem to retain gray coats due to the colder weather at high altitudes, whereas the lowland savanna forms retain the reddish brown coats. South American white-tailed deer, like those in Central America, also generally avoid dense moist broadleaf forests.

Since the second half of the 19th century, white-tailed deer have been introduced to Europe.[25] A population in the Brdy area remains stable today.[26] In 1935, white-tailed deer were introduced to Finland. The introduction was successful, and the deer have recently begun spreading through northern Scandinavia and southern Karelia, competing with, and sometimes displacing, native species. The 2020 population of some 109,000 deer originated from four animals provided by Finnish Americans from Minnesota.[27][28]

Antlers[edit]

Male white-tailed deer
Males regrow their antlers every year. About one in 10,000 females also has antlers, although this is usually associated with freemartinism.[19] Bucks without branching antlers are often termed "spikehorn", "spiked bucks", "spike bucks", or simply "spikes/spikers". The spikes can be quite long or very short. Length and branching of antlers are determined by nutrition, age, and genetics. Rack growth tends to be very important from late spring until about a month before velvet sheds. Healthy deer in some areas that are well-fed can have eight-point branching antlers as yearlings (1.5 years old).[20] Although antler size typically increases with age, antler characteristics (e.g., number of points, length, or thickness of the antlers) are not good indicators of buck age, in general, because antler development is influenced by the local environment. The individual deer's nutritional needs for antler growth is dependent on the diet of the deer, particularly protein intake. Good antler-growth nutritional needs (calcium) and good genetics combine to produce wall trophies in some of their range.[21] Spiked bucks are different from "button bucks" or "nubbin' bucks", that are male fawns and are generally about six to nine months of age during their first winter. They have skin-covered nobs on their heads. They can have bony protrusions up to a half inch in length, but that is very rare, and they are not the same as spikes.


White-tailed bucks with antlers still in velvet, August 2011
Antlers begin to grow in late spring, covered with a highly vascularised tissue known as velvet. Bucks either have a typical or atypical antler arrangement. Typical antlers are symmetrical and the points grow straight up off the main beam. Atypical antlers are asymmetrical and the points may project at any angle from the main beam. These descriptions are not the only limitations for typical and atypical antler arrangement. The Boone and Crockett or Pope and Young scoring systems also define relative degrees of typicality and atypicality by procedures to measure what proportion of the antlers is asymmetrical. Therefore, bucks with only slight asymmetry are scored as "typical". A buck's inside spread can be from 3 to 25 in (8–64 cm). Bucks shed their antlers when all females have been bred, from late December to February.

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December 7th, 2022

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