![\"\"](\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/white_girl_.jpg\")
\nA neighbor shot this photo of the youngest white deer, now two years old. She is muscular and remarkably healthy.<\/em><\/p>\n
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It was more than ten years ago that I first saw a white deer in the woods here. Sometimes I was able to get a photo, and comparison of the photos from year to year led to a strong suspicion that there were two white deer, almost certainly of two generations. Then, in the spring of 2023, a baby white deer appeared. That would make three, all part of the local deer herd, whose range includes my woods, the opposite ridge to the south, a lot of creek bottom, and a field or two along the ridge north of the creek.<\/p>\n
Fortunately their range is not crossed by a paved road, and as far as I know the local herd has not had any car fatalities. The deer are often in my yard. They’re hard on my day lilies, but they’re welcome to the clover. After I stopped keeping chickens, I opened the gates to the orchard. The deer now do a fine job of keeping the undergrowth (mostly honeysuckle) out of the orchard. <\/p>\n
My nearest neighbor keeps a close watch on the local deer herd. He puts out corn for them as well as mineral salt. He is a longtime hunter, but as far as I know he has never shot a deer from our local herd. Rather, he sees his job as keeping poachers out and letting it be known that anyone who shoots a white deer — or for that matter any deer from the local herd — just might get shot, if caught. There are plenty of hunters who would like to have a white deer as a trophy.<\/p>\n
I asked my neighbor, in a text message, if the youngest white deer has a white mother. He replied:<\/p>\n
“Not sure which doe it was. There are genes in this area to produce the white deer. I’ve heard that there are several between here and the river.” <\/p>\n
There is a lot of wild bottom land between here and the Dan River, which is less than two miles away. Bears are seen in that area pretty often. There is a pack of coyotes, though I rarely hear them. They must have a pretty large range.<\/p>\n
There are places in North Carolina with white squirrels. The commonly heard explanation, probably false, is that they escaped from a P.T. Barnum circus truck after a truck wreck<\/a>. If Brevard is still having its white squirrel festivals<\/a>, I wonder if there are any for sale on the black market. Woods with white deer ought to have some white squirrels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A neighbor shot this photo of the youngest white deer, now two years old. She is muscular and remarkably healthy. It was more than ten years ago that I first saw a white deer in the woods here. Sometimes I was able to get a photo, and comparison of the photos from year to year … Continue reading “Three generations of white deer?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sustainable-living","category-the-land"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30809"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30855,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30809\/revisions\/30855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}