The “Brown-Eyed” & “Bushy” White-Tailed

BuckBy: Noah Edwards

Scientific Classification

Kingdom = Animalia – Animal Phylum = Chordata – Spinal cord Class = Mammalia – Mammal Order = Artiodactyla – “Even-toed” Family = Cervidae – Grow & shed new antlers

each year Genus = Odocoileus – Medium sized deer Species = Mule deer & white-tailed deer

White-tailed deer

All states in America except Nevada, Utah, California, Hawaii, and Alaska have white-tailed deer. They can also be found in Canada and places between Mexico and Bolivia. A good deer habitat would include a mixture of trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, and woody plants for food, shelter, and concealment.

Something Smells Human-y!

• White-tailed deer can smell 1,000 times better than you!• They have a secondary scent gland located in their mouth!

Did You Hear That?• Deer can hear a predator making noise from over 100 yards

away. That’s the length of an entire football field!

Let’s Play Hide and

Seek!• A young deer, called a

fawn, has a reddish-brown coat with white spots that help them blend in with the forest.

• White-tailed deer are very fast and agile. They can sprint up to 30mph and jump 10 feet high & 30 feet wide in one bound.

What’s for Dinner?

• Deer love to eat the farmer’s soybeans and corn!

• Did you know that deer can eat some plants that are poisonous to humans like poison ivy, mushrooms, & hay?

• How about some wild berries for desert?

• Deer have a 4-chambered stomach that allows them to eat varieties of foods and digest it later in a safe area of cover.

VelvetEach year, the antlers on a deer are covered in velvet until the

antler reaches it’s full size and is shed.

12 Points?Some deer have numerous “points” or “tines” on their antlers.

When antlers regrow, they are typically larger than before.

What if they get stuck?White-tailed deer use their antlers during “rut” or the mating

season and to fight off predators.

Life as a Deer!Every morning I wake up hungry so I set out to find food. I look for berries, acorns, soy beans, or corn. Today is my lucky day because what do I see? An entire field of soybeans! I get my feel so I run back as fast as I can to get my family and friends so they can have some. With our bellies full, we head back to our home and decide to take a nap.

When I wake up I realize the sun is starting to set and I must go find more food. I stumble upon a large, white oak tree and eat some acorns. On my way back home, I stop off at the creek for some water. While at the creek, I hear a strange noise that stops me dead in my tracks. I listen for a while but I don’t hear anything else so I continue drinking the water. BOOM!!! I jump as high as I can and take off running harder than I ever have. That was close. I think Farmer John is upset because we ate so many of his soybeans. Tomorrow morning I will look for food somewhere else. Maybe if we don’t eat his soybeans he won’t try to eat us!

Shoo, what a day! Time for bed. Good night!