Day dream that you are climbing the Adirondacks and you are halfway to the tippy top and suddenly a mammal with large horns charges at you. Do you know who this creature is? It has large eyes with white rings around it. It weighs about two hundred pounds. It is three and one half feet tall and it has hoofed feet. It has a white tail. The creature is a white tailed deer. It is a buck because only males have antlers which are branched. They lose their antlers every year because they bang their antlers against  trees. Later the antlers will regrow.

White tailed deer are herbivores. They eat, leaves, grass, bark, acorns, berries, clovers, tree buds and apples. White tailed deer have no teeth in their upper jaws, so they place their upper jaws over their food and chop it off with the teeth on their bottom jaw.

White tailed deer are in a family called Cervidae. Fawns drink milk from their mother for one year. Males can be called bucks, bulls, stags or harts. Females can be called does, cows or hinds. Babies can be called fawns or calves. White tailed deer have enemies which are, humans, coyotes, and wolves. Speed is a deer's best defense. The females often travel in small herds with their fawns. White tails are mostly active in the early morning and at night in the fall. The breeding season is October to December. The baby deer are born in May or June. Fawns have white spots that help them hide from their enemies. When a fawn is twenty minutes old it will try to stand up. It will fall down after a few tries. When the fawn is two days old it will stand and begin to walk.

Did you know that the whitetail deer can jump over ten feet high and that bucks can weigh up to four hundred pounds. I bet you didn't know that large whitetail can signal other deer when danger is near. Deer have scent glands on their legs and feet which make a smell that communicates danger to other deer. Fawns have no scent glands when they are first born so predators can't smell them. The whitetail can see in every direction except behind them so they can see movement easily and escape from danger.