Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Big Bucks - Coat Changes?

Sorry, the picture I posted came out a little small.

If you right-click on the pic and select "Open image in a new tab", then you can see him much better.

That's the difference between the thinner summer coat and the thicker winter coat. Our deer here in Northern Indiana do the same thing. Go from a more reddish color to a more grey color.

Nature usually makes good sense.

However, to my eye, it looks like the biggest bucks have the heaviest coats and the 1-1/2 year-old does have the thinnest coats.

The bucks have the most favorable surface area-to-mass ratio to stay warm during the winter. The little does are almost as tall through the back as the bigger does, yet they still have spindly little legs and 1/2 the mass of the bigger does. This seems inverted for long-term species survival.

I am going to watch my cameras more closely this year and see if the coats of the smaller deer thicken significantly as we move to late December.



P.S. I have never caught any of the truly "monster" bucks in my area on a game camera. My cameras are set up on the main travel paths and on the feeders on our farm.

Are the big bucks so smart that they have read Robert Frost, and when it comes to paths, they know to take "the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference"?

I've caught a monster buck on trail cam once for a 3 picture sequence. When he heard the cam trigger he immediately went back the way he came and the last 2 pictures of him were him looking over his shoulder at the camera. I saw him once in person and never saw him again.

FishinRod, you are thinking of Bergmann's Rule.

Been my experience that your older bucks are more grayish color then younger deer, usually one way of distinguishing and older deer if you just see a picture of the head, it's more grayish usually.

Fishing Rod,

Can't say this has anything to do with it but there may be predator/prey influence that has adapted the summer time red/orange coloration. It is thought that tigers developed orange coloration as camouflage making it difficult for deer to see them. The color is mistaken for green by the native deer there and so it is the perfect color in places where the growing season is long. (Our whitetail) deer are reddish brown in the summer time when green is a prevalent color ... so maybe this color helps/helped with a predator that had a similar vision limitation? Here is more on tigers.

Thanks for all of the help, everyone! I am new to watching my deer on camera in the fall, and then watching them again from the stand in the winter.

It is a very complicated puzzle to "figure out" all of their patterns. However, just like with trying to catch wily fish, the more you know about their patterns and lifestyle, the better job you can do.



I will say that BOTH colors of my deer are nearly perfectly matched to their background.

The reddish-brown deer blend in perfectly to the color of our tall-grass prairie mix after it goes dormant in the fall.

The larger/older gray deer blend in perfectly to the color of our tree trunks and bare plum thicket stems after the leaves have dropped.

Now that I have all of my cameras out, I am going to see if the coats on the big does are more gray and thicker compared to the younger. I am also going to check the coat changes on our little spike bucks and the 4-pointers.