When a local hunter I know went out on opening day to his stand near Crystal Mountain, he had a feeling it was going to be a good day. It was! He got a deer and a big surprise: it was a white buck!
White deer can either be albino or leucistic. Both are genetic conditions. Eye color is the key way to tell them apart. Albinos have pink or red eyes. Leucistic deer have brown eyes.
Albinos cannot produce melanin but leucistic animals produce some melanin. The latter can be almost completely white or have white patches on mostly brown fur. Those with patchy colors are sometimes called “piebald.”
The first white deer I ever saw was in upstate New York. I was driving past the Seneca Falls Army Depot and I spotted one inside the fence. I was amazed! I thought this must be the only one in existence!
But when I told friends who lived in the area, it turned out there was a whole herd of them. In the 1940s, the Army had closed off more than 10 thousand acres with a security fence so high deer couldn’t jump it. The enclosed herd included some leucistic genes and as years passed with no hunting or natural predators, white deer became more common.
In a free-ranging whitetail deer herd, one to two percent are leucistic. Albinos are even less common. Both are at a disadvantage in nature because they’re more easily spotted by predators.
They have other disadvantages, too. Albinos have poor eyesight and extreme sensitivity to light. Leucistic deer can have debilitating bone deformities.
Deer aren’t the only animals with these genetic conditions. The more you get out in nature, the better your chances of seeing a white deer, squirrel, snake or insect.
