LAST EDITED ON Jul-21-04 AT 08:50AM (MST)[p]LAST EDITED ON Jul-21-04 AT 08:45?AM (MST)
No, I think it was a reindeer - lol. It was a muley/whitey mix. I've seen plenty of muleys east of the Missouri River in SD.
Here's the article...Yes in Rochester MN, right across the river from WI. There's a pic on Outdoornews.com, but I'm not sure how to get it posted here.
When mule deer and whitetails get together
By Gary Clancy
When Ben Johnson, a young man from right here in Byron, Minn., where I live shot a mule deer buck while bowhunting during the first week of November, it caused quite a stir around these parts. Old timers could remember one other mule deer being shot out around Douglas sometime back in the 1950s, although some swore it was in the early 60s, and the argument about that one is probably still going back and forth around the tables at KJ?s Cafe.
Ben was hunting over a deer decoy when the buck appeared and he knew right away that this was no ordinary deer. Many deer hunters probably would not even have recognized that they were looking at something other than a whitetail, but Ben, although he is only 24 years old, is a seasoned hunter and he knew as soon as he saw those big ears that this was no ordinary deer.
Ben suspected right away that the deer was a mule deer or mule deer/whitetail cross. When the deer turned and Ben saw that the tail was small with a black tip, he knew that the buck in front of him was no whitetail. They aren't named whitetails for nothing, you know.
About then, a 9-point whitetail came over to investigate the decoy. With the odd-looking deer and the whitetail buck side by side, it was easy to see the difference.
Ben figured he had better shoot the mule deer buck, which sports a 7-point rack and let the 9-pointer go or nobody would believe that he actually had seen the deer. So he did. The 10-yard shot was a ?gimme? for Ben.
Ben was right about people not believing him. He went to get his dad, Bruce, to help him drag the deer out, but his dad would not believe it was a muley until he saw it himself. Mule deer are not all that uncommon in western Minnesota. It seems that a mule deer or a hybrid is shot nearly every season somewhere in the western tier of counties. But for a mule deer or hybrid to make it as far east as Olmstead County is very rare.
This buck is a hybrid. The face markings, the ears and the tail are all distinctively mule deer, but the antler configuration is whitetail all the way. It is almost certain that the buck?s mother was a mule deer doe and the father a whitetail buck. Whitetail bucks tend to be much more aggressive and assertive than mule deer bucks.
When a buck whitetail comes across a mule deer doe in heat, if the buck is big enough he can drive off the mule deer bucks and breed the mule deer doe. The fawns are hybrids. On Ben?s buck, it is easy to see that the deer is carrying whitetail and mule deer genes, but it is not as distinctive in all hybrids. Hybrids are not uncommon in some parts of the country. There are places in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado, where taking a hybrid deer will not turn any heads.
A number of years ago, I was on a hunt in southeast Colorado where both mule deer and whitetails share the range. There were eight of us hunting. Snow fell early in the hunt and conditions were ideal. We took eight bucks. Three were whitetails, two were mule deer, and three were hybrids. The hybrids were easy to spot. One, like Ben?s deer had a mule deer tail, mule deer ears, mule deer face markings, but whitetail antlers. Another was just the opposite, everything was whitetail except the antlers, which had that distinctive mule deer fork to them.
One of the hunters on that trip was Larry Weishuhn, who like me, makes his living as a writer, but he's also a trained whitetail biologist. He confirmed that the three bucks were all hybrids. Larry did some measurements of the metatarsal gland, which is that small gland on the outside of the leg beneath the larger tarsal gland. I forget now, if it is bigger on the whitetail than it is on the mule deer, or vice versa. It was just one of those bits of information that did not seem worth remembering. But now that Ben has gone and shot a hybrid buck practically at my back door, I guess I had better get busy and brush up on my anatomy lessons.
Congratulations Ben on a fine and unique trophy buck!
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