coues deer coloration

after looking at a ton of pix of harvested coues deer, i have noticed that some of there hides are grey and some are brown. what causes them to be different colors, does location or time of year cause this? i thought i read somewhere that they are brown during the summer, then switch to a grey coat for the winter months, is this true?

how do they look different from say an eastern whitetail, besides there racks are gonna probably be smaller.

coues deer have many different colors. not only there over all color, but there chest, their tail and coloring around their head. they are amazing deer.
Casey

Other differences are that the coues have shoter noses, ears and tail are larger in proportion to their body than eastern WT, and a mature coues buck is about 85-110 pounds. The color does change from summer brown to winter grey.

RR

Our Coues do not have the red summer coats that other whitetails have. South Texas deer also stay very gray in the summer. I'm not sure anyone knows why the SW deer have much less difference between the winter and summer coats. They do shed twice a year, but the difference is not as great - really a change from a brown/gray summer coat to a gray winter coat. They do have a huge variation in the color of that back of their tails, spawning all sorts of rumors of Mexican Fantails and the like. I have a whole section on Coues and desert mule deer coat color (and Mexican Fantails) in my new book.

I also completely revamped my website to include pdf versions of past magazine articles that you can download free. You can now also order my book with a credit card right off the website.

Jim Heffelfinger
Wildlife Biologist and Author
Visit http://www.deernut.com for articles and to purchase your copy of "Deer of the Southwest"