This year we had our first white spotted deer (piebald) on camera on our farm, a young 8 pointer...he's been a regular for the last month & shows up on various trail cams several times a week.

also noticed we have had quite a bit of color variation in some of the yearlings, with some more noticeably gray in color.

i'll upload some pix of the piebald buck, he has assorted white freckles on his face & torso.

anyone have piebald, or melanistic, or other color variations on your whitetails?

shoot him....you don't want the genetics that come with piebalds....

couple of pix of the spotted buck...

Never had any colorations in our area that we've seen.

Always thought they were neat though.

We see a mix of colors in deer around here. Some will be a very light tan, others a very red/brown color, and others shades of grey from light to almost black. It seems to be genetic, and not a seasonal thing.

I haven't seen any piebald on the hoof. One sporting goods store in the area had a full body mount of a piebald spike in the store.

I wonder if the expression of the piebald/albino trait is a warning sign of too much inbreeding in a population?

or maybe it was a fallow deer got into the mix?

We have a lot of bucks in my area that have mule deer forks on their antlers.

Who knows?

The grey color is just change of coat from summer to winter. I don't think that deer is piebald, rather that appears to be some hairless spots on the hide. He otherwise looks proportionate and healthy. Piebald is a genetic defect that normally coincides with other issues, disproportionate legs, snout, etc.

Exactly-the piebalds that I have seem killed-4,have all had obvious "defects ",roman noses and enlarged ankles being the most obvious.Not seeing any of that in the buck above.

some experts say the first does to change from there reddish summer coat to the darker winter are always the first to come in heat.

I hunted a property in the 80s and 90s that had a number of piebald bucks. I shot one in the 140 class that had a fair amount of white, he didn't seem unhealthy.

We see some whitetails that are more grey than brown from time to time. Not really sure why.

Where I hunt in East Central Minnesota we have dark deer and lighter colored deer in November. It seems to me that the dark ones can be quite a bit larger. I shot a fawn one year that was dark and huge, close to 150 lbs. One year, I sat out in a stand on a field watching a doe with 2 fawns. This means that doe was at least 2 1/2 years old. Does under that age almost never produce twins. She would have weighed 130 minimum to a probable 150-160. After a bit, another dark doe walked out and started feeding with the others. With her in the midst of them, it was obvious she was half again larger than the other doe. Last year I shot a dark doe one that was bigger than the sixer I shot a week earlier. Might just be coincidence. But... we have the genes locally to produce 300 lb+ bucks with typically very small racks while our average mature bucks are more typically 170-225.

had several more pix of the spotted buck, i'll get some more uploaded....here's a couple more from a couple weeks ago. I'll check cam pix again this week on Friday, he's been coming in to the feeders and the food plots fairly often....

Three seasons back I saw one that was charcoal gray with virtually black antlers. I let him walk.

This is what I observe in my neck of the woods which is farmland/upland reddish brown and gray in the river bottoms.

Farmland/upland


River bottoms