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White Tailed Deer
Odocoileus virginianus

So, we ALL know what this is. However in researching this entry I WAS able to answer a question I had for years, when I’d go hiking and put on blaze orange to prevent any rogue hunter from shooting me. I wondered, doesn’t that make the deer able to see them easier? Well, deer have dichromatic vision, which means they only see two colors: yellow and blue primaries. Therefore deer can’t easily distinguish the orange and red color hues! So wearing orange is something that a human (that has trichromatic vision) can easily see, but a deer, cannot.

Alternate Name: Whitetail
Size: Male: 150 to 300 lb, Female: 88 to 198 lb
Family: Cervidae 
Habitat: Everywhere, and you know it.
Identification: "The deer's coat is a reddish-brown in the spring and summer and turns to a grey-brown throughout the fall and winter. The deer can be recognized by the characteristic white underside to its tail." From wikipedia.com
All text and photos copyright © 2022 Middle Way Nature Reserve, unless noted.
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