The whitetail deer can be mostly found in America, particularly the Northern parts. They tend to make their home in an area consisting of a range that is less than a square mile and usually in the heavily wooded regions which provide shelter from both elements and predators. Only the male bucks have antlers and even then only in the summer months, before they are shed for winter. Their speed and agility is something to behold, capable of reaching 40 miles per hour and a distance of over 30 feet in just 1 single bound.

They actually change color depending on the seasons, with a summer reddish-brown changing to a more dull grayish shade in the winter. The name obviously suggests a certain coloration of a particular part of the animal, but the intriguing fact about whitetail deer is that it is not only the tail that has a flash of white - and it is actually only the underside that is colored this way - but there are also areas of white on the throat, stomach as well as around the eyes and snout.

One of the many intriguing snippets of information about whitetail deer is that they are ruminants and as such have 4 separate stomach chambers for the purpose of fully digesting its food intake. The first 2 mix up the food with bile and create the cud which is regurgitated and then passed through to the 3rd chamber for the removal of water, before making its way to the final chamber for the absorbing of the nutrients. As herbivores their diet consists of green plants, grass, corn, nuts, buds, twigs, leaves, fruits, acorns, mushrooms and even poison ivy. They tend to eat either at dawn or dusk and normally at established feeding areas.

The mating season varies dependent upon their whereabouts, with the more northerly based whitetails breeding in November and those further south in January to February. The gestation period is around 7 months and rarely more than 3 fawns are born in any one time (more would create problems for the mother, as although the newborns can walk at birth she often looks after them for their first 2 years of life). The buck lives a fairly solitary existence until the rut (another name for the mating season), and will certainly not hang around after to play any part in the fawns development.

Predators of whitetails include the likes of: wolves, bears, cougars and alligators and you can add bobcats, lynxes, coyotes and bald eagles to that bunch, although the latter quartet usually target the fawns only. Of course there is one further predator and that is the human. An experienced hunter, loaded with the needed whitetail deer info, will be able to spot numerous whitetail deer signs in and around their habitat.

These range from certain potent scents left on vegetation, scrapes and rubs on tree bark, trampled undergrowth, returning trails, bedding and scat or droppings. Not obvious unless you know what you are looking for, but to a trained eye a clear indication of whitetail presence and activity.