Deer

A deer (plural: deer) or true deer is a hoofed ruminant ungulate belonging to the family Cervidae (informally the deer family). Cervidae is divided into subfamilies Cervinae (which includes muntjac, elk (wapiti), red deer, fallow deer, and other species) and Capreolinae (which includes reindeer (caribou), white-tailed deer, roe deer, moose, and other species). Male deer of almost all species (except the water deer) grow and shed new antlers each year. (Female reindeer also grow antlers — typically, male reindeer shed their antlers in the late fall, while female reindeer shed their antlers in the spring when their calves are born.) Deer antlers are bony extensions of the skull and are often used for combat between males.

Quotes

• ... Fallow deer, which were deliberately stocked in the deer parks, boosted the lord’s image because they were exotic imports. They also made good decorations—they tended to stick together in large herds, a picturesque scene when observed from afar by the lord and his attendants.
  • Erika Howsare, The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with our Wild Neighbors. New York: Catapult. 2024. p. 30. ISBN 1646221354. 

• ... Under the oak boughs and in the thickets the stags can lie perfectly unseen; and the brake, too, is high enough to hide them if lying down. In June the deer spend the whole of the day in the covers out of the heat. At this time they are more shy than at any other, both stags and hinds retiring out of sight. The stags' antlers are as yet only partially grown, and while these weapons are soft and tender they conceal themselves. The hinds have their calves only recently dropped, or are about to calve, and consequently keep in the thickest woods.
  One might walk across the entire width of the North Forest, and not see a single deer, and yet be in the midst of them ...
  • Richard Jefferies, Red Deer (2nd ed.). Longmans, Green & Company. 1892. p. 56.  (1st edition 1884)

• Man has had a long history of association with the deer family — economic, religious, aesthetic and social. Deer are widely distributed throughout the north-temperate zones of the world, extending into the tropics in Asia and South and Central America. Throughout this range they were the major food species for man the hunter. As, in Africa, the hunter-gatherer economy relied heavily on exploitation of antelope, so, in other areas, the various deer species provided the main source of meat, hides and other products: sinews for sewing or twine, antlers for picks and other tools, etc. So fundamental were the deer to the subsistence of these people, so deeply interwoven with their whole life style, that they were endowed with mystical, magical properties, and became an integral part not only of man's secular existence but of his spiritual world as well. In extreme cases the relationship became so intimate, and human populations became so dependent on one particular species — as the Lapp reindeer-herders of the far north of Scandinavia — that the situation developed into of complete social parasitism: one organised population relying entirely upon one other.
  • Rory Putnam, "Preface". The Natural History of Deer. Cornell University Press. 1988. pp. xv–xvi. ISBN 0801422833.  (quote from p. xv)

• White-tailed deer are adaptable and prolific animals equipped with keen survival instincts (Halls 1984). Major predators such as the gray wolf (Canis lupus) and cougar (Puma concolor) have been extirpated from much of the deer’s range (Cote and others 2004; Rooney and Waller 2003). Because of human intervention, the range of the whitetail has actually expanded to include offshore islands, such as Block Island, RI, where seven deer introduced in 1967 grew to a herd of 700 deer by 1994 (Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, Division of Fish and Wildlife 2007). In addition to the food sources available to them in forests, deer have successfully exploited the human-altered environment, feeding in agricultural fields, orchards, roadsides, lawns, and gardens.
  • Thomas J. Rawinski, Impacts of white-tailed deer overabundance in forest ecosystems: an overview 1–8. USDA Forest Service (www.fs.usda.gov), Newton Square, Pennsylvania (2008). (quote from p. 1)

• The average lifespan of a white-tailed deer is about twelve years, but both wild and captive deer have lived to be twenty-three years old.
  • Leonard Lee Rue, The Encyclopedia of Deer: Your Guide to the World's Deer Species Including Whitetails, Mule Deer, Caribou, Elk, Moose, and More. Voyageur Press. 2003. p. 105. ISBN 0896585905. 

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Deer on Wikipedia