Is it a goat? That is what several people thought when they saw a white and brown four-legged creature nibbling some of the weeds along Geigertown Road in Union Township.
After looking at the cellphone photos she snapped of the animal, Regina Hill of Exeter Township thought it was an albino white-tailed deer fawn because it had some brown spots on it.
“I believe they are rare, and I am truly blessed to have captured this creature on my phone,” Hill said. “What’s next? Who knows. Maybe a unicorn.”
It turns out it was not a goat or an albino fawn; it was a piebald white-tailed deer.
“There are two conditions that cause a brown deer to be white,” Jeannine Tardiff Fleegle, a wildlife biologist for the Deer & Elk Management Section of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, said in an email.
Both are related to genetics.
“With the millions of genetic combinations that occur when deer breed, leucistic or piebald deer are rare, but widely documented throughout the range of the white-tail,” Fleegle said. “Usually, they are reported at rates under 1% in the population.”
An explanation of how these unusual deer come to be explains their small numbers.
Albino or piebald?
First, let’s look at what makes a true albino.
“Albinism is the result of reduction of melanin production only and it is inherited through recessive gene alleles,” Fleegle said. “Melanin helps to protect the skin and eyes from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. This leaves these animals very sensitive to overexposure to sunlight, increasing their risk of melanomas and retinal damage. As a result, they usually die at an early age.”
“Leucism is a condition characterized by reduced pigmentation also caused by recessive alleles,” she explained. “However, it is caused by a reduction in all types of skin pigment, not just melanin.
“Piebald is partial leucism resulting in irregular patches of white on an animal that otherwise has normal color and patterning. The result is a wide range of patterns. Some deer have speckles or whitewashed flanks or the markings of a prize pinto. Others are almost completely white. But if they have the brown eyes and black hooves of the classic white-tailed deer, they are still piebald, not albino.”
Along with the color mutations, there are other physical differences associated with piebald deer.
“They also typically have some other abnormality that may include dorsal bowing of the nose (Roman nose), short legs, curving of the spine, deviated limb joints (turned feet) and internal organ malformations,” Fleegle said. “Those with severe defects die at birth or shortly after. Limited observations indicate that piebald deer can breed with ‘normal’ deer and produce both normal and piebald fawns. All attempted matings of two piebald deer have failed to produce offspring.
“Limited observations indicate normal and piebald deer crosses produce both normal and leucistic offspring. This rate can increase if piebald deer are protected, making the genes for this condition more common in the population.”
A special population
At the former Seneca Army Depot in central New York, about an hour southwest of Syracuse, a unique herd of all-white deer have developed. They are leucistic/piebald because they have normally pigmented eyes and hooves.
According to Seneca White Deer, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the deer and the wildlife at the former Army depot, several dozen white-tailed deer were trapped within the depot when it was fenced in in 1941. The first all-white deer were observed there in 1949. Protected within the 10,587 acres of the Seneca Army Depot in Romulus, the white deer gene pool increased.
“At one time, white deer accounted for almost 200 of the approximately 800 deer within the depot fence,” states senecawhitedeer.org.
The depot was designated a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1990, and the cleanup it set to be completed by 2028. The base closed in 1995, and much of it has been sold, with a deer management proposal required for all interested bidders. Deer tours were conducted by SWD from November 2017 to December 2019. Self-guided tours are now offered by the Deer Haven Park business.
Some lucky Berks County residents don’t need to leave home to see an unusual deer. Another piebald deer, with more brown coloring, also has been seen in Union Township.
“I was on my back porch taking a phone call and this little spotted piebald casually walked through my backyard with its solid brown sibling,” wrote Marlette Johnson in an email. “I was so stunned … I had never seen anything like it.”
The two came through her wooded backyard in the Douglassville section of the township on May 4.
“I posted a few of the pictures on Facebook, joking that it looked like Momma Deer had used a bit too much bleach during this crazy time!” she said. “It was an awesome sight, and I of course keep my fingers crossed that we’ll cross paths again.”
Other readers reported seeing piebald deer in Bern and Colebrookdale townships.
Is killing one an omen?
A question that arises when these beautiful deer are seen, is “are hunters allowed to kill them?” In Pennsylvania, Fleegle said, the answer is yes.
Laws vary from state to state. For example, Wisconsin prohibits the killing of all-white bodied deer, albino or leucistic. It is illegal to “possess albino deer which are entirely white except for the hooves, tarsal glands, head and parts of the head unless special written authorization is obtained from the department” according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ Fall 2020 – Spring 2021 Hunting Regulations guide.
Should a hunter kill a white or mostly white deer? There is a debate, even among hunters themselves. A February 2019 National Deer Alliance members’ poll indicated a little more than half of hunters polled would shoot an albino deer if it were legal. And 90% said superstitions would not keep them from pulling the trigger.
“From my research only about 0.5% of the white-tail deer population carries the recessive white gene for either pure white or piebald deer, and it is far less for a true albino deer,” said Dennis Money, president of Seneca White Deer Inc. and a founder of the nonprofit. “With about 28 million whitetails, that is a very small number, and you can understand why hunters – which I am – consider them trophies. I do not, however, hunt them as I feel their best mission is to educate the public about the value of wildlife and habitat.
“They are ‘sexy’ animals, and when people see them they become excited and more interested in learning about the less sexy critters, so all the critters win.”
There are many Native American, Celtic, Japanese, Hungarian and Austrian legends and myths that say killing a white deer will bring the hunter bad luck or even the death of a family member.
No records are kept of piebald or albino deer harvested in Pennsylvania, Fleegle said.
Melanistic rarity
What is even rarer than an albino deer? A melanistic one.
“Melanism is the dark coloration of the skin, hair, fur or feathers because of a high concentration of melanin,” Fleegle said. “Semi-melanistic deer display coloration and markings somewhere between those of normal and melanistic specimens. Melanistic deer are extremely rare.”
According to Quality Deer Management Association, melanistic deer have been recorded in Mississippi, Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Texas and South Carolina. An unusually high incidence of 8.5% occurs in eight counties in the center of Texas.
Fleegle shared a report from the April 2007 edition of “The American Midland Naturalist” that details the first documented melanistic deer in Pennsylvania. It was a male fawn captured in June 1999 in Valley Forge National Park, which is in Chester and Montgomery counties. In 2003, an adult male 3.5-year-old was harvested in Bucks County.
While not black, melanistic deer tend to be a dark chocolate brown and are striking, but not as striking as an all-white counterpart.
