In woods and fields, chances run high that resident whitetails know more about the presence of hunters than most hunters know the whereabouts of deer.
Whitetails might be inferior thinkers and planners compared with humans, but they have evolved superior capabilities in basic sensory areas that route to the brain. This should come as no surprise given that deer, though considered a big-game animal, spend many hours fleeing animals that would eat them.
Heightened senses and inborn athleticism tend to keep a vulnerable vegetarian alive, out of trouble and a challenge for hunters.
A deer’s sense of smell not only outstrips that of people by a factor of 100, but likely that of dogs. A whitetail’s nose, nasal passages and throat hold about 300 million olfactory receptors. A bloodhound has about 220 million smell receptors, and a human but 5 million.
Some of the whitetail’s smell cells are on the outside of the nose, which probably explains why a deer will lick its snout if it catches wind of something curious. Moisture helps activate receptors. Deer can detect residual human odors on underbrush for days after a person passes. How a whitetail responds, however, can be tied to how familiar it is with the scent of humans. Some farmers, who spend many days in their fields, report that as hunters they can get closer to deer on their land than a visitor might.
Deer don’t travel far, sticking to familiar ground. Does hang with their mothers for two seasons, young bucks for a year. Once a buck has established a territory, it will stay until forced to leave by humans, predators or another buck. Hunters take advantage of the territorial habit of big bucks by tracking their movements long before hunting season.
Many hunters have observed that deer have the smarts to move away from hunted land and into safe zones within weeks after the start of hunting season. A three-year Auburn University study based on the activities of 37 bucks showed that they increased their distance from hunting stand sites an average of 55 yards from the beginning to the end of the hunting season.
The hearing of whitetails is also far more acute than that of people. Deer ears are large, shaped to capture sound and can rotate 180 degrees without moving the head. Whitetails can hear a range of high-frequency sounds inaudible to humans. Doe-eyed might describe a look of wide-eyed innocence when attributed to humans, but deer eyes are built for survival. A deer can see objects in a 310-degree arc without moving its head because of eye location. The wide eye orbits, on the other hand, prevent a deer from focusing on an object.
Having fewer cones, deer don’t see colors the way people do, but having more rods, they see in the dark far better. Reflective material inside a deer’s eyes helps it gather light on even the darkest nights. The light-enhancing material causes a deer’s eyes to glow in the dark when it reflects a flashlight beam.
Deer see mostly in greens and blues, leaving hunter orange out of its color range.
Because deer are sensitive to ultraviolet light, they perceive as glowing the brighteners used in most laundry detergents. The brighteners commonly are also found in new clothes, including camouflage garb.
Whitetails can run about 35 mph in the field, can bound 30 feet at a time and can leap an 8-foot fence. Their life, though, is fairly short in the wild. If not killed by disease, motor vehicles or predators including hunters, coyotes, bears, wolves and big cats, a deer’s teeth will be ground down to nonfunctional in about 11 years by a diet of coarse plants.
Deer have lived longer than 11 years in the wild, but if nothing else gets a deer by the time its teeth wear down, starvation ultimately will do it in.
outdoors@dispatch.com
