Muley or Whitetail?

What type of deer is this?

  • Total voters
    185
White rump- check
Huge ears- check
Antlers growing in forks- check

100 % mule deer, like they say if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, smells like a duck then it is a duck.

That is a mule deer, no question about it.
 
Easy enough if you can study a photo. But summer deer can be tricky. They don't have the typical colour of fall deer, especially around the face, and the uniform reddish hue can throw an observer off. I'd call it a mule deer too but if it was hunting season and I only had a tag for one or the other I would hold my fire on a running deer that I wasn't 100% confident in identifying.
 
I'm calling cross, white rear end patch not big enough for true mulie, however small tail with black tip typical mulie, ears are big but not too big to be a whitey, horns real iffy at this stage of growth. I took a hybrid in Sask a few years back and I'm guessing that this photo is of another. Coloration is typical whitey, not grey enough for a true mulie.
 
H4831 said:
That is what I told Kamlooky, when he sent me the picture.

Edited to say that the three points mentioned above; antler direct branch, the big ears, and the white on the bum, were three reasons I said it was a mule deer.
Click to expand...

What he said - I'm certain; I was shocked to see the first few posts here saying whitey, that's textbook mulie
 
Look at the ears.
Look at the way the horns "fork" they spilt in two then split again
MULE deer for sure

WT have a main beam with points all coming from the main beam. This one doesnt

Anyway, you saw it run - so did it run like a WT or hop away like a MD????
 
The solution is simple, do a catch and release. I find that deer tend to stay put after you catch them thou, catch and release works for fish why not deer? ;)
 
Whitetails have a white tail, but mulies have a white ass.
That white butt is definite mule deer and the closest antler is a double fork. Mulie fer sure.
 
This thread wasn't meant to offer up any insults to anyone.
I was heading up to a favorite lake with the two dogs to ease up some 42* heat.
There were two bucks standing on the road and I stopped as quickly as I could.
The camera wasn't handy and looking between the seats for it, the pup on the passenger
seat was onto them. She started to get finnicky and the window was down enough for her
to jump out. I grabbed her while still trying to unzip my camera. The buck you see over the
fence was the lead buck of the two. There was a gal in a SUV coming down the road while
all this hooplah was going on. By the time I looked up, the one buck that you see in the photo
was just jumping over the fence. The other buck was standing in the middle of the road.
I got his photo first, turned to find the other buck and blink of an eye, they were both gone.
The side of the road was an uphill bank so the running (whitetail) hopping (muley) just
wasn't there. They hopped up the bank, jumped the fence and the top of the fence as you see
it was the crest of a hill.
My first impression of the buck was the forward tine was actually the lead of the right tine suggesting he could be a whitetail.
But as I mentioned earlier, there are two forks, the right and the left. I didn't see the black tip of either buck to identify them being muley's.
This whole duration was in a few secongs. The SUV coming down the road spooked any chance of me getting any time with these two bucks. The SUV isn't in the photo as the road climbs up quite steeply and is out of the cameras lense.



This was the first photo.......can you still feel confident to cut a muley tag if the season was
open? Both of these would of grown to an older age if at this time muley bucks were open.
It happened to quick to make a solid judgement.
And to you that made the scorn against the whitetail nods, I wouldn't hunt with you either.
Cheers.





Couple of does from the same area.
Hide the tail, could you tell the difference?





 
Even that 2nd posted pic screams mulie. I never look at a deer's head to confirm, too many variables there. I've passed up some nice shots but if I can't see that big white bottom and black tip of the tail I won't shoot. It doesn't pay to not second guess, I have seen whitetails and mulies run together here...
 
When it happens fast it can be hard to tell. It's pretty straight forward in the pictures, given the luxury of time to look more carefully. That white butt and the black tipped tail are a dead giveaway. The absence of the white flag is a pretty strong clue as well. When a whitetail sticks that flag in the air it's a no-brainer.
 
The first picture from page one is 100% a Mule deer. Although it does have a white tail, the white tail deer when his tail is down, you can not see any white, or at least very little white.
 
First Picture, Page 1: Mule Deer!

Why?
1. The ears are too big
2. The white on the rump is seen while the tail is down
3. The Whitetail will "flag" the tail 99.9% of the time a dog/coyote goes after them.
4. The tip of the tail looks black
5. and lastly, the possible barrel chest and possible dark hair on the side of the nose generally indicate Mulie... but the photo gets grainy there..

Don't normally notice antlers in velvet... but the forks hint at it too as someone else said.
 
Antler tine configuration, while a general indicator of species, is far from definitive. There are lots of mule deer that don't fork and lots of whitetails that do. The butt and tail say 100% mule deer....forget about the antlers.
 
sheephunter said:
Antler tine configuration, while a general indicator of species, is far from definitive. There are lots of mule deer that don't fork and lots of whitetails that do. The butt and tail say 100% mule deer....forget about the antlers.
Click to expand...

30 years ago I was hunting with a guy who shot what looked like a whitetail excpt that it had a perfect 4x4 mule deer rack. Other than the antlers it didn't look like a hybrid except a very faint black tip on the tail that you couldn't see unless you were holding it. It didn't matter to my buddy since he had tags for both species, except we didn't know which tag to throw on it. We took it to the local F&W office and asked which tag should be used but they just told us if we shot it as a whitetail to use the whitetail tag, or vice versa.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom