The Black Thing
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 5th, 2006
This black (melanistic) color phase of the white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, was taken during hunting season in Michigan, apparently this October 2006. They are said to be rarer than appearances of the albino phase.
Thanks to John Lutz and Judith Rogers for sharing this.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Wow, that is really odd. I’ve heard of melanistic deer before, but I have never seen one. Interestingly, it still has the white tail though.
Albinism is fairly common in whitetail deer, but melanism is very rare. I, too, wonder at the white tail. I would think that a deer with such an intense degree of melanism would not have such a large area of white.
Too bad this one wasn’t left alive to contribute to the gene pool.
I saw a group of deer here in southern Indiana a few years ago with 3 melanistic does in it. No one has ever really believed me. IM so glad to finally see a good picture of one.
MY husband, who is a deer hunter, has seen a piebald deer near the Ohi0o reiver, but never a black one.
Too bad it was killed, it was a beautiful animal.
Any idea whether they’ll have the skin preserved?
I don’t want to think where it is going to stuff those antlers.
I feel sorry for the deer and the loss of its life.
It was probably picked out of a group and shot, because of its unusual color.
If he wouldn’t have shot it, there may have been a few more next year.
I can guarantee you that the genes from that deer are in the pool. He has probably mated more close to a hundred times or more over his 3 or 4 years. The gene that caused the black is probably so rare just him depositing it in to a hundred does would not bring another. This trait would be repeated in one area until several generations later if his offspring happened to be lucky enough to mate within his blood lines a few times and strengthened the trait. So shooting him has no effect on whether this will or won’t occur again. Unless you count effect to the .000000th of a percentile.
What is too bad, it was shot and killed. It was killed for its color. It was picked out of a group and shot. All comments of ignorance.
Deer hunting is management. Plain and simple. Certain numbers of bucks, does and spikes are taken each year to avoid over population and a collapse of the herd in the state or unit within a state.
If deer hunting were stopped, you would have a steady increase of the population until the population collapses. It is the exact same result you get with over hunting. that is a collapse of the population. Whether it is from over hunting or no hunting the population will fall on its face.
There is only so much habitat and too many animals will degrade the habitat. There is no predation in most areas like before the population explosion of the 18 and 1900’s in this country.
As for the comments of picking the animal out of a group, it shows the lack of knowledge of what hunting entails. Sure some hunters would take that deer regardless of the others they may see on the hunt. But the vast majority would not waste a tag on a undesirable animal regardless of its color. If that comment were true, that deer would have been taken on the previous 4 seasons it was out there. If you say they may not have seen it you’re making my second point. There are not groups of 8 point deer standing around having coffee waiting to get killed.
One of the main reasons why the deer population will increase until collapse is the decline of top predators in the food chain. So in a way, humans have caused that problem themselves by killing off wolves and so forth. I mean, before there were humans there was no one to go out and cull them. It was the job of the food chain and this typically works very well until humans go and throw a wrench in the works. The dissappearance of one species has a profound affect on all others. Over here in Japan, the wolf has been extinct for some time and there is a major deer problem in some areas.
This is just one of those trade-offs. I love panthers and wolves, but I’d rather have the “problem” of deer overpopulation be controlled by human hunters rather than have to carry a sidearm with me everytime I walk in the woods to make sure a panther doesn’t take me out for getting too near her den.
Until people can somehow magically remove themselves from doing anything anywhere, we’ll just have to do the best we can with what we can.
Deer overpopulation is a major problem in some places. They end up using up valuable rescources that other animals need to survive and disrupt the ecosystem. Nature needs its top predators to function well. There has to be balance and preservation and humans, I feel, have to learn to manage this or we won’t need a sidearm in the woods because there will be no woods left to walk in. There are ways to coexist with nature that don’t involve killing off animals that may frighten us, thereby causing repercussions throughout the ecosystem. Remember, the problem is not just that there are too many deer, it is the domino effect that will continue on for generations if something is not done.
The taking of this animal is not what some here has called a tragedy, I have hunted for many years and this has brought me very close to the land and the entire natural world. What is a tragedy is what most of us live in now; subdivisions. Unless most people have not looked around you don’t see any wildlife larger than a rabbit in these abominations to mother Earth. Also, where are the deer going since the subdivisions have replaced natural habitat, and places are too close to human habitation to safely hunt and shoot the critters? Hint: look for the fur sticking up in the median of most state highways and interstates. Cool pic, incredible color on the buck, I would have to have sprung for a full body mount.
On a secondary note, the deer in the photo was shot in the Texas hill country.
Lots of interesting comments. Some not as informed as they believe themselves to be.
The post that said this deer has mated many times is correct, along with the fact that it will probably not produce another one like itself. The post about the food chain is not as accurate, as humans ARE part of the food chain as well. Humans have been part of the food chain for quite some time too. 🙂
Wildlife management is something fairly new. It has been in practice less than half the amount of time this country has been a country. We have managed the gators so well in Florida, that there is a consideration to put them into the regular hunting season. Meaning you just buy a stamp instead of win the lottery for a tag. So it does work.
People love wildlife and hate to see them killed. That is until they come flying through your windshield or eat up hundreds of dollars in landscaping or eat up half your garden. Most people I would consider to be anti-hunting are city dwellers who only visit the woods or country. They have no real conception of how “mother nature” works. I choose to be part of the food chain. I don’t see a deer as a nice set of antlers I see a full freezer for a year. My supermarket is the great outdoors.
True, humans are part of the food chain. That is correct. But the way the food chain works I don’t believe to be in dispute. But we also have populated the globe to the point that we need to be able to sustain rescources. Top predators are at the top of the food chain, which is like a pyramid, the top predators not out numbering the prey species. There is a natural balancer maintained. Now take humans and turn that triangle upside down. That’s humans up there at the top of an unbalanced triangle. We have overfished and hunted some species to the brink of extinction. What I’m trying to say is that this can have consequences if left unchecked.
By the way, this is a bit back on the topic, but I’m curious. Melanism is not my area of expertise and I am wondering if anyone out there has an explanation for why it’s tail is still white?
Trapster, personally, I’d rather have to take my chances with encountering a large predator, a rare event even where they are prevalent, than have to deal with all of the environmental repercussions of an out-of-control deer population. After all, it’s not like wolves are taking people down left and right in Yellowstone or Alaska.
I also don’t think it has to be a case of either/or, there’s no reason you can’t have bears, wolves, coyotes, and cougars AND hunters out there. Skunkape_Hunter is right, people have been part of the food chain here in North America for upwards of 50,000 years (11,000 if you want to take the most conservative estimate), and we have had both positive and negative effects.
Where I live in New Jersey, it was said that you could run from one end of the state to the other without ever getting caught in brambles or thickets (One man, Jonas Cattell, is said to have essentially done just that to warn Monmouth of a British attack). This was partly due to lightning strikes causing minor fires to keep the brush clear, but by and large it was the native Lenni Lenape (Delaware) with their controlled burnings that kept it that way. Nowadays you can’t run 3 feet into the woods in most places without becoming tangled in the thickets. Clearings are necessary for all sorts of songbirds and other animals to flourish, but even where they do exist today, the large deer population tends to crop the new growth that these animals need.
Another problem the Lenape didn’t have to deal with was the massive amount of ticks you find in the NJ woods today, which is due to the tick population outpacing that of its predators, mainly birds. An ice storm in 1996, coupled with the cyclical 17-year population explosion of ticks in 1997 has only made the situation worse.
Regarding why it has a white tail, I would imagine that the melanism has made its natural dark pigments much darker, but does nothing to effect the light coloration.
I think I’ve seen that picture before back during the summer. I don’t think it was taken this year but I have heard of melanistic animals before. I have seen several true albino deer in my area but never one of these.
So, has anyone figured out why they do this? I can understand why they go albino, but going black (and keeping the white tail) doesn’t make a whole lotta sense to me. Though, I will have to say that the coloring really makes this deer majestic looking.
If you have ever seen a group of deer die of starvation I’m sure you would much rather see the population controlled by hunters. If it were not for the sportsmens love of wildlife, deer as well as many other animals wouldn’t stand a chance. While you are sitting in your nice warm house these guys are out planting trees and doing things to protect habitat as well as hanging salt licks and pruning wild fruit trees to keep them producing. I have hunted on and off for many years and have also done my share of conservation for the animals I hunt as well as for the habitat they live in.
I can tell you that whitetails come in many shades of color. They are a beautiful animal and I hope they are around for a long time to come. Of course when a new soccer field is needed, who do you think suffers? How many deer do you think will starve that following winter because that piece of land was taken away?
A beautiful animal to be sure.
I am not surprised the tail is white. My understanding is White-tails use the tails for a warning to the other members of the herd, — I am also sure to be corrected if that is an old myth. Anyway what benefit would there be for a totally black deer?
I do know the black color in horses only comes when a certain gene is off in BOTH parents. If this buck had some full siblings that survived, there may be others there. If not this boy probably set up the appearance of a few blacks in a few years as the lines he started meet up, at least occasionally. Assuming the genetics follow the same pattern of course.
It is my understanding that an animal that is melanistic simply has more melanin in its skin. Albinism is a total lack of pigment. A melanistic animal doesn’t even have to be black, just much darker. Since the skin underneath the deer’s tail normally has has no pigment, the melanism wouldn’t affect it.
They saw something that was a rarity, so they killed it? Makes so much sense to me…
Raisinsofwrath, Yes, I’d much rather see the population controlled by SOMETHING, but ideally it should be natural predators, which as I said does include hunters. I think what you’re doing is great, and I work with a lot of sportsmen of similar caliber. My wilds are largely coastal, and my sportsmen are fishermen, but I agree, they are some of the more dedicated nature-lovers around…educated too. Most understand that if they want to continue doing what they do, they have to protect habitats, limit their catches, and so on.
Some of the info on the white tail color is interesting. But some people have mentioned “what good would it do?”. Well, mutations like albinoism and melanism probably don’t take into consideration what good it does for the animal involved. It isn’t some sort of adaptation in deer, but rather a genetic condition. It is not going to say “oh, the deer needs the white tail for a warning, so I better leave the tail white.”, or “this isn’t an advantage for the deer, but I’ll do it anyway.” There must be some physical reason for it. I like the idea that there is no pigment under the tail, so it is white. Is this a fact?
First of all I live in an area where several people hunt and some years the population is more than enough or in other years too scarce. Anyways deer of unusual color (black or white) if ever seen are killed, because their genes will set the population off balance. It ruins the population. For example, albinos are smaller than a regular white tail deer. This creates problems if there are too many. It must be contained. I agree they are beautiful animals and they should not be shot because of color alone. But think about it, if your family depends on deer to feed them, are you going to want a deer the size of a goat with tougher meat or something that will supply you with some food?
Wow that is so cool, but killing it is sad , a majestic rarety like this black buck should be left in nature. Mutants like these are seen only once in a blue moon and sometimes only one case ever pops up in history, hopelfully we will see another black deer