Many that head out whitetail hunting are looking to bag a big buck, but there are some trophies in the woods that are much more rare. And they may or may not have antlers. These are whitetail deer that have color abnormalities. Recently, I received an email with a fawn that was much different than your everyday, run-of-the-mill, normally-colored fawn. This whitetail fawn is black!
It is not unheard of for most mammal species to occasionally be different colors. It’s all based on their genes. Most animals of the same species end up looking much like each other, but sometimes those recessive genes show up. Many times hunters and non-hunters alike will report seeing albino deer, but melanistic black deer are even more rare. Melanistic deer are, of course, not what a normal whitetail deer should look like!
I received the images of the melanistic black fawn displayed on this page via email. The photos of this black fawn were taken from the website of photographer Richard Buquoi of R.M.Buquoi Photographics. Mr. Buquoi obviously specializes in nature photography because these photos are amazing. He obviously knows how to use a camera.
Someone asked Mr. Buquoi about the origin of these photos and he stated:
“I can understand the curiosity from people of the highly melanistic black fawn images that we have on our website. They are a rare phenomenon to see. We’re always happy to find someone who enjoys viewing our images as much as we enjoyed taking them. I took the photos of the black fawn near Austin, TX. That area of central Texas seems to have a concentration of black “white-tailed” deer, although it is still extremely rare to find them. This is a wild deer, but resides in a greenbelt near a neighborhood. I took the images when the deer were roaming through the neighborhood.
The two fawns in the photos are twins, but only the one is black. The images being circulated were taken in May 2010 and I again captured some images of them about seven weeks later which I added to our website. They are going to be published along with an article about “Melanism” in “Deer and Deer Hunting” magazine due out in September 2010.”
Please check out the photographer’s website for more great photos of this and other animals.