Answer: Genes are funny things and they can recombine during conception to form either normal looking fawns or piebald fawns. It all depends on the buck and his gene composition. However, since the doe is piebald, my guess is that there is about 25% chance her fawns will be piebald right out of the gate.

If the whitetail buck carries piebald genes (even if he’s not piebald in color) then the odds go way up. Looks like you are just going to have to wait and see! Let me know what happens.

Question: We went whitetail hunting on the last weekend of the deer season and while me were riding along the trails at our hunting camp, and on the way to our stands, my father’s freind looked to the right and saw something. He stopped the four wheeler and told me and his son to be quiet, and then he walks back couple feet and fires his 30-30!

He did not tell us what he was shooting at so we started walking to see what he got. We found a blood trail and then I saw something laying down, but it did not look like a deer. It was not completely brown or white, but it was a deer with white on the back, its head was brown, and it had brown spots on it back.

Well, I said you shot a dog to my fathers freind and he says no that’s my deer. So we walk over and sure enough it was! I was surprised this was the first time I ever saw a whitetail deer with these kind of spots. What kind of deer is white with brown spots?

Answer: It sounds like the deer harvested by your father’s friend is a piebald deer. A piebald deer typically has brown and white splotches on its body similar to a paint horse. A completely white deer would be an albino, but the deer harvested on that property is definitely not an albino if it has brown spots.

Piebald deer, although not common, are not terribly rare, especially depending on where you are hunting. Piebald deer get their specially colored coats from their genetic composition, so some areas can have a high number of piebald deer. Most areas of the United States, however, have very few piebald deer. Congrats to your friend and thanks for sharing!