Check out these cool photos of a black whitetail fawn. Supposedly in Beamsville. Ontario, perhaps? Very cool pics.
This is another example of melanism. Melanism is the opposite of albinism. Where albinism is a condition where the animals has less than normal pigmentation, melanism is an condition where the animal has more than normal pigmentation or melanin.
You may never see something like this in your life. It’s a beautiful piebald whitetail deer. Seems to be a doe.
The term `piebald`, used to identify a whitetail with at least one extra splotch of white hair, has an interesting origin. ‘Pie’ means mixed up; ‘bald’ means having a white spot. To a horseman, a ‘piebald’ is a horse with black and white splotches; one with brown and white splotches actually is known as a ‘skewbald’.
What a beautiful creature!
Also, don’t forget to check out all the blog posts for piebald deer. Start with this trophy buck
Here’s a series of photos of a piebald trophy whitetail buck.
Here’s the back story:
“We did actually catch this buck on trail cams a few times over the last couple months. I’ve added one of those to the zip file I’m sending you from the night before I took him. The trail camera is about 500 yards south of the box stand I was sitting in and he came out of a field about 500 yards north of my stand. I noticed something in the field in the early dawn light but couldn’t make out what it was. Then it moved into a patch of hard woods that are about 200 yards from my stand just as the sun started to creep up.
As soon as the light hit him I saw the white all along the belly through my binaculars and knew it had to be him. He worked through the patch of woods as the sun barely made it up and was heading to the patch of pines that I knew to be a popular bedding area. I had to take him on the move, through the trees at 228 yards. He dropped in his tracks and I found later that I had shot him right through the heart.”
A piebald whitetail deer was taken near Corsicana Texas. Piebaldism, — sometimes called skewbald — is rare in whitetail deer. If it was a horse we’d call it a “paint” horse. Piebald usually refers to black and white coloration and skewbald then is used for white and non-black colorations. So, I would say the proper term to use here is skewbald. However, the pictures came to me describing the deer as “piebald” so I decided to go with that term.
It’s a beautiful deer regardless of the name you give it.
Unique coloration of mature whitetail buckAnother angle showing the unique colorationA good angle showing the piebald (skewbald) coloration
