I think this doe is a Hybrid (Whitetail/Mule Deer Cross)

[jackflap]

This is not one of my primary hunting areas, but belongs to a friend of mine that allows me to hunt it during bow season only as hegun hunts.

It is mostly Mule deer ( I would guess around 95% plus) but there are a few whitetails as well.

I am hunting a draw that is tributary to a wheat field in the evening where the deer pass through from their bedding area.

Idid not think anything about this "whitetail" when she comes up the draw other than she was awfully big. I got a picture of her with the mule deer wich is unusual although they were not traveling together, they just converged into the mouth of this draw at the same time.

But the mule deer circled in behind me "busting me" in the process. As she snorted and ran off, the whiteail bolted in another direction as well. It was then that I noticed she ran100%like a mule deer in their "crow hop" fashion and that her tail wasn't like a whitetail. I did not notice how the fawn ran one way or the other as it all happened so fast and I wasn't "looking" for anything.

Just curious if anyone else has ever encountered what they thought or knew was a hybrid.

I am assuming she is a hybrid.....I've heard of thembut wasn't sure that I believed in them until now.
Either that or she has been around the mule deer too long and has taken up their way of running.


While not that good of a picture, I felt lucky to get a picture of a mule deer and what I thought was a bonafide whitetail in the same frame.



I also included a couple ofpicsof a mule deer doe that I found bedded.

[Schultzy]

I've seen It before myself in Montana. I seen whitetails that had the big old floppy ears, but had whitetail racks. I wasn't the only one either who seen this, there was 6 others who seen It as well.

[bowmanaj]

Big ears on that thing.. Most def. a mule deer or hyrbid one, of the two. On quality whitetails tv (I think that was it)the other night, they were discussing this exact topic. They talked about how interbreeding DOES happen and that one of the characteristics of them is a strange hop. They said its almost always a white tail buck tending and breedingmule deer doe, and that it almost never happens the other way around with a mule deer buck tending a white tail doe. Nice pictures by the way

[MN/Kyle]

Last year in MT, I saw a deer with a whitetail body and a NICE mule deer rack JUST out of range. I really wanted that deer.