Here is what Dr. Leonard Lee Rue III says in his book, "The Deer of North America"

"People often report seeing "albino" deer. Of course, some deer are albinos, but most of the white deer seen are not true albinos: they are mutations. These mutations are becoming more prevelant with the help of man. When the wildlife population was controled by natural predators, any deer that had the deficient genes to result in a white coat would have been killed, becasue it would have been so easily seen. Ordinarily, the other deer will shun the mutations, even going so far as to drive them away.

I have found that these white deer usually have poor hearing. During the many years I was chief gamekeeper for the Coventry Hunting Club, we had a number of them from time to time on our club lands. They were almost always loners and they were easy to creep up on becaause they could not hear well. All of these white deer happened to be females, although this mutation can occur in either sex. These deer appeared at our club before New Jersey allowed does to be hunted. With the large predators gone and man protecing the mutant does by law, the deficient genes were passed on. So white deer are more common today than ever before

Around 1928, when white deer were a rarity, they suddenly became very common near Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania. It was thought that overcrowding had something to do with the prevalance of this condition, but even today we do not know the reason.

In 1983 I did a series of deer seminars in Illinois. In the evening paper, I read that Governor Thompson had just signed a bill that provided full protection to all albino deer within the state. What the article failed to explain was just what the new law was protecing. If the law was protecting true albinos, then prehaps it had soe merit; if it was protecting all of the mutations, then the law was doing the Illionois deer herd a disservice. Mutant deer are definaely inferior, degrading the deer they breed with by passing on harmful recessive genes.

True albinismism is due to lack of pigment. Ordinarily the production of pigment os controlled by the pituitary glands. In human beings, albinism is cause by the absence of the enzyme tyrosine, which is needed to produce the darker pigments. A true albino deer will have all-white hair, grayish hoofs, and pink eyes. The eyes appear pink becasue, in the abscence of pigment, the blood can be seen coursing though the blood vessels.

The Seneca Army Depot in New York State has an entire herd of white deer. The first white fawns were seen in 1956, born to a normal brown doe. The commanding officer issued orders for protection of the white deer, and the boom began. In 1958 on white fawn was born, in 1959 two white fawns were born, and in 1960 two more white fawns were born. The white herd went from seven deer in 1960 to 150 in 1968 and has continued to increase in size.

The New York State Department of Conservation has conducted breeding studies with these deer. The biologist have found that, contrary to the usual laws of genetics, in this case white is the dominant color. Except for ebing white, these deer are as hearty in all ways as the other deer at the Seneca base. Although their coats are white, their eyes are brown and not pink, as in tru albinism."