Black-tailed Deer
| Black-tailed deer | ||||||||||||||||||||
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 Black-tailed deer at Alum Rock Park in northern
California.
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| Odocoileus hemionus columbianus Richardson, 1829 |
The Black-tailed deer, or Blacktail deer, is a species of deer found in western North America, specifically the Pacific Northwest region.
Black-tailed Deer once ranged at least as far as Wyoming. In Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail, an eyewitness account of his 1846 trek across the early West, while within a two-days ride from Fort Laramie, Parkman writes of shooting what he believes to be an elk, only to discover that he has killed a Black-tailed Deer.
It is sometimes classified as a subspecies of the mule deer, as reflected in its scientific name Odocoileus hemionus columbianus as compared to the Rocky Mountain mule deer's Odocoileus hemionus hemionus. However this classification is not widely followed.
These animals are now common at least in Western Oregon and Washington as well as Northern California, but there remains confusion over their proper classification. They are a very popular game animal, in thrive on the edge of the forest, as the dark forest lacks the underbrush and grasslands that the deer prefer as food, and the totally open areas lack the hiding spots and the cover they prefer for harsh weather. They often move at dawn and dusk and are frequently involved in collisions with automobiles.
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