Whitetailed Deer 



69 



Fig. 15 — Left hind leg of Mule-deer (i), Coast Deer (2), 

 and Whitetail (3), to show the size of the metatarsal 

 glands, respectively, 5, z, and i inch long. 



Virginian Deer, 2 inches in the Coast Deer, and about 5 in the 

 Mule-deer. The tails also are very distinctive, as will be seen 

 on reference to Fig. 17. 



The Northern White- 

 tail is much larger than the 

 typical form from Virginia, 

 being nearly double the 

 weight of the latter; the 

 Whitetail group present, in- 

 deed, a complete gradation 

 of size from the pygmy Aca- 

 pulco Deer found in Mexico, 

 or the Florida Deer a little 

 larger, to the giant form of 

 Maine and Manitoba. 



Caton considered the Acapulco Deer the smallest of the 

 North American species. None of the specimens he had 



weighed over thirty 

 or forty pounds.' 



Bucks of the 

 Florida Deer are 

 commonly said to 

 be about eighty 

 pounds or ninety 

 pounds, and, ac- 

 cording to Cory,^ 

 not often over no 

 pounds. The does 

 are proportion- 

 ately less in weight. 

 A fine adult male of the Northern form (No. 1 04891 

 U. S. N. M.), killed November 15, 1900, near Floodwood on the 

 St. Louis River, sixty miles west of Duluth, Minn., I measured 

 in the flesh, as follows: 



Length, 6 feet 5I inches (1,970 mm.); tail, ii§ inches 



'Antelope and Deer of America, 1877, p. 121. 



'C. B. Cory, Hunting and Fishing in Florida, 1896, p. 63. 



Fig. 16 — Typical antlers of Whitetail (i) and of Mule-deer (2). 



SIZE 



