36 WILD ANIMALS OP (II.ACIF.R NATIONAI, PARK. 



tor US to come up, watching curiousl}', undecided whether to run or 

 stand their ground. While standing watching us the}' Itept raising 

 raid spreading their tails and occasionally waving them from side to 

 side, like signal flags. A yearling was especially active in waving 

 its tail, often switching it rapidly from side to side through a full 

 half circle. When the tail was raised and the lung lateral white 

 hairs thrown open on each side at right angles to the shaft, a huge 

 white fan, fully a foot wide and a foot and a half high, was produced. 

 This, set above the white hams and belly, screened most of the body 

 color of the deer and explains what seems to be an incomprehensible 

 expanse of white that, as the deer bound away through the brush and 

 woods in great curving leaps, shows one hnge flash after another, as 

 if the animals had no other color than white. As they stop and stand 

 with drooping tail the white is practically all concealed and the uni- 

 form yellow-brown of sunmier or light gray of winter renders them 

 inconspicuous, and in slight shadows often invisible. With these 

 deer, directive and jDrotective coloration is often more strongly em- 

 phasized than in the antelope, which are usually considered the best 

 illustration of the law of directive coloration. 



White-tail deer are social, often running in family parties of an 

 old doe and her two fawns or larger parties of sometimes a dozen 

 individuals. In winter they are even more gregarious and in times 

 of deep snow often yard to some extent, keeping their trails well 

 packed so that free access to moss and browse and bushes insures 

 ample food for the severest weather. 



In August they were feeding on the low plants of the Hudsonian 

 Zone meadows and slopes, but I could not determine the actual 

 species of plants selected for food. One old doe seemed to be nib- 

 bling at the beds of moss in a little alpine meadow, but she may have 

 been selecting tiny saxifrages or heather or even the low sedges 

 that grow among the white mossj^ cushions. As elsewhere, their 

 food probably consists mainly of buds, leaves, and browse of a great 

 variety of bushes, with seeds, flowers, and delicate tips of tender 

 plants. In winter the deer are said to feed on the lichens that hang 

 from the low branches in the deep woods, and on the twigs of hem- 

 lock, birch, and other trees, together with a great variety of shrubs. 



Outside of the park the chief enemies of white-tail deer are bear 

 trappers, hunters, and the predatory animals, while in the park 

 the coyote and mountain lion are practically the only check on their 

 increase. The coyote droppings along the trails on the west slope 

 were composed mainly of deer hair, and as coyotes are numerous 

 in the timber and up the mountain sides, their destruction of both 

 fawns and groAvn deer is of serious consequence. That they do not 

 confine their killing to fawns is shown by an instance observed just 

 west of the park by W. C. Gird, one of the best-lolown park guides. 



