Rare:Piebald Whitetail Deer with Pink Nose

I like to fancy myself as a nature afficianado with solid observational skills. Coming home from a recent trip to scout for white tail deer I opened my whitetail deer catalog in Lightroom and made a brief scan thru the 216 images I had marked with stars to be looked at later as potentially good images. Nevermind the other 2644 images in that folder. Although I’m sure there are some good ones yet to be found. I stumbled on a few images of a piebald whitetail deer buck. This got me thinking about this animal. It also had a pink nose. What I found out with a little research; piebald bucks with a pink nose are indeed very rare. Too bad I snapped his picture a couple of times then went about finding that big bad boy buck that surely was lurking somewhere in the woods.

According to the website deerassociation.com piebald deer have a rare genetic disorder that produces deer with white patches on their body. Sometimes these patches are almost unnoticable and others are almost white. Some deer with this genetic disorder are not well and have a variety of other symtoms that may lead to an early demise. Upon further digging it appears that the piebald condition is seen in less than 1 percent of deer, Even less in piebald deer with pink noses. And further down are piebald bucks with pink noses! Damn! I’m now kicking myself for not taking the time to better photograph this rare best!

In my reading I found out that piebald deer are not as rare as albino deer. Albinos are 1 in 30,000 and piebald 1 in 1,000. For me this stat is odd because I’ve observed at least 8 albino deer in the last 20 years and 1 piebald. Below are a couple of  images I hope you’ll find interesting and somewhat rare.

Piebald vs Albino Whitetail Deer

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