We are all familiar with mythical beasts. This long list includes the likes of unicorns, mermaids, and the Loch Ness monster. There are also animals such as the legendary Phantom of the Piedmont.
Supposedly for decades, this magnificent white-tailed buck has found a way to evade hunters as it roams the woodlands of Middle Georgia. Do white-tailed deer bearing black coats deserve a place on the list of these magical beasts? As unbelievable as it sounds, the answer in no. Black whitetails do exist; however, they are extremely rare.
Most melanistic white-tailed deer are dark black with the exception of a white area in the ventral section of the bodies. These melanistic animals are sometimes smoky gray and not truly black. Geneticists believe a recessive gene causes this anomaly.
Apparently, the first black deer were reported in 1929. Since then they have been documented in 29 states including South Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, Michigan, Texas, and Pennsylvania.
The late South Carolina Outdoor Writer Archibald Rutledge reported that a black whitetail was shot near Georgetown, South Carolina. He also wrote that he personally spotted a large melanistic buck in South Carolina’s Santee area.
There are also reports of black whitetails living in a small area in Pennsylvania during the 1950s.
While the animals are extremely rare wherever they are found, currently they are most often seen in the Edwards Plateau area of Texas. Texas A & M biologists have found that 8.5% of the deer in this area are melanistic.
A handful of hunters say that they have seen a few of these rare animals in Georgia. You can find a few references to black deer in various online chat rooms. Additionally, a supposedly black white-tailed doe was shot in Webster County in 1988. I have seen a picture of this animal. This animal was not dark black like a Labrador retriever. It was indeed very dark. However, to me, its coat seems to vary from dark brown to smoky gray.
True black whitetails are so rare that most wildlife biologists never see one during their entire career. I have personally never seen one. Recently I asked some of my retired biologist friends if they had ever seen or heard of such a deer during their long careers. In spite of the fact that these men have handled and seen literally thousands of deer across the state, none of them had ever encountered a black whitetail.
One did tell me that, while he had never seen a black deer, he has spotted some very dark whitetails on the Oaky Woods Wildlife Management Area located along the Ocmulgee River south of Macon. He has a theory to explain why these deer were so dark. He feels the darker deer were carrying remnants of the genes of native Georgia swamp deer that were still present when deer were stocked in that part of the state years ago. The introduced deer came from Wisconsin and were considerably lighter in color.
That being said, how rare are these animals?
Some experts have estimated the odds of seeing one of these elusive animals to be 1:500,000. Others say it may be as low as 1:6 million. Anyway you cut it, these critters are the rarest of the rare.
To put this in perspective, your chance of seeing a piebald white-tailed deer (animals with odd patches of white on their bodies) is 1:1,000.
Albino deer are even rarer. The odds of spotting a true albino whitetail range from 1:20,000 to 1:100,000.
If that is the case, you have a far better chance of taking home a Boone and Crockett trophy buck (1 chance in 20,000) than seeing a black whitetail.
Since these animals are so rare, little is known about them. However, some deer experts say a melanistic deer has a greater chance of survival than an albino or piebald deer. Who knows?
Will you ever see a black white-tailed deer in Monroe County? Perhaps you already have. I am sure that many times over the years you have spotted what you thought was the silhouette of a deer deep in the brush or disappearing over a hill. Who knows, one of them might have been a black white tailed deer.
Terry Johnson is retired Program Manager of the Georgia Nongame-Endangered Wildlife Program. He has written the informative column ‘Monroe Outdoors’ for the Reporter for many years. His book, “A Journey to Discovery,” is available at The Reporter. Email him at tjwoodduck@bellsouth.net.
