I did in fact pass up this buck as a spikehorn when he was a year and a half old. I thought it would be cool to watch him mature. He was a 4x4 for two more seasons before he went to 5x5. You will see live footage of him on our upcoming "Essential Encounters" DVD. We have been blessed with rare footage the last few years. You will also see piebald and albino deer as well as a melanistic raccoon.

That is a really cool color phase!  Very rare indeed.

Many times we poo poo technology because of its negative effects such as leading us to forget our roots and leaving the true experience to the forgotten.

Technology, in this case, has enabled many of us to share in viewing this splendid animal.

Thank you for sharing.

I've seen white, piebald, but never black.

Neet!

I saw twin fawns one year that were both piebald, but one was really dark and one was really light. They looked like opposites of each other.

Rob, that's really cool. Wondered what you've been up to.

     

I notice that Rob's pics display a Melanistic deer that is totally black in contrast to the other Mealnistic deer pics where the deer maintained its normal white marked areas.

Just something I have reflected on.

Friend, that's a pretty good observation for a guy from Madisonville. As a kid I lived with my partents in Earlington and Providence. Dad worked for the (Old Reliable) L & N Railroad.

2fletch, There TG members are getting numerous however few live close by. However, I did shoot this evening with gentleman that I infact met on TG. We had a great time.

Thank you for the comment and perhaps ,we too will be fortunate enough to meet.

The melanistic fawn pictures have been floating around the internet since spring and were taken around an Austin TX park by a professional photographer, and from what I gather, there is a much higher whitetail melanistic rate occurring in that area than anywhere else due to genetic isolation. Kinda like the white deer of the Seneca Army Depot in upstate NY.

I'm kind of an accumulator of weird colored deer photos and animal oddities after catching a white fawn as a kid, but aside from pictures have seen only one with the melanistic trait in the wild which was a doe a couple years or so ago. She wasn't jet black, but she was awful dark.

Gathering quite a few photos of odd colored animals through the years and have learned it's all about genetics.

Locally, melanistic eastern grey squirrels are quite common around here which I have a ton of in my back yard. The blacks actually dominate (I'd say probably around 3 to 1) over normal colored greys in town, but the further out of town you get, the more prevalent the greys become.

Read something that was posted a while back, (I believe by George S) that stated back in the days of early settlers when squirrel tails were exchanged for tax moneys, these squirrels were predominately black.