Albino Buck In My Back Yard!

     Last night, I was working on the podcast when my kids come running in screaming “Dad there is an albino deer out back!”  I didn’t believe them!

      Then my oldest son Michael came in and told me that there was indeed an albino deer out in the back field.  I immediately grabbed my video camera and ran upstairs to the back window.  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  There he stood a nice buck in all white, standing with three other normal bucks in the alfalfa field behind our house.  He was about three hundred yards out from us, just grazing away.  I started the video camera and recorded about 6 1/2 minutes of video.  I posted it on our Up North Journal Television site if you would like to view it. 

     He looked like an albino, but there might have been some small spots of brown on him that couldn’t be seen.  If it was a piebald instead of an albino, he was 99% white!  He did look dirty though.  The white looked dingy somewhat or maybe as if he had laid on the ground in some dirt and needed a bath!  Anyway, that was the talk of the house for the rest of the evening.  We sure enjoyed see it.  This is the second white deer we have seen in our neighborhood in the last month or so.  A while back we saw a piebald doe about 1/2 mile from our house.  She was about 80% white.  The only brown on her was from her neck up, the rest was pure white.  I now think that there is a genetic defect in the area, obviously.  But to see two different white deer in the same area is pretty rare I think. 

     We may not see them for long, since Michigan has changed the law regarding the shooting of albino deer this year.  You may remember the blog entry I wrote about the gentleman in Indian River Michigan who took a piebald deer back a couple of years ago and is still trying to resolve the issue in court.

     Anyway, I hope we get to see them around this fall, I know the kids and myself enjoyed watching it feed through the field.