#WildernessWednesday: Take a walk through the woods or along the edge of a field, look down and pay attention to the areas of bare dirt. If you are lucky you might see some animal tracks. Many times tracks and scat are the only evidence you will see of animals. One of the easier tracks to identify in South Carolina is the whitetail deer. They have cloven hoofs meaning the hoof is split into two toes. Their hoofs will leave an upside down, split heart shape in the mud or soft dirt. Their scat is usually a pile of small brown pellets. Deer are herbivores that eat a wide variety of plants. Like cows they are ruminants, which mean they have a four chambered stomach and chew cud. Male deer, bucks, grow antlers in the summer that they use for fighting other males during the mating season. In the winter, when the season is over, the antlers fall off. Females, does, give birth to one to three fawns, young deer, from May to June. From birth until fall the fawns are reddish-brown with white spots. This coat helps protect the fawn from predators by blending in to its environment. Sometimes people fined fawn left on their own and think that the mother has abandoned them. She has probably hidden the fawn in a safe spot so she can go eat and will return for it when she is done. If you find a fawn while you are out walking the best thing to do is leave it alone. Once the fawn loses its spots it becomes solid brown with white around the eyes and on the underside. The underside of the tail is also white which gives the whitetail deer its name. Deer are amazing runners and jumpers. They can run up to 30 miles an hour and leap 10 feet up and 30 feet across. In the Colonial days both the Cherokee and the colonist hunted deer for their meat and their hides. The hides became a major trade commodity in the southeast and were traded at Gouedy’s Trading Post in #NinetySixNHS. Some people believe that the money terms “doe” or “dough,” “bucks,” and “skins” are remnants of the fur trade.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 17:00:00 +0000
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