(c) Jack Ballard
Near the edge of town during mid-summer, just at twilight, I spied two whitetail bucks feeding in a meadow. Intrigued by their large, fuzzy antlers, I pulled over at the side of the road to give my son in the back seat a better look. On closer examination, we noticed something very strange about one of the deer. He had no tail.
A few months later, while puttering about trying take photos of a jackrabbit, I noticed a buck deer bounding pell-mell in my direction. It was a sight I’ve seen a thousand times, but something didn’t seem right. Viewing the photos on my computer later in the day, I recognized the tailless whitetail. It was the same buck, absent the trademark white flag normally carried upright on the rump of a deer when running.
Initially amused, I soon found myself zooming in on the image of the unfortunate creature to examine its missing appendage. Within the tail of a whitetail deer is a series of thin bones, much smaller but similar to those in the spine. This buck wasn’t simply missing the hair on its tail. Its tail was completely gone, severed from its body precisely at the base as if it had been surgically removed by a mentally unstable veterinarian.
And so I pose some obvious questions. Has anyone else seen a deer without a tail? Does anyone know how a whitetail might lose its tail? Maybe all those kids trying to pin the tail on the poor donkey could help out this buck. But perhaps not. I think they’d have a hard time catching him.
We have a tailless deer. I first saw her 3 years ago. She comes right up to the house. I call her “Tailos.” She knows her name. I thought it might be a roe deer?
We saw this on a young deer today. It is this year’s deer and had noted it was always by itself so assumed it is a buck. The stump looked raw but not bleeding. I feed the deer so I believe this may be a recent injury, but he got away this time but can only guess as he comes right up to the porch. I can only imagine what happened as in Upper Michigan there are all sorts of hazards.
I can’t answer your question but would also love to know the answer. While cutting my back lot, I came across what appears to be the tail of a deer. No blood, nothing else, just a tail.
We have a doe tht brought twin fawns to feed behind our house this summer. When they first came they both looked normal one just a little larger than the other. After a few days we noticed that one of them had what looked like dirt under its tail like diarrhea, a few days later we noticed it had cleared up and short time after that they came to feed and the fawn in question did not have a tail, looked as if it had been bit off right next to her rump, but not bleeding, just all white. We have lots of coyotes and even seen a bobcat earlier this year, and we can only assume that the fawn may have encountered one ot them in the woods.
We live in northern Alberta and look at many whitetails as we are outfitters and pursue big buck whitetails. We have seen at least 3 different deer with no tails and one doe lived for many years. My only theory is that coyotes damage the tails and they become infected and eventually fall off. Another theory I’ve heard is that the tail will freeze and later fall off. Neither theory has been proven.
I’m in Central Wisconsin, and I’ve noticed a big buck, that I’ve gotten on camera, had no tail. Well, at least I know there are others like this, but no known reason why.
Kill a high 160 class buck in Missouri in 06 missing all but about 2 inches of tail . Live in Florida never seen it here was thinking froze off but coyote possible . Was just thinking about it looking for answer saw this post
Www ifish.net has post on subject post by Boone
In forum has quote from Dr. James Kn. About domant does picking up subordinate does fawns by tell and even bitting of .
We live in New Jersey and have seen several whitetail deer, both male and female without tails. None of which ever looked like they ever grew one had one and may have been infected etc. We always wondered why some whitetail deer have tails and others do not. My 6 year old’s theory was that some fell off during the winter time. It was nice to see that this theory was up here already. My son suggested that a predator may have attacked the deer, but we’ve never seen one injured in the rump area.
Annandale Virginia – This morning a 6 point buck that visits regularly showed up with his tail missing — as others described, recently severed clean at the base — red raw, but not bleeding, He’s eating and seems to be OK with not other injuries. Not sure of the cause — we’re seeing several deer with broken legs this year and we’ve attributed that the neighbors putting up new fences or new homes that channel the deer thru more narrow “channels” in the woods when they run. At this point our thought is that either the deer chewed off his own tail or perhaps he was snagged trying to go under / through openings in fencing (which the deer commonly do in our suburban neighborhood).