A few seasons ago I was invited by an old
rancher friend on a hunt on his place in Jarrell, Tx.
about 40 miles north of Austin. It is definetaly whitetail
only country. We were in a barn looking at some racks
from previous years and he took down a faded set of what I just
assumed were Trans Pecos muley horns and gave them to me.
It's a high racked 19" spread nine point(would have been a
ten but it has only one brow tine), both G1's are forked and the G2's fork with the main beam like a muley instead of standing up like a whitetail. I figured he shot it in W. Texas but he said he shot
it on that Jarrell ranch and it was a whitetail. The skull plate
is smaller like a whitetail but the horns, I swear, are muley.
A hybred? I want to mount the horns but dang sure don't want to
mount muley horns on a whitetail cape. Do I need a biolgist to
measure the skull cap to settle this or is there a shortcut?
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Give me a call at 605-269-2578 Dave
I have killed two deer that were verifed by biolgist that they were hybrids. The easiest way to tell would be to look at the cape and the musk glands on his hocks but that is out of the question with youre deer. How big and how far from the bases are his browtines. I killed one more that I think is hybrid but I never had it verified. Both of these deer's browtines are about 5" from the bases and they both are real long about 8". Like I say it would be hard to say for sure unless we could look at the cape. Could you post a picture of the anlters on here.
The single brow tine's base is 1.5 inches from the burr
and is 1" long. If I can ever figure out how to transfer
images to photobucket I will post pics. If you have an email
address I can send pics.
I have plenty of whitetail racks along with muleys from Colo.
and W. Texas and they definately match the smaller whitetail
skull cap.
Did the capes and features on your hybred look like a whitetail?
The rancher took this one and a twin off the same Central Texas
place, at least a hundred miles to the east of any mule deer
range.
My email is whiteyfisktaxidermy@yahoo.com , yeah the capes looked like a whitetail but they were more of a yellow color and one of them had whitelegs. Also one of the deer' both his testicles were all dried up looking they were black and looked they where dried out and about as big as grapes. It was weird; but when I shot him he was with a doe, I passed him up the day before in the same spot and he was cruisin that day. The next day I went back after realizing I should have shot him and he was standing over a bedded doe. He was a basic 4x4 with some sticker points and grossed 151. I dont know if he was sterile or what was wrong with him. The other one I killed was normal, but still was a yellow color and had a rack like I described. It isnt uncommon for whitetail's to have forks like a mule deer even on both tines. While I was growing up in TN I hunted a big buck that we called forked tine because both of his G2's where forked just like a mule deer. I never got him but my neighbor did, he grossed 145 (that is like killing a 180 anywhere else). I know he was a pure whitetail.
Robert, it is fact that White tail deer have the dominate gene. A white tail doe mounted by a mule deer buck will breed a whitail fawn.
On the other hand a mule deer doe mounted by a white tail buck will STILL bread a white tail fawn. The offspring is always pure.
That is until a few years ago when I noticed cross breed white tail/mule deer comming in my shop. I have Montana mule deer capes with white tail antlers. It is sad.
The ONLY explanation for this is that many of the cross fawns that were pure enough to hold mule deer genes to mix the mule deer in the new offspring. Thats wierd and sad. We will eventualy lose our mule deer heards.
Art
You explained how the dominant whitetail trait
will prevail but how does that explain the mule
deer antlers on the whitetail body?