Strange Looking Deer in Alabama

[AlabamaDeerHunter]

Hi ladies and gents. I'm hoping someone can help me out. I caught a deer with strange looking antlers on my trail cam. In Alabama, we have Whitetail Deer and apparently there are some other species mixed in there such as Fallow, Sika, Axis and Red Deer. However, I have never seen anything other than a Whitetail. Maybe the others are on game preserves or deep inside the National Forest.

Anyway, here is a photo of what I thought was a whitetail but look at his antlers. They are very tall in relation to his head and it looks like the points on the antlers are in reverse of what a normal whitetail would look like.

Am I just uninformed regarding how their antlers grow or is this indeed a strange deer for my area?

Thanks!

 

[Mennoniteman]

Hi ladies and gents. I'm hoping someone can help me out. I caught a deer with strange looking antlers on my trail cam. In Alabama, we have Whitetail Deer and apparently there are some other species mixed in there such as Fallow, Sika, Axis and Red Deer. However, I have never seen anything other than a Whitetail. Maybe the others are on game preserves or deep inside the National Forest.

Anyway, here is a photo of what I thought was a whitetail but look at his antlers. They are very tall in relation to his head and it looks like the points on the antlers are in reverse of what a normal whitetail would look like.

Am I just uninformed regarding how their antlers grow or is this indeed a strange deer for my area?

Thanks!

It looks like an immature stag of possibly red stag species

 

[AlabamaDeerHunter]

I've hunted Alabama all of my life and I have never ever seen a red deer, although they say they are around. I've never seen any other species of deer except once a guy in my hunting club killed a female deer that was like a 12 point. That and an albino deer are the only non typical deer I have seen in 53 years.

 

[Mennoniteman]

I've hunted Alabama all of my life and I have never ever seen a red deer, although they say they are around. I've never seen any other species of deer except once a guy in my hunting club killed a female deer that was like a 12 point. That and an albino deer are the only non typical deer I have seen in 53 years.

Once I saw a red stag with a large rack running beside the road within the city limits of Harrisburg, but never saw any more stags in Pennsylvania. It'd be even more interesting if you get a daylight color picture of him.

 

[AlabamaDeerHunter]

Once I saw a red stag with a large rack running beside the road within the city limits of Harrisburg, but never saw any more stags in Pennsylvania. It'd be even more interesting if you get a daylight color picture of him.

If I can catch him on camera I'll definitely post it.

 

[yoderjac]

Speaking of Harrisburg, when I lived in PA, my hunting buddy saw a deer we could not identify on the drive back home from a hunt. It looked like a young elk to me in general. The body was grey the rack was elk-like but only 6 points. We were pretty far from the small elk herd in PA at the time. The other option I thought of was some kind of exotic that escaped a high fenced area on some private land. I don't know of any facility in the area like that. The game warden said we were crazy and no one else reported it. To this day, I'm not sure what it was.

 

[AlabamaDeerHunter]

Speaking of Harrisburg, when I lived in PA, my hunting buddy saw a deer we could not identify on the drive back home from a hunt. It looked like a young elk to me in general. The body was grey the rack was elk-like but only 6 points. We were pretty far from the small elk herd in PA at the time. The other option I thought of was some kind of exotic that escaped a high fenced area on some private land. I don't know of any facility in the area like that. The game warden said we were crazy and no one else reported it. To this day, I'm not sure what it was.

Nature can definitely throw us some curve balls from time to time. I've seen a couple of bobcats that were bigger than they should have been but it was private land that was never disturbed. So I guess their food supply was unlimited.

 

[Mennoniteman]

Nature can definitely throw us some curve balls from time to time. I've seen a couple of bobcats that were bigger than they should have been but it was private land that was never disturbed. So I guess their food supply was unlimited.

I saw bobcats hunting groundhogs on my game cameras, and it's insane how easily a bobcat can scarf up a meal. They would walk into the field and 3 minutes later they would be walking away with a woodchuck. The bobcats main downfall is that they are very easy to catch or shoot.

 

[9x56MS]

Once I saw a red stag with a large rack running beside the road within the city limits of Harrisburg, but never saw any more stags in Pennsylvania. It'd be even more interesting if you get a daylight color picture of him.

That’s funny this year there was an Emu running up the 4 lane on the road in to the Harrisburg Sportsman’s show this past weekend.

 

[Drycreek]

Speaking of Harrisburg, when I lived in PA, my hunting buddy saw a deer we could not identify on the drive back home from a hunt. It looked like a young elk to me in general. The body was grey the rack was elk-like but only 6 points. We were pretty far from the small elk herd in PA at the time. The other option I thought of was some kind of exotic that escaped a high fenced area on some private land. I don't know of any facility in the area like that. The game warden said we were crazy and no one else reported it. To this day, I'm not sure what it was.

That sounds like a Sika deer Jack. I can’t explain it being there unless it was an escapee.

 

[yoderjac]

That sounds like a Sika deer Jack. I can’t explain it being there unless it was an escapee.

It was quite large. It seemed immature but had a body slightly bigger than our large bucks.

 

[Drycreek]

It was quite large. It seemed immature but had a body slightly bigger than our large bucks.

Then it wasn’t a Sika, they are not really big. They have elk like antlers though. There are strange iterations in the whitetail world though.

 

[9x56MS]

Looks like a whitetail buck with an abnormal rack to my untrained eye.