Forums.NitroExpress.com

Hi,
Thank you for the picture help. I hunt Coues deer here in Arizona, generally in the South eastern part of the state. I pulled some information from the Arizona game and fish site to give you an idea of what they are.
The 3x3 lying with the blue pack and rifle is the one the story is about. The picture doesn’t show the long eye-guards very well though. 3x3 or 4x4 and such is how the points are counted in the western U.S without counting the eye-guards, back east they count all of the points together. The 3x3 with eye guards would be an 8 point.

They can be found at elevations of 3500ft-9500ft (approx).
The Coues white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus couesi) is one of the smallest deer in America with the Florida key deer being the smallest.
Coues deer stand around 28-32 inches tall at the shoulder and measure about 56 inches from head to tail. I have seen some bucks that were a great deal smaller than this. One a friend of mine shot had a perfect 13 inch wide 4x4 rack that didn’t weigh more than 45 pounds after field dressing. A large field-dressed buck will rarely exceed 85-90 lbs. I have taken several that were weighed on certified scales after skinning that went 110-130lbs though the heavier ones aren’t the norm. (Some can exceed 100 pounds) and a doe tends to weigh about 65-70 lbs. A decent sized field-dressed Eastern Whitetail buck will weigh approximately 200 lbs or more.
Coues deer vary in color from a grayish coat in winter to a more reddish-brown color in the summer. The bucks tend to drop their antlers around March and April. Coues deer have white circles around its muzzle and eyes as seen on other subspecies of whitetail. Coues deer tend to not to have such a pronounced white throat patch as do whitetail in the East.
The tail of the Coues deer is generally brown with a border of white on the topside and completely white on the underside. The mule deer has white on the topside of the tail with its tip being black. Tail color can vary geographically. The topside of a Coues tail can be grayish, reddish brown or even black.
The Coues whitetail shares its range with the mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus). In some areas the two deer do on occasion cross breed. It is pretty easy to distinguish between the two species.
Viewing the tail is the easiest way to distinguish these two deer apart. Coues deer also have a much wider tail that is white underneath, but not on top. The tail of the mule deer is much skinnier, very rope-like, and is white with a black tip. When Coues deer are fleeing a person or predator, they will raise their tail. This displays the white under the tail and is c referred to as "flagging". The mule deer will not raise its tail in that manner.
You can also tell these deer apart by other differences in their behavior. White-tailed deer generally live in small groups of 2-5, not larger herds like mule deer. White-tailed deer and mule deer have different predator avoidance strategies. When mule deer are fleeing a predator they will use a unique gait called stotting. Stotting is the gait where they bounce stiff-legged on all four legs at the same time. Whitetails will not do this. They will leap or run (trot) away from danger.
Coues deer have white "halos" around their eyes and muzzle. Mule deer have quite a bit more white on their faces, not just encircling the eyes and nose. Mule deer also have more black coloration on their foreheads. These differences are very useful to help identify deer that are facing you and you can't see their tails.
Coues white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus couesi) is just one of 35 subspecies of white-tailed deer found in the world. The Coues deer are found in Arizona, Mexico, New Mexico and a small number are found in Texas. Texas also has the Carmen Mountain deer. It is very similar to the Coues deer and somewhat smaller
Thanks again for reading the story and for the picture help as well.
Coues
DS

Post Extras