Sunday, June 24, 2007

Rare white and albino deer

I live in a heavily wooded areas and I often walk for miles through the forest. The eagles and turkeys are returning to North Carolina.

It’s highly illegal to kill a bird of prey here and we are inundated with Hawks and Buzzards, cruising for vermin. However, in the past few months I’ve spotted several wild turkeys and even a bald eagle, flying with a branch for the nest!


The rare white deer

Yesterday we had the second sighting of a rare white deer (due to a recessive gene). It looks like the famous Seneca white deer, (their compound of about 200 deer is right outside of Cornell, a cool visit) and the White Deer of Patuxent.

Even at a distance we could tell that it was not albino because the eyes were not pink and there was a splash of brown on the neckline:



We have lots of deer in this area, and they even come-out on the golf course, very tame:



We someimes play golf with our Yorkie dog, who loves the wildlife, but she is a hassle at times:



Anyway, I know that this white deer will not last long after deer season starts, and I’m debating about tranquilizing him with a dart and sending him to a zoo or game reserve, so that he does not wind-up as part of a collection of deer butt art.

I’ve never used dart ammo, but a fellow I know has an amazing 223 rifle, a supercharged .22 rifle with amazing accuracy at long distances. Check-out the size of the brass on the bullet (left, compared to a .38:



He claims that he can plug a field rat at a quarter-mile away with the high-powered scope, and I’m definitely going to add one of these babies to my rifle collection. These beauties have almost the distance of a 30-06, but with much smaller payloads, the perfect rifle for dispatching varmits of all kinds.