Mule Deer vs. White-tailed Deer

Transcript for Identify: Mule Deer vs. White-Tailed Deer

Hello, I’m Jim Heffelfinger, the Wildlife Science Coordinator for Arizona Game and Fish Department. And today we’re going to be talking about the differences between white-tailed deer and mule deer.

White-tailed and mule deer are two closely related species that occupy some of the same areas in southeastern Arizona and in central Arizona.

What I have in my hand is a mule deer antler. Antlers differ between white-tailed deer and mule deer. Mule deer antlers have what’s called dichotomous branching, so they fork, and then they fork again in a mature buck. Whereas white-tailed deer have more of a main beam that follows around, and each individual tine arises independently from that main beam, normally without any one of the tines forking at the end. But antlers are not good characteristics to tell the difference between the two species.

So, let’s talk about some of the characteristics that are a little more fail-safe.

The most obvious thing is to look at the other end, on the opposite end of the antlers—the rump. Animals that are wide-open, kind of open-space animals, typically are more showy. They’ve got more white. They’re more obvious. And that’s because they’re more visual in the open landscape that they live in. The mule deer rump has a lot more white on it. You’ll see a lot of white around the rump. The tail itself is more of a thin, rope-like tail that comes down with a black tip on the bottom of it. Whereas white-tailed deer, they’re more a deer of the brush and the forest. And if you look at the rump, you won’t see a lot of white. You’ll see a little white lining around the thighs, but the tail itself is much different than a mule deer. The tail itself, on a white-tailed deer, is a triangular-shaped flap that’s always brown on the back, sometimes black, sometimes a little reddish brown, but definitely not the rope-like tail that you see on the mule deer.

Other differences on the front end of mule deer and white-tailed deer are the facial coloration. Whitetails have mostly a brown face with white eye rings and a white ring around the black spot on their nose, whereas mule deer have really more of a gray face with a dark black forehead.

And then the mule deer, of course, get their name because their ears look like mule ears. So, they have very long ears in relation to their head. Their ears might be half the whole length of the whole head, whereas a whitetail is smaller than that.

And those are some pretty obvious differences once you key your eye into looking at those differences on the front end. But it’s always important to use all the information you have available. Look at the rump, look at the front end, and look at everything you can to try to make that determination.

One other behavioral characteristic between these two species is the way that they’ll flee from you. White-tail deer are used to being in the brush and the forest. If they see danger, they put their head down and they run, and they don’t stop running. They don’t really care what scared them. Whereas mule deer being evolved in more of an open landscape, they always want to kind of see what scared them. And so, they typically will hop away with a bounding motion called stotting, where all four hooves hit the ground at the same time, where they hop, hop, hop. And then very typically, within 100 yards, they’ll stop and turn around and look at the source of danger. And that’s just a behavioral difference. And so, if you think you see a mule deer, and it’s hopping, and then it stops, turns, and looks at you, that should be a cue that you need to be careful, that that’s not a whitetail. It’s most likely a mule deer.

Another difference between these two species is just overall size. Our small desert white-tailed deer dress out at about 110 pounds for mature bucks, whereas a mature desert mule deer buck will dress out over 200 pounds. So, there’s a dramatic difference in size between these two species.

Well, the Arizona Game and Fish Department manages whitetail and mule deer separately. We keep the survey information separate in the databases. We keep the harvest information separate. And we prescribe the harvest; the number of tags, even in the same game management unit, will be a different number of tags for each species. And that separate management is at the very foundation of conserving these species.

For more information about these two deer species and the hunting regulations, log on to the Arizona Game and Fish Department website. Happy hunting!