Hybrid talk from biggest buck thread

[boneaddict]

I’m going to go ahead and split this so that we aren’t stealing the OPs intention of their thread.

Probably a dumb question, but do whitetail and mule deer ever cross breed? I’m familiar with the mule deer/blacktail but don’t hear anything with whitetail/muledeer.

It’s amazing how great God was to offset the rut like he did of those two.  It happens but not nearly as often as most people think. 

[C-Money]

A friend killed a buck in the Kahlotus area that truly struck me as a muley/whitetail cross. It had obvious body features of both breeds. Over the years, sitting behind a spotting scope or a set of binos, looking over a lot of mule deer, I can honestly say, I do not remember looking at a deer that jumped out as looking like a cross breed. Only example I have is the one I mentioned that a friend tagged. Also, this is a great thread, lots of great WA bucks to look at!

[C-Money]

Oh, and while we are on the topic of whitetail/mule deer cross...I hear so often folks say that because a muley buck dose not have forks it must have whitetail blood. FALSE! This vomit comment usually comes from our fellow hunters from the Eastern states. When I hear someone say this its worse than fingernails down a chalk board...

[chukardogs]

Back in the late 80s, early 90s, I ran into a guy coming off of Mt. Annie with a buck in the back of his pickup that was clearly a Whitetail. The body, the tail, everything said Whitetail. The rack was 15 to 16 wide, a traditional 4 point with every 4 to 6 inch tall point, coming off the main beam plus 2 to 3 inch eye guards. The only difference was every point except the most forward tips were forked. Strangest looking rack! It's the only buck I've seen that said my daddy was a Muley.

[huntnnw]

My dad killed a 170’s whitetail that every tine is forked but the G4’s.. its 100% whitetail.  Gotta look at body, he also killed a doe a number of years ago when I was a kid in a group of 10–12 muleys . We get up to it and there was no mistaken this doe was crossed with a whitetail and muley. Oddest looking deer I have ever seen. Had markings of both species, had muley ears , a full whitetail tail. Didn’t bounce when it ran with herd when the rest did.

I use to see near Tum tum on several occasions when I lived near there of muley bucks chasing whitetail does in November. 2 years ago in lolo of Idaho I watched a muley doe and fawn be followed for over a mile by a small 4pt whitetail.

[zwickeyman]

My dad killed a 170’s whitetail that every tine is forked but the G4’s.. its 100% whitetail.  Gotta look at body, he also killed a doe a number of years ago when I was a kid in a group of 10–12 muleys . We get up to it and there was no mistaken this doe was crossed with a whitetail and muley. Oddest looking deer I have ever seen. Had markings of both species, had muley ears , a full whitetail tail. Didn’t bounce when it ran with herd when the rest did.

I use to see near Tum tum on several occasions when I lived near there of muley bucks chasing whitetail does in November. 2 years ago in lolo of Idaho I watched a muley doe and fawn be followed for over a mile by a small 4pt whitetail.

Huntwa

Just across the bridge over the Spokane River going toward Airway Heights if you take a right and go down river there are a bunch of cross down there. You are right, odd looking with traits of both species and some are down right ugly

[chukardogs]

Hey Bone, as far as the rut? If the Whitetails rut the week of Turkey day, when do you think the Mule deer rut? Before or after? We've consistently seen bucks starting to swell the last week of October? At least on the mountain I've been hunting for years in the eastern Okanogan, the Whitetail hang 500 to a thousand feet lower in elevation than the Muleys during the Modern firearm season. I've always heard the Mule deer rut is usually early (beginning of November) and late (beginning of December). Basically, whatever females don't get bred early, come back into heat 30 days later or so and the bucks are still cruising around looking for does. If that's actually the case, isn't it possible that the Muleys are out n about throughout the entire rut of both Whitetails and Muleys? Or do the bucks, take a break from the rut and rest for a few weeks?

[huntnnw]

All the hunting I have done with both species mule deer rut way earlier than whitetails. I have watched on may occasions muleys in full blown rut the week of Oct 20th and on. Muleys seem to peak in this region in early November and whitetails are usually around November 18-24. Muleys seem to have a much more longer drawn out rut and whitetails start, peak and it really drops off fast with them.

[boneaddict]

    First you have to take in account there is pre-rut behavior and then breeding.  Typically the majority of the mule deer rut is completed before whitetails even begin.   Does it completely end, no, but it’s a tight tidal wave in general terms last week of October,or Halloween through Veterans day.  As that  tapers off the whitetails start in earnest, starting mid November, roughly after the 12th, climbing rapidly in activity by the 19th, peaking hard and  just about the time theirs ends, the second mule deer rut hits, roughly around Thanksgiving. Sticking to the wave analogy this wave is smaller and less intense than the first.   Rinse and Repeat, then the Whitetail wave hits in December.   

[nwwanderer]

Have seen a few suspects and family has harvested a few.  Whitetail are the old line ones, mule deer the new kid on the block.  Would expect to see more with current population make-up, seeing more mule deer, still darn few, in whitetail areas.  Al ittle dna testing would settle the subject.

[Sitka_Blacktail]

DNA studies have shown that Mule deer are a hybrid cross between Blacktail bucks and Whitetail does.

https://www.britannica.com/animal/mule-deer

[chukardogs]

It's been interesting to watch the Mule deer for over 30 years on the mountain that I hunt. Every year when the Mule deer rut starts to heat up, for whatever reason, there seems to be one area around an opening on a specific ridgeline that draws in the deer. I guess it's possible that because I've seen so many deer in this area, I just gravitate to it and therefore see more deer there because it's where I spend my time. Do Mule deer congregate in a specific area for the rut or just for the pre rut activity? You hear about Mule deer bucks that roam ten to twenty miles out of their summer/fall range during the rut. Applying all of this to, if I'm ever lucky enough to draw the late 204 any buck tag, I question whether the area that I hunt during the regular modern firearm season would still be worth putting my time into or if I'd be better off finding high spots throughout a much larger area and just glassing larger tracks of land?

[chukardogs]

Wow! That hybridization had to have taken a "few" years to occur, considering the regions each of the species are traditionally known to have occupied!? Makes me wonder if man had a hand in it by their westward movement across this country or if it happened naturally long before with no involvement from man whatsoever? Seems like it would have taken thousands of years to transpire to get the Muley species solidified (If you will) and then dispersed from the Cascade range to the middle of the continent? Makes a good case for the belief that Whitetails had to have been spread acrossed most of the country before white man ever set foot on North American soil if that's the case. I guess I've always heard that Whitetails were pushed westward by man and that's why they ended up in the Dakota's, Montana, Wyoming....etc.etc What we don't know?!?

[boneaddict]

Unfortunately the answer isnt in black and white.   You have to take different variances into effect.   Major differences, migratory versus non migratory, timing with weather, pressure, and humanity.   Anecdotally I can tell you I often find the same deer within yards of where I saw them last year at the same time.  Anecdotally I can yell you I filmed x amount of big bucks on the same ridgeline year after year for a decade until they logged that ridge and I havent seen a deer there since.    Anecdotally I can tell you a migration route goes through spot x, but it depends on what they are doing when they hit spot x if its snowing hard and its peak or if they are there 2 weeks early because of a major storm, or in the middle of general or the snows never came so they didnt migrate through and the lower range is left vacant.   Lots of factors

[kentrek]

This buck was culled as a cross

[C-Money]

Any pics of his rump?

[chukardogs]

The area I hunt doesn't seem to have what I would consider a migration like you'd experience in the Cascades. Surely some years the snow pushes the deer lower but we've found sheds at 5400 feet on a mountain that's only 5800 feet total. In fact, we've found the dryness of the brouse has far more to do with moving animals off of the open hillsides and driving the deer lower than the weather or the snow. Twice in the last ten years or so, there's been no sign above timberline between the 5000 foot elevation and the top. The lodgepole thickets on top that's always held animals, had no sign whatsoever. If I wasn't so stubborn, I'd move down some but I've never seen the one I'm looking for down low and I always figure another hunter may push some in to the area.

[chukardogs]

Wow, that is truly odd looking.

[kentrek]

Couple more pics...I will say after hunting this buck a couple days he was extremely aggressive and was pushing out full framed 180 type deer

[dvolmer]

Couple more pics...I will say after hunting this buck a couple days he was extremely aggressive and was pushing out full framed 180 type deer

looks like 100% mule deer to me.

[kentrek]

Couple more pics...I will say after hunting this buck a couple days he was extremely aggressive and was pushing out full framed 180 type deer

looks like 100% mule deer to me.

Could be, the conclusion was he needed to die irregardless of what he was...he wasn't a young deer either

[boneaddict]

Just a good ole Muley to me.   I'd love to "cull" that one

[Mtnwalker]

Antler configuration can be misleading sometimes. Example, here’s a buck I glassed up on a late hunt that threw me for a loop at first.

[boneaddict]

I ran this poll 5 years ago.    Muley 38, Whitetail 33, Hybrid 10

As far as I would say, 100% whitetail

[High Climber]

No Benchleg talk yet? Lots of hybrid deer around goldendale/ klickitat area

[chukardogs]

That looks Muley to me also.

My wife took this picture Dec. 10th 2012 on Blewett, probably 10 miles north of the summit. Every time I look at the picture, I just have to wonder, what's in that boy's DNA?

[chukardogs]

I've always thought this picture of him was awesome! I'm not much of a photographer but the horns being above the brush like that just gives you an idea of the mass.

[chukardogs]

This picture makes it pretty clear.

[lewy]

Here is a cascade blacktail/MD cross buck I killed some years back….

[Ironhead]

These are two different bucks from around my place in the Entiat. I assume they are hybrids. They are a fairly common occurrence around here.

[boneaddict]

Those damn big whitetails

[TeacherMan]

That is a tank!!!

[kentrek]

That is my kind of whitetail

[kodiak06]

Couple more pics...I will say after hunting this buck a couple days he was extremely aggressive and was pushing out full framed 180 type deer

looks like 100% mule deer to me.

me too

[C-Money]

Couple more pics...I will say after hunting this buck a couple days he was extremely aggressive and was pushing out full framed 180 type deer

looks like 100% mule deer to me.

me too

As deep as his chest is, and the ripped muscles in his neck, I bet he was pushing everyone around! Wow...looks like buffalo genetics observing width/depth of chest!

[C-Money]

This whitetail forks, but I don't see a drop of muley blood. Antlers are just not a good indicator to me of a deers breed. This whitetail came from our farm, which has a very healthy population of mule deer and whitetail deer. I just don't think cross breeding happens a lot.

[C-Money]

This muley came from a friends farm...This deer gets accused of being a whitetail a lot. Probably a benchleg, but no whitetail blood that I could see from his physical features.

[zwickeyman]

Antler shape is the worst way to tell if Whitey or Muley

Tail
Face
Ears
Belly       Are all betters ways

[MeepDog]

Antler shape is the worst way to tell if Whitey or Muley

Tail
Face
Ears
Belly       Are all betters ways

It seems like the mule deer in areas with heavy overlap of whitetails are muddy. Areas like the blues foothills have mule deer that have thick bases to their tails with brown all the way down the tail, and smaller ears. In the juniper dunes, the deer look like dumbo with giant ears and their tails are small and more rope like. I'm not saying I know for certain that the thick tailed small eared muleys are hybrids, but maybe their great great grandpappy did some kanoodling with the neighboring herd of whitetails.

[KP-Skagit]

In college I was down on the Snake River breaks and glassed a herd of mulies with several bucks. One had a decidedly whitetail rack in form and much lighter antler color than every other buck in the group.

What was interesting was the group got spooked and took off. They all bounded off except the unique buck, he ran almost as if he couldn't decide whether to bound like a mule deer or sprint like a whitetail. It was very strange. Can't remember if it lifted its tail been a while now. Wasn't till then I started thinking it was a cross.

Over the years I have heard others mention "hybrids" don't know how to run.

Curious if others have since stories to tell?

[chukardogs]

 I hadn't thought much about this until this conversation. In the late 80s, I hunted a bowl like landscape with a ridge that wrapped around leaving only the east facing plateau open to drop into a creek valley with a 3200 ft. elavation. The most western portion of the ridge was 5000 ft. elevation with the ridge (s) as it/they wrapped around both north and south and ran east, dropped to 4000 ft. elevation before eventually running down into the valley to the east. I hunted a few bruiser Whitetails and eventually killed my biggest Whitetail just below one of the 4000 ft. peaks and chased a couple monster Muleys for a few years just below and around the 5000 ft. peak to the west. During the Modern Firearm season, I never saw a Whitetail above the 4000 ft. elevation of the bowl and I never saw a Muley below the 4600 ft. elavation. I see basically the same situation where I hunt now. Until the fires of 2015 we'd never seen a Whitetail above the 4600 ft. elevation. That year after the fires, we had Whitetails running around our camp at 5400 ft. Since 2015, haven't seen another.
 My point, which I assume some would like me to get to, in a natural setting with no feed plots or human inhabitants, unless weather, snow or fires drive the species together, for whatever reason, whether it's intentional or just a natural consequence of the species environmental preferences, they do a pretty good job of staying away from one another.

[chukardogs]

What an interesting dynamic. Because the two species run so differently, a hybrids natural tendencies could be conflicted. That'd be a hard one to hit on the run!

[OutHouse]

Several years ago there was an impressively big bodied (apparent) whitetail that I saw in Gardner unit. The antlers were more impressive than the body and the tips pointed out. A few times I got a good look at the buck close up from a road and when he turned his head many of the tines were forked just like a mule deer with a wide rack with the tips pointing out. It had a normal tail for a whitetail. Ears were not over sized. Overall, the rack looked much more like a mule deer than a whitetail. Its interesting because I posted a smaller basket buck on here sometime in the 2014 or 2015 time frame and there were comments that it may have been a cross.

[boneaddict]

What an interesting dynamic. Because the two species run so differently, a hybrids natural tendencies could be conflicted. That'd be a hard one to hit on the run!

Actually one of the reasons if hybridization does manage to come about, the animals have poor survival rates.   Hybrids move in a way that is not quite whitetail but not quite mule deer either.  This combined style of movement, however, doesn’t compound effectiveness at escaping predators, it reduces their ability to escape.

As stated and as shown, antlers are very poor characteristics for judging hybrids.  Metatarsal glands would be one of the best without a laboratory at least. 

[kirkl]

Heres a west Yakima buck I shot quit awhile ago. Whitey frame.

[KP-Skagit]

What an interesting dynamic. Because the two species run so differently, a hybrids natural tendencies could be conflicted. That'd be a hard one to hit on the run!

Actually one of the reasons if hybridization does manage to come about, the animals have poor survival rates.   Hybrids move in a way that is not quite whitetail but not quite mule deer either.  This combined style of movement, however, doesn’t compound effectiveness at escaping predators, it reduces their ability to escape.

As stated and as shown, antlers are very poor characteristics for judging hybrids.  Metatarsal glands would be one of the best without a laboratory at least.

For what its worth, the one I saw ran WAY slower than its pure bred mulie companions.

Reading between the lines here, it seems that Bone can vouch for the weird running habits of hybrids!

[pickardjw]

What an interesting dynamic. Because the two species run so differently, a hybrids natural tendencies could be conflicted. That'd be a hard one to hit on the run!

Actually one of the reasons if hybridization does manage to come about, the animals have poor survival rates.   Hybrids move in a way that is not quite whitetail but not quite mule deer either.  This combined style of movement, however, doesn’t compound effectiveness at escaping predators, it reduces their ability to escape.

As stated and as shown, antlers are very poor characteristics for judging hybrids.  Metatarsal glands would be one of the best without a laboratory at least.

For what its worth, the one I saw ran WAY slower than its pure bred mulie companions.

Reading between the lines here, it seems that Bone can vouch for the weird running habits of hybrids!

Rinella talked about the results of a hybridization study where they would switch between the whitetail, tail up running away move and the mule deer hopping. As if they're not sure which they're supposed to do.