Utah never held much appeal for whitetail deer . . . until now, anyway.
Last year, a Utah hunter shot a whitetail during the annual mule deer hunt. The feeling was that it had walked into Utah.
This year a second whitetail deer was shot by a Utah hunter and checked through the Logan station on opening weekend.
The deer was shot near Tony Grove north of Logan, and wildlife officials believe this one came with Utah citizenship.
Both deer were whitetail, both were in Utah and both were legally harvested, even though, officially, Utah has no whitetail — just mule deer.
So now, it appears, Utah has at least the beginning of a whitetail herd.
"It was only a matter of time," said Lou Cornicelli, regional wildlife manager in the Northern Region for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and the department's recognized whitetail expert. "We have the habitat. We know Idaho has whitetail down as far as Pocatello, so it's conceivable they've now walked into northern Utah.
"They came for a reason, and that is because they find Utah appealing. It's simply a case where the urban west is meeting with the agricultural east."
Most states have whitetail populations. Utah and Nevada are about the only states without big herds.
The whitetail shot last year was a 3 1/2-year-old mature buck. The one shot this year was a yearling, which leads Cornicelli to guess it was born in Utah.
At the turn of the century, Utah didn't have much of a mule deer herd, either. Then, overgrazing by cattle and sheep changed the landscape from grasses to forbs and brushes, which are more appetizing feed for deer, and the population grew.
"What we've done is a lot like what happened to the mule deer. We created mule deer habitat, and they responded. We created new riparian habitat, which the whitetail prefer, and now they're responding," he added.
Differences between the two species are not always obvious, especially from a distance. Mature mule deer have antlers that are larger and branch off two main beams, where whitetail horns branch off one beam; mule deer are more grayish in color, where whitetail are more brownish; mule deer hop when they run, whitetail run; and, mule deer have larger ears, thus the name mule, where whitetail have shorter ears.
But the most distinguishing feature is the tail. When a whitetail runs, its tail stands up and fluffs up like a cotton ball.
And, despite what many believe, whitetail are larger in size. The average dressed weight of a mule deer is around 125 pounds. Cornicelli said in many states it's common to see dressed whitetail bucks weighing over 200 pounds.
Whitetail also have a higher production rate than mule deer and are a heartier deer, which means they can survive harsher winter conditions.
There are, however, a couple of concerns with respect to whitetail moving into Utah.
For one, whitetail prefer agricultural areas, which means they could be more bothersome to farmers than are mule deer.
The second is more on a social level. Many Utah hunters have a provincial attitude and believe the state should be — now and always — the land of the mule deer.
But, as Cornicelli pointed out, changes in land management in recent years have created prime whitetail habitat, "and it was just a matter of time before they discovered it." And now, it appears, they have.
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