The white-tailed deer is recorded in every one of Indiana’s 92 counties, 3,196 records running from the dune and savanna mosaic at Indiana Dunes National Park to the big hardwood blocks of Brown County State Park and Hoosier National Forest. It is the state’s signature large mammal, and its map is effectively a map of Indiana itself.
An edge species in farm country
Whitetails browse twigs, leaves, acorns, and farm crops rather than graze open grassland, and they do best where woods meet field. Indiana’s quilt of woodlots, creek corridors, and cropland is close to ideal deer country, which is why the animal shows up as readily around Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park at the edge of Indianapolis as it does in the wilder, hillier south.
Fawns in June, the rut in fall
Reports crest in June, fawning season, when does tuck spotted newborns into grass and cover and slip back to nurse them. Through summer the bucks carry velvet-covered antlers, and by November the rut puts normally cautious deer on the move at all hours, the season when a hiker or a driver is most likely to cross paths with one.
Status in Indiana
NatureServe ranks the white-tailed deer S5, Secure, in Indiana, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
