With 15,823 records spread across all 100 North Carolina counties, the white-tailed deer is one of the most completely documented mammals in the state. The map runs from the hardwood slopes of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Pisgah National Forest through the Piedmont’s Wake and Orange counties to the maritime woods of Dare County on the Outer Banks.
An edge animal with a broad menu
White-tailed deer are browsers, taking twigs, leaves, acorns, and soft green growth, and they do best where forest meets open ground. North Carolina’s patchwork of farmland, suburbs, and second-growth woods is nearly ideal, which is why records pile up not only in big forests like Nantahala National Forest but also in smaller tracts threaded through settled country, places like Eno River State Park and Lower Haw River State Natural Area.
Rut and fawns on the calendar
Counts stay strong through summer, when does travel with spotted fawns born in late May and June, and they rise again in October and November as the rut sends bucks ranging widely in daylight. Deer that spent the summer keeping to small, quiet home ranges begin crossing roads and fields at all hours, and the whole state seems to see them at once.
Status in North Carolina
NatureServe ranks the white-tailed deer S5, Secure, in North Carolina, and the species is native across the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous. Few large mammals in the Southeast are as thoroughly woven into every landscape the state contains.
Full species profile
