With 1295 records, the white-tailed deer is among the most thoroughly documented mammals in Washington, and those records sort into two clusters. Spokane, Stevens, and Pend Oreille counties anchor an eastern population in river bottoms and farm-and-forest edge, while Clark, Cowlitz, and Wahkiakum in the southwest hold a separate population along the lower Columbia River. Reports come in every month of the year, thickest in June when new fawns arrive and deer are most visible along cover edges.
Edge habitat, on two very different sides of the state
White-tails are browsers of brush, twigs, and forbs, favoring the seam where cover meets open ground, and Washington offers that seam in two settings: the cottonwood bottoms and marshy lowlands of the lower Columbia, and the draws, orchards, and shelterbelts of the farm country east of the Cascades. Records run through Colville National Forest, Mount Spokane, and Riverside and Fields Spring state parks along that eastern side, where white-tails overlap with the more widespread mule deer.
Status in Washington
NatureServe ranks the white-tailed deer S5, Secure, in Washington, and the species is native to the state. One population stands apart from that broad security: the Columbian white-tailed deer of the lower Columbia River, found in Clark, Cowlitz, and Wahkiakum counties, is federally listed as threatened, its river-bottom habitat long since settled and diked.
Full species profile
