By Sally Haase
(July 13, 2022) — Have you seen them? They are here in Haddam. Oh yes, the whitetail piebald deer have been spotted in the Jail Hill Road area and perhaps other parts of our town. Many in our neighborhood have seen them. “So, what are piebald deer?” you ask. The word piebald refers to spotted animals like pinto ponies or cocker spaniels for instance. The meaning of “pie” is, in short, “mixed up.” And “bald” refers to the white patches.
We know that a deer’s coloration is its camouflage in the woods. They startle us when we see them on the side of the road or tiptoe through our backyards. A piebald, however, sticks out like a sore thumb, giving an advantage to its predators while amazing us with its unique beauty.
There are many myths surrounding the piebalds. Native Americans thought their ghostly white patches represented deer in the process of leaving for the spirit world. European hunters who brought down a piebald either thought it would curse their hunting going forward or, worse, they would die within in a year.
Piebald deer are not albino. They are not totally white and do not have pink eyes. Rather, they possess a recessive gene that controls the amount of melanin responsible for their pigmentation. The amount of melanin or lack of it determines just how spotted the animal is. An internet search claims that 1 in 30,000 or 2% of whitetail deer are piebalds.
Albinos produce no melanin, resulting in white hair and pink noses. Melanistic deer are colored dark to black, having excessive amounts of melanin. Piebalds are more common than albinos, while melanistic deer are extremely rare.
In upstate New York, the former Seneca Army Depot located on 7,500 acres is a sanctuary for the Seneca white deer. They are neither piebald nor albino, but leucistic deer. Leucism pigmentation is somewhere between albinism and piebaldism. Unfortunately, the herd has diminished due to poor wildlife management and lack of funds.
I spoke to Andy LaBonte, a wildlife biologist with DEEP and the go-to person on deer in Connecticut. He said there is no way of knowing the population of piebalds in the state or if there is a concentration of the animals in any one area. When the state operated the hunting check stations, they saw them more frequently. Haddam’s Animal Control Officer, Daun Kowalski, echoed his response and added that generally the calls she receives are either complaints or lost pets.
A piebald is produced when both parents carry the gene. Even then, only about 25% of the newborns will show symptoms while the other offspring will just carry the gene. I asked Andy LaBonte how the piebald population builds up its lineage. He told me that previous- year offspring are forced out of the herd by their mothers in the spring. Often the female offspring will stay with the herd while the males wander off on their own. With more piebald females, the lineage perpetuates in these herds.
So, do we hunt them? Sadly, the piebald gene causes more than a variation of pigment. Other genetic defects may include one or more abnormalities such as short legs, an overbite, an arched back (scoliosis), and deformed internal organs. All these symptoms make life more difficult for the piebalds and shortens their lifespans. While hunting them is prohibited in some states (not Connecticut), they are not an endangered species, but are only a genetic mutation. Hunt them? Only the hunter can answer that question.
Although, I keep watching my backyard, the only whitetails (gene carriers or not) that I see are the ones unapologetically eating my Hosta.
Photos by Dottie Rogers
