Couse Whitetail in South America?

[Mangum]

I lived and worked mining gold in Guyana South America for about three and a half years. I didn't personally kill any deer while I was down there. However the Brazilians that worked near us were contiually taking nice whitetail that looked exactly like the couse we have here in Arizona. I am just wondering if any one knows anything about the whitetail of South America, if they are couse or a subspecies and if they are a subspecies what type?

[IHunt2live]

I don't know but would like to.

Amanda..... could you fill us in?

[Outdoor Writer]

Were those deer sort of reddish colored? If so, probably brocket deer.

 

There are a BUNCH of deer subspecies as you go south in Mexico into Central America and then to South America. -TONY

[Coues Sniper]

Were those deer sort of reddish colored? If so, probably brocket deer.

 

...continually taking nice whitetail that looked exactly like the couse we have here in Arizona.

If they were "nice" deer that resembled Coues deer they aren't likely to be Brockets. Brockets have unbranched horns and a big one has horns about twice the length of your thumb. Although for Longshooter that would be a heck of a Coues . Not sure if there are Coues down that far or not.

[Mangum]

Were those deer sort of reddish colored? If so, probably brocket deer.

 

There are a BUNCH of deer subspecies as you go south in Mexico into Central America and then to South America. -TONY

These deer had the normal brown summer coat that couse get. It just never got cold enough for them to need a thicker winter coat.

[Mangum]

Were those deer sort of reddish colored? If so, probably brocket deer.

 

...continually taking nice whitetail that looked exactly like the couse we have here in Arizona.

If they were "nice" deer that resembled Coues deer they aren't likely to be Brockets. Brockets have unbranched horns and a big one has horns about twice the length of your thumb. Although for Longshooter that would be a heck of a Coues . Not sure if there are Coues down that far or not.

I take back that I didn't kill any deer down there. I shot what they called a Wivaserie. It was about the size of a cyote. It was a female so it didn't have antlers. They tell me that the males grow one to two inch spikes. Every one in camp had to make fun of me that I went and shot a baby deer

[COOSEFAN]

I noticed a difference in the deer we took last week. The deer around Hermosillo were much lighter grey just like our AZ deer, but the deer we took farther south near Obregon appeared brown from a distance. The pictures don't do it justice, but the coats on the Obregon deer are the same color of a late season Kiabab Muley coat! They had very thin hair and very small hooves. The antlers were polished and smooth like an eastern whitey. I'm sure the differences are because we were at 375 ft elevation, tons of vegetation and it never gets very cold. As for the very small hooves......I'm still stumped on that one. I'll get more pics this next week. JIM>

 

South Mexico Coues....

 

 

 

and here's the normal grey colored Coues taken near Hermosillo....

 

[Coues Sniper]

I take back that I didn't kill any deer down there. I shot what they called a Wivaserie. It was about the size of a cyote. It was a female so it didn't have antlers. They tell me that the males grow one to two inch spikes. Every one in camp had to make fun of me that I went and shot a baby deer

 

If that's the case then I think Tony was right; they were probably Brocket deer. They can vary in size and color quite a bit depending on the subspecies, but the horns are small.

[AZP&Y]

brocket deer

[mr.smith]

I doubt any made it to Guyana but, the Army bases in Panama imported eastern whitetails for the soldiers and they adapted pretty well from what I hear.

[Outdoor Writer]

The Coues deer range pretty much ends in southern Sonora.

 

I have seen a couple deer while fishing at El Salto, which is in Sinaloa, about an hour north of Mazatlan. They are small like Coues but a different subspecies. All the ones I saw were does, so I don't know what the antlers look like. They still call them cola blancas, though.

 

Below is a list of most of the subspecis of Odocoileus virginianus . -TONY

 

38 sub-species

Odocoileus virginianus acapulcensis : Acapulco White-tailed Deer, southern Mexico (Caton 1877) .

Odocoileus virginianus borealis : Northern Woodland White-tailed Deer, southeastern Canada and northeastern United States (Miller 1900) .

Odocoileus virginianus cariacou : Venado Deer, French Guiana and North Brazil (Boddaert 1784) .

Odocoileus virginianus carminis : Carmen Mountain White-tailed Deer, northern Mexico (Goldman & Kellog 1940) .

Odocoileus virginianus chiriquensis : Chiriqui White-tailed Deer, Panama (J.A. Allen 1910) .

Odocoileus virginianus clavium : Florida Key White-tailed Deer, Florida Keys (Barbour & G.M. Allen 1922) .

Odocoileus virginianus couesi : Coues White-tailed, Fantail Deer or Arizona White-tailed Deer, Sunta Cruz, Arizona (Coues & Yarrow 1875) .

Odocoileus virginianus curassavicus : Venado Deer (8), Curacao Island (Hummelinek 1940) .

Odocoileus virginianus dacotensis : Dakota White-tailed Deer, Alberta and northern Dakota (Goldman & Kellog 1940) .

Odocoileus virginianus goudotii : Venado Deer (3), Columbia (Andes) and west Venezuela (Gay & Gervais 1846) .

Odocoileus virginianus gymnotis : Venado Deer (2), Venezuela and Guianas (Wergmann 1833) .

Odocoileus virginianus hiltonensis : Hilton Head Island White-tailed Deer, Hilton Head Island (Goldman & Kellog 1940) .

Odocoileus virginianus leucurus : Columbian White-tailed Deer, Oregon and western coastal area (Douglas 1929) .

Odocoileus virginianus macrourus : Kansas White-tailed Deer, Kansas and neighboring States (Rafinesque 1817) .

Odocoileus virginianus margaritae : Venado Deer (6), Margarita Islands (Osgood 1910) .

Odocoileus virginianus mcilhennyi : Avery Island White-tailed Deer, Louisiana (Miller 1928) .

Odocoileus virginianus mexicanus : Mexican White-tailed Deer, central Mexico (Gmelin 1788) .

Odocoileus virginianus miquihuanensis : Miquihuan White-tailed Deer, central Mexico (Goldman & Kellog 1940) .

Odocoileus virginianus nelson : Chiapas White-tailed Deer, southern Mexico and Guatamala (Merriam 1898) .

Odocoileus virginianus nigribarbis : Blackbeard Island White-tailed Deer, Blackbeard Island (Goldman & Kellog 1940) .

Odocoileus virginianus oaxacensis : Oaxaca White-tailed Deer, southern Mexico (Goldman & Kellog 1940) .

Odocoileus virginianus ochrourus : Northwest White-tailed Deer, northwesern United States and Canada (V. Bailey 1932) .

Odocoileus virginianus osceola : Florida Coastal White-tailed Deer, northerwestern Florida (Banqs 1896) .

Odocoileus virginianus peruvianus : Venado Deer (4), Peru (Gray 1874) .

Odocoileus virginianus rothschildi : Coiba Island White-tailed Deer, Coiba Island (Thomas 1902) .

Odocoileus virginianus seminolus : Florida White-tailed Deer, Florida (Goldman & Kellog 1940) .

Odocoileus virginianus sinaloae : Sinaloa White-tailed Deer, mid-western Mexico (J.A. Allen 1903) .

Odocoileus virginianus taurinsulae : Bulls Island White-tailed Deer, Bulls Island (Goldman & Kellog 1940) .

Odocoileus virginianus texanus : Texas White-tailed Deer, Texas and adjacent states (Mearns 1898) .

Odocoileus virginianus thomasi : Mexican Lowland White-tailed Deer, southeastern Mexico (Merriam 1898) .

Odocoileus virginianus toltecus : Rain Forest White-tailed Deer, southern Mexico (Saussure 1860) .

Odocoileus virginianus tropicalis : Venado Deer (7), western Columbia (Cabrera 1918) .

Odocoileus virginianus truei : Nicaragua White-tailed Deer, Nicaragua and adjacent states (Merriam 1898) .

Odocoileus virginianus ustus : Venado Deer (5), Ecuator (Trouessart 1910) .

Odocoileus virginianus venatorius : Hunting Island White-tailed Deer, Hunting Island (Goldman & Kellog 1940) .

Odocoileus virginianus veraecrucis : Northern Veracruz White-tailed Deer, eastern Mexico (Goldman & Kellog 1940) .

Odocoileus virginianus virginianus : Virginia White-tailed Deer, Virginia and adjacent states (Zimmermann 1780) .

Odocoileus virginianus yucatanensis : Yacatan White-tailed Deer, Yucatan and Honduras (Hays 1872) .

[CouesWhitetail]

I don't think there are any Coues in South America. I don't know specifically which subspecies is there, but I have attached a map showing the subspecies in Mexico. The range labelled as Number 3 is the range of the Coues.

 

Amanda

 

[Outdoor Writer]

Amanda,

 

I'm guessing the subspecies I've seen at El Salto are the sinoloae. The lake sits at the northeast corner of 8. That said, IMO, that map has the Coues range extending too far south, which basically encompasses all of the Sierra Madre. But what do I know. -TONY

[hunter4life]

Looking at Tony's list it appears that the deer you were seeing were probably one of the many subspecies of whitetail deer. Likely one of the Venado deer subspecies from that list (Odocoileus virginianus cariacou : Venado Deer, French Guiana and North Brazil (Boddaert 1784) .). Here is a webpage I found that tells a bit about the 8 South American subspecies. It gives a weight of 50kg for a buck in Venezuela, which would be fairly consistent with the size of a coues deer.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/T0750E/t0750e0n.htm

 

The SCI record book had a few pictures and scores of South American whitetails. You can see them from this link.

http://www.scifirstforhunters.org/members/....cfm?specID=L01

[CouesWhitetail]

Several years ago I started looking into the distribution of Coues in Mexico after a ranch in the state of durango contacted me to help them promote their hunting program (which is how I ended up with that diagram showing subspecies distribution). That ranch is Rancho el Durangueno and they are a current sponsor of CouesWhitetail.com. In order to help them with their deer hunting program I suggested to them that they needed to get Boone and Crockett to recognize their deer as being from the coues subspecies. (current range that B&C allows for Coues does not go that far south) In conversations with B&C I was told they would look into extending what they considered Coues deer range for the recordbook and likely would do just that. Currently they are funding a project that will genetically analyze samples of whitetail from Mexico, including some from Rancho el Durangueno which is near the southern section of that range shown in the figure. Jim Heffelfinger is one of the lead researchers on that project, and I am sure he will share the results when he gets the analysis done.

 

Amanda