Is Florida home to three different species of whitetails?
QUESTION: I live in Florida and am hoping to be a better deer hunter. Florida has three subspecies of white-tailed deer. I’m familiar with the Key deer, but what is the difference between the Florida coastal whitetail (O. v. osceola) and the Florida whitetail (O. v. seminolus). — Mike
ANSWER: The most recent taxonomic information identifies three subspecies of white-tailed deer occurring in Florida, which you’ve so astutely identified above. It’s important to understand that taxonomy is our best attempt at classifying organisms into distinct units or taxa. However, living organisms don’t always abide by these distinctions.
According to “Biology and Management of White-tailed Deer,” the subspecific status of Key deer (Odocoileus virginianus clavium) “is unquestionable, being geographically, phenotypically and genetically differentiated.” In other words, its DNA, appearance and range are distinctly different from other subspecies, it being much smaller and occurring only on the islands of the Florida Keys. That’s not so of the other two.
The Florida whitetail occurs over most of the peninsula, while the Florida coastal whitetail is restricted largely to northwestern Florida and the Panhandle, as well as extreme southern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. The geographic line separating them runs roughly from the northeastern Florida-Georgia border, southwest to Tampa. But the deer don’t recognize this line, and interaction occurs all along its considerable length.
The same is true of the line that runs west across the three aforementioned states separating the Florida coastal and Virginia (O. v. virginianus) deer.
To make matters even more confusing, other sources show slightly different lines of geographic separation. And a 2006 report from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission lists a fourth subspecies, the Virginia whitetail, as occurring in extreme northeastern parts of Florida. However, that report also notes: “The differences among these subspecies are negligible, and there are not subspecies-specific management concerns.”
Bottom line: About the only difference between them is where you are when you see one.