Whitetail Winter

The whitetail deer are active all around our neighborhood this winter. We spotted this one in the brambles on some conservation land near our home. We usually don't have to set foot outside to see whitetail deer, they come to us. A group of females that I call "The Matriarchy" wander through our backyard every morning like clockwork. They browse on shrubbery, luckily my landscaping is "all natural" so I don't mind, but some neighbor's find their eating habits expensive drains on the pocketbook. The kids love to watch the deer, especially when they "raise the white flag" (lift their tails as a signal to the other deer) and leap off into the woods. My only reservation about these magestic animals is that with such a large whitetail population, there are fewer and fewer spring wildflowers in our area and many forests have lost their young trees and shrubs to the deer's ravenous appetites.