Most whitetail deer are quite jumpy around humans. They've been conditioned by nature to be naturally fearful. However, when a deer is raised by people or fed from a young age, it can cause these animals to abandon their ordinarily cautious behavior. While we've seen plenty of friendly deer, we had never seen a nice deer that was also a piebald. Until now, anyway. This incredible footage from West Virginia shows a man petting a beautiful piebald deer on the side of a road. This deer was obviously raised by people judging from its reactions, and a conspicuous collar was probably put around its neck as a caution to hunters.
Unbelievably, the buck seems to really enjoy being petted and having his head scratched. It's not often you get an up close and personal look at a live piebald deer like this. It's one of those things one would never believe if there wasn't a video to prove this encounter happened.
One of the more interesting aspects of this man petting a piebald deer is that the buck has at least one deformity that's common with piebald whitetails. The buck has a clearly deformed nose that gives it a humped appearance. Piebald deer are the result of a mutation or genetic defect, so some less-than-desirable physical traits often manifest in inflicted deer. The buck in this video appears to be one of the lucky ones. It doesn't appear the deformed nose is causing him any physical problems. In fact, the animal seems to be in excellent health.
Perhaps the biggest message to get across is that this isn't a wise thing to do. We do not recommend approaching any animal like this in the wild. This appears to be during the late fall months, likely during the rut, and that's when bucks can get the most aggressive, tamed by humans or not. Even though this buck has a small rack compared to some, it's not anything a human wants to be on the wrong side when the deer gets aggressive.
In most states, it's also illegal to raise wild deer or to feed them to the point they lose their fear of humans. We can only hope after this video was shot that the deer wandered back into a wild, remote area where it encountered few humans after the fact.
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