Field guide · 5 animals
Five members of the deer family roam North America, from the whitetail in suburban backyards to the caribou of the Arctic tundra. In every species the males grow and shed a new set of antlers each year, and caribou are the only deer in which females usually grow antlers too.
Size alone separates most of them: the moose is the largest deer in the world, while the antler shape, tail and rump patch settle the closer calls between whitetail, mule deer and elk.
| Animal | Type | Habitat | Headgear | Region | Typical weight | Diet |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White-tailed Deer | Big game | Forest | Antlers | Nationwide | 150 lb | Herbivore |
| Mule Deer | Big game | Mountains | Antlers | Western mountains | 200 lb | Herbivore |
| Elk | Big game | Mountains | Antlers | Western mountains | 710 lb | Herbivore |
| Moose | Big game | Wetlands | Antlers | Northern forests | 1,200 lb | Herbivore |
| Caribou | Big game | Tundra | Antlers | Arctic tundra | 400 lb | Herbivore |
The white-tailed deer is the most hunted big-game animal in North America and the continent's most widespread deer, found from southern Canada to South America. It is also one of conservation's great comebacks: whitetails were nearly wiped out across much of their range by 1900, and today they number in the tens of millions.
Read the full guide →The mule deer is the big-eared deer of the West, at home from desert canyons and sagebrush basins to alpine bowls above timberline. For many hunters it is the classic Western hunt: glassing open, broken country at first light for a heavy-antlered buck, then planning a long stalk to reach it.
Read the full guide →The elk is one of the largest deer in the world and the animal that defines a Western fall: bulls bugling across mountain meadows in September and herds pouring out of dark timber at dusk. Once found across most of the United States, elk were wiped out east of the Great Plains by the late 1800s, and restored herds now roam from Kentucky to Pennsylvania as well as the West.
Read the full guide →The moose is the largest member of the deer family, a long-legged, dark-coated giant of northern forests and willow bottoms. A big Alaska bull can weigh 1,600 pounds and carry antlers more than six feet wide, and a moose hunt, whether in Alaska, the Canadian bush or a hard-to-draw unit in the Rockies, is a lifetime goal for many hunters.
Read the full guide →The caribou is the deer of the Far North, built for snow and cold, and the only deer in which females as well as males regularly grow antlers. Its great herds make some of the longest overland migrations on Earth and feed Indigenous communities across the Arctic. Many herds have crashed in recent decades, so hunting is closed or tightly limited across large parts of the range.
Read the full guide →Think you could name them from a few clues? A new mystery animal drops every day.
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