In the future, when I’m asked what a typical whitetail deer looks like, I will refer to this photo that I captured today: it is so typical.
The brush in which she is lying and through which she is peeking is also typical of her habitat with which she is perfectly in tune. It is a species of greasewood, and without it many, if not most of the deer in this vicinity would starve to death during a hard winter that has very heavy snow. Every time I hiked through the foothills and lower mountains slopes around here this winter I observed the tracks of whitetails in deep snow visiting and browsing on the tips of this very common plant, and nearly every plant showed obvious signs of having been trimmed.