Blacktail deer or hybrid?

[ducktoller]

ive always been under the impression that it's the opposite: a blacktail is a cross between a whitetail subspecies and a mulie. I've heard that blacktails were whitetails stranded on the west side of the ice sheets. After the retreat, they hybridized mulies infilling from the south and east.

Genetic evidence shows mulies as quite young only 10-2000 years old. Blacktail and whitetail are millions though some think millions of years ago they were the same species. Mulies isolated during the iceage and have since spread

[scotty30-06]

^^^^^^all the research I have done agrees with this....whitetail and blacktails made muleys

[ajr5406]

Genetic evidence shows mulies as quite young only 10-2000 years old. Blacktail and whitetail are millions though some think millions of years ago they were the same species. Mulies isolated during the iceage and have since spread

yep, I think it may have been in Mule Deer Country, by Valerius Geist that I read that too

[ryanb]

It's a mule blacktail hybrid. Fact of the matter is that the regs treat the two as the same species so it's only academic. I know areas where the majority of the deer have tails like this. Also seen in the same area would the traditional muley and blacktail tails.

[Pemby_mess]

yep, I think it may have been in Mule Deer Country, by Valerius Geist that I read that too

Yeah I read that last night. Indeed it seems to confirm the opposite of what I had thought to be true. Seems mostly counter-intuitive to me, but then you gotta defer to the genetics.

[Dannybuoy]

Yup it's been discussed many times on this site over the years ...

[Salty]

Blacktails on the island where there's no mule deer at all and so hybridization to consider don't always have pure black tails top to bottom some have some brown up top much like the OP. The OP looks like a plain old Columbia blacktail to me.

island BT-

[twoSevenO]

So does anyone have a pic of what would be considered an ACTUAL hybrid?

I'd now like to see a hybrid one. Everyone talks about them around the reg2 / reg3 boundaries but I've yet to see on that a majority would agree was an actual hybrid.

Or is it simply such a grey area wed never collectively agree on whether any individual deer is a blacktail or hybrid?