I am a university professor studying color phases of deer and cervids. My goal is to document the distribution of melanistic white-tailed and mule deer I have received numerous messages from hunters that harvested melanistic deer and landowners with melanistic deer on their land. I would appreciate hearing from anyone with knowledge of melanistic deer in North America. I am also interested in securing a tissue sample from harvested deer for genetic studies. I can be contacted at [email protected]
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As far as I know there are no melanistic deer in the high fence deer industry. Some of us have been trying to get a post mortem collection to try to introduce the color into our deer industry with semen collected from a melanistic deer from the wild. I believe this would be the only way the gene could/will be introduced into domestic raised deer under high fence. Being a recessive gene one would think if it was in the industry we would have a melanistic deer sooner or later if the gene was present. I personally have been looking for about ten years in our deer industry and none have been found. If in your studies you have the chance to collect and freeze semen from a melanistic deer there are some in this industry that would be interested.
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