My father shared with me that when he was 13 or 14 (circa 1933) and the family went deer hunting with snow cover, they hoped they could find a deer track.

He recalled that if he and his brothers found a deer track, they followed it for hours. The deer population then in Pennsylvania was about two or three deer per square mile.

Today, estimates vary, but that has increased to 10 to 20 per square mile. With great management we are now blessed to regularly see these beautiful animals. (But they can be an issue in residential communities.)

So why have they been so successful? Let’s review some of the adaptations that deer have and why they have done so well. One of those adaptations is their fur. You probably noticed that those “reddish brown” coats in August became a duller light brown in September. Deer grow a winter coat of longer, hollow hairs that insulate them well. A deer can lie down in the snow for hours and the snow doesn’t melt beneath them.

I recently mentioned how owls’ eyes have a tremendous number of rods in their retina to allow them to see so well in the dark. Deer have that same adaptation. Great night vision, but poor color vision.

Another sense that they have mastered is their sense of smell. A white-tailed deer has about 257 million olfactory receptors compared with humans, who have about 5 million.

And here’s one to top that: They have bilateral nostrils. They can “pull in” a scent in stereo, helping them to more easily pinpoint where that smelly hunter is close by, or scent a doe from a quarter-mile away. Wow.

Deer and elk are browsers, not grazers like cattle or sheep. They adapted to life in the forests eating browse, leaves and the soft growth of shrubs and trees. They also eat much mast; acorns, beechnuts, etc. They are ruminants with a multichambered stomach. The rumen is the first section where they initially store the browse they just gobbled down. Later, in safer conditions, they can lay down and then “chew their cud.”

In many deer seasons I have had deer lie down within my view, and I watched them for an hour or two chewing away. That brings another adaptation: Being browsers, they have no upper incisors, just a hard flesh covered “lip,” in simpler terms.

Their mandible, the movable lower jaw, has incisors in the front and then a big space in the mandible with no teeth until the molars farther back. This space is called the diastema. It is necessary because they chew sideways, not up and down like us. Having too many teeth would be a problem to do that, thus the space in their jaws.

I wondered why a deer could eat pokeweed berries that are poisonous to us, so I researched a little. Deer have adapted to have special tannin-binding proteins in their saliva. The tannic acid is then “bound up” and proceeds through their digestive system, causing no issues. This works with pokeweed, hemlock bark or mountain laurel leaves, things a grazing animal like a cow could not tolerate.

There are so many adaptations, but I’ll conclude with this one: their legs and feet. With cloven (split) hooves they can adapt to hard rock or soil, muddy conditions and snow. They run on these cloven hooves, actually their toes.

The lower leg contains very elastic tendons, allowing them to bound back and forth through thick brush and downed trees. They can easily leap 20 or more feet when running. And those thin legs help them move easier in deep snow.

If you have a little spare time, sit and watch some deer for a while to appreciate their amazing traits.

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge — True/False: Deer in winter need to feed more to sustain them through harsh winter conditions.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: The need to feed voraciously before denning by woodchucks or bears is called hyperphagia.

Note: In a recent column the numbers were transposed for the gestation of a meadow vole, it is 21 days, not 12.

Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com