Mule deer wear fur, the way the horse, the wolves and the dog do: about half a million strands grown on each deer’s own body and taking their color from its own coat, with a white rump, a black-tipped tail and a dark forehead. The flat painted look is gone, and so is the stretched, crumpled skin that showed behind the front leg when a deer ran.
A buck is no longer a doe with antlers. He has his own body, about 1.85 m long to her 1.6 m, with a thick neck, a deep chest and a tucked belly. His big rack is wide and brown with paler tips, and it forks twice the way a mule deer’s does. Close up, from under 2 m, a deer’s eyes are wet and dark, with lids and a spark of sun in them, and the fur stops short around each one.
Still open at the end of October 30: the coat appears a moment after a deer first comes into view, the ears can look blotchy, and a crease shows at the base of the buck’s neck. The coat’s colors were redone on November 12.
