Last deer season 2 hunters shot 2 rare and incredibly beautiful white whitetails.

MI kid white buckOne day in October 2014 11-year-old Gavin Dingman shot a 12-point buck with a crossbow. Another day fellow Virginia hunter Daniel Blaha shot this 8-pointer, which is without question the most stunning piebald buck I have ever seen.

Just how rare are white deer like this? According to Wisconsin naturalist John Bates, co-author of “White Deer: Ghosts of the Forest,” a true albino occurs in about one in 20,000 fawn births. Other biologists say they are much rarer, with only one in 100,000 deer born totally white.VA piebald

As for the genetic variation that causes the brown-and-white piebald, biologists say that less than 1% of all whitetails born will show piebald traits.

Every time that some lucky hunter shoots a prized white buck like Gavin’s or John’s, it creates some controversy. Anti-hunters come out of the woodwork to rear their ugly head and hide behind their computers and post online, How could you kill such a beautiful animal?

But even some hunters seem to have pause, wondering, I don’t know if I could shoot a white deer…

Could you, would you?