About This Stamp
In 2013, the U.S. Postal Service featured the silhouette of a fanciful deer on a stamped card. More than 40 species of deer are found around the world. In the United States, the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) is the most common species. As many as 30 million white-tailed deer are estimated to live in the U.S., but the animals range as far north as Canada and as far south as Bolivia. They’re named for the white undersides of their tails. When bounding away from danger, these deer raise their tails like a signaling flag, exposing the pale hair underneath.
The white-tailed deer is one of the most ancient deer species alive on the planet today. Its excellent abilities to move quietly, hide, and run enabled it to evade powerful Ice Age predators. Before the arrival of Europeans in North America, white-tailed deer were an important source of food for Native Americans. They used the deer’s hide for clothing and its bones for weapons and tools. European settlers eventually hunted whitetails nearly to extinction, reducing a population of some 25 to 40 million down to 500,000 or fewer by the late 1800s. People on the frontier fashioned deerskins into jackets, clothing, and moccasins, and even traded the skins, known as buckskins, as a form of currency. As a result, a dollar bill is known as a “buck” to this day. With game management, the whitetail population eventually rebounded.
Some of the largest whitetails can be found in northern populations, where adult males can stand three feet high at the shoulder and weigh more than 300 pounds. Whitetails prefer habitat at the edges of forests, where they can browse on leaves and twigs as well as acorns, fruit, mushrooms, and grasses. Every spring, this nourishing diet helps the male deer begin to grow new antlers. When mating season starts in the fall, male deer use their antlers to spar over mates. The antlers fall off in winter, providing an important source of calcium and minerals for small animals such as mice, squirrels, porcupines, and even the deer themselves, which seek out the antlers and gnaw on them.
About seven months after the mating season, fawns are born in the spring and summer. Spotted coats help them blend into the shade-dappled forest floor, where they hide while their mothers are grazing. Twin fawns are common, and they begin following their mothers when about a month old. Although white-tailed deer can live to be 20 years old, life expectancy for many deer is just two to three years. Wolves, mountain lions, bears, and humans all hunt whitetails, and many deer die from malnutrition or collisions with cars. Excellent runners and swimmers, whitetails can exceed speeds of 30 miles per hour when fleeing a predator.
Art director Ethel Kessler designed the card, using an illustration created by artist Cathie Bleck.
The Deer Stamped Card is being issued as a Forever® stamped card. Its postage will always be equal to the value of the postcard rate in effect at the time of use, even if the rate increases after purchase.