BOOKS

White Deer : Ghosts of the Forest

Photographs by Jeff Richter
Text by John Bates

Hardcover with dust jacket
8 x 10 inches
96 pages
Color photographs
Softcover edition: ISBN: 978-0-974188317, $19.95
Hardcover edition: ISBN: 978-0974188324, $27.95
Limited edition: Limited supply first-run hardover, signed w/print enclosed, $40.00

There are an unusual number of albino white-tailed deer in some counties of northern Wisconsin. Perhaps no one has spent as much time following these white "ghosts of the forest" as photographer Jeff Richter. He has committed hundreds of images of white deer to film over many years of photographing nature and wildlife. In this book, Richter shares the best of the albino whitetail photos here. This stunning book contains albino bucks, some in velvet, does, yearlings and mixed groups. There are brown does with white fawns and white does with brown fawns. The images include other wildlife such as squirrels, that sometimes have albinism or melanism (black coloring).

Outdoor writer and naturalist John Bates weighs in with his own impressions of these fascinating animals. John references historical accounts of white deer in northern Wisconsin, and wisely tempers the subject with an explanation of the genetics of albinism and a discussion of the implications of this phenomenon. For example, does it make sense to protect albinoes from hunting, as some states do? Might white deer have an advantage where snow may cover the ground nearly half the year?