It’s
that time of the year and the white tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
are running, the bucks are rubbing trees and making scrapes. “But what does the deer see ... Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!?”
What does
the Deer See!?
Hunters used to think that white-tailed deer were colorblind, only
seeing the world in shades of gray, but now researchers know that deer can see
colors, just not in the same way as humans.
So, what does the deer see and what does this mean for hunters and other
visitors to the wild parts of North America?
Humans have trichromatic vision because their retinas contain three
photopigments which allow us to see colors.
The first is at the short wavelength of very dark blue-violet at 420 nm (nanometer),
the second one at the moderate wavelength of green at the 530 nm range, and the
third at the long wavelength of orange-red at 565 nm. Additionally, human eyes have more cones than
deer eyes, while deer eyes have significantly more rods. And because of this, humans can see details
and colors much more clearly than can a deer.
But our lenses filter out almost all the available UV light, preventing
us from seeing shorter wavelengths which are visible to many other animals,
including deer.
The University of Georgia Deer Lab (UGA) has done much of the research
on the white-tailed deer’s visual capabilities.
They discovered that deer have
dichromatic vision and that a deer’s retina only has two photopigments with just
two peaks. The first one is at the short
wavelength of dark blue at 450 nm, and the second at the moderate wavelength of
green at 537 nm. And deer are 20 times
more sensitive than humans are too blue. In fact, deer see blues much more vividly than
a human sees red and can even see ultraviolet (UV) light between wavelengths of
300 nm and 400 nm. This is one reason deer can see so much
better in low-light conditions than can humans.
Also, unlike humans, deer’s eyes don’t have an ultraviolet filter that
protects them from the Sun’s harmful rays. According to Dr. Gino D’Angelo, “The lens
in a deer’s eye are perfectly clear, where ours are more like yellow shooting
glasses that filter out some of that ultraviolet”.
All things on the Earth are exposed to UV light all day long, but this
wavelength is overpowered by visible light.
As the visible light begins to fade at the end of the day, the shorter
UV wavelengths make up much of the remaining light. UV light is most abundant around sunrise and
sunset, although it lingers deep into the night, and the moon and cosmic rays shed
some all night long. Deer eyes have
adapted to the low-light conditions of dawn and dusk when UV light is dominant,
and this is when they can see their best and are most active.
What
does it all mean?
Since deer’s eyes can’t see longer wavelength colors like red and
orange, to a deer bright oranges and reds,
look like muted grays and browns.
According to Blaise Newman at the University of Georgia Deer Lab (UGA),
“Deer don’t see blaze orange the way that we do, but it’s not like you
disappear. It can be very neutral, but
if you don’t have some form of breakup you can look like a dark blob in the
forest. So, if you can get blaze orange
breakup, that’s always a good selection”.
Also, per Newman, “Deer are a prey species ... Having detailed
discrimination isn’t really important to deer. They just need to be able to detect and escape
something”. With a deer’s dichromatic
vision limiting the number of colors that it can see, deer have less “chromatic
noise”, and not having to process so many colors, allows their eyes to detect
movement much more quickly and easily. Newman
explains, “They see motion at an astounding rate compared to our own ability”.
To us deer vision might seem like a pale imitation of what we see, but
that’s only because we’re seeing the world through our eyes. As omnivores and tool makers, we need to see
in finer detail and to be able to recognize a wider range of colors.
But with a deer’s ability to see into the ultraviolet wavelengths,
there are things that they can see that we cannot.
According to Daniel DeRose-Broeckert of the UGA, when viewed with a
black light, fresh rubs glow more during the pre-rut, and fresh scrapes glow
more during the rut, he explained that to deer “rubs look like highway
reflectors ... When the rest of the woods are dark, the rubs and the urine in
the scrapes are highlighted because it’s throwing a different color, a brighter
color, than the light that’s contacting it”.
The reason for this is that when deer leave rubs on trees, the bark
layers, saps and other plant parts photo-luminesce, and so do the secretions
from a buck’s forehead gland. The wavelengths
produced by the urine in the scrapes, according to DeRose-Broeckert, glow in
the UV range “like spilled milk” or “spilled white paint”.
And now we know “what does the deer see!?”
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
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That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
Sources
Collins,
Dac; “What Colors Can Deer See?”, January 5, 2023, [© 2025 Recurrent], https://www.outdoorlife.com/hunting/what-colors-can-deer-see/,
October 18, 2025
Durkin,
Patrick; “Buck Rubs Never Fail to Fascinate”, February 10, 2017, https://www.bowhunting.com/blog/2017/02/10/buck-rubs-never-fail-fascinate/,
October 18, 2025
Honeycutt,
Josh; “Learn How to Read Deer Rubs for Greater Success”, October 1, 2025, [©2025
Outdoor Sportsman Group], https://www.gameandfishmag.com/editorial/reading-rubs-scrapes-greater-success/536907,
October 18, 2025
Infantry
Journal, Psychology For The Fighting Man, [Penguin Books, Washington,
1945], page 62, https://archive.org/details/psychology-for-the-fighting-man/page/4/mode/2up,
accessed November 1, 2025
Olesen,
Jacob; “Eyes of the Forest: What Colors Can Deer See and How Is Their Vision?”,
[© 2013-2025 Color Meanings], https://www.color-meanings.com/what-colors-can-deer-see-vision/,
accessed November 1, 2025
“Rubs
Versus Scrapes: What’s the Difference?”, March 13, 2023, [© 2025 Outdoor
Specialty Media], https://crossbowmagazine.com/rubs-versus-scrapes-whats-the-difference/,
October 18, 2025
“Buck
Rub, Buck Scrape”, November 13, 2011, https://prairiegardentrust.org/buck-rub-buck-scrape/,
October 18, 2025
Wikimedia,
“Deer rub.jpg”, October 22, 2015, by Wasp32, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deer_rub.jpg,
October 18, 2025
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