White-tailed Deer

No deer covers more ground in the Americas than the whitetail — native from southern Canada clear down through Central America into South America, split into roughly three dozen subspecies along the way. The coat shifts with the seasons, reddish-brown in summer fading to gray by winter, but the giveaway is in the name: that bright white underside of the tail, flagged up and flashed as the deer bolts, the surest way to tell it from a mule deer at a distance. Bucks grow a fresh rack every year, a single main beam branching into tines, then shed it and start over. Adaptable browsers at heart, whitetails do well wherever woodland meets open ground — field edges, brushland, farm country — which is a large part of why they've spread so far.