A Doe named "Crystal" is a Wisconsin silver phased buck

As a sportsman we’ve all heard of piebald or albino whitetail deer, and on occasion have seen a piebald version. Most recently, there was a black or melanistic deer, spotted in Lehigh Township, Northampton County. But how many have seen or even heard of a silver deer yet alone a buck? 

Well two hunters in northwestern Wisconsin have a silver buck in their area, and they’re trying to protect it from hunters. 

According to the National Deer Association who featured this particular buck since it came to their attention as a silver buck or ghostly deer, learned it has been seen for three hunting seasons by Kevin O’Brien, his uncle and three cousins who all hunt in this area where the buck has been seen and photographed on trail cameras. This frosty whitetail doesn’t fit into any well-known color phase of deer. 

In 2024, Kevin contacted a Wisconsin DNR wildlife biologist about this buck who admitted it didn’t appear to be based on any previous known cases of such a deer. 

The silver buck was photographed on August 12, 2025 as a 2 1/2 -year old and on earlier sightings when it was younger. It first showed up in 2023 as a button buck, reappeared on trail cameras as a yearling and subsequently spotted from tree stands this fall. One Wisconsin biologist suggested it was a “gray phase” melanistic deer, but melanism involves a lot of dark, black hair over most of the body. And. Melanistic deer usually lack white patches of hair on the face and neck. But this silver deer, like most whitetails, has them. Even lighter cases of melanism are still very dark gray, not frosty silver, explains the biologist. 

In attempting to find someone who could identify this deer more definitely, Dave Osborn a Georgia DMAP biologist,  a deer researcher at the University of Georgia Deer Lab, said this silver buck reminded him of a doe named Crystal that lived for 10 years at UGA Deer Lab that was born as a piebald fawn. 

“When Crystal molted into her adult pelage, she no longer was a piebald as she went from almost no white to no white at all. The rest of her life she had unique summer and winter colors. In summer, she couldn’t be distinguished from any other of 30-plus does in her pen, unless you got close to see her gray eyes. In winter, she was almost silver,” Osborn explained. 

Crystal stumped Osborn who admitted that he could not explain Crystal and why she was a piebald, not a piebald and why she was silver in winter and red in summer. “I have no understanding of this unique color phase.” 

He then reached out to Jim Heffelfinger a wildlife biologist with Arizona Game & Fish Department who recalls seeing a photo of a similar colored Sitka black-tailed deer from Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “The “glacier” black-tailed deer was sighted in 2012 on Baranof Island in the Alaska Panhandle and was running in a group of  other normal-colored bucks and does and was described as “a very light, bluish gray,” he recounted. There was also a black bear who had a silver phase and was called a “glacier bear.” This color pattern was reported as a recessive gene like piebaldism and melanism. 

For now, the silver Wisconsin buck does not seem like a true piebald or true  melanistic and it’s not an albino which is a complete lack of pigment – even eye color. It seems to be some kind of anomaly that is even more rare. The biologist concluded, “We simply do not know.” 
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