A rare albino deer has been spotted in Spring Hill, Tennessee for the second time in a month. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) says experts estimate only one in 20,000 -30,000 deer are albinos. This majestic cutie was first seen on the morning of October 24th.
“It honestly was such a surreal kind of almost like mystical experience,” Abbey Cabler said about the first sighting. “All of a sudden I hear my husband go, ‘Oh my gosh babe! Get out here now,’ like kind of freaking out, kind of panicky, and I run out there and he goes, ‘There is a white deer I swear,’ and we look out the window and sure enough there he is, just kind of like right on the other side of our porch, closer to the tree line just eating away on the bushes.”
The couple was able to snap a few pictures and a short video before the all-white deer wandered off. “In the video, you can kind of see his red eyes for a second. You can see his pink ears, so it’s so crazy. He’s like true albino,” said Abbey.
It seems that the area may have a predisposition to this unique genetic mutation. A few years ago there was an albino buck known as Ole Caney wandering around the Chapel Hill area. Sadly, he was hit and killed by a car. So, the TWRA memorialized him by creating a full-body mount of the beloved buck.
“I did some research and I guess our area has a really prevalent genetic lineage of albino deer, so there’s a hot spot in our area for the mutation and then there’s also a hot spot closer to Kentucky, but you see more of them around here which is interesting,” Abbey said.
The Cablers even got to see the deer again on Wednesday morning. “A lot of people are saying, and I agree with them, ‘Oh my gosh, this is good luck,’ or, ‘What a sign of anything good in life to have something like that happen to you,’ so I feel like I should buy a lottery ticket,” Abbey laughed.
While she is a professional photographer, she has not snapped any photos of the deer with her camera. But she has affectionately named them Casper.
“It’s close to Halloween and he was there and then he was gone, so it kind of felt like Casper the friendly albino deer,” she joked.
And it turns out this deer sighting is luckier than the couple originally imagined. When she posted about the animal on a local Facebook group, neighbors commented they had seen it last winter. One even reported that the poor deer had a bone sticking out of his leg at the time. Sever leg injuries are often fatal in wild animals like Casper.
“He had a hind leg injury,” said Abbey. “It looks like a fracture and they thought he was a goner with the injury, and sure enough, you can see in the photo if you look, you can see the healed-over injury on his back leg, which is so crazy. So he survived and he’s thriving and seemed really happy, too. He was wagging his tail, doing his thing.”
Another thing Casper has going for them is in Tennessee it’s illegal to trap, hunt, or possess an albino deer. Killing one is a Class B misdemeanor, which is punishable by a $500 fine. They are one of the few states with this protection, which may explain the larger population in the area.
“I think it’s really important that we protect him, and now he’s so identifiable that we can kind of keep an eye on him and make sure he’s happy and healthy and is growing up and gets to live a long white albino deer life, and that nobody comes and tries to harm him and he’s all good,” Abbey explained.
That does seem like a small price to pay to have such rare wildlife literally in your backyard.
