The whitetail's range is limited to North and South America. It extends from Canada, near the Arctic Circle, to Peru and Brazil in South America. The whitetail's range covers more latitude than any other ungulate (hoofed animal) in the world. Our North American whitetail have been successfully transplanted as exotics to Finland (which proves that they really are a cold-adapted deer), but have failed when they were introduced everywhere else. That is because they just cannot successfully compete head to head with specialists who are well adapted and on their own turf.
While whitetail deer are premier survivors : shakeup the environment, whether by fire, earthquake, volcano, avalanche, Ice Age extinctions, urban development or whatever other disaster you can imagine, and the whitetail will out-survive their competitors whose special needs are less likely to be met in a state of natural chaos or, if you prefer, natural renewal.
The whitetail thrive on the tender new shoots that follow the clearing off of a mature habitat. They moved into the ranges that were left empty by the large North American animals after they had become extinct during the Ice Ages. Some, but not all, scientists believe that all of the living species of deer in South America branched off in the past from the whitetail.
Whitetail Range
Whitetail Range
I take that life if I can, with regret as well as joy, and with the sure knowledge that nature’s ways of fang and claw or exposure and starvation are a far crueler fate than I bestow. – Fred Bear