# Sex Characteristics of Black-Tailed Deer Hooves

> Can you tell a buck from a doe by their tracks? In 1965, a biologist who kept guessing right while following deer to their beds measured the hooves of 106 black-tailed deer. Adult males’ hooves were clearly wider towards the front, so most adult males, and the larger yearling males, can be picked out from their tracks with a high degree of certainty, though fawns cannot.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/1965-mccullough-sex-characteristics-black-tailed/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** Dale R. McCullough
- **Year published:** 1965
- **Journal or source:** The Journal of Wildlife Management
- **Full citation:** McCullough, D. R. 1965. Sex characteristics of black-tailed deer hooves. The Journal of Wildlife Management 29(1): 210–212.
- **DOI:** 10.2307/3798655
- **Access status:** Publisher link only
- **Where to find it:** https://doi.org/10.2307/3798655

## Tags

- **Species:** Mammals > Black-tailed deer
- **Region:** North America > United States
- **Tracking:** Track measurements; Tracking; Tracks; Tracks and signs identification; Trailing
- **Methods and technology:** Body-size comparison; Descriptive statistics
- **Data type:** New field data
- **Observer qualification:** Not reported
- **Discipline:** Wildlife tracking
- **Year published:** 1965

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Studied: black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus; the scanned text reads “hemwnus”). Mentioned but not studied: white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), other subspecies of the mule deer group, and Inyo mule deer, whose tracks the author observed only briefly in the field.
- **Location and habitat:** Hooves measured at a check station during a special hunt near Corvallis, Oregon, United States. Earlier track measurements in Strawberry Canyon, near Berkeley, California. Tracking experience in the heavy cover of western Oregon.
- **Topics:** telling the sex of deer from their tracks; hoof length; arc width (hoof width across the toe at one-third of the length back from the tip); differences between fawns, yearlings and adults; front versus hind hooves; broken and malformed hooves as individual recognition marks; the long-running argument between hunters and biologists over sexing deer by their tracks.
- **Statistics or models:** Means, standard deviations, standard errors and ranges (shown in two figures); t-test (adult arc width: t = 9.89 with 36 degrees of freedom, significant at the 0.5 percent level); non-overlap of two standard errors used as the test of significance at the 5 percent level. Possible inconsistency: 21 adult males and 18 adult females would give 37 degrees of freedom for a two-sample t-test, but the paper reports 36 (perhaps one animal lacked usable toes; the paper does not say).
- **Data type:** New field data: hooves of 106 freshly killed deer measured in late October and November 1961; deer aged by tooth replacement and wear. Earlier track measurements in Strawberry Canyon (no dates given).

## Synopsis

### 1. What they did

Hunters and biologists had long argued over whether a deer’s sex can be told from their tracks, with biologists usually saying no. The author had been noticeably better than chance at predicting the sex of deer when following fresh tracks to bedded deer in western Oregon. Size was one clue, and he also had the impression, shared by an earlier study of mule deer, that males’ hooves are wider towards the front than females’ hooves. Measuring deer tracks in Strawberry Canyon, near Berkeley, California, supported this: a histogram of track width at one-third of the length back from the tip showed two separate, fairly distinct peaks.

To test this on animals of known sex and approximate age, he measured the hooves of 106 black-tailed deer killed during a special hunt near Corvallis, Oregon, in late October and November 1961. At the check station, each toe was measured to the nearest half millimetre with a dial caliper:

- Total length of the toe.

- Arc width: the width across the toe where an arc, drawn on the bottom of the toe from the tip at one-third of the total length, met the toe’s edges.

Broken or malformed toes were left out. Deer were aged as fawns, yearlings or adults by tooth replacement and wear. The sample was 16 male and 20 female fawns, 21 male and 10 female yearlings, and 21 male and 18 female adults.

### 2. What they found

- A single hoof’s measurements were close to the average of all four. Individual toes sometimes varied a lot in size, but an unusually small toe was usually balanced by an unusually large opposite toe.

- Front hooves were about 3 percent larger than hind hooves, for both sexes and all ages.

- Fawns: no difference between males and females.

- Yearlings: the hooves start to differ; males’ arc width was significantly larger than females’.

- Adults: males’ hooves were significantly longer and wider than females’. The difference in arc width was highly significant, and the ranges of arc width for the two sexes barely overlapped.

- Overlap between the sexes means that a single set of tracks would not reveal the sex in most cases. However, the vast majority of adult males, and the larger yearling males, can be identified with a high degree of certainty.

### 3. What they concluded

- Hooves, and so tracks, of black-tailed deer differ by sex from the yearling stage onwards, mainly in width towards the front of the toe.

- Most adult males and the larger yearling males can be told from their tracks with a high degree of certainty, and these are the deer of greatest interest to hunters.

- Where deer live in heavy cover, as in western Oregon, researchers find far more tracks than deer, so even a little extra information from signs, such as the sex of some of the animals, is worthwhile.

- Broken and malformed hooves are often distinctive enough to recognise individual deer, and their use in following individual movements from tracks should not be overlooked.

- The results have not been tested on white-tailed deer or other mule deer subspecies, so applying them there is provisional. Limited field observations of Inyo mule deer tracks suggest they probably hold for that form.

### 4. How tracking was or was not used

The study grew out of the author’s own tracking: following fresh tracks to bedded deer in western Oregon and predicting their sex better than chance, and measuring tracks in Strawberry Canyon, where track width at one-third of the length back from the tip fell into two groups. The main study measured the hooves of dead deer rather than tracks, on the basis that hoof differences are reflected in the tracks. The author also briefly observed Inyo mule deer tracks in the field.

### 5. Tracker or observer certification

Not reported. The track observations were the author’s own, and his tracking skill is not described or tested. Three people are thanked for helping collect the hoof data.

### 6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

- A simple, repeatable hoof measurement, “arc width”, taken with a dial caliper by swinging an arc from the toe tip at one-third of the toe’s length. The same point on a track (one-third of the length back from the tip) was used in the earlier track measurements.

- Ageing deer by tooth replacement and wear.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- The study turns a tracker’s field impression into a measurable test, and shows where the impression holds (adult and larger yearling males) and where it does not (fawns, and many single sets of tracks).

- The measurements are of hooves, not tracks. How well the one-third-length width carries over to footprints in different substrates is not tested in the paper.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: Sex Characteristics of Black-Tailed Deer Hooves (McCullough, 1965). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/1965-mccullough-sex-characteristics-black-tailed/