Whitetails: Nature's Wild Spirits

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Whitetails are the most widespread and abundant deer in North America.
They are what most of us visualize when we think of deer. Yet we know
very little about them beyond the Bambi-images from storybooks and the
dusty rack of antlers at the cottage.

Raycroft opens up the whitetail’s world for us. His passion for these
animals comes through in both his writing and photography. To him,
whitetails embody the “essence of wildness,” animals of the still
forests, facing the challenge of adapting to a changing environment. He
is intrigued by their beauty, mystery, and elusiveness. He admires their
speed and versatility, and revels in using film to open a window into
their secret world.

Raycroft’s smooth, flowing style blends personal anecdotes with the
well-organized results of research material to yield a text that is rich
in detail. This information-packed text covers all aspects of the
whitetail’s life cycle: food, habitat, mating, rearing young,
digestive system, smell, hearing, sight, defences, enemies, crepuscular
characteristics, antler cycle, and relationship to their environment.

More than 180 vivid color photos create a portrait of the deer’s
life. Photographing whitetails has been a 10-year obsession for
Raycroft. Throughout the book, he shares the results of this work,
concluding with a chapter on the craft and practice of photographing
deer in their natural habitat.

For anyone who has been intrigued by the glimpse of a deer at the
roadside and wants to know more, this work is the answer.