Species: White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

What to look for

  1. Pellet size. About 0.5 to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.5 cm) long and 0.2 to 0.5 inch (0.5 to 1.3 cm) in diameter.
  2. Shape. Oval and cylindrical, dropped in piles rather than singly.
  3. Surface. Usually shiny and dark when fresh, dulling and drying with age.
  4. Contents. No distinct pieces of food are visible, only finely processed plant material, and the color runs black to greenish.
  5. The clumped form. High-moisture foods such as berries and apples make the pellets clump, into a deposit Maryland measures at 6 to 9 inches (15 to 23 cm) across and 8 to 14 inches (20 to 36 cm) long. Look for pellet shapes inside the mass.
  6. Quantity. Deer leave large numbers of pellets in one place, and that volume is usually what catches the eye first.

Easily confused with

Eastern cottontail scat. Rabbit pellets are rounded balls 0.15 to 0.4 inch (0.4 to 1 cm) across, smaller than deer pellets and often showing bits of grass.

Elk scat. Also pellets of plant material, black to green, but noticeably larger than a deer's.

Black bear scat. A clumped deer deposit gets taken for it, but bear scat runs 1.2 to 2.5 inches (3 to 6.4 cm) in diameter and shows seeds and other coarse remains.

Where and when

White-tailed deer range across the eastern and central United States and well beyond, and the pellets turn up wherever they bed and browse: field edges, brushy fence lines, orchard ground and backyard shrub beds. What the animals are eating decides the form, so firm separate pellets and soft clumped masses can both be deer, sometimes within a few weeks of each other on the same ground.

Related signs

  • Bear scat: Black bear scat is a large tubular deposit, usually left in a coil or in segments 2 to 3 inches long and 1.25 to 1.5 inches across.
  • Deer tracks: A deer track is a split, upside-down heart: two pointed toes side by side, symmetrical, about 2.5 to 3 inches long in Maine's guidance and up to 4 inches in Missouri's.
  • Coyote scat: Coyote scat is ropelike and twisted, averaging 3 to 4 inches long and about an inch across, usually packed with hair and bone.

Sources