Deer Trivia
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48 free Deer trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
46 free Deer trivia questions with answers. Deer are the animals almost everyone has seen and almost nobody knows much about. This deer trivia quiz covers the whole family: how antlers grow and why they fall off, which species has tusks instead, the largest deer alive and the one that fits in a shoebox, why reindeer are the only deer whose females wear antlers, and how a moose can dive to a lake bottom for lunch. It also wanders into deer in culture: Bambi's species change between the book and the film, the department store that invented Rudolph, the sacred deer of Nara, the third labour of Heracles and the leaping deer on a tractor. There are questions on white-tailed deer for North American readers, red deer and roe deer for Europeans, and elk, chital, sika and muntjac for everyone else. The early questions suit kids and family quiz nights; the later ones will stretch hunters, hikers and biology students. Every answer was checked against a reference page, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Unlike deer antlers, which are bone, the horns of cattle and sheep are sheathed in what?
Keratin
Keratin is the same stuff as human fingernails, which is why horns keep growing for life while an antler is dead bone by the time it is fully grown.
Q 02What are wild reindeer called in North America?
Caribou
Caribou is the North American name for wild Rangifer tarandus, while 'reindeer' is kept for domesticated herds, such as those shipped from Siberia to Alaska in the 1890s.
Q 03What is the largest living species of deer?
Moose
The moose stands up to about 2.1 metres at the shoulder and bulls can top 700 kg; Europeans call the same animal an elk, while North Americans use 'elk' for the wapiti.
Q 04The world's smallest deer, standing about 32 to 35 cm at the shoulder, is which South American animal?
Pudu
The pudu, a genus of two Andean species, is the world's smallest deer; the northern pudu stands just 32 to 35 cm at the shoulder, and the name comes from Mapudungun, the Mapuche language.
Q 05Which continent has just one native deer, a subspecies of red deer?
Africa
Africa's only native deer is the Barbary stag, a red deer subspecies of the Atlas Mountains in Algeria and Tunisia; Australia and Antarctica have no native deer at all.
Q 06Instead of antlers, what does the male water deer of Korea and China grow?
Long tusk-like canine teeth
Male water deer grow long tusk-like canine teeth, up to about 8 cm, in place of antlers, earning the nickname 'vampire deer'; South Korea's population is estimated at around 700,000.
Q 07How many chambers does a deer's stomach have?
Four
Like cattle, deer are ruminants with a four-chambered stomach (rumen, reticulum, omasum, abomasum), though theirs is small for the group, so they browse low-fibre, nutrient-rich plants rather than coarse grass.
Q 08In Old English, the word 'deer' (dēor) originally meant what?
A wild animal of any kind
German 'Tier' and Dutch 'dier' still just mean animal; English narrowed the sense to one family around 1500.
Q 09Which deer has the heaviest antlers relative to its body mass, along with the reindeer?
Fallow
Its flat, palmate antlers average around 8 grams per kilogram of body weight; the smallest deer's are the lightest at 0.6 g/kg.
Q 10Roughly how long is the gestation period of a white-tailed deer?
200 days
A white-tailed doe carries her fawns for about 200 days, roughly six and a half months, so fawns conceived in the November rut are born in late May or June.
Q 11Roughly how wide could the antlers of the extinct Irish elk span?
About 3.6 metres
The Irish elk's antlers spanned up to about 3.6 metres (12 feet) and weighed around 40 kg; despite its name, its closest living relatives are fallow deer, not any animal called an elk.
Q 12What is the scientific name of the white-tailed deer?
Odocoileus virginianus
The white-tailed deer is Odocoileus virginianus, described by Zimmermann in 1780 from Virginia; the mule deer is its close relative Odocoileus hemionus in the same genus.
Q 13By about 1930, the US white-tailed deer population had crashed to roughly what number?
300,000
Q 21The fold of skin hanging under a moose's chin is called a dewlap or, more commonly, a what?
Bell
The moose's dewlap is usually called a bell; both bulls and cows carry one, and its purpose is uncertain, though bulls may use it to spread scent during the rut.
Q 22Moose introduced in 1878 and 1904 became the dominant large mammal on which Canadian island?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland received two moose in 1878 and four more from New Brunswick in 1904; their descendants, well over 100,000 by the 2000s, reshaped the island's forests and became its most notorious road hazard.
Q 23A study using a microphone on trophy antlers found that a moose's broad palmate antlers do what?
Amplify sound at its ear
Unregulated market hunting had cut the US herd to roughly 300,000 by about 1930; regulated seasons and changing land use rebuilt it to an estimated 30 million by 2005.
Q 14A white-tailed deer's coat is reddish in summer but what colour in winter?
Grey-brown
The autumn moult replaces the reddish summer coat with a grey-brown winter coat of longer, hollow hairs that trap air for insulation.
Q 15The smallest subspecies of white-tailed deer in North America is confined to which US state?
Florida
The Key deer, a dwarf white-tail subspecies, is found only in the Florida Keys, mainly Big Pine Key and No Name Key, where it was marooned as sea levels rose after the last ice age.
Q 16White-tailed deer were introduced for hunting to which Nordic country in the 1930s?
Finland
Finland received a handful of white-tailed deer from Finnish-Americans in Minnesota in the 1930s; the descendants had grown past 100,000 animals by 2020 and were spreading toward Sweden.
Q 17The mule deer of western North America is named after a mule because of its large what?
Ears
Mule deer take their name from their large, mule-like ears, which they swivel independently to pick up sound; the two black-tailed deer subspecies of the Pacific coast belong to the same species.
Q 18Which US state records the highest number of deer-vehicle collisions, an estimated 115,000 in 2013?
Pennsylvania
State Farm's 2013 claims data put Pennsylvania first with about 115,000 deer collisions; West Virginia drivers faced the highest individual odds of hitting one, and crashes peak in the October-December rut.
Q 19Chronic wasting disease was first identified in 1967 in mule deer in which state?
Colorado
CWD was first seen in 1967 in captive mule deer at a Colorado wildlife research facility near Fort Collins; like BSE and scrapie it is a prion disease, later found across dozens of states and in Norway from 2016.
Q 20Moose have been recorded diving to what depth to reach plants on a lake bottom?
Over 5.5 metres
Their hollow guard hairs help them float and their splayed hooves work as paddles; orcas have been seen taking moose swimming between islands.
The flat antler acts like a parabolic reflector, so bulls with antlers hear better than those without.
Q 24The name 'wapiti', used for the North American elk, comes from a Shawnee and Cree word meaning what?
White rump
Wapiti means 'white rump' in Shawnee and Cree; elk fluff up the pale patch around the tail to signal alarm, and the word was adopted to avoid confusion with the European elk, which is the moose.
Q 25During the rut, bull elk advertise themselves with a loud whistle-like call known as what?
Bugling
Bugling is the bull elk's rutting call, a bellow that rises into a whistle reaching about 4,000 Hz; European red deer stags roar instead, a lower call suited to forests.
Q 26Which subspecies, found west of the Cascade Range, is the largest of the North American elk?
Roosevelt elk
Roosevelt elk, named for Theodore Roosevelt, are the largest North American elk; introduced to Alaska's Afognak Island in 1928, bulls there have been estimated at up to 600 kg.
Q 27What is a female red deer called, the counterpart of a stag or hart?
Hind
The female red deer is a hind, the male a stag or hart; the red deer is the fourth-largest living deer species after the moose, elk and sambar.
Q 28European roe deer have an unusually long 10-month gestation because of what reproductive quirk?
Delayed implantation of the embryo
Roe deer show delayed implantation, rare among hoofed mammals: they mate in July and August but the embryo lies dormant until about December, so fawns arrive the following May or June.
Q 29When alarmed, a roe deer flashes its pale rear patch and makes a sound much like which animal?
A dog
An alarmed roe deer gives a short, hoarse bark much like a dog's while flashing its white rump patch; muntjac are nicknamed 'barking deer' for the same habit.
Q 30From which permanent bony stalks on the skull do a deer's antlers grow?
Pedicles
Antlers grow each year from pedicles, permanent bony stalks on the frontal bones; the antler is cast from the pedicle after the rut, and the next set grows from the same base.