Albino buck caught on camera in northern Butler County

After an amateur photographer heard about an albino white-tailed deer in northern Butler County, he finally managed to photograph and video the animal twice, most recently in mid-August.

“It was a cool sighting,” said Jake Dingel of Butler who found the buck on private property in a wooded area. To protect the animal, he declined to give specifics about its location.

“He seemed like a loner,” Dingel said. But when there was a herd of other white-tailed deer in a field, the albino got closer to the others, he added.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission confirmed the animal is an albino, that is to say it is all white rather than leucistic, which is partially white.

Albino deer are rare, reported at rates under 1% in the wild throughout the whitetail deer’s range, said Travis Lau, PGC spokesman.

Albinism is caused by the lack of melanin, a dark brown-to-black pigment found in the hair, skin, and iris of people and animals, said Lau.

Since melanin helps protects the skin and eyes from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, albino deer are “very sensitive to overexposure to sunlight, increasing their risk of melanomas and retinal damage,” he said.

As a result, albinos usually die at an early age.

Then there are the hunters. Not surprisingly, albino deer don’t have much success eluding them, Lau said.

“Hunters harvesting white deer might consider them special trophies,” Lau said.

However, some hunters will pass up albino deer, Lau said, because they enjoy watching them and hope that they will produce more white deer or feel that harvesting one will bring them bad luck.

Dingel said he plans to keep tabs on the unique animal.