BANGOR DAILY NEWS • March 19, 2021
Early in my outdoor writing career, I learned a valuable lesson while making a common mistake: I called a mostly white deer an “albino.” The response was swift, and harsh, and readers — many, many readers — lined up to tell me that I was wrong. The photo I had shared showed a “piebald” deer. Not an albino. Nathan Bieber, the deer biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said, “Piebald deer share a genetic recessive trait, so both of the deer’s parents have to carry the recessive gene for there to be a chance the offspring will be piebald. Piebald deer will have body pigments distributed abnormally, but an albino deer will be completely lacking pigment.”