The Not Deer

It's not (not) a monster

Aug 06, 2024

A deer acting “strangely” in the woods of North Carolina, 2019 — Image Credit: The Charlotte Observer

Growing up in rural Oklahoma, deer were just a part of life. The opening week of hunting season was a holiday in my hometown. Fawns would wander into backyards and steal from birdfeeders. And if you left someone’s house after dark you’d be sent along with a friendly warning: “Watch out for deer”.

Every lonely country road sported a faded yellow sign with the black silhouette of a buck on it. And it was always a buck, never a doe. I’ve never thought about that until today. I suppose for folks who don’t see deer very often, the antlers are a dead giveaway. For someone who has seen literal fields of deer, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone seeing a deer and being confused — antlers or not. But in certain corners of the internet, users have been reporting sightings of Not Deer, animals that look like deer at first but turn into something…different.

a yellow street sign sitting next to a forest filled with trees — Image Credit: Todd Morris on Unsplash

The Sightings

Unlike the Beast of Bray Road, Dover Demon, or Fresno Nightcrawlers, the Not Deer don’t seem to be a single entity. They’ve been sighted in different places, at different times, and under very different circumstances. No two sightings are the same. Some have legs that turn backward. Others have forward facing eyes like a predator. And still others have heads that definitely don’t belong on deer. The unifying factor across these encounters is that they look like deer, until it becomes terrifyingly obvious that they are something else. I’ve collected three of the more popular stories (which I’ve edited for length and clarity) in a collection below.

The Joints Went the Wrong Way

“I swear to God, this thing’s eyes blanked out and it took a couple jerking steps forward, moving really strangely? And I flinched, and then she ran off to the side while staring at me until she was about fifty feet away. It was deeply unsettling in a way that I can’t explain and I know that that thing was not quite a deer. I sprinted all the way home.

I would say that the joints went the wrong way. The bends were not where the bends go. And the shape of the face and head was wrong, more in the shape of a dog. It was just very odd-looking, and the way it reacted to me was disturbing. I started to walk away, but the doe followed me for about 2 miles on the trail. It stayed at a distance of about 50 feet. After about 45 minutes of this, she suddenly disappeared.

I have family that still live in the mountains and they have described a variety of strange things. But the 'Not Deer' is one phenomenon that they don't like to discuss.”

- From phantomsandmonsters.com

Malformed Wildlife

“The term of 'almost deer' is really fitting, but not quite accurate. It was like a deer that someone who had never seen a deer drew, but only after someone else described it to them. It stood on the left side of the road (mountainside), and I saw the eyes long before my headlight shown it fully. It was big - easily the biggest deer I've seen, and the lack of any horns that time in the year suggested that it was a doe. The head was almost bovine in shape, but fixed to a deer's frame. The legs seemed too long in proportion to the body (think maned wolf proportions), and the body was extremely barrel chested. I've always been creeped out by malformed wildlife, and this was no exception.”

-From u/Ampersand_Dotsys on reddit.com/r/Appalachia

Some Kind of Genetic Disease

“It was around 2007, I was driving near the Oregon Dunes outside of Coos Bay towards “The North Spit”. It was dark outside, probably around midnight. I am very careful and aware of deer in that area, so drive slowly. I saw a deer coming out of the bushes on the right. It stopped and looked at us. My passenger and I (totally sober btw), both saw it and looked at each other like “what in tarnation?!” It had the body of a deer, but the face of not a deer. The closest thing I could say was the face of a cougar, but long? With human eyes? I assumed it was just a deer with some kind of genetic disease. I have seen CWS in deer and that was definitely not it. It was healthy and large. I had never heard about Not Deer before today but I think that’s what we saw.”

-From u/archers_arches on reddit.com/r/notdeer

That’s a lot to unpack. We’ve got deer that look like dogs. Deer that look like cows. And deer that look like cougars. So, basically, a bunch of “deer” that don’t look like deer at all. So, were these all cases of misidentification? A new species? Or is something else at work here?

The Origins of the (Not) Deer

I heard about this phenomena for the first time just a few weeks ago. I was doing research on another Monster of the Week when I came across an entry for “Not Deer”. The image was the same one I included at the top of this episode, a deer in North Carolina “behaving strangely”. It’s an image that was captured by the Candid Critter program, a wildlife survey experiment that was conducted by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. One that has, unfortunately, concluded. While the image is unsettling, as someone who grew up around deer it’s not unheard of. I haven’t seen it myself, but I know plenty of people who can attest to the fact that deer will rear up on their hind legs in this way.

“Some deer are surprisingly proficient at bipedal standing and walking. I’m not referring to behavior whereby they stand momentarily while fighting, or lean their forelimbs on tree-trunks while standing up tall to browse at height; rather, I mean that they can actually balance and walk bipedally, unassisted, with the body held in a vertical pose.” Darren Naish, a science writer and paleozoologist wrote in Scientific America.

So a deer standing up wasn’t all that surprising to me. What really caught my attention was the name. Not Deer? What do you mean “Not” Deer? More importantly, why had I never heard of them before?

As we’ve established, I grew up on monsters. One of my earliest memories is of watching a documentary about the Loch Ness Monster with my grandma. Nothing in my cryptozoological catalog was pulling up Not Deer. The closest proxy I had was Deer Woman, an Indigenous tale of a woman who lured violent men into the woods before revealing her deer hooves, which she would promptly stomp them to death with. I grew up on Chickasaw and Choctaw land in Oklahoma, but I’m not Native, and have little understanding of the story’s origins. If you’d like to know more, I found a wonderful write up about her by Cherokee writer Isabell Retamoza.

Though the internet has been known to appropriate Native stories (see Skinwalkers or Windigo) I don’t see any connection being made online between Not Deer and Deer Woman. So where did it come from? And why could I not find any reference to the Not Deer from before 2019?

I was beginning to believe that Not Deer were monsters in the way that Slenderman or Pale Crawlers were “monsters”. Until I stumbled upon this article from the Skeptical Inquirer. Huge shout-out to Autumn over at the SI for uncovering the origins of Not Deer. Go read her article if you want a great expose. Autumn’s writing led me to Madison, a Tumblr user who coined the term “Not Deer” in 2019 on her blog Have a Magical Day. Her original post is below.

Madison AKA Tumblr User Will-O-The Witch’s original post where she coined the term Not Deer. Image Credit: *Have a Magical Day,* Tumblr

In her Skeptical Inquirer article, Autumn corresponded with Madison about the legacy of the Not Deer. Here’s what she had to say:

“I’m from the Carolinas, largely North Carolina until recently, so largely the southern Appalachian Mountain area. The word ‘everybody’ is a bit of a hyperbole, but at least in my circles of folk (who tend to be very open minded to the spiritual and things that go bump in the night) people knew exactly what I was talking about even if they’d never heard it called the Not Deer before. I won’t claim to have invented the idea of the Not Deer; it’s always been a synthesis of other people’s testimonies from the beginning. As far as I can tell my main contribution was just giving a name to an idea that’s already existed for a while.” (Skeptical Inquirer 2021).

Autumn also reached out to folklorists from the Appalachia area to clarify whether the Not Deer were a known legend in the region. The answer was a pretty resounding no. While it’s possible, and I’d even say likely, that folks have told stories about seeing “weird” deer in the woods, the Not Deer phenomena is decidedly modern.

Do I believe?

Oh Dear, we’ve come to the hard part. One of my main reasons for writing Monster of the Week is to help define the boundaries of my personal beliefs. And as I’ve come to find out time and again now, those boundaries continue to be fuzzy. As an openminded, naturally skeptical, but ever curious person I always want to believe. But the Not Deer have a lot working against them. For starters, all of the reports are anonymous. Reddit is a notoriously problematic website, to say the least. So it’s not easy to simply “believe” the stories from the Appalachia subreddit.

Additionally, and something I didn’t even bother to bring up in this episode, Not Deer are a popular hashtag on TikTok. You can read more about that in Autumn’s SI article. And while those folks are less anonymous, I don’t consider Tik Tok to be a credible source.

And, while I believe Madison and the stories she described in her original post, many can be explained by a much scarier — but very real — ailment: Chronic Wasting Disease, or CWD. A disease that was mentioned in u/archers_arches story on Reddit. It seems they were at least aware of its potential to cause disturbing behavior in deer.

According to the CDC: “CWD can infect farmed and free-range deer and elk of all ages. It may take months to years before an infected animal shows symptoms. These symptoms may include: Drastic weight loss (called wasting), Stumbling or lack of coordination, Drooling, Listlessness (appearing "out of it"), Excessive thirst or peeing, Drooping ears, Lack of fear of people.”

Again, as Autumn addresses in SI (and commentors on Reddit have noted) this disease could explain the odd behavior and strange appearance of the Not Deer.

So, do I believe in the Not Deer? I don’t know if that’s really the right question. I believe that the wilderness is a strange place. That you can see a thousand deer and all it takes is a single weird one to make you question everything you know about them. I’ve seen a lot of deer. But perhaps that’s the problem? When you’ve seen one deer, you feel like you’ve seen them all. You stop paying attention to the way their legs turn, which way their eyes face, or how they walk. Maybe, somewhere among the herds, a Not Deer has been hiding. I know this, from now on, I’m going to take “watch for deer,” a lot more literally.

The Stag AKA Freak Deer from Adventure Time — Image Credit: Cartoon Network

So what do you think? Have you ever seen a Not Deer? Let me know in the comments!