Leap Year and White tail Deer

Leap years are years with 366 days, instead of the usual 365. Leap years are necessary because the actual length of a year is 365.242 days, not 365 days, as commonly stated. Basically, leap years occur every 4 years, and years that are evenly divisible by 4 (2004, for example) have 366 days. This extra day is added to the calendar on February 29^th. However, there is one exception to the leap year rule involving century years, like the year 1900. Since the year is slightly less than 365.25 days long, adding an extra day every 4 years results in about 3 extra days being added over a period of 400 years. For this reason, only 1 out of every 4 century years is considered as a leap year. Century years are only considered as leap years if they are evenly divisible by 400. Therefore, 1700, 1800, 1900 were not leap years, and 2100 will not be a leap year. But 1600 and 2000, were leap years because those year number are evenly divisible by 400.

The white-tailed deer is named for its most distinctive feature, the large white tail or "flag" that is often all you see as the animal bounds away through tall grass. The color of the deer's upper body and sides changes with the season, from a generally reddish-brown in summer to buff in winter. Its belly and the underside of its tail are completely white, and it has a white patch on the throat. The deer sheds its hair twice a year, its heavy winter coat giving way to a lighter one in spring which is replaced again in early fall. A fawn's coat is similar to the adult's but has several hundred white spots which gradually disappear when the deer is three to four months old. Fawns are born in late spring and summer and by early November a male fawn weighs about 85 pounds and a female about 80 pounds. Yearling bucks average 150 pounds, while does of the same age average about 20 percent less, or about 120 pounds. Some older bucks weigh 200 pounds or more when field dressed (about 250 pounds live weight) and the heaviest Nebraska whitetail on record was 287 pounds field dress (about 300 pounds live weight).