This is the best collection of deer quotes that’ll satisfy your curiosity about this gentle and beautiful animal.
With more than 100 quotes about deer from life to hunting to some amazing words of wisdom, there’s no doubt you’ll find the inspiration you need to go about your day.
Deer are social animals. Their herd can even be made up of thousands of members, and there’s no doubt that they are an important part of the world’s ecosystem.
But more than their role in nature, deer also have multiple symbolisms that vary across different cultures like mindfulness and grace.
Learn more about the deer through our collection below.
And make sure to check out our animal quotes.
Best Deer Quotes
1. “Everything pales in comparison to deer.” – Bill Vaughan
2. “An army of lions commanded by a deer will never be an army of lions.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
3. “My feet will tread soft as a deer in the forest. My mind will be clear as water from the sacred well. My heart will be strong as a great oak. My spirit will spread an eagle’s wings, and fly forth.” – Juliet Marillier
4. “Deer are like dogs. Except for Bambi, they’re pretty personalityless.” – Judd Apatow
5. “A wounded deer leaps the highest.” – Emily Dickinson
6. “They do have a deer out here, but I haven’t seen it here. I just hope the deer will be alright.” – James Dean
7. “How can a deer tell when a leaf falls silent in the forest? She hears it breathing differently.” – Richard Bach
8. “The perfect archer calls the deer his own while yet the shaft is whistling.” – George Elliot
9. “Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow. Calm as still water.” – George R.R. Martin
Deer Quotes on Life
10. “We’re like a deer caught in the headlights.” – Charles Jenkins
11. “We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The deer, the horse, the great eagle—these are our brothers.” – Chief Seattle
12. “Follow the deer? Follow the Christ the King. Live pure, speak true. Else, wherefore born?” – Alfred Lord Tennyson
13. “Live bold, without fear. This is life amongst the deer.” – Katelyn S. Bolds
14. “Fishing too long with a fly rod on a small trout stream is like driving a greyhound bus down a deer trail.” – Jimmy Moore
15. “A lot of webinars want us deer to become lions.” – Vineet Raj Kapoor.
16. “I basically grew up in the woods. There were deer on my lawn. It was totally awesome.” – Kat Dennings
17. “The sorrowful spirit finds relaxation in solitude. It abhors people, as a wounded deer deserts the herd and lives in a cave until it is healed or dead.” – Khalil Gibran
18. “To go safely through the world, you must have the eye of a falcon, the ear of an ass, the face of an ape, the mouth of a pig, the shoulders of a camel, and the legs of a deer.” – Italian Proverb
19. “Cleave to the footprints of the deer and advance with care that you may reach the musk-gland.” – Rumi
20. “It’s very ugly, but it looks as though it would laugh at snow. And, if you hit a deer it would hiccup, and keep going.” – Maggie Stiefvater
21. “People sitting all day for hours looking at a glowing light are bound to get run over like a deer in headlights.” – Richie Norton
22. “Truth is a hard deer to hunt. If you eat too much truth at once, you may die of the truth.” – Stephen Vincent Benet
23. “Most wives look at me the way lame deer look at a hungry lion.” – Katie Hopkins
24. “We may never find a way to live in suburbia with deer as we do with raccoons, say, or squirrels. So for this reason, it’s very important that we make sure always to save enough wild or open land so that they can live in their normal manner.” – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Poetic Deer Quotes
25. “From all kinds of flowers, seek teachings everywhere. Like a deer that finds a quiet place to graze, seek seclusion to digest all you have gathered.” – Namkhai Norbu
26. “The deer to the wholesome world; and the heart of a man to the heart of a maid, as it was in the days of old.” – Rudyard Kipling
27. “Twilight, a timid fawn went glimmering by; and night, the dark-blue hunter, followed fast.” – George William Russell
28. “A pine needle fell in the forest, the deer heard it.” – Edith Pattou
29. “A deer in the body of a woman, living resentfully in the Hollywood zoo.” – Clare Boothe Luce
30. “The deer don’t dine when a wolf’s about, and the porcupine sticks his quill-points out.” – Arthur Guiterman
31. “Envy, like the worm, never runs but to the fairest fruit; like a cunning bloodhound, it singles out the fattest deer in the flock.” – Francis Beaumont
32. “The fabled musk deer searches the world over for the source of the scent which comes from itself.” – Ramakrishna
33. “Where are you, O wild deer? I have known you for a while here—both loners, both lost, both forsaken.” – Shams al-Din Hafiz Shirazi
34. “The deer’s a mighty useful beast from Petersburg to Tennyson for while he lives.” – Ellis Parker Butler
35. “Often when I imagine you, your wholeness cascades into many shapes. You run like a herd of luminous deer, and I am dark; I am forest.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
36. “The hunter felt so pity, of what he saw over there. His sufferings were the same as those of the deer, and then they died together, as they reached the starving.” – Neymat Khan
37. “There is a road that turning always, cuts off the country of Again. Archers stand there on every side, and as it runs, time’s deer is slain, and lies where it has lain.” – Edwin Muir
38. “God has given the salt lick to the deer; and He has given to man, red-skin and white, the delicious spring at which to slake his thirst.” – James Fenimore Cooper
39. “Their strength’s eternal in their sight. They overtake the deer in flight, and in their arrogance they smite. But I am sage, if they are strong. Man’s love is transient as his death is long.” – Vita Sackville-West
Funny Deer Quotes
40. “I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say, ‘Because it’s such a beautiful animal.’ I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.” – Ellen DeGeneres
41. “He’s 6-feet-4, runs like a deer, and can jump like Kobe Bryant.” – Rodney Harrison
42. “A small deer came into my camp and stole my bag of pickles. Is there a way I can get reimbursed?” – David Barry
43. “I love things made out of animals. It’s just so funny to think of someone saying, ‘I need a letter opener. I guess I’ll have to kill a deer.’” – David Sedaris
44. “If a wolf can take down a deer from either flank, does that make him bambidextrous?” – Anonymous
45. “I like deer. They’re kinda cool.” – Forrest Griffin
46. “I grew up in New Hampshire. The deer and the raccoons were my friends.” – Steven Tyler
47. “Lions in time of peace; deer in war.” – Latin Proverb
48. “A reindeer is a deer with antlers.” – Scott Michael Foster
49. “Serve as a serf or fly like a deer.” – French Proverb
50. “Tigers and deer do not stroll together.” – Albanian Proverb
51. “A monkey that amuses me is better than a deer astray.” – Arabic Proverb
52. “A bambiraptor is a savage baby dear.” – Alan Davies
53. “If I wasn’t making music, I would probably be in the woods with a big deer, talking to myself.” – Jared Leto
54. “I sure wasn’t going to ask Aunt Sally, because if she told me once that getting your period was like a moth becoming a butterfly, she’d probably say that sexual intercourse was like a deer getting antlers or something.” – Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Insightful Deer Quotes
55. “If you are a friend, why do you bite me so hard? If an enemy, why do you fawn on me?” – Aesop
56. “Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion.” – Gen. H. Norman Schwartzkopf
57. “They run like deer, jump like deer and think like deer.” – Charles Barkley
58. “I saw a giraffe with a short neck that was sad, or a deer.” – Bo Burnham
59. “People always say he can run and he can jump. So can a deer and you wouldn’t put a deer in the game.” – Charles Barkley
60. “Until the donkey tried to clear the fence, he thought himself a deer.” – Arthur Guiterman
61. “God made us walking animals—pedestrians. As a fish needs to swim, a bird to fly, a deer to run, we need to walk, not in order to survive, but to be happy.” – Enrique Penalosa
62. “We humans will never know how meadows or mountains smell, but deer and horses and pigs do.” – Jean Craighead George
63. “She has a memory of trees and fields and nothing more.” – James Thurber
64. “I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever.” – Aldo Leopold
Wise Deer Quotes
65. “It is the lion, not the deer, that hides in the grass!” – Vineet Raj Kapoor
66. “You shouldn’t have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer.” – Daniel Quinn
67. “Though large herds of deer do much harm to the neighbourhood, yet the injury to the morals of the people is of more moment than the loss of their crops.” – Gilbert White
68. “Like a deer in the headlights, frozen in real time and I’m losing my mind, it’s time to move on.” – Tom Petty
69. “We must forget bodily consciousness like a deer which is infatuated by music.” – Tukaram
Deer Quotes About Hunting
70. “You can learn more about hunting deer with a bow and arrow in a week than a gun hunter will learn in his entire life.” – Fred Bear
71. “Deer hunting would be a fine sport, if only the deer had guns.” – W.S. Gilbert
72. “If you want to save a species, simply decide to eat it. Then it will be managed—like chickens, like turkeys, like deer, like Canadian geese.” – Ted Nugent
73. “I felt like a deer with a hundred hunters after me.” – Deion Sanders
74. “My dad would take me deer hunting with him, which was pretty traumatic. ‘Bambi’ was one of my favorite movies.” – Haley Bennett
75. “Deer hunter, waste not your arrow on the hare.” – Chinese Proverb
76. “I don’t like reindeer. They seem like regular deer, only more dangerous.” – John Green
77. “The man who hunts a deer does not gaze at the mountains.” – Takeda Nobushige
78. “This isn’t about deer hunting.” – Jeff Duncan
79. “You know, if you need 100 rounds to kill a deer, maybe hunting isn’t your sport.” – Elayne Boosler
80. “I went hunting, I shot a deer, and it mortified me. I just couldn’t do it again.” – Channing Tatum
81. “The probability that the bowman’s arrow hits the deer does not lie in the arrow or the deer. It lies in the bowman’s mind.” – Bart Kosko
82. “You have to think about one shot. One shot is what it’s all about. A deer’s gotta be taken with one shot.” – Robert De Niro
83. “Only humanity could have conceived such a strange and artificial way to die. Wolves might tear the flesh of deer, but they never slept and dreamed near their quarry.” – Conn Iggulden
84. “This was a common routine for the group, whenever they were blessed enough to actually hit a deer, rather than scaring it away. It looked like they would be eating well tonight.” – Jason Medina
Beautiful Deer Quotes
85. “I once loved a girl. She was gentle like a fawn.” – Bob Dylan
86. “She told them the meadow was a place of peace and beauty, where the animals would not be disturbed. There are lovely birds, and sometimes, deer.” – Kathryn Lasky
87. “The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers.” – John Muir
88. “My heart’s in the highlands, my heart is not here. My heart’s in the highlands a-chasing the deer.” – Robert Burns
89. “I love running cross-country. You come up a hill and see two deer going.” – Robin Williams
90. “If you depend on where the chestnuts are going to be and where the deer are, you have to be attuned to the outside world.” – Howard Rheingold
91. “Still, then, shall the beautiful wild deer drink from the coolness of great pools in the leaves’ shadow.” – Sri Aurobindo
92. “He was born on a warm Spring day in April. The little fawn lay against the warmth of his mother.” – Lora Hollings
93. “There is a poignancy in all things clear, in the stare of the deer, in the ring of a hammer in the morning.” – Richard Wilbur
94. “The life of the wood, meadow, and lake go on without us. Flowers bloom, set seed, and die back; squirrels hide nuts in the fall and scold all year long; bobcats track the snowy lake in winter; deer browse the willow shoots in spring. Humans are but intruders who have presumed the right to be observers, and who, out of observation, find understanding.” – Ann Zwinger
95. “That night she dreamed of the deer. Strangely, the animal was holding her. She cuddled close into the soft fur and touched and kissed it gently. In the morning her pillow was wet with tears.” – Julie Andrews Edwards
96. “The first person you fall in love with will be a deer.” – Kelli Russell Agodon
97. “We like to take picnics and sandwiches, driving through the green lanes. My wife loves the house, the dogs, and the animals we have around us, the deer and the fox that comes and pokes his head through the hedge.” – Keith Flint
98. “I’ve seen deer. I have lots of woodchucks on my property. And bluebirds. Foxes.” – Parker Posey
99. “Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.” – Home on the Range
Deer Quotes That Hold a Deeper Meaning
100. “A deer’s cry never spooks the tiger.” – VKBoy
101. “An army of deer would be more formidable commanded by a lion, than an army of lions commanded by a stag.” – Anonymous
102. “If you are hunting for a red deer, then ignore the hares.” – Chinese Proverb
103. “I don’t have to take a trip around the world or be on a yacht in the Mediterranean to have happiness. I can find it in little things, like looking out into my backyard and seeing deer in the fields.” – Queen Latifah
104. “Somehow, having a deer preside over the ceremony of a werewolf and a girl seems oddly appropriate.” – Maggie Stiefvater
105. “Your growing antlers are proof of your intimate place in the forest—for of all the things that live and grow only the trees and the deer shed their foliage each year and replace it more strongly, more magnificently, in the spring.” – Felix Salten
106. “Everyone knows that there are no real forests in England.The deer in the parks of the great are demurely domestic cattle, fat as London aldermen.” – Karl Marx
107. “A deer tethered with a golden chain can escape to the forest to eat grass.” – Malawian Proverb
108. “Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It’s like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can’t control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across the lawn.” – Mike Tysonot
109. “I can’t imagine deer hunting. I used to think I couldn’t imagine deer hunting because killing a deer seemed so awful. But now, I think about just sitting in a tree and doing nothing all day and probably not even seeing a deer. Not moving and sitting in a tree? That seems rough.” – Joel Stein
Deer Quotes That Will Help You Get to Know Them More
110. “People think of deer as Bambi—cute and cuddly. But they can be extremely dangerous in certain circumstances.” – Steve Martarano
111. “Wolves go after a wounded deer, it is the nature of the beast.” – Barbara Delinsky
112. “A deer that knows all the hunting techniques of a lion will never fall prey to a lion!” – Mehmet Murat İldan.
113. “The musk is inside the deer, but the deer does not look for it, it wanders around looking for grass.” – Kabir
114. “Deer like people. They like to be near people. They like beanfields, head lettuce, and anybody’s apples. They like hibiscus, begonias, impatiens, azaleas, rhododendrons, boxwood, and wandering Jews.” – John McPhee
115. “The dog that is forced into the woods will not hunt many deer.” – Danish Proverb
116. “The deer hovered by the trees beyond as the sounds of the ravening wolves came to them across the grass, their own senses almost frozen in impotent horror.” – David Clement-Davies
117. “Now and then, we hear the wilder voices of the wilderness from animals that in the hours of darkness do not fear the neighborhood of man—the coyotes wail like dismal ventriloquists, or the silence may be broken by the snorting and stamping of a deer.” – Theodore Roosevelt
118. “I will believe anything about deer. Deer, in my opinion, are rats with antlers, roaches with split hooves, denizens of the dark primeval suburbs.” – John McPhee
119. “In my cosmology, indigenous wild deer are more important than exotic ornamental shrubs.” – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
More Quotes About Deers
120. “I used to look like a deer in headlights on the red carpet. You step out of the car and it’s bedlam. Everyone’s got crazy eyes.” – Emily Blunt
121. “I often have deer on my property and there’s a fox and owls. You’re not going to see that in the city.” – Billy Corgan
122. “A forest—the word dates back to the Norman occupancy, when it meant an area set aside for England’s violent new masters to hunt boar and deer—is necessarily larger than a wood.” – John Burnside
123. “We saw a beautiful deer, and I told Jay, ‘Whatever you do, don’t go into the clearing,’ and then I made venison sounds and hopped like a deer.” – Alison Pill
124. “A new servant can catch a running deer.” – Afghan Proverb
125. “I love living with animals. And my children love animals. I love walking around and being with the horses. But the deer? They’re naughty.” – Stephanie Seymore
126. “Hey, I’m a Catholic deer hunter. I am happy to be clinging to my guns and my religion.” – Paul Ryan
127. “The first movie I ever saw was a horror movie. It was Bambi. When that little deer gets caught in a forest fire, I was terrified, but I was also exhilarated.” – Stephen King
128. “She hoped he was running to his red deer woman, and that when he tapped on the door of her heart, she’d open it wide and let him in.” – Charles de Lint
129. “Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid. Ain’t nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.” – William Faulkner
130. “We should always speak what would please the man of whom we expect a favour—like the hunter who sings sweetly when he desires to shoot a deer.” – Chanakya
Do You Also View Deer as More Than Just Prey?
A lot of animals on the planet provide us with food and other forms of sustenance. But let’s not forget that animals have a deeper purpose and meaning in the world.
Aside from their role in keeping the balance in the world’s ecosystems, animals, like the deer, also serve as idols and symbols that vary across our different religions and cultures. When it comes to the deer, it’s mostly all positive.
They’re considered as a sign of prosperity and a symbol that alludes to gentleness, mindfulness, good luck, grace, and many more. It’s only fitting, as deer try to remain as calm and graceful as possible when facing the enemy. Maybe this is also where the saying, ‘Deer caught in the headlights,’ came from.
This doesn’t just mean we should stop and be so frightened when faced with adversity. In a deeper sense, it moves us to be calm and try to think clearly about the next steps we should take to get over the problems that lay ahead of us.
What do you think about this saying and the other quotes we have included in this collection? Are there any other symbolisms or life lessons you got from the deer? If so, we’d be happy to hear about them. Don’t forget to comment your thoughts in the comments section below.
