I've heard this expression all my life, whitetail bucks being referred to as "big and blue" or simply "blue bucks". I never thought anything about it. It wasn't until about five years ago while on a bowhunt in Arkansas did I understand exactly what that meant.
I was bowhunting the edge of a huge greenfield (20 acres, I think) late one evening. As the sun fell, deer began entering the field to feed. In a short time, there were over 100 deer feeding in front of me, all of them out of range.
As it began to get dusky dark, too dark to shoot, it became more difficult to see the deer in the distance. All except for one, anyway. There was one deer that stood out above all others in the distance, a very large dark colored buck.
As I watched him in the fading evening light, I observed that he did actually take on a very dark grey-bluish tint in the distance. It occurred to me then maybe that was what the term "blue" referred to when used. It simply mean those older, bigger and darker colored bucks.
Later, my grandfather confirmed that assumption. And, so did an older friend of mine from here in Mississippi. Surprisingly, they both told me the same story, even though they didn't know each other and they lived many miles apart.
They said that many years ago, a deer re-stocking program brought many bigger northern deer down to the south to help local genetics. Over the years, those bigger northern deer bred with the smaller southern deer and produced offspring. While most of the descendants of the original northern, or "blue" deer have long since passed away or been harvested, occasionally you still see really large bucks taken that are very dark grey in color.
Those are the blue bucks.
