For over two weeks I have been waking long before dawn, dressing to be outside in cold weather and heading out into the dark. After a long familiar drive I strike out into the woods in search of White-tailed Deer. It has been my absolute pleasure to watch the transition or should I say transformation of the placid and congenial non-breeding male and female deer into the half crazed, breeding frenzy deer.
When I first started searching for the deer to photograph for an up and coming book the deer were calm and relatively content. The breeding season hadn’t started. Most of their time was spent feeding and milling about. All I needed to do was sneaking about to get close enough to get some portrait shots of these magnificent deer. It would be safe to say there wasn’t any interesting behaviors going on at this time.
Day after day I would find the deer feeding. They weren’t moving around much so I could reliably find the deer in the same place. The male deer, known as bucks, had already rubbed off the velvet on their antlers and were just killing time before the breeding season. The females were just hanging out together with their fawns from last spring.
We’ve been experiences one of the nicest autumn weather patterns in many, many years. No snow, cool temperatures and very little rain has lead to unprecedented amount of time I’ve been able to spend in the field. This has allowed me to spend extra time studying in detail the deer behaviors.
The first big change in behaviors happened over night. One day there wasn’t many scrapes in the woods. (See my last article for more about scrapes). Then just like that, the woods were filled with patches of bare ground indicting the bucks were scraping the ground with their hooves to lay down their scent to entice the females into breeding.
It was almost as if someone flipped a switch and suddenly the breeding season, also known as the rut, was in full swing. Within one day of the increased scrapes found in the woods, the bucks were starting to follow around the females. At first the females, who are called does, seemed totally uninterested in the bucks. In fact the majority of the time the does, when approached by the bucks, would retreat to thick cover of sapling trees or a tangle of shrubs where the bucks with their large antlers couldn’t go. The does would remain inside the protection of the thick vegetation until the bucks would leave. They would also run away, sneaking around, or laying down to avoid the attention of the males.
In the world of deer, males always initiate breeding. Unlike Elk, which is the deer’s larger cousin, the males do not acquire harems, but rather pursue single females, one at a time. Females may only be receptive for 24 hours so the bucks often spend a long period of time pursuing the female. He will make a variety of snort-like calls, release a very pungent order, make scrapes on the ground, charge after the female with his antlers down and much more. All of this is believed to help move the female into estrous, or the time in which she can be impregnated.
As the female becomes closer to being ready to breed, she will allow the buck to approach her and actually make contact. The male often smells around her genitals and licks the fur on her back and hind legs. When she is ready she will hold her tail up and over to the side and won’t move when the male bumps into her. Mating often takes place at night but also occurs during the day. I’ve photographed this several times in the past week. It lasts only a moment and the male moves off to find another receptive female. If for some reason the female doesn’t become impregnated, she will move into another estrus season in twenty-eight days. At this time the rolls reverse with the female becoming the aggressor and the male, which has worn himself out during the first breeding season is very passive and almost uninterested.
The rut lasts only a couple weeks. Here in the upper Midwest it is all wrapped up by Thanksgiving. Further south the rut starts later and lasts until Christmas. Right now the males have changed their behavior one more time and are now chasing females through the woods. I often walk/run many miles each morning in order to keep up. The rut is wearing me out also. Until next time…
Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the US to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Twitter, Facebook and also on his web page at www.naturesmart.com