The Morning Stalk

You never know when you're going to have an extraordinary day. I've learned to watch out for the weepy gray days, the ones trying so hard to be ordinary, to pass without notice. November 17, 2017, was just such a day.

While doing my morning wildlife feeding, I noticed a big dark doe walking, all the way out the meadow. Most people say, "Oh, it's only a doe," as if a doe were somehow less a deer than a buck, but I like does. It's like Patton Oswalt said long ago: "I like porn. Because I can GET porn."

Does are easier to see and far easier to stalk; does are easier to identify from year to year, as they aren't always changing their headgear and going through wild hormonal changes. So I threw on a coat and my boots and headed out to stalk this intriguing animal. 

The first thing I noticed about her was large size. Then, her deep blue color, and her beautifully straight topline. Hmm. 

And then I picked up the brilliant white stockings down the back of her front legs. 

She stopped and stood, rooted, staring back at me, and she was so beautiful I thought she might have to be Jolene. Jolene! Is it you? I couldn't remember if Jolene had a red tail, tipped in black. All these little things matter, all these things remain constant year to year, and I add them up to figure out who is who. 

But I don't waste any time looking at my photos when I'm stalking deer. I'm too busy getting those photos and keeping a low profile. I am happy to figure out who I've got after I upload them, when I can closely study and compare the current photos with my library of photos of known individuals. I hadn't seen Jolene since May, and she was heavily pregnant then. 

As luck and the rut would have it, this doe was not alone for long. Out of the woods to the west came a very large buck!

I immediately dropped behind the tall goldenrod, thankful that my part of the meadow hadn't been mowed.  I dared a few shots, rising up just enough to get the lens on him, then sinking back down. 

From his point of view, there was something small, odd and dark popping up and down in the frost- bleached goldenrod, and he wasn't sure what it was. 

I crawled, holding my camera under my belly, getting closer and staying in cover. I peeped up. The buck was still there, still looking at the spot where he last saw me. 

I stayed down. I wanted him to forget about me and think about sex. Finally he turned and continued parading slowly toward the doe. Fabulous! I took that opportunity to hunch-run a bunch closer, while his attention was diverted.

When his bone-white antlers pierced the darkness of the Virginia pines, I knew I had someone special. I couldn't help but notice his beautiful topline, and the white stockings down the backs of his front legs.

Does a buck follow his sister when they're all grown up? If she's in heat, does he know not to court her? Or is it hers to refuse and outrun him? These are things I wonder, and will likely never know. Surely they know each other by sight and smell, if they were raised together. 

Could poor crooked Ellen have been the outcome of a brother-sister tryst? 

So much to wonder. 

Look at his neck--swollen with muscle, built up by fighting saplings and other bucks. Look at the length of his tines. Eight points. A gorgeous gentleman.

When he turned, I could see a pretty good gouge on his right hind leg, doubtless from another buck's tine. He was moving well, though, keeping up appearances for the doe.

The doe had been watching me all along, and she was unnerved by how close I'd gotten. She rushed toward the buck and he broke into a run.  If you click on the photo you can see her motion ghost behind him. 

She was moving right along, outpacing him.

The eternal chase. You can see how heavy are his neck and forequarters compared to hers. He's ponderous by comparison.

It had been a magical encounter. I love little more than being out in a meadow with deer, having some cover to hide in while I watch them living their graceful, beautiful lives.

Next, we'll figure out who that doe was.

November Rut: Does Feel It, Too

Much is made of the November rut, but everybody winds up talking about the bucks. 

They're big and impressive and they have those fabulous racks, and everybody likes to look at those. 

But the bucks aren't the only ones doing crazy things. I'm here to represent for the does.

I had had a string of three days in a row where, while trotting along with Chet, I'd enjoyed fabulous sightings of a king buck escorting a doe--three great big swole-necked eight-pointers in three days.  Of course I'd been on foot and packing only my iPhone, so I have lousy photos, even though I was deliciously close. I love stalking deer on foot! So on this afternoon, figuring I might get lucky again, I packed my big Canon rig with 300 mm. telephoto when I drove to pick up Liam at the bus stop about 6 miles away. 

So we were driving from the bus stop on the afternoon of November 17, 2015, Liam behind the wheel. This leaves me free to enjoy the passing landscape, when I'm not stuttering "BRAKEBRAKEBRAKEBRAKESTOOOOOPPPP!!"  We call it "my call." It's not that he drives too fast. He just waits too long to brake. We're working on that. 

I saw a small doe hugging the edge of the woods, clearly wanting to cross an expanse of lawn and the road, at a little before 4 in the afternoon.

Her eyes were fixed on something across the road, and she was so absorbed in what she was looking at that I feared she would step right in front of the car.

So I gave my trademark staccato call, 

"BRAKEBRAKEBRAKEBRAKEBRAKESTOOOOOPPPP!!"It actually sounds like something a ptarmigan would say. 

Liam checked the rearview and rolled to a stop.  I threw myself across him, rolled down the window, and got this shot of the doe as she stood and fidgeted, wanting to cross. 

I looked along her sight line across the road, expecting to see perhaps a group of other deer she was trying to join.

Huh.  She's wanting to cross in broad daylight into someone's front yard, and there's nothing there. 

No other deer. 

 Except this one. And she's looking right at it.

Perhaps the finest piece of yard art on my county road. I drove by it for years without appreciating its full majesty. It wasn't until I started running and thus had the leisure to examine it closely that I grasped its impact. For Mr. Funk (yes, that's his name--you can't make this stuff up) has taken a roll of electrician's tape to your basic concrete yard deer, and he's taped a bit of skull and the attached rack of a real whitetail onto it. The solar light stuck on a tine adds a bit of nocturnal flair. 

Dang handsome, that yardbuck. Even with his tail done wore down to a nub o' #3 rebar.  It's the rack what got her.

Bucks aren't the only ones who get lonesome in the November rut. 

File under: Desperate HouseDoes, Sadie Hawkins Dance,  I Love Where I Live, Appalachian YardArt, and Situational Awareness.