Stinkin' Up the Place

Who goes there? 

 My friend Geoff Heeter introduced me to the concept of spread in antlers. A buck has to be 31/2 or 4 1/2 years old before the antlers spread beyond the span of the ears. I think I have that right. You can see that, while this one has a high crown and long tines, the antlers still spread no further than the ears do. This is not something I've picked up on before. I mean, I knew a wide spread meant an older buck, but I didn't know the numbers. Thank you, Heets.

I didn't know at first what brought them, these bucks, walking proudly through the meadow of another gray morning. All I knew was to praise them and start shooting, or rather, clicking, gathering my trophies, my snippets, my memories.

First was a proud, high-crowned eight-point. Not particularly massive or aged, like the brace of beauties in my last post, but so beautiful nonetheless. Any buck is a great treat for me.

He seemed to be looking for someone.

By and by he slipped into the honeysuckle and sumac tangle, taking a well-worn deer road down into the woods.

Following a hunch, I hugged my big lens and skittered through the house to the studio. There, I found my little friend Flag, Ellen's daughter peeking out from behind the birch trunks. Flag was born in the spring of 2016, with a twin brother named Pinky, so she's 2 1/2 years old now. 

 And it became apparent that Flag was, in hunter's parlance, "stinkin' up the place." It appeared she was still in estrous, on December 9. She must be really fast to have escaped getting knocked up in the first rut.

On another hunch, I peeked out the west window of the studio and whoa! There was a buck I call TinyTine, lurking around the fallen pine in the backyard.  TinyTine is a ten point, but just barely. See that tiny tine on the beam of the near antler? That's his claim to 10 point fame. I've been following him for several months. I see him regularly at a corn feeder about a mile to the east of my house. And now here he was right in my backyard! His other nickname is CornHog.

Flag knew when to get gone. She moved down toward the meadow, peeing as she went.

 

TinyTine, you'd best get going.

 TinyTine followed, checked that stuff out.

Mmm. I love the smell of estrous in the morning. See his partly opened mouth? He's doing flehmen, passing the scent through his vomeronasal, or Jacobson's organ, assaying it for hormones. This area is a patch of chemoreceptive cells in the nasal cavity, just above the hard palate. TinyTine is huffing Flag's urine, passing it through his Jacobson's organ, testing it.

Flag must've passed his test. After all, it's #flehmenfriday. The chase was on.

This will be a several-part post about one magical December morning. I'll post as I can, when I can find a couple hours to rub together. It's a challenge to even get the photos sorted and edited, much less write them up; it's taken days. But I don't want to lose this morning. I want to remember it.

Refugium

 Buck doing buck things. Which involves neck stretching, thrashing at vegetation, poking twigs into their pre-orbital scent glands, peeing, snorting, pawing and facing off.

 Refugium: A safe place. A place you can go to get away from everything else that's going on. Indigo Hill has always been a refuge, for animals and for us. I keep this blog as a refuge for me, for you. But even Indigo Hill can be compromised, invaded.

I have been holding these photos since I took them October 22, 2018. I didn't want anyone to see them and know that these beautiful bucks were frequenting our meadow. I held them until after hunting season at Thanksgiving, and then I planned to hold onto them until after the two-day gun season December 15 and 16.  No way was I going to blow these big boys' cover with a blog post while men were about with guns. And then on December 16 all hell broke loose in our world, and it has taken me until now to even begin to emerge and remember who I was and the things I was doing before that, to remember the joy these animals brought me. I remember as through a fog or a screen. My joy has been badly beaten. It's still there, the way a pilot light glows blue in the back of the oven, waiting. Wishing to burst back into flame, knowing that isn't going to happen.

I don't want to write about hell. Screw that. There's enough hell in this world. I want to remember looking out the window and seeing this enormous eight-point beast shuffling up the meadow margin.

 

And because that wasn't enough, along came a nine-point monster to complete the picture.

Such incredibly beautiful, fine, mature animals. Their racks are high and their tines are very long. Surely the finest brace of bucks I've been blessed to see here.

I knew the moment I saw them that I'd tell no one, show no one their magnificence. They were too beautiful to share. And sharing them during hunting season could get them shot.

I grinned as I watched them showing off for each other, and for any doe who happened to be peeking from the woods. They tried to moosh their scent glands up as high into the brush as possible, to say that a big one passed here.

Then they drew close together and my heart almost burst.

The span of their antlers seemed to go on forever. They looked almost like mule deer, or elk.  I wondered if they were brothers. Twins, even. What a thought.  Looking back on them, they're but apparitions to me. I can hardly believe they were ever here, hardly believe I had them in my lens, my heart pounding out of my chest.

 I've no idea if they survived hunting season, but chances are better than usual. It was miserably wet all week, with cold driving rain, and the hunter numbers were greatly suppressed. I can hope they escaped. I can hope they hid in this refugium we offer. And wouldn't it be wonderful to trip over one of those antlers some gray February day? To see tines sticking up out of the sere grass? To pick up a shed antler and marvel at its weight, smoothness, and beauty? To bring it home and add it to my basket of bloodless trophies? I can dream.  I did dream, and my dream looked like this.

 Click on this photo to see them all at proper size and definition.

More Buck Schneakin'

As bucks get older, they get heavier in the shoulders and chest.  There are people who can age bucks by looking at them. I try. I have the small buck aged at 1.5 years, and the larger one at 3.5 years. Happy to be corrected. Might learn something! Experienced buck-agers, step up!

The neck swells during the rut. You can see that not much of that is happening yet with the small buck. The bigger one has a swollen neck, but he looks athletic and toned, not tanklike. He's pleasantly proportioned, not ponderous like a 4.5 or 5.5 year old buck would be. I've seen some monsters this year, and he's not one.

The forkhorn seemed pretty comfortable in his rival's company, lifting a rear hoof to give it a little attention.
 

 

 The big buck was listening and looking across the meadow. Bucks are all about possibility, about opportunity. During the rut, they're the guy who's pretending to be interested in you, but always looking over your shoulder to see who just walked into the bar. That guy.

 He sent a glance my way, freezing me still.

Then the forkhorn approached and clickety click, they were sparring again.

The last mini-match was the most vigorous.  A final salvo. I love the sprawly legs on the big boy here.

 The little buck got pushed back a few yards, and that, it seemed, was that.

The little buck sauntered toward me, and the big buck turned and cut across the meadow. 

He pooped all the way over, spreading his bucky scent far and wide. That guy, livin' large.

The little feller went over to scent mark on the west border of the meadow.

A lot of what bucks do during the rut is peeing and pooping and other sundry things that make for strong scent patches.

 

 Suddenly a big doe burst out of the border and launched herself through the flaming sumac.

Oh man, she was headed right for me, still rooted in my rickety blind of gray sunflower stalks.

She slowed down, caught her breath, and walked up the path, closer and closer.

 

 

 It was very still, so I think she heard my shutter.  Her head shot straight up. Funny, the bucks had completely ignored my shutter sounds, though they were doubtless close enough to hear them, as I'd heard their antlers clacking.

And that doe was outta there!

But being a doe, she had to stop and wheel around to wonder and stare for awhile. Bucks don't do that. When they go, they go!

I guess does tend to get away with curiosity. I have a notion that the relentless pressure of human hunting has shaped flight responses in deer, sorting their behavior by sex. You just won't see a buck getting all curious and walking up to you, stamping, or presenting his lung area for the perfect shot like this doe is doing. A buck who does stuff like that dies.

She gave me time to take a shot, yes, but also to take a deep breath and pull back and look at the incredible beauty of that morning. Of all that had happened, that I got to witness. The sun coming up golden behind the pines. The color, still leaking from the meadow. My Canon struggled and failed to truly capture it, but we got close. Please click on this photo and run through all of 'em embiggened. Don't know about you, but they look awful to me, small.

 

 Ka-thunk, ka-thunk! She was off again.

Back into the waiting arms (legs?) of the two bucks.

Little buck, still standing, watching the whole thing, wondering what got into her?

He decided to follow. Might be something worth running away from. Might get lucky.

Ecuador (Oct. 24-Nov 2) was ah-maaa-zing and I loved it, the birds and the Andes and the botany!! The wonderful companions! But I was so torn about missing the end of October in Ohio. The colors, the deer behavior, the weather...leaving my home with all this going on took FOMO to new heights.

I felt so blessed to catch the tail end of it all.


 I absolutely love the rut, 'cuz I jes' love schneakin' up on bucks. 

Schneakin' Up On Bucks

 Every morning I get up in the dark. I raise the blinds and go back to bed to write in my journal. I write down my dreams, and then segue into whatever's on my mind. Maybe I plan something, start writing a talk, chew over something that's been bugging me, or just write about what I'd most like to do next. It's a hopeful journal.

Also hopeful is waiting for first light, to see if there's anyone out in the meadow. My heart pounds as the light comes up, especially if I see shapes out there.  On this morning, I saw two shapes in the path not far from the house. One was a pretty buck, and the other I couldn't quite tell. But from the way they were behaving, I knew it was time to suit up and get out there.

I schnuck out the front door, closing it soundlessly, and slunk over behind the Rose of Sharon. The clotheslines made a green cut across the scene, but at least I could sort of see what was going on from here.

 OMG! sparring bucks!

 It didn't look like a very even match to me!

 When they broke up I could see it was an 8 versus a spike. The big boy thought he saw something. I held perfectly still. And amazingly, they went back at it. With those damn green clotheslines still screwing up my shots.

This was not a pitched battle. It almost seemed gentle. Their motions were slow and smooth, without any of the furious pushes or shiftings of position you'd expect if they were really fighting.

The older buck had a beautiful high rack with long tines. I wouldn't call it massive, but it's my favorite kind of rack from an aesthetic viewpoint. I'd about had it with the clotheslines. I decided to go for it. So I waited until they went into another mini-match and then I took a deep breath and schlooped like Napoleon Dynamite across the open lawn. I raced over to the edge of the prairie meadow and buried myself behind the dead stalks of a big gray sunflower, holding my breath and staying down.

Oh so much better! And they never knew I'd done it. All hail testosterone and distracted bucks. From here, I could hear their antlers clicking together. It was so cool, with the sumac on fire behind them and the frost on the grass.

The older buck kept looking around like he sensed the presence of other deer. Maybe there were does around, and he could smell them. He wasn't 100% into the match.

 

 He could have annihilated the younger buck if he'd wanted to, but instead he just kept politely answering the repeated requests to engage.

You can see from the ear position that the small buck is feeling ornery.

He just kept buggin' the big buck.

I don't fully understand how antler fights work. How they keep from getting their eyes poked out. Especially when you have a tiny set of spikes and you're up against a long tined tree. I liked this next shot. Click on that one. You can see the whites of their eyes. As you can see I was shooting through the sunflowers, and they had no idea I was right there.

It occurred to me that the white throat and belly of a deer must have some powerful social signaling function, beyond the countershading camouflage value.  It's the white flag of surrender, perhaps.

And still that little cuss kept pushing it. Maybe he was practicing, knowing his battles would be for real next fall. It seemed to me quite charitable of the big buck to keep answering his challenges.

It isn't often you get to be present for a sparring match. I took a lot of photos. I'm going to save some for  the next post, because my gosh. A lot of stuff happened next. I felt so lucky to be there. It was as if I'd been given a Cloak of Invisibility.

Postscript: This morning, Dec. 9, I was schneakin' up on bucks from first light until 9 AM. What I was privileged to witness makes this look like child's play, literally. Gonna be a Deery December. Hope you like whitetails! :D xo jz