White-tailed deer buck in the woods in southern Minnesota. Photo by Stan Tekiela
Walking through the autumn woods on a carpet of fallen leaves is a wonderful experience. The air is filled with the scent of decaying foliage mixed with the sharp bite of winter’s approach. Each footstep is muffled by the leaves, except for the occasional twig that snaps underfoot. Because the trees have shed their leaves, you can see great distances in all directions.
During the summer, this same walk would be much different. The view would be blocked by dense green leaves, and the sounds and smells would change completely. A walk in the autumn woods is like no other time of year. It’s one of my favorite times to be outdoors.
I was recently thinking about this while walking through the woods the other day, camera in hand, hoping to capture video or images of white-tailed deer bucks during the rut. The rut refers to the time when male white-tails seek females for breeding. For these deer, the entire spring and summer have been building toward this period. The bucks have been growing antlers and putting on weight in preparation for the mating season.
Starting in October, male white-tailed deer slowly move into breeding condition. Their focus shifts to finding females. As the days shorten and the weeks progress into autumn, the males undergo physiological and behavioral changes. A surge of testosterone triggers the shedding of the velvet that once covered their antlers during the growing season. Their necks thicken, and the fur around them becomes coarse and bristly.
Bucks begin rubbing their antlers on small saplings, stripping off bark and leaving scent from glands located on their faces and heads. They also make scrapes by pawing the ground, clearing leaves and sticks from a small area about two feet wide, then urinating on the exposed soil. Often a low-hanging branch is directly above the scrape, which the males lick or chew to leave additional scent behind.
All these activities serve to attract females and announce that the buck is ready for breeding. It’s often said that males stop eating during the rut. While bucks can and do lose weight during this time, they continue to eat — just less often — after feeding heavily all summer to prepare for the season. Bucks also take midmorning breaks to bed down and chew their cud while resting for a couple of hours.
Each autumn, female white-tailed deer are receptive to mating for only about 24 to 72 hours. That means the window for conception is very narrow. Timing is everything in the reproduction cycle. Males often follow females for several days before they enter estrus and are ready to mate. If a female doesn’t become pregnant the first time, she will come back into estrus about 28 days later.
Each autumn, the rut returns to forests and fields like clockwork, ensuring a healthy white-tailed deer population for the year ahead.
Until next time …
Editor’s note: Stan Tekiela’s NatureSmart column appears twice a month in the Eden Prairie Local News. Tekiela is an author, naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels extensively across the United States to study and capture wildlife images.
You can follow his work on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at www.naturesmart.com.