By Dave Mance III
posted
Nov 21, 2012
Even if you're not a deer hunter, chances are you've heard of
"the rut" - slang for the white-tailed deer's mating season. This
event is going on right now, as is deer hunting season, making the
rut a cultural event in both the whitetail and human worlds.
In spring and summer, male and female whitetails are largely
segregated. Does tend to their fawns; bucks hang out by themselves
or in bachelor groups. In September, the declining daylight prompts
increased testosterone levels in bucks, causing them to act
erratically and become less tolerant of one another. They make
antler rubs on small trees and shrubs and, in the process, deposit
scent from forehead glands and preorbital glands, located in dark
pits at the inside corners of the eyes, onto the frayed wood. They
make scrapes on the ground: a three-part act that involves
scent-marking an overhead branch, pawing a depression in the earth,
and then urinating on themselves over the scrape. (As the urine
runs down their hind legs, it picks up musk from the tarsal glands,
located on the inside of their hocks.)
The does sort of pay attention to all this in that they'll
casually check scrapes and rubs, but by and large their
participation in breeding season is limited. Basically, it can be
summed up as: "no, no, no, no, no, yes." Bucks spend most of late
October, November, and early December running themselves ragged in
search of does; does spend most of late October, November, and
early December avoiding bucks, save for a brief period of tending
immediately before copulation. The does' monthly estrous - the time
when they're "in heat" - lasts only between 24 and 36 hours.
The act itself is a pretty crude affair. The buck follows the
doe with his neck extended and lowered, and the doe, for once,
doesn't avoid him. Intromission is brief. Afterwards, the doe gets
on with her life and the buck goes back to roaming the woods
looking for another courtship. It all ends in December when a
buck's testosterone level drops, at which point he'll shake his
head as if waking from a daze (authorial postulate) and go back to
acting like a deer.
The bucks' promiscuity makes individuals of their gender largely
expendable. Five bucks plus 10 mature does in an area equals 20
fawns (give or take a few) the next spring. One buck plus 10 mature
does also equals 20 fawns (give or take a few) the next spring.
This is an oversimplified equation, but it gives you a general idea
of how people can harvest large numbers of male deer (nearly 15,000
bucks were killed by hunters last year in Vermont and New Hampshire
combined) and the herd can still grow.
Patience and perseverance are the hallmarks of a good hunter,
and there are hours upon hours during deer season spent alone with
your thoughts. As a notoriously self-interested species, it's
impossible not to spend some of this time in your head considering
the rut in human terms. When the younger men in deer camp leave for
a Saturday night on the town, opting for courtship rituals over
beans and cribbage with the older men, they're said to be "out
chasing does," but while the analogy is apropos, it provides a
skewed look at human mating trends overall.
People who have looked into the "human rut" say that we seem to
have two distinct mating seasons: One, like beavers, in deep
winter, the other, like bears, in early summer. A Scientific
American blog reports that babies are conceived most frequently in
December; in summer, condom sales spike. A recent study of Internet
keyword searches confirms this notion of a bimodal human mating
season, reporting that people are more likely to visit both dating
and adult websites in winter and summer than they are in spring or
fall.
We're wandering pretty far afield, I know. But if nothing else,
this gives you something to think about while you spend long hours
hiding by a buck scrape in the coming weeks, waiting for that big
8-pointer with the hormone-addled brain to walk by.
Dave Mance III is a deer hunter from Shaftsbury, Vt. The
illustration for this column was drawn by Adelaide Tyrol. The
Outside Story is assigned and edited by Northern Woodlands magazine
and sponsored by the Wellborn Ecology Fund of New Hampshire
Charitable Foundation.
Tagged:
The Outside Story, The Rut
