Saturday - March 23, 2013

The Mysteries of Nature

And I’ve lived here for well over a decade. So I thought I’d seen it all when it came to deer. I’ve seen them in rut, I’ve seen the baby fawns still wet and wobbly. I’ve seen them eat, play, eat, sleep, eat, hide, eat, ... you name it. If there are 3 trees and a bush here, odds are there is a deer hiding behind them.

But until this afternoon I had never, ever, seen does fight. I didn’t even know they could. Or did. While yelling at each other! Go figure. Do does have a pecking order, like chickens? Beats me. And why fight now? It isn’t anywhere close to mating season. It’s almost fawning time.

I was heading down to Flemington about a quarter to five this afternoon, going down our main road to the corner. There’s a bit of woods off on the right, about an acre. And a little scrap of scrub brush right across from the corner, a little thin triangle of land between the highway and the entrance ramp that is the west end of our connecting road to town. I doubt if it’s a quarter of an acre, but I know that more than half a dozen deer live in there most of the winter, under the eye of an 8 point buck. The sun was out a bit today, and it was maybe 40°; nearly warm for this early in Spring. And the does were a-frolic.

So driving up to the corner I saw this movement in that bit of scrub land in front of me, some gray-brown motion behind the gray-brown tree trunks and leafless gorse bushes. And in a little clearing there, I saw 5 deer having a fight. Well, two fighting, and three watching. Damnedest thing I ever saw.

No, this is not my video. Somebody else shot it, in late summer, over in PA. I didn’t get any pictures; I was just too amazed. But I’ll tell ya, the two deer in that video are amateurs. The does I saw were up on their hind legs ducking and weaving and running about, easily 30 seconds at a time. And the hoof fight was at least twice as fast as the two half-hearted contenders pictured above. I mean, man, it was on!! And the bleating! I knew deer could vocalize. You hear them in the fall when the rut kicks in, and sometimes you hear the mommy does calling to their fawns. But these deer were cussing a blue streak and having a major hissy fit on each other. I just sat there in my car with the window open, watching and listening for probably a full minute. A car pulled up behind me and didn’t beep; they were watching too. Then it was over suddenly, and the combatants went their separate ways. Some lifetime I’m going to learn to carry a camera with me everywhere, charged up and ready at hand. I could have had some neat video.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/23/2013 at 10:10 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals •  
• Comments (6) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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