Stuck in a Rut

I was glad I had put on my Woolpower base layer, as there was a ground frost and a cutting north-easterly breeze. It was 7:30am when I entered the woods and it seemed like it was chaos. There was deer running about everywhere and it took me a couple of minutes to work out what was going on.

Two does were trotting away from a bellowing stag, which was out of sight to north west of the wood. Now that shouldn’t be happening for a start! I tried to work my way round to the bellowing but it suddenly stopped and I lost sight of anything vaguely resembling a deer.

I suddenly saw movement to my right and quickly knelt down behind a fallen trunk. A young stag wandered into sight and came to within about 10 yards of my position. He suddenly saw me and leapt back a couple of steps, which was quite comical to watch. Instead of darting off, he seemed to circle me, looking in my direction a couple of times before walking nonchalantly away.

I guessed that would be it for a while. Instead of chasing the deer out of the wood, I tend to sit and wait for them to reappear, which they invariably do. After half an hour, a cup of coffee and a breakfast bar, I spotted movement again. It seemed the whole Poor Park herd had split up. I recognised a couple of the individual does on their own but there were also about three young stags; obviously the young pretenders.

I watched as one of them dared approach the Chief. I couldn’t see him very well through the closed in woods, but the sudden bellowing told me he was there. The young stag gave ground. I managed to catch up with the proceedings and went into a crawl but once again, I was spotted by the young stag.

I withdrew once again and went to the south of the woods to see what else was going on. It was a change to easily spot the tracks in the damp ground instead of searching for them on hands and knees. Badger, fox, Farmer B and the fallow were all there with enough information to ascertain the gait.

Back to the rut. I hadn’t really identified a stand, but the best area seemed to be where I normally bed-down to watch the fallow in the spring. There was some scraping on the earth and a single fresh marking on tree. That was enough for me to set up the trail cam. I will retrieve it at the end of the week.

I had now been in the wood for 6 hours and I think the deer were getting a bit fed up with me. I was also getting a bit tired, but I had been successful in not scaring them out of the wood and had observed them on about five separate occasions. So enough was enough.

My last sighting was probably one of the best where a young stag followed by the Chief himself came into view about 25 yards away from me.  Again, I metaphorically tore a page out of the text books as I was sure it was the bachelors stags that followed the Chief in order to challenge him.

I expect I’ll be out again before the rutting season ends. Until then, it was time to leave them alone.

Thanks for the visit.