Young love
It’s not easy being a young animal in the wilds. Their slower body and mind often make them targets for predators. Mature animals are quick to physically force them out of their way to get to the best food.
Their inexperience means they go through the breeding season unwanted, unsuccessful and totally confused.
But they sure are fun to watch.
Saturday afternoon’s trip to a Butler County treestand furnished an hour of entertainment as I watched three young whitetails try to figure out their roles in the on-going breeding season.
Actually the first deer on the hilltop was a big, mature eight-pointer that disappeared into a dense thicket with an old doe. They knew how the mating game is played.
Minutes later a doe fawn, a deer born this summer and just forced away from its mother, came wandering through. It wandered back and forth across the prairie, confused at being away from the doe that looked after it all summer. Equally confused at why a yearling spike-horned buck followed her every step.
The 18-month-old buck was in its first breeding season with enough hormones to know something special’s going on but not enough experience to know exactly what it was supposed to be doing.
The first comedy came when the spike passed downwind of where I knew the old buck and doe to be. Scenting something special the spike trotted into the thicket and seconds later came running back out at full-speed.
The old buck obviously didn’t want to be disturbed by the upstart young ‘un.
Back by the doe fawn the spike alternated between walking inches from her tail and raking tree limbs with pencil-sized antlers. That she probably wouldn’t begin estrous for at least another month, if at all her first year, didn’t dim his interest.
Repeatedly he nudged the fawn no bigger than my hunting dog and when she’d run a short distance he was literally trying to get on her tail. Finally, totally confused and frustrated, the doe fawn plopped down in thick grass 15 yards from where I watched.
I could almost read the sigh of relief on the fawn’s face and the look of even more confusion on the spike’s. It was if he was saying, “Hey, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to be doing but I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to be part of it!â€
Several times the doe fawn rose to move off and within seconds the spike hounded it so much the doe fawn plopped back down again.
As time passed the spike seemed more and more confused. Several times he wandered off a ways before trotting back to check the lust of his life.
In a year or two the spike will learn November’s for mature does and not fawns. They’ll be the mating game in December.
The spike will also learn that the best way to get an almost ready doe ready is to flat-out chase it until it has to stop.
But Saturday all the spike could do was look on and try to get a nose under a very clamped tail. The spike was so close I could read its face like a book. The perplextion (somehow I doubt that’s a word) was hilarious.
Eventually when the doe fawn stood and looked north I slowly turned my head and saw a buck fawn walk into the scene. Seeing the doe fawn, possibly its sibling, it broke into a happy trot. The two were almost nose to nose when the spike charged in and split the pair.
That spooked the doe fawn into running southwest with the spike happily trotting inches from her tail.
The buck fawn stood in one place for several minutes, scanning one way and then the other, repeatedly testing the wind as it tried to figure out where the others had gone and what to do next.
Probably about a year away from being sexually mature the entire breeding season process is way beyond the buck fawn’s young mind.
It hung around a few minutes and headed south, towards the thicket where a true tail-kicking from the mature buck guarding a a doe awaited.
A minute or so later the buck fawn was a brown blur headed westward from the thicket, no doubt more confused than ever.
Ah, young love in the deer woods.
