At last the Red Deer rut has started, I have been impatiently waiting for this moment for ages!
25th September – First Morning
I arrive before 7 am, it is still pitch black. Once again the weather forecast has gotten things wrong, it doesn’t look like a nice day at all. Heavy clouds loom above and whilst it isn’t really raining there is a slight drizzle that my camera does not like at all. I listen carefully – the bad weather doesn’t seem to stop the deer, I hear stags roaring from all directions. I slink into a field, I can hear a stags voice at the other end. But it is still too dark to make out anything. I stop behind a hedgerow and scour the edge of the field with my binoculars. There he is! I can see him, about a 100 meters further down, close to the edge of the wood marking the other side of the field. Through the binoculars I can only just guess his outline in the darkness. But I don’t even have time to envisage an approach and the stag has already disappeared inbetweeen the trees. I am positioned upwind, he couldn’t possibly have picked up my scent. Maybe a hind nearby?I negociate my way back across the field, the darkness doesn’t seem to want to lift this morning. In the adjoining field a fox is hunting voles. Impossible to get closer, he is upwind from me and in any case, today I haven’t come for him.
I am back in the enchanted forest. The trees, the shrubs, the bracken, everything in this place has eyes and ears. In order to be able to observe the animals living here you have to blend in, become part of this world. After that it is a case of patiently waiting, sometimes for a long time, sometimes not at all. Nothing here is predictable.
Softly and quietly I follow the path, the rain over the last few days makes my silent progress a lot easier. I can hear them further away. There are at least 4 of them. I stop not far from a clearing and listen, they are very close. Suddenly something is moving in the dense thicket of bracken, I can just make out the bleached tips of the antlers, they are moving in parallel to me. Crouched down and hidden in the undergrowth behind my camera I wait for him to appear between the trees. Around 12 meters ahead of me he stops and freezes, staring in my direction. Visibly my strange form that wasn’t there before has caught his interest.
For now he is too young to join the great ball of the mature stags. Unable to identify me he finally moves on, I see him slowly disappear between the birch trees. It is 8.10 am and there is still hardly any light in the wood.
I walk a little further until I get to the clearing. From behind a tree I listen. In the slight breeze I can even smell the deer with their typical musky pungent odor. The sound of a snapping branch makes me look the other way, I can see a beautiful male with 12 points stepping out into the clearing, quite obviously he is very excited. His head held backwards he roars.
Then he slowly moves up the edge, his antlers violently thrashing the bracken on either side. I hold my breath, he is only a few meters away now. He stops, crowns of bracken tangled in his antlers. Pausing for a moment he stares warily at my camera, as intrigued as the other stag a little earlier.
Then he strides past me and up the other side of the clearing. The bracken is so high there that I can only just see the tips of his antlers move, then they disappear behind top of the hill. Another stag shows up, hot on his heals, but I quickly loose sight of him in the high vegetation. I can feel the wind changing, it is time to leave, even if I have trouble tearing myself away. I have already been extremely lucky this morning!
2nd October – Antlers in the Woods
Another gray and miserable day with a more or less constant drizzle. But the rut is too short to worry about the weather, there is simply no time to wait for better for the sun to be back.
Slowly I move along the path, the wet ground is carpeted with colourful leaves. From far away a few roars drift across. I stop regularly, scanning the surrounding wood for signs of life, but with the little light that manages to penetrate below the tree canopy this is no easy task. At the end of the path I sit down against a tree and wait. Just as my attention is beginning to wane he appears. Typical. Through a tangle of branches and leaves my eyes meet those of a 10 point stag. He’s spotted something, but hasn’t identified me. I notice his striking face, I am certain that this is the first time we meet. When you spend a lot of time with deer you inevitably reach a point where you start to recognise certain individuals. Of course the antlers are a pretty good way of telling them apart, but some have also quite pronounced facial features that help to distinguish them from the rest.
He doesn’t take his eyes off me for a long while, I sit stock still. At last reassured, he moves on a few meters and from behind a large shrub starts roaring. Even after having listened to their calls so many times I can’t help feeling awed.
On my way back I come across a 10 point stag in the middle of a birch stand as well as a curious youngster and a hind a little further.
4th October – A Beguiling Show
A light constant drizzle again this morning and a less constant breeze. The rut has reached its peak. Well hidden in the bramble undergrowth along the edge of the woodland, I listen to the powerful voice of a male roaring on the other side of the clearing. The vegetation is so high that I cannot see anything, but even just listening is simply magical. The voice is getting closer, he must have arrived in the middle of the clearing by now. Finally I catch a glimpse of him inbetween the fronds of bracken.
At least 2 other stags answer regularly. I get the impression that the tension is building up. Suddenly I spot 2 ears hidden in the vegetation. A hind!
Needless to say I am not the first one to have noticed her, the majestic stag with the deep voice that I have been listening to for a while has long since picked up her scent. He moves in on her, circles around her, but visibly she is not ready to accept his advances. I couldn’t be in a better place to watch his increasingly desperate attempts. But the lady of his heart is playing hard to get and after 15 minutes decides to move on, the stag following hot on her heals. A few minutes later he is back in the middle of the clearing starting to roar again.
Other voices from lower down the clearing seem to be getting closer. ”My” 10 point stag is roaring louder and louder, then I see the tips of his antlers move in the direction of his rivals. I wait around for a while before leaving, but this time the action has moved on to a different spot.
5th October – In the Open
Whilst I do love images where the animal is partly hidden in the vegetation, I am starting to accumulate a bit too much of a collection of pictures of floating antlers without the stag. So this evening I have decided to set up at the edge of an open field hoping to capture some different types of image.
I don’t have to wait for long before I see him appear on the other side of the field, followed by his harem. From a safe distance I observe his attempts to get the females attention.
But they don’t seem interested this evening and continue grazing. A deafening noise makes me flinch and look up, a small military plane is heading in our direction flying right across the field. It is so low that it seems to be clipping the top of the trees at any moment. The harem, totally spooked by this intrusion starts running maddly away from where the plane disappeared behind the trees, that is, in my direction! The hinds are closely followed by the stag. They run right past me, cross the gravel path and disappear into the pasture on the other side. The 12 point stag is speechless, he doesn’t dare follow them beyond the gravel path onto the territory of a rival stag. He is so close that his head is too big for my frame . Finally, after having caught his breath he heads back to the other side of the field and disappears behind the trees. I now hear the deep strong voice of the stag on the other side of the gravel path.
This 14 point specimen has gathered his neighbours harem around him and is keeping a constant eye on them. But the females are still not interested. They have calmed down again and started grazing. Just keep roaring….
However they haven’t lost their nervousness and I see them looking up scouring the surroundings at regular intervalls. Their eyesight is much better than that of roe deer.
6th October – Dancing Antlers
The weather is as gray and miserable as ever but I can’t resist setting off once again to find the deer. Deep in the forest I come across a 10 point stag that I have met before. He is roaring at the edge of a clearing, other deep voices answer back from the other side. I get the impression there is a battle going on across there, I can hear noises, but they are too far away to see anything and I can’t move without being spotted.
I listen for a while until the 10 point stag moves into the middle of the clearing. Another male, whose voice I kept hearing on the other side is now close to him. The tangled growth in the clearing is so high and dense that I can only just see the tips of their antlers sticking out over the top. In a carefully choreographed dance the two pairs of antlers float like two puppets in an ocean of bracken. From time to time one of the heads takes a dive and I hear him thrashing about violently, before his antlers reappear with heaps of vegetation dangling from the ends.
I don’t get to see anything from the actual fight as all of it takes place below the surface of the vast ocean of bracken. It isn’t long before one of the opponents gives up and fades into the woods at the top of the clearing. The winner loudly announces his victory and retires into the pine stand on the other side.
8th October – Nearly the End of the Show
Once again I am hiding in the gorse bushes along the clearing, from a fair distance I hear voices roaring. I wait…. Something is moving in the middle of the bracken. That must be the stag I heard deep in the woods when I arrived. After a while he starts roaring, half-heartedly at first, but as his rivals start up again all around his voice gets stronger and louder. Unfortunately I can only see the tips of his antlers sticking out above the vegetation. Every so often I catch a glimpse of his head as he directs his calls in one direction, then another. I like to imagine that this morning he is roaring just for me…… For about an hour I listen, I love these precious moments in total harmony with nature. From time to time the slight breeze carries up his heavy musky smell, more powerful than any perfume. Soon the rut will be over, I want to make the most of these last days…. Something else is moving in the bracken a few meters away from the stag, at last a hind has heard his calls!
He has already spotted her, sticking hard on her heels. At the edge of the clearing, where the hind has entered the wood he stops and turns around. Our eye to eye doesn’t last longer than a second before he disappears inbetween the trees.
11th October – All Good Things Must Come to an End….
Not long now before the enchanted forest will be quiet again. The rut is drawing to an end and I hear fewer and fewer males roar. I attempt a last session tonight, thereafter the stags will retreat much deeper into the forest and take time to recover from the stress and hardships of the mating season. Over the last few weeks some of them haven’t even taken time to feed, they have lost a lot of weight and for the remainder of the time before the onset of winter they’ll be concentrating on 2 things : Eating and sleeping.
I am waiting at the edge of a clearing hoping to see him one last time. This time he makes me wait for a long while and the stag that shows up in the end is not the one I had been expecting, but a male with 12 points that I have already met elsewhere. I hope that all his travels over these past weeks have at least allowed him to pass on his genes to the next generation…..
