Season Eye Opener

Buck this morning

We've been mushroom crazed here at Dodge this fall.  We've been finding, cataloging and eating fungus.  It's been an entire slippery season of mushrooms.  Guess who else is enjoying the fungal bounty of this damp fall?  Whitetails.  Deer find mushrooms scrumptious-- they too are mycophiles.

What else do deer eat?

-acorns
-corn
-soybeans
-grasses
-tree leaves
-tree buds
-tree bark
-wild grapes
-apples (wild or not)
-lots of shrubs and bushes

When we visit my parents in the Florida Keys every year, we always see Key Deer.  These petite cuties  don't look it, but they are omnivorous.  I've seen Key Deer eat crabs, fish and hot dogs.  While my dad and I were grilling on the beach, a crafty little deer came and stole a pork chop right off the Weber!  Maybe he was just mischievous, you're thinking.  But, no, we watched that deer wolf down that pork chop.  His friend carried off my daughter's box of Cheez-its and crunched crackers not five feet from us.  When you see a list of what deer eat, even discounting Key Deer, it is clear that Whitetails are adaptable.  Whitetails live, successfully, in every county and corner of our state.  An old friend of my husband's confirmed that he used to see Whitetails picking over the carcasses of dead fish in lake country.  The DNR estimates that we share Minnesota with close to 1,000,000 deer.  Deer are really good at accommodating us, even though we do our best to diminish their habitat (and their predators, which keep them in balance), so it's no wonder that we see them all the time here at Dodge.

Doe on playground

And yet, it is a wonder.  It is wonder-full.  Dodge deer have habituated to mild disturbance.  They've learned, through their successive generations, that preschoolers, elementary and even middle school aged kids pose little or no threat to their existence.  Dodge is a relatively safe place for Whitetails.  No hunting, no dogs, no traffic.  Lot's of food and a good amount of shelter.  It seems no surprise then that we can routinely get within ten feet of a Whitetail or two, or thirteen.  But still, it is surprising.

This morning we encountered 3 bucks vying for the attentions of a single doe.  Picture 4 groups of preschoolers, out on their respective hikes.  Then the word goes out over the walkie-talkies that a really big buck is hanging out by the Nature Center parking lot.  Suddenly twenty odd kids and five teachers are bearing witness to a yearly rite of passage:  the rut.   Seems like I'm destined to do an annual deer post every November.  There really is no way around it.  Whitetails just make their presence known here at Dodge.

Admiring a buckscrape

Things always pick up right after Halloween.  The wind blows, the leaves come down, and there they are.  Actually, we see deer year-round, but what we don't often see are bucks.  Bucks cruise around, conducting a mini migration through different populations of deer, having contests with different males, trying to win the right to mate.  And this week, there are at least four bucks chasing does right around the Nature Center.  These guys come in small, medium, large and extra large.  When you stop and think about it for a second, it is simply amazing that preschoolers, and grown-ups, can get up close and personal (what's more personal than the rut?) with these large and interesting animals.  It's also amazing that Dodge teachers have a real reason to discuss the word, "rut"  with preschoolers.  Continue to be amazed, consider the stats of the ubiquitous Whitetail:

-4-6ft long
-3.5ft tall at the shoulder
-85-300lbs
-Run 30mph
-Jump 8ft high
-Leap 33ft across

Track on morning hike

Consider more cool facts:

-4 chambers to their stomachs and are ruminants (like cows)
-Stomach bacteria changes seasonally in order to break down the forage a deer encounters through the succession of seasons!
-Blow or snort when they feel uneasy or threatened
-In Virginia, where they are hunted in the greatest numbers, can run the fastest:  47mph!
-When first frightened, they first run with tails or "flags" up
-When shot at, Whitetails can run in zig-zags with tails down
-Conduct a lot of communication with glands.  For instance:  crouch and pee down the backs of their own legs in order to activate glands in their flanks.  This says, "I'm here, and I'm really big, so check me out."
-Have dichromatic vision, meaning they see two color families:  blue and yellow (this is why they don't see blaze orange very well)
-1 in 10,000 female deer grows antlers
-Number of points on the antlers and the general size do not necessarily indicate the age of a buck; most yearlings grow antlers with 3 or more points
-Antlers are shed after deer mate, after the rut, when testosterone drops, from December to April
-Antlers begin to grow again in the spring
-Deer mature at about 1.5 years
-Gestation is just under 7 months
-Does usually give birth to twins

Calling in the bucks with antlers clacking

We love watching Whitetails with preschoolers.  My best afternoon here ever, bar none, took place when I when I was hiking with a group of boys and we were caught unawares by a three-way buck battle.  The boys and I dropped low and watched the battle rage.  For days, even weeks after, those boys re-enacted the buck battle.  They told the story forward and backward.  They drew pictures and wrote words about the encounter.  The were electrified by the power of Nature, with a capital "N."  We should surely keep watching Whitetails, and learning from them, but we should also respect them and remember that, although they have a big, positive impact on us, we have an impact on them too, and it is not always so positive.

Things to keep in mind when you admire deer at Dodge, and elsewhere:

-Bucks do not eat during the rut, and they lose weight and condition in their relentless pursuit of does; interference with their behavior during the rut can further degrade their physical well-being, setting them up for starvation during the winter.

-Bucks and does must eat as much as possible before the snow flies.  Winter is extremely tough on deer, and like most animals, they get stressed out when people watch, follow or otherwise harass them for too long.  Stress eats up precious calories in the deer body, setting them up for malnutrition and illness. When you observe deer, do so from a distance for a short time, and then go your own way, leaving them to eat and recuperate.

Deer do seem ubiquitous, and sometimes they drive us crazy.  They eat our landscaping, or garden goodies and they run in front of our cars.  But deer have complicated and mysterious social lives.  We can admire and emulate their adaptability too.  And we should keep in mind that, like us, deer are just trying to make a go of things.  Deer have learned to cope with a relentless human presence.  Perhaps we can extend deer a little grace by remembering them each November, studying their habits, honoring what we still don't know about them and admiring their resilience.  A closer look at Whitetails might just reflect a few of our finer traits.