04-AUG-B-5
“BIG BUCKS!”
Aug. 31—
I have come into Big Bucks! No…not that
kind; they have all been going the other way!
But, these are up close and
personal, “in your face” and almost within the “reach out and touch” one of
them range.
I have been watching them all year
since my return to the Derwood woods, but there has never been such a high
buck/doe ratio, and even the few does around are followed by at least twins,
and one with three fawns now becoming half-grown yearlings.. But, it is the bucks that command
attention. They are magnificent!
They
are big bodied, and their necks are swelling up now as the first hint of
coolness comes on the air. And they are attracted right to the big windows of
the Game Room, right under the hanging heads of a dozen or more of their late
compatriots.
Deer
are as lazy as any other creatures in these lazy crazy days of summer, and as
the fall begins to shorten the daylight, the cycle is again returning to the
point where they are getting a little skittish about being bunched up in all
mixed gender groups. The laziness comes
at a very considerable energy-savings.
The woods are filled with leaf litter of the kind that I have been
picking up off the freshly graveled drive.
The cut ends of the oak trees with their five to eight leaf clusters
around small and succulent white oak acorns have been rimmed by the cicadas
which have laid their eggs in the stems which girdled the branch ends. This is
how the eggs return to get into the ground for the long winter’s nap, with 17
years if incubation. This theme will be
continued during the later parts of this year, since 2004 (you heard it
first—right here!)—will be the “Year of the Cicada!”
IN BLACK AND
BROWN
The acorns themselves are raining down in profusion,
bouncing off the skylights with a resounding “ping” and dropping to the apron
of fresh crush and run, right outside the new garage door. There is a veritable menagerie called to this
feast—including a bumper crop of fox squirrels which are as numerous as eleven
seen in one glance without turning my head.
Of this group of eleven, five were in the “melanism” phase of the dark
fur. This trait breeds true, and of the
dozen fox squirrels introduced at the turn of the last century in the
Chipmunks have proliferated with no cat nearby, and
even one ground hog which is perched near the shed. I should forewarn the groundhog, that likes
to burrow under the shed, the oldest semi-permanent structure on the property,
gnawing the underside of the door when I have tried to barrier the access with
big rocks, that I have purchased a remarkable round. I now own several boxes of “subsonic” .22
caliber hollowpoint bullets. They travel
just a fraction slower than the speed of sound, so that nothing can get out of
its way, but it is much less noisy than the crack of the regular .22 long rifle. And my new Marlin .22 autoloader with scope
is up to the task of varmint control without disturbing the neighbors
unduly. So, there may be a market
somewhere for Marmot fur hats, and the Eastern marmot is fair game near my
shed!
What
I also saw in this are is the red fox that walked between the big bucks as they
were picking up acorns while the Killett's were measuring the big Wapiti heads
on the Game Room wall. I do not remember
when this was being done, if I reported that the Altai Wapiti (the “Byk Maral” from Kazakstan which
occasioned such a story in the “High Altai”) is now officially recorded in the
SCI trophy book. He is missing the left
brow tine which is no doubt buried in the neck of his satellite bull opponent
with whom I had exchanged bugles. On the
basis of the measurements made by the two Master Measurers of the SCI, the
Altai Wapiti is Number 16 in the trophy record books! He would have scored Number 2 if he still had
the missing brow tine! (My nice Rocky
Mountain Elk does not make the book—it takes a huge bull elk to get into the
SCI book, since there are almost as many of them taken each year as
Whitetails.)
But, now back to those
whitetails. They come each morning under
the Game Room widows and pick up acorns.
I have watched them form easy bow range, in fact, form easy atl-atl
range, since they are five feet away and eight feet down from my Game Room
windows. I have shot altogether too many
pictures from the windows, and most of them through the windows, which means
that the flash that is triggered bounces off the glass, or it autofocuses on
the screen. But, I have taken to
removing the screen and opening the window and hanging out as they come in, and
they have got used to me (no one else, it seems) so that I have watched them,
counted them, measured them, and got a very good idea of their behavior pattern
and the kinds of things they do each day.
They
come over to the fresh crush and run—the 62 tons of gravel placed on the long
circle of drive, which is all fresh, so there is no leaf litter into which they
would have to nose along and pull up acorns that would be buried, the kind of ignoble foraging that the big
boys leave to the squirrels. They pick
up the fresh acorns with their outstretched tongues, and “rim” them, popping
the “cap” off the acorn and tossing back the nut. The ground is a litter of acorn caps just
outside the automatic garage door.
As
I have watched over just this past week, the big high racks of four of the
bucks have gone from spongy velvet to dried and ragged, and now, shiny clean
and tan-white antlers. They are
obviously “rubbing” along my trees somewhere down there, and they are getting
ready for combat by strengthening their neck muscles and by marking territory
with the scent gland at their eye. They
are now good mountable racks—each a “wall hanger” The ten pointers are big beamed and not so
wide as they are high. There is an eight
pointer that is wide. The big fourteen
pointer which I have only seen at a distance, is now getting a bit pushy, and
this morning shoved the other two out of the way after I had been watching
them, and had decided that I had taken quite enough pictures, when he came
along, both brazen toward the bucks and skittish toward me.
They are a magnificent sight!
When
Dale Kramer was here as we hung the mount of the buck form this past fall on
the wall, and helped set up the meticulous photo shoot of the Derwood manse for
the year-end calendar with perfectionist Randy Hall, we moved the camera. The camera which is a motion sensor and flash
camera which waits at intervals in sensing motion of an object of sufficient
size marks the time and the sequence.
This morning the ten and eight pointers were browsing right in front of
that camera which is now strapped to a small sapling at the base of the drive
about ten feet over from the canoe, which the squirrels like to bomb with
acorns from the white oak trees overhead.
The several rolls of deer photos
that have been developed show the bucks coming in, warily looking over the
camera when they hear it, and one of them spooking into high gear at the time
of the second flash photo. Some of the
deer have come right up to the camera and stared into it, to check out what
this device was, and have triggered it with tongue, ears and velvet antlers in
a fuzzy too-close self portrait. But,
the pictures I have taken from my window perch are up front, heads high,
proudly flaunting their great racks and looking good. If anyone other than I were in a videotaping
mode, this would be the right platform for it.
The next roll of film out of the camera is gong to have some great “head
shots”—if they had not already triggered the roll of film within. I would like to see the fox take his own
picture, Or maybe the inquisitive woodchuck
standing up and whistling. I might have
to put him in a fixed “head-brace” in front of the camera with the sub-sonic
.22’s!
UNDER THE
OBSERVANT GAZE
OF A
HUNTER-GATHERER
So, I am reveling in the coming fall of the Big Bucks
of Derwood. Dale is going to put up a
tree stand or two, since the bow season begins September 15. I might crawl into one just to get another
aspect for the pictures. Dale is gong
out to
So, this is the season in Derwood
for the Deer of the Derwood Deer Woods.
I have views, photos, and venison aplenty to share, and a spot
overlooking the still green woods, which will shortly turn still more glorious
than it is just now in the superb transition into Indian Summer!