The Story
A white-tailed fawn, nearly grown, tries to nurse and his mother refuses him. All over this ridge in the East Tennessee foothills of the Smoky Mountains, the bucks have come out of the back woods.
These are hidden trail camera clips from the week of November 21, the leaves are down, and the rut sets the pace. Bucks big and small keep turning up. The basic social unit in this species is a doe and her fawns, but this one has outgrown the milk bar.
White-tailed deer are typically most active around dawn and dusk, though activity may increase throughout the day during the breeding season. The biggest bucks here still seem to keep to the night, yet good ones walk through in daylight, among them what looks like an eight-pointer. At one camera a buck lowers his head almost to the lens, the white band behind his nose plain.
The calendar is tight. A doe in estrus is receptive for about 24 hours, and if she is not bred she comes into heat again every 28 days until early winter. Rival bucks fight by clashing antlers for access to a doe. A bunch of young bucks ganged up at one camera may be practicing, or just playing around. At the pond, others look skinny and keep moving anyway.
Acorns run the other clock. Fall shifts the deer diet to acorns, corn and other nuts, and this crop is going fast. Deer store autumn fat even in their hollow leg bones, and by late fall it can make up 10 to 25% of body weight.
After dark the shift changes. Raccoons come off the den, foxes work the ridge, and old bucks stop to inspect the cameras. One very big bobcat also shows up. Come daylight a fawn stands alone, its mother, by the filmer's reckoning, off with the bucks. Ideal habitat has dense thickets for hiding, and once this rut ends the filmer expects the bucks to slip back into them. You would be lucky to see one then.
