Walking through the autumn woods on a carpet of fallen leaves is a wonderful experience. The air is filled with the scent of decaying leaves, combined with the bitter bite of winter weather. Each footstep is muffled by the carpet of leaves except for the occasional small stick or twig that snaps underfoot. Because the leaves have fallen you can see great distances in all directions.

During the summer, this same walk would be much different. The view would be restricted by the thick dense green leaves, and the sounds and smells would be much different. So, a walk in the autumn woods is like no other time of year. It is one of my favorite times to be out and about.

I was recently thinking about this while I was out walking in the woods the other day. I was out looking to capture some video and/or images of White-tailed Deer buck in the rut. The rut is a term used to describe when the male White-tails are out seeking females for breeding opportunities. For the White-tailed Deer, the entire spring and summer have been building up to this time. The bucks have been growing antlers and putting on weight all in preparation for the mating season.

Starting in Oct of each year, the male White-tailed Deer slowly move into breeding condition. This means they are more focused on finding females for breeding. As the days and weeks go into autumn the male has physiological and behavioral changes to its body to accommodate the season of breeding. A surge of testosterone will trigger the shedding of the velvet that once covered the antlers during the growing season. Their neck thickens and the fur on the neck becomes bristly.

The bucks will start rubbing their antlers on small sapling trees, stripping off the bark and then rubbing their scent glands which are located on its face and head, on the newly rubbed trees. Males will also make a scrape by pawing at the ground, clearing leaves and sticks from a small round area, about 2 feet in diameter. The males then urinate in the newly exposed soil. Directly above the scrape is often a low hanging branch from a tree. The males will chew or lick this stick which also leaves a scent behind.

All of these activities by the male serves to attract females and to announce that the male is ready for breeding. It is often said that the males will stop eating during the rut. While the males can and will loose weight during the mating season, they do continue to eat during the mating season. The amount of eating is reduced, since they have been feeding heavily all summer to prepare for this time of year. Bucks will also take a mid-morning break and sit down and chew their cud while resting for a couple hours.

Each autumn, female White-tailed Deer are receptive for mating for just a short period of time of about 24 to 72 hours. This means that the window of time that the female can become pregnant is very narrow. Timing is everything in the reproduction department of the White-tailed Deer. This means that males need to follow around females for several days who are close to estrus before having an opportunity to mate. If she doesn’t become pregnant the first time, she will come back into estrus again later in approximately 28 days.

Each autumn, the rut shows up in the forests and fields, just like clockwork and we are the beneficiaries of all this effort by ensuring that we have a healthy White-tailed Deer population. Until next time…

Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the world to capture images of wildlife. He can be followed at www.Instagram.com and www.Facebook.com. He can be contacted via his website at www.NatureSmart.com.