The secret life of deer

I placed a game camera in my father-in-law's flower bed 10 steps from his porch. The doe is a little blurry because she is trotting between the camera and his house.
I placed a game camera in my father-in-law's flower bed 10 steps from his porch. The doe is a little blurry because she is trotting between the camera and his house.
DAN GEDDINGS / SPECIAL TO THE SUMTER ITEM
Posted

I've been fascinated by whitetail deer since I saw my first hoof print pressed into a sandy woodland road many years ago. I was eight years old. I had seen pictures in hunting magazines and on television shows like Wild Kingdom and Walt Disney, but now I wanted to see a live one, in the wild. They were not very plentiful back in those days.

Since that time, I've hunted them, read about them and studied them. And I'm still fascinated by our native deer. They have a wary manner with acute hearing and a keen sense of smell. They are truly unique and remarkable creatures, and their numbers here have increased remarkably.

What secrets do they carry into the forest away from our prying eyes? Where do they go? What do they eat? When do they sleep? Let's pull back the bushes and take a look into their world.

Whitetails love a thicket. A briar patch, a tangle of vines or a copse of bushes that gives them the cover and concealment that they prefer. They can adapt to a wide variety of habitats. Whitetails are most active at dawn and dusk, feeding along the edges of fields and woods. They usually bed down in thickets through the middle of the day and are considered "nocturnal," or most active at night.

They eat acorns, berries, leaves and agricultural crops like soybeans and corn. They have a four-chambered stomach, which allows them to eat quickly without chewing. Later when they are bedded they will cough up their food and chew it. They have highly specialized teeth to help them with their diet. Sharp incisors help them bite through tough vegetation, and big molars are used to grind it up when they chew. They are classified as herbivores that "browse" on leafy plants and grains.

Deer see the world a little different than we do. Their eyes contain more rods than cones, which gives them good night vision. Research has shown that they can see blues and greens, but oranges and reds appear as gray. Hunters take advantage of this fact to wear orange colors for safety. Orange color is so visible to us that it is hard to believe that deer can't see it.

Let me give an example of color perception that is easy to perform yourself. Take a small piece of fluorescent orange surveyor's tape about 10 inches long. Go out in your back yard and tie it to a bush at least 50 yards away. It is so visible that you can't help but notice it, even at much greater distances. Now go back inside and wait until dark. Take a normal small flashlight that most of us have around the house, and walk out in the back yard and shine it on the bush. You will not be able to see the bright orange tape. You can see other colors but not the orange until you get much closer. I think that example is as close as you can get to how a deer sees the world.

Whitetails are like most wild animals, especially prey species. They nap and doze throughout the day and night. They don't sleep deeply for extended periods of time. They will lie down with their legs folded beneath them. They can rise and leap quickly from this position. Deer are vulnerable when bedded and will seek cover and concealment when resting.

Vocalizations are soft and not very frequent. A doe will bleat occasionally. Bucks will grunt, especially during the "rut" or breeding season. The sounds blend in with the wind, the woods, the forest birds and can be completely missed by humans but not by other deer.

Scent detection is a whitetail specialty. Their survival depends on it. Deer have scent glands on their legs and feet. There are scent glands near their eyes. Scent "marking" by deer is a more common type of communication than vocalizations. Scrapes are created by bucks when they paw away the leaf litter and leave their scent on the bare earth. Bucks will also rub their face on small limbs and twigs that hang over a "scrape" to leave scent. Other deer, bucks and does, will check the scrapes and leave their own scent.

Other scents that are left in the woods or carried on the wind can be detected by deer. Whitetails are extremely wary of human scent when it is detected in a woodland setting. Mature bucks will avoid an area for weeks where human scent has been detected.

Bucks grow antlers at a very rapid rate during the spring and summer. The antlers are covered with a soft tissue called velvet. When the antlers harden in the fall the velvet will dry out, and bucks will rub saplings and small trees to remove the dried velvet. These "rubs" are a signpost marking territory and are another form of communication among deer. The number of points on a set of antlers does not indicate the age of the deer but is a good indicator of its health. Antlers are shed every year in the late winter or early spring.

Hunters observe them through the fall and winter, but for most people the greatest interaction with deer is while driving along and spotting one crossing the road. Sometimes deer will make a suburban neighborhood their home, especially if the neighborhood abuts a woodland area. We have deer in our neighborhood, and it's an exceptional living arrangement. Sometimes we see them at the edge of the yard from our back door. They eat our flowers and walk around in our yards at night.

They think we don't know, but I see their hoof prints in the sandy earth.

Reach Dan Geddings at cdgeddings@gmail.com.