The Story
A wild white-tailed buck in full rut walks up to a ranch feeder on a cold mid-November morning and starts clearing the table. His neck is thick, his manner is not polite, and he works within six or seven yards of the camera.
It is a Sunday on a ranch in Oklahoma. Fog lifts off the lake as the sun comes up over the hardwoods, and bucks drift in from the back. One young deer carries thirteen points on what the rancher calls his first set of antlers. Then two bigger bucks arrive, and the wild one takes charge, prancing and running everyone else off the food.
The date explains the swagger. Mating peaks in mid-November in Missouri and in the last two weeks of November in Connecticut, and deer activity may increase through the day while it lasts. Rival bucks settle access to a doe by clashing antlers. They do not keep harems.
More than a mile from the house, in the Oak Field, the same contest runs at a slower tempo. A doe stands off to the left, and a buck lies bedded within sight of her, waiting, by the rancher's read, for her to come around. Patience has its logic. A doe in estrus is receptive for about 24 hours, and if she is not bred she comes back into heat every 28 days until early winter.
The turkeys keep their own calendar. Around thirty gather at daylight, and the gobblers strut as though it were spring, whether or not the hens care. When the feeder goes off, the turkeys bolt.
Another morning brings a south wind, a high of 42 sliding back into the 30s, and rain expected to turn to sleet and then snow. Prince Charming, a deer the family came close to losing, is up and walking, stiff-legged but eating. In September deer molt into dense woolly underfur beneath long hollow guard hairs, and by late fall the fat they store can make up 10 to 25 percent of body weight.
