In the Outdoors
When whitetails become wallflowers
With Oak Duke

Hard to imagine what it would be like to go through puberty and those adolescent years all over again.

The teenage years present us with a lot of choices for the first time.

But how would you like to go through it every year, again and again?

Well that's what whitetail bucks do.

Little wonder bucks are so unpredictable.

And at other times, in fact the vast majority of the time, they are extremely wary, cautious and mostly nocturnal.

Why do these supersavvy, woods-wise critters with radar-like senses all of a sudden do such stupid things as stand in the middle of a busy highway at noon, or be seen sauntering along through the edge of a lawn at lunchtime?

The answer is simple: Hormones. Chemicals. Intoxicants.

Ancient history Section: a long time ago when I was teenager, it was "cool" to hang out at dances with my buddies. We'd have to summon up all the courage we could find to ask the girls to dance.

And when we stood there, watching other kids dance, we were called "wallflowers." We hung back, fooled around, fidgeted, even pushed each other.

And we stared like young deer caught in the headlights.

The white-tailed deer receives ever-increasing amounts of testosterone and other behavior-altering hormones as autumn progresses.

Biologists term them "short-day breeders."

That means that their glands are triggered and timed by photoperiodism, or the shortening of days and decreasing daylight.

In the whitetails' case, there also exists a built-in timing mechanism.

So there's two things working here.

Seems like deer in each part of the country have a breeding time, and it differs from area-to-area, state-to-state and regionto region.

Many studies have been done by game farm managers, such as introducing northern whitetails to southern deer farms to increase body size and antler mass. Southern whitetails traditionally have been significantly smaller than their northern cousins.

Tip-to-tip ear spread of a mature southern whitetail is 15 inches, of a mature northern whitetail it's 17 inches. B e r g m a n n 's Principal states that northern animals are larger than southern critters of the same species (more efficient to maintain core body temperature.)

In order to produce larger and more preferable antlers, Southern game farm managers imported Northern bucks and does to breed with their Southern deer. But there were many unforeseen problems (such as adaptability to the hot, desert, subtropical climate.)

But interesting and unforeseen - the timing of the rut or breeding period for the progeny of the introduced deer became skewed. It was not the same rut timetable as either the Southern indigenous deer, or the introduced Northern deer!

Now if you are in the game animal breeding business, that's a problem!

But nature always seems to find a way, especially when it concerns breeding.

And we are back to the power of the hormones to so radically alter a buck's behavior.

Bucks are the ultimate bachelors and hang together most all of the year. But they have one short time, when it seems they can't stand each other(But they keep in close contact through rubs and scrapes.)

And like boys who have been best of friends all summer, and who find themselves in a scrap outside the dance; the normally docile, pencil-necked bucks change into burley linebackers with short fuses.

Every year during bow season bucks seem to hang back from the main staging areas and sulk until dark just prior to the high point of what we call the "Pre-Rut."

Some old timers call it "The Lull," others may say, "it's the calm before the storm."

But bucks each year act like "wallflowers" at those old dances and just hang back before they start making their moves.