What do sleeping and smelling have in common? Read on.
By the way, the Rut Tracker is updated, so check that out after you read this post.
It is now just past the peak of the rut (but maybe it’s a late rut this year?!). This morning I watched a buck out the kitchen window. The same one the neighbor and I have seen on our game cameras. His nose was to the ground and he was on a mission.
Going through our game camera videos that night, we came across this interesting sequence. Each video is only 10 sec. Check it out.
That’s right. She decides to bed down right in front of the camera at a scrape that has been used now for at least a dozen years!
Her resting bout begins at 3:03 am. Look carefully in the next video at what you can see just above her back.
Yes, a fawn bedded down with her.
Over an hour and a half later she got up and walked off. The fawn is still bedded down but got up about 7 minutes later at 4:43 am.
Then it gets interesting. Three hours later a 1.5-yr-old buck arrives and what does her do? He starts sniffing where the adult doe was bedded. Check it out.
And then what does he do? Again, you have to watch.
Finally, he checks out the fawn’s bed site.
The two doe that rested in front of our game camera spent about an hour and a half bedded. Then 3 hours after they left a buck arrived and sensed their recent presence and left his own message.
As humans, we have have no idea what deer smell. We have written about this before but it still boggles the mind. How can a deer tell that another had rested at a spot hours later? It is obvious that this is a key way they communicate and interact with the world.
All I can say is good luck thinking your special scent attractants, neutralizing odor chemicals, odor-absorbing clothing, and scent-destroying technology is going to fool a white-tailed deer.
On a related note, I am equally fascinated that my setters can smell a grouse or woodcock 20 yards away. But then why do they have to roll in cowpies?
-Duane Diefenbach
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