Our neighbor comes down about once a week, especially now that the rut is in full swing, to share a beer and videos of animals on our game cameras.
This week was particularly entertaining. The third video on the camera card started with this very nice adult buck visiting the scrape. Typical behavior of reaching for the licking branch above to smell and leave scent, scraping the soil, and urinating on the scrape.
Four hours later, this little guy showed up. The videos get increasingly entertaining!
Clearly this buck has the right idea, but needs some finessing of his moves. He needs a boost to reach the licking branch. His attempt at scraping the ground needs more front leg action and less rear leg. He almost fell over backwards a couple of times!
After watching these videos it would not be a leap of faith to suggest that older, mature bucks dominate the breeding in the herd. However, research has shown that yearling bucks are nearly as successful as adult bucks!
It took genetics to poke holes in the “...the long-held assumption that male reproductive success in [white-tailed deer] is highly skewed toward a small number of mature, dominant individuals.” Across 3 deer populations with different age structures, DeYoung et al. (2009) found that 1.5- and 2.5-yr-old males fathered 30-33% of offspring.
The finding that many bucks contribute their genes to the next generation has important implications for deer management. Foremost is the fact that hunting regulations (e.g., antler point restrictions) will have limited influence on the genetics of a white-tailed deer population. [But note that this may not be true for other species with different breeding behaviors and lower reproductive rates.]
Another reason to be amazed at the resilience and adaptability of the white-tailed deer! It is a species that can sustain harvest rates of as much as 80% of antlered males and yet retain a sex ratio of less than 3 females for every male.
Those young bucks may not look competent, but they get the job done.
-Duane Diefenbach