Documentary Notes

     It has been a very cold week without much of a warm up to come in the near future. I went out to the woods Saturday to do some scouting of new areas for possible turkeys but was not able to locate any. Instead of going out into the field in freezing temperatures I decided to look at a PBS documentary of the whitetail and get a fresh perspective on deer from their Nature Series. Not only does this focus on deer in the wild, but also the deer in our backyards all across America's suburbs. The following are pieces that I found relevant to what I am studying. Pardon the note taking style of the following paragraphs.

     The episode starts by showing a deer photographer watching the deer on a recently mowed grass field. Obviously these deer are in a setting where they are use to human presence. The man is sitting within 20 yards from the doe, capturing her every movement with his camera as the deer ignores his presence. The deer are obviously skittish at the same time, using all their senses to look for any sign of danger. The narrator talks about the communication aspect of stomping, twitching, and using the tail to alert their companions of danger as I talked about previously.
     Another thing that I have heard a lot lately is that deer live on the edge. This means that they live where two or more different environments meet. Where the timber meet farmlands, where backyards meet the backwoods.
     There are 30 times as many deer as there were one hundred years ago. Suburbs are a safe haven for deer. They provide an area where the only predator are vehicles and their is a wide diversity of plant species to feast upon. The population is about 20 times what it should be per square mile in many suburban neighborhoods. Homeowners in these areas can be sick of the number of plants these deer will consume. In some cases six foot high fences have been put up and then the deer easily jump over them. Deer have been known to jump over eight foot high obstacles. After eating, deer must rest to digest their food during the day. One reason deer spend so much time near deadly road ways is because it is another edge. Here the constant sunlight means that the plants have the ability to grow much faster. Deer are most active in the early morning and late afternoon. As fall rolls around, the bucks become very active. Again, as I discussed in my communication post, deer communicate using rubs, leaving there scent and making various noises. During the rut bucks think only about impressing the does that are in heat. One of the most exciting interactions to watch between deer is when two bucks battle each other for dominance. These fights can leave one or both deer dead from the exhaustion of the fight. The bucks can lose all fear of humans when a doe comes into heat.
    One biologist is putting cameras on deer to see how deer interact with each other when humans are not around. What they found is that deer will sniff each other when they first meet, and they groom the others to eliminate parasites and sustain a bond between them. The biologists also found that the does also fight very often during the rut. What I noticed that the biologists found was that these deer are extremely adaptable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1wo6lRmmuQ