The Hidden Life of Deer

by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

  But how must this affect a male? After all his scraping and rubbing, after all his sparring and fighting, what is he supposed to do if the hard-won doe he has just bred squats and squeezes out his semen? Should he keep tending her in hopes that he can breed her again? Should he go looking for a more willing female? If she gets rid of his semen she will cycle again, so if he leaves her, will he be handing her over to one of his rivals?

  I saw a buck in such a dilemma in our field in mid-November 2008, the year after the ten-point buck was murdered. That day, a four-point buck tried to mate with the younger daughter of the Deltas. This was an unusual sight, as hunting season was in progress. I knew for sure that people were hunting illegally, either on my land, which is posted, or on the Wapack Wildlife Reserve—also posted—on North Pack Mountain, which abuts my land to the east. Now and then we’d hear a gunshot. Normally, deer seldom appear in my field in the daytime during hunting season, except to spar occasionally. These deer did, though. The Delta daughter was unworried, and the buck couldn’t resist the scent of estrus. He spent quite a while sniffing under her tail or trying to. She was grazing and wasn’t very interested in him, although she didn’t rebuff him. At last he mounted her, extruded his pale penis, and penetrated her. She stood still for a few moments, but then pushed backward and dislodged him. She went on grazing, making her way toward the woods. He followed at a distance. It wasn’t clear to me whether or not he had ejaculated. Perhaps not. But even if he did, he could not be sure he had impregnated her and would still need to follow her to try to keep another male from mating with her too. Only if she stopped cycling could he be sure.

  Obviously a male in his situation can’t just relax and start eating for winter. He must keep on scraping and rubbing, threatening the smaller males, cautious of the bigger males, sparring with his equals. Testosterone is flaming inside him, burning up whatever fat reserves he may have gained in summer, and only if he finds sufficient food in early winter will he be able to restore himself to prime condition. This doesn’t always happen. Therefore male whitetails are often vulnerable to winter, dying at a rate that requires the species to compensate. More males are born than females. We do that too. Baby boys outnumber baby girls, allegedly to compensate for our warlike inclinations. Like war, a rut is conducted at the expense of life and profoundly engages all those who are involved with it, at enormous cost to one but not both genders. As far as male deer are concerned, the rut is the ultimate distraction.

  Our response is to open the hunting season. Taking full advantage of the needs and distraction of the deer, we fill the woods with invasive primates camouflaged to look like piles of leaves who sneak around, sprinkling estrus doe urine and manipulating gadgets that sound like antlers clashing, all designed to trick rut-consumed males into coming in their direction. The obvious quarry of most hunters is the large bucks, those with impressive antlers who have managed to survive several winters and who, if they were left alive to breed, would pass their abilities to the next generation. It goes without saying that a deer population is better off if the strongest, most vital animals are alive and breeding than if their heads are on somebody’s wall. However, a certain amount of semi-science is offered to support their slaughter—when they’re gone, it is argued, the younger bucks can breed and thus diversify the gene pool. In reality, of course, the little bucks are probably the sons of the big eight-pointers and won’t be offering much diversity. It’s complicated, of course, and a number of truly scientific studies have been done on exactly this issue, but the long and the short of it is that any population that manages itself is following the evolutionary path set by Gaia, and is normally better off than if another, less knowledgeable species such as ours interferes with it.

  During the rut of 2007, the deer were doubly disadvantaged by seemingly unlimited snow in which they had no choice but to leave footprints, enabling hunters to track them. The snow also dampened and buried the dry autumn leaves, which in a normal year would make rustling noises when stepped on and would warn the deer of an approaching hunter. In the snowy autumn of 2007, the hunters walked in silence. That year in New Hampshire, the fatalities were legendary—an estimated 13,416 deer were killed, or 15 percent of New Hampshire’s deer population. A similar slaughter in human terms would eliminate all the people in two of New Hampshire’s biggest cities, Manchester and Nashua, along with the populations of several towns. The number of reported fatalities does not include deer who were shot but escaped the hunter and died later. There are always some of these too—witness the corpse of the ten-point buck on our neighbor’s property—but no one knows how many. At least the corpses feed the bears and bobcats and coyotes who also will be trying to survive the winter. With all due respect to the nation’s Fish and Game departments, more deer die because people hunt them than because people feed them. No matter how opposed to deer-feeding some people may be, no one has ever suggested that extra food in winter could result in a death toll of such magnitude.

  The rut tapers off in December, just in time for the most serious part of winter. In response to the fading rut as well as to pineal information, the testosterone level in the males drops, so the males cast their antlers, first one, later the other. After midwinter comes the equinox, a signal that nonwinter is at hand. The balancing hours of daylight and dark inform whitetail metabolisms to get moving. All the deer who came for my corn seemed hungry, but very little food was in the woods. However, twigs were budding and the days were getting warmer. At the edge of the pond, the beavers began to cut down a tree that would fall uphill, butt end toward the water. On April 17, two nights before the full moon, frogs began to sing in the swamp.

  At about that time, the deer resumed their nonwinter behavior. For the past six weeks or so, I had watched my deer arrive less regularly, without the Alpha Group, who might not have wanted to cross the weakening ice, and without the Taus, who may have been unable to come and may have suffered terribly. None of the deer came every day, and at last only two groups came reasonably regularly. These were the Delta mother and her two daughters, and the five wonderful Betas—the mother, her grown daughter, and her three fawns, including the fawn she may have adopted. In the late afternoon, I would see these deer in the field with their heads down, grazing. During a period of about two weeks, they seemed to leave the woods exactly when the shadow of the hill touched the edge of the woods and the sun stood four fingers above the horizon. (For those unfamiliar with the ways of the woods, an ancient way of telling time is to hold one’s hand at arm’s length so that one’s fingers are between the sun and the horizon.) The deer timed their arrival precisely. Day after day I’d watch for the shadow and note the elevation of the sun. And just as the deer started up the hill, the shadow would touch the edge of the woods and the sun would be exactly at four fingers. What had they been waiting for? The shadow? The elevation of the sun? Something else I hadn’t noticed? I couldn’t answer my own questions because the deer behaved in this manner only for a short time, then gave up the interesting practice. They continued to come, but later.

  When the moon rose, the two groups of deer would go back to the woods, the Betas to the ridge to the east, the Deltas to the trail past the swamp. Later in the night both groups would reemerge to make their way up the hill and lie down in our field in the moonlight. If I came up the driveway at night, the deer would stand up and my headlights would shine in their eyes, first into five pairs of eyes at various distances from the ground on the right side of the hilltop—the Betas—and then, as the headlights swept around to the left side, into three more pairs of eyes, all about the same distance from the ground—the Deltas. Right through the end of May I’d see their eyes shining, but when the weather grew hot I didn’t. Perhaps the deer were deep in the woods, keeping cool, doing their best to avoid the black flies and mosquitoes. Or perhaps I simply couldn’t see them because the grass was too long. I know they sometimes came, though—a sleeping deer curls up in the grass, which flattens i
t into a deer-size circle, and I’d find their empty beds.

  With the winter of 2008–2009 just seven months away, the next task for deer was to give birth. At this time, the mature, pregnant females supposedly chase off their daughters and live alone, or they do according to the literature. The various authors seem quite specific. For instance, according to one of them, “The whitetail doe isolates herself on a small territory, driving off other deer, including any of last year’s young who are still tagging along.”[3] I do believe this to be partly true, not just because it pervades the literature, but also because, one spring, I happened to see a doe trying to chase away her yearling daughter. This took place on an old logging road in the woods to the west of our house. I was surprised. Normally, the only other times I saw deer in the woods, I was up in the tree by our swamp, hoping to see wildlife. Now and then I’d see a coyote or a fox, and now and then a beaver or two swimming down their homemade channels in the swamp water, but only rarely would I see a deer go by. Therefore, just to be walking through the woods and chance upon a deer seemed unusual. Yet there they were, the two of them, about fifty feet away, going in the same direction that I was.

  They didn’t notice me. That also was unusual. They were preoccupied with each other. The daughter was trying to nurse from the mother, but the mother kept driving her away. The daughter would try to follow the mother, and the mother would turn on her and kick her. There was no resolution to this scene—I stood still while the two crossed the path in front of me and while the mother jumped over a stone wall into a thick part of the woods, as if running away from the daughter. Despondent, the daughter followed slowly. The two reemerged farther down the path, the daughter still begging, still trying to nurse from time to time, and the mother still dashing away or kicking at her. Many animals—dogs, for example—are good at judging whether or not their efforts are productive. If not, dogs stop trying, thus saving time and energy, which is to any animal’s advantage. Dogs are very good at this, belying the word “dogged” as a synonym for “tenacious.” I don’t know how long a deer will persist, but it’s longer than I would have thought, because when I saw the two for the last time, perhaps half an hour later, the daughter was still trying to nurse from her mother.

  What did this mean? My guess—having watched deer more carefully since that time, and considering the season, which was spring—is that the mother had recently given birth. Her newborn fawn, of course, would have been hiding somewhere, but the milk in her udder would have been giving off its scent, and the yearling could have taken the scent to be an invitation. Maybe she thought the milk was for her.

  Surely she remembered nursing. Most animals, certainly the so-called higher vertebrates, have enviable long-term memories. The yearling probably remembered the satisfaction of milk, her mother’s warm flank, the summer sunshine, the security. Since then, she had survived her first winter. Young as she was, she had learned as much as anyone can about hunger, the freezing wind, the heavy snow—and during that time she might have thought about the meals of milk she had enjoyed a few months earlier. Perhaps her mother had nursed her through at least part of the winter, as a doe will sometimes do if she has milk. The practice may have saved many a fawn from starving. Perhaps the yearling was still thinking about this in the spring. The winter must have been hard on her. She seemed very needy.

  Thus in the spring of 2008, I found it interesting to see the Betas and the Deltas still together. This alone cast some doubt upon the massive literature about whitetail birth, and my guess is that at least some of the various authors got their information from reading one another’s publications. As Dr. Rue points out, very few people have seen a doe give birth, alone or otherwise. He has seen several births on deer farms, not exactly wild conditions, but similar. On one occasion he was able to witness a primapara doe in labor that can only have been extremely difficult, but probably was not abnormal. The doe was alone when her water broke at nine o’clock in the morning, and the fawn wasn’t born until one o’clock in the afternoon after a hard and very painful labor. Most members of the deer and cattle families give birth standing up, at least for some of the time if not for the entire process, and so do whitetails who have given birth before. This seems to be as true for other mammals as it is for people—any woman can tell you that the second or third delivery is easier than the first. In one case, according to an observer, the doe went right on walking and browsing as the fawn slowly slid out of her. She seemed to scarcely notice, let alone experience discomfort. But some whitetails lie down, getting up from time to time, just as many women want to under similar conditions. A standing cow or hind arches her back and tucks her hips to let the weight of the calf pull it down and out. But the doe that Dr. Rue was watching lay twisted on her side, moaning bitterly and bearing down hard, with only the fawn’s front legs emerging. When the laboring doe struggled to her feet, the fawn’s legs slid back in. Dr. Rue tells us that she moved around restlessly, moaning and suffering, coming back to her chosen spot to lie down and try again. After four long hours, she delivered her fawn. Dr. Rue wrote, “It was the hardest birthing I have witnessed.”[4]

  In the wild, a doe in these circumstances is extremely vulnerable, especially if she is having more than one fawn. There they all are—the mother consumed by pain, one fawn still in her birth canal, another fawn weak and wet beside her and hopelessly ignorant, having been in the world for only a few minutes. Nothing could be more tempting to a predator, so why would a doe want to do this by herself? Why would she take such a risk unless she had to?

  Some animals won’t. After hearing this story, my friend Katy Payne, who visited me while this book was in progress, reminded me of elephants she and I had known in the Washington Park Zoo in Seattle. There, alone in a cage, a young primapara elephant labored painfully for most of a day, moaning terribly and very loudly but not delivering the calf. In an adjoining cage, other elephants were also bellowing—her mother and another female. At the time, people knew next to nothing about elephant birth, but at last, almost in desperation, her keepers opened a gate and let the two other elephants join her. Within moments after they hurried in, the young elephant delivered her calf.

  I find it hard to believe that any primapara of a social species prefers to labor alone. Looking through the lens of the Kalahari where, in the past, the women gave birth alone in the veld, I remember that the primapara women had their mothers with them when birthing, and were alone only for subsequent births. I recall my own birthing experiences, especially the first, during which I was in no shape to defend myself. I was alone, due to now outdated hospital regulations, right up until the baby was crowning, at which point a man came storming in and slashed my vulva with a scalpel. I yearned for someone to protect me. As for the deer, it struck me that most of the births recorded in the literature took place on deer farms or in places like deer farms, where the social arrangements of the deer could have been distorted. Dr. Rue’s observations—useful and compelling as they are—were of deer in somewhat unnatural situations.

  So in the spring of 2008, I kept watch on my field for the Betas and the Deltas. They usually came in the afternoon, the Betas from the woods to the east, the Deltas from the southeast, and they grazed until after sundown. Because a doe who is bulky with pregnancy cannot run at full speed and thus cannot readily escape a predator, fetal fawns gain most of their birth weight all at once, at the very end of gestation. My slender Betas and Deltas seemed not to be pregnant at all until early June, at which point the two mothers ballooned. Their daughters didn’t. Day after day I kept watching, expecting to see the mothers slimmed down, but still they kept coming, as huge as ever, eating and looking, eating and looking, going back to the woods in the evening to lie down and chew their food.

  It was at this time that the Betas vanished. But the Deltas kept coming, the mother still bulging. One day it rained, but the Deltas came anyway. Toward evening the three of them headed off to the woods, in no parti
cular hurry. Luckily, I was watching them with binoculars, because just as they reached the edge of the woods, I saw the Delta mother pause. Then something huge, shiny, and pink slid out of her vagina. Her two daughters strolled past her and she followed them into the woods.

  What had I seen? At first, I thought it was a fawn—the mother had given birth before and might not expect much difficulty—but why, if it was a fawn, didn’t the mother then tend to it? Then I thought it might be a placenta, although a doe normally eats the placenta, and if it was a placenta, what had happened to the fawn? I felt I had to know. So without taking my eyes off the place where this happened, I waited until the deer were away in the woods, and then went to take a look. The sky had cleared but the grass in the field was still shining with raindrops, and through the grass each deer had left a highly visible trail by knocking off the raindrops. The Delta mother’s trail was in the middle, and I followed it to the exact place where I knew for a fact that the pink thing had emerged. And there, I found nothing. No fawn, and no placenta. So what had I seen? I realized it must have been a gush of sunlit birth water, which the wet earth had absorbed. This meant that not far from where I was standing, the Delta mother was soon to start labor. I left quietly, walking quickly but in a casual manner to show anyone who might be watching that I had business elsewhere, and other things on my mind.

  This doe had made no effort to get away from her daughters. On the contrary, she had followed them into the woods. So why is it said that a doe gives birth alone? Some do, obviously, but all of them? What advantage would that give? A companion would pose no danger, and the social groups of other ungulates protect one another, either intentionally, like musk oxen, or by the sheer force of numbers, like wildebeests. Could anything but good come from having a companion or two? Wouldn’t a doe in labor be better off with grown daughters nearby, to fight off a predator, should one be drawn to the scene by the possible moaning and the smell of blood? I will always remember the three deer mentioned earlier—who in retrospect were surely a mother and her two daughters—who threatened a coyote with snorts and foot stamping, and I will always remember the demeanor of the coyote, who was half hidden by a boulder but nevertheless was seriously worried by the aggressive deer, and tried to seem unimportant until he could sneak around the boulder and take off. It was thus my impression that the Delta mother, when she went into labor, would welcome her daughters nearby. It certainly seemed, when she followed them into the woods, that she had no objection whatever to their presence and would not have followed them if she did.