The Deer Year
There’s no recording of this volume, so your phone reads it out, section by section.
A fallow deer's year in New South Wales, month by month, and what each part of it means for the person holding the rifle.
The year at a glance
Fallow live by a calendar, and the sun keeps it. As the days shorten in autumn, a buck's testosterone climbs. His neck swells, his antlers are hard and polished, and he loses interest in anything that isn't a doe. As the days lengthen in spring, the testosterone drains away and his antlers fall off. Nearly everything else in the year hangs off those two switches.
Our deer are Europeans living upside down. The rut that runs through October in England happens here in late March and April, six months out of step, because the seasons are. Get this calendar into your head and you can walk onto any block in any month and know roughly what the deer are doing before you see one.
The rings, from the outside in
- The rut Not yet. Bucks in velvet or just clean.Building: stands, scrapes, swelling necks Peak, usually early to mid monthWinding downOver for the year
- Antlers Full size, still in velvetGrowth done, velvet rubbed offHard antler Hard. The oldest few may castCasting starts. Most still hardCasting ends, regrowth in velvetGrowing fast in velvet
- Does Fawn at foot, feeding itFawn weaningConceiving PregnantHeavily pregnantFirst fawns, late in the monthPeak fawning
- CoatApproximate Summer coat, spots brightMoulting into winter coatWinter coat, dull and thick Moulting into summer coat
- Movement Quietest of the yearRising as the rut buildsBucks roam, day and night Steady, and all day in a cold snapBusy on the spring growth
Velvet, fawns and heat
Bucks carry full-size antlers, still in velvet. Fawns are a few weeks old, lying up or trailing their mothers. Collared NSW fallow move least in summer, and heat keeps them in cover through the middle of the day, so hunt the first and last hour.
The velvet comes off
The antlers have finished. The velvet dies and bucks thrash it off on saplings, leaving shredded bark and frayed stems at about knee to chest height. A fresh fray is the first clue that bucks are using a patch.
Necks swell, stands appear
Hard antler now. Testosterone climbs, necks thicken and bucks drift towards their rutting grounds. They paw scrapes and thrash scrub, and some are groaning by the middle of the month.
The rut
The peak, usually early to mid April, with the wildest two or three weeks in the middle. Bucks groan through the night, hold their ground and barely eat. Collared NSW bucks moved about 40% further at dawn and dusk and about 80% further at night. It's the one month a buck tells you where he is.
Winding down
The rut tails off. Bucks come out of it gaunt and worn, short of fat after weeks of hardly feeding. A doe that didn't conceive comes back into season about every three weeks, so a few late matings run on into winter.
Recovery
Winter coat, short feed. Bucks are rebuilding what the rut cost them and the sexes drift apart again. Most adult does are now pregnant.
Bachelor mobs
Bucks band together through July and August. Where you find one buck, look for more. In a hard cold snap fallow can be on the move at any time of day.
Hard antler, long nights
Bucks are still hard and still in their groups. The does are about halfway through carrying this year's fawn.
Hard antler, heavy does
Bucks are still in hard antler, and the oldest few may start casting late in the month. The does are heavy now. The spring growth pulls everything out onto the green pick.
Casting starts
Bucks drop their antlers through October and November, oldest first. On any given night you might see a freshly bald old buck, but most are still in hard antler. A cast antler in the grass is the find of the walk. Does are about three-quarters of the way through their pregnancy. Chapter VI is all about this month.
Bald bucks, first fawns
The last bucks cast and the new antlers start growing in velvet. The first fawns arrive late in the month, and a doe slipping away from the mob on her own is often about to give birth.
Fawning, and soft velvet
Peak fawning. Each doe has one fawn, rarely two, and leaves it hidden in long grass for hours while she feeds. A fawn on its own has not been abandoned, so leave it where it is. The bucks are growing new antlers fast, in soft velvet.
How exact is this?
Treat the months as a guide, not a timetable. Australian agencies and deer bodies give windows a few weeks apart, a good season or a drought shifts things, and old bucks run ahead of young ones. The coat ring is the roughest of all: nobody has published Australian moult dates, so those months are worked out from British records, moved six months.
Lore
Fallow in England rut in October and November and drop their fawns in June and July. The same species under a southern sky ruts in April and fawns in December. Nobody had to teach them. The trigger is day length, and down here the days stretch and shrink the other way round.
The rut
The rut is the only time of year a fallow buck stops being careful. In New South Wales it runs from late March into April, about six weeks in all, and peaks in early to mid April, when the wildest two or three weeks are on.
The build-up starts well before. A buck's testes grow from about 20 grams in late summer to about 90 just before the rut, his neck thickens and his Adam's apple stands out like a fist in a sock. Bucks leave the company of other bucks and drift towards traditional rutting grounds, and by the middle of March some are already pawing the ground and groaning.
The groan is the sound of the whole season: a deep, belching croak, repeated over and over, often through the night. The Australian Deer Association likens it to a pig's grunt crossed with a chainsaw starting, which is unkind and fair. You hear a rutting buck long before you see him.
Many mature bucks claim a rutting stand: a small patch they scrape, thrash and groan from, often in a traditional spot used year after year. He walks its edges, sees off rivals and waits for the does to come to him.
Where bucks crowd in, each defends a tiny stand within sight of his neighbours and the does walk through and choose. That cluster is a lek. It's well documented in Europe and seems to depend on how many deer there are. The NSW collar study found bucks' rut movements consistent with lekking.
Some bucks don't bother with a stand and roam between doe groups instead. Collared NSW bucks ranged further during the rut than at any other time, yet a third of them never left their usual home range at all.
The stand
A patch he claims, marks and defends, often in the same place every autumn. He groans from it, patrols its edge and drives off rivals. Find a stand and you have found him, at least for this week.
Scrapes
Patches pawed bare in soft or sandy ground, soaked with urine and marked with the scent gland in front of each eye. Bucks roll in them. A fresh scrape means a buck is using the patch right now.
Frays
Saplings twisted, broken and stripped of bark, usually at knee to chest height. Bucks fray them to strip their velvet in February and thrash them hardest in the rut. Fresh ones show pale wood and hanging bark.
The does
They come to the stand, or the buck goes to them. The first season in a mob is synchronised, so most of the does come into season within about a fortnight of each other.
A lek
Several bucks, each holding a tiny stand in sight of the others, with the does choosing between them. Documented in Europe where fallow are thick on the ground, and NSW tracking data fit the pattern.
You
Wind in your face, slow, and using cover. A groaning buck gives away his position, but in the rut so can another hunter's call. Identify the whole animal, every time, and never fire at a sound.
Rivals size each other up first, pacing alongside each other, and plenty of arguments end right there. When they don't, the antlers crash together and it turns into a shoving match. The stronger buck usually wins, which is not always the one with the bigger head.
A buck in the thick of the rut barely eats. He comes out of it gaunt and worn, and because the rut ends just as winter arrives, some struggle to get their condition back before the cold. The meat suffers too. A rutting buck's venison takes on the smell of the rut, so he is not the animal you want on the table.
Never fire at a sound
The rut is when hunters call: rattling antlers together or copying the croak to make a buck answer. The groan you are creeping towards might be a person. Identify the whole animal before the safety comes off.
Lore
A buck's groan comes out of his nose and his mouth at the same time: researchers who scanned and modelled the fallow vocal tract found both at work. Like several deer, bucks can also pull the larynx down the throat as they call, which deepens the sound, and the deepest groans come from the biggest, most dominant bucks. It's a boast you can measure.
Casting and velvet
Antlers are bone, and a buck grows a new set every year. The stalk it grows from, the pedicle, is a permanent part of his skull. Every spring the antler on top of it breaks away at the base and falls off. That's casting.
Casting runs through October and November, and the oldest, most dominant bucks go first, a few of them as early as September. Young bucks cast later, so in October you can see an old buck bald-headed while a youngster nearby is still carrying hard antler.
Regrowth starts on the bare pedicle, inside velvet: a soft, furry skin full of blood vessels that feeds the bone as it builds. It's quick work. By December most bucks are growing new antlers in soft velvet, and by February the set is finished, three to four months from bare pedicle to full size. Then the velvet dies, the buck rubs and thrashes it off on saplings, and the bone underneath hardens and polishes up in time for the rut.
Cast
The old antler drops off the pedicle and leaves a raw, weeping scab. The oldest bucks go first, a few as early as September, and the young ones last. Cast antlers turn up in the grass from September to November.
Velvet knobs
Soon the pedicle is growing again under a cap of velvet. A buck at this stage looks like a doe with lumps on its head, so check for the brush under his belly and the thickness of his neck before you call it.
Beam and brow
The main beam pushes up and back, and the brow tine shoots forward just above the burr. Every tip is soft, swollen and rounded.
The palm forms
A second forward tine, the trez, appears, and above it the beam flattens out into the palm, the shovel that makes a fallow a fallow. Still velvet, still growing.
Full size, in velvet
Growth slows as the antler reaches full size inside a fuzz of velvet that blurs every edge. The points along the back of the palm, the spellers, are blunt bumps for now.
Velvet stripped
Growth is finished. The velvet dies and the buck rubs and thrashes it off on saplings, and for a while it hangs in bloody strips. Fresh frays, shredded bark at knee to chest height, are the sign to look for.
Hard and clean
Polished, hard and sharp. He carries this set through the rut and the winter, and drops it next spring.
A buck's first set, in his second year, is a pair of spikes or knobs, which is why the old name for him is a pricket. The brow and trez usually arrive with his second set, and palms with the third or fourth. Full potential takes six or seven years, and an old buck's antlers shrink again, which hunters call going back.
Food, shelter and a quiet life usually count for more than breeding, so a buck on good country with few deer grows a better head than his brother on a crowded, overgrazed block. Weighed on farmed bucks, the jump is steepest between three and five years old:
Fig. 4Average antler mass by age, from 31 farmed bucks in Poland.
Lore
The fallow's closest living relative is the giant deer of the Ice Age, the so-called Irish elk, which carried the biggest antlers of any deer that ever lived. Both its DNA and its bones point the same way. Look at a fallow palm and you are looking at a scaled-down copy of the most extravagant headgear in history.
The doe's year
A doe's year is simpler than a buck's and harder work. She comes into season in the rut, carries a single fawn through autumn, winter and spring, gives birth at the start of summer and feeds it through the hottest months. Then she does it all again.
Most does conceive in April. Their first season, or oestrus, is synchronised across a mob, all within about a fortnight, and a doe that doesn't take comes back into season about every three weeks. That's how a few late conceptions run on into winter. In many populations nine adult does in ten or more end up pregnant. Yearlings manage it less often.
Pregnancy lasts about 230 days, roughly seven and a half months. The first fawns arrive in late November, the peak is in December, and stragglers keep turning up into January.
When her time comes, a doe usually slips away from the mob to give birth. One fawn, rarely two, weighing about four kilos. For its first days the fawn's entire defence is to lie flat and still in long grass while its mother feeds somewhere else, sometimes for hours. She comes back to feed it, and once it's strong enough to keep up she brings it back to the mob.
Fawns depend on their mothers for three or four months and may suckle for longer. The young does stay on in their mother's group, which is often led by an older doe. The young bucks leave at about a year old and join the bachelors.
If you find a fawn
Leave it. It isn't lost and it hasn't been abandoned. Its mother is close and will be back once you've gone. If someone has already picked it up, put it back exactly where it was found and walk away. Don't hang about to watch. You are the reason she isn't coming back.
Lore
The old English names didn't stop at bucks. A doe in her second year was a pricket's sister, or a teg. After that she was simply a doe, which tells you something about who was writing the books.
The daily round
Fallow are crepuscular: they move most around dawn and dusk. When researchers fitted GPS collars to 68 fallow on three grazing properties in New South Wales, all three sites told the same story, for bucks and does alike. The big movements came around sunrise and sunset.
In between, they live on a loop. Undisturbed deer feed, then lie up in cover to chew the cud, then feed again, every two to four hours. Their beds are called couches, and you'll find them as flattened ovals in grass or bracken, often with a few hairs left behind. Old deer come out later in the evening and go back to cover earlier in the morning than young ones, which is part of how they got old.
Pressure changes all of it. Deer that are hunted hard switch to feeding at night and lying up in thick cover by day. Keep harassing them and they leave.
Night
Feeding in the open, on and off. Fallow use open country after dark, and hunted deer do most of their eating at night. This is spotlight time.
First light
The busiest hour is coming. Deer are drifting from the feed towards cover. Be where you want to be before it's light enough to see.
Sunrise
The morning peak. On cold mornings look for deer on east-facing edges, standing in the first sun.
Morning
Deer drift back into cover and bed down. Glass the edges and shaded slopes for the last ones moving.
Midday
Bedded and chewing the cud, getting up for a feed every few hours. In heat they stay put. A good time to check sign and the wind, and to sleep.
Afternoon
Restless. Deer stand, stretch and start feeding close to cover. Get into position, with the wind right, before they come out.
Sunset
The evening peak, and on this trip the main game. The oldest animals tend to come out last, often right on dark.
Dark
Back to feeding in the open, and back to the spotlight off the ute.
Before heavy rain
Deer often have a burst of feeding just before heavy rain arrives. If a big front is coming in, be out ahead of it.
In heavy rain
They shelter. If the rain sets in for days, they give up waiting and come out to feed anyway.
When the sun comes out after rain
Deer move out into the open to get away from dripping trees.
Cold wind
They avoid the open and feed on the sheltered side of timber and hills. Hunt the lee slopes.
Heat
Movement shrinks to dawn, dusk and night. The middle of a hot day is for sleeping, theirs and yours.
Hard frost
Deer lie up and feed where the sun warms first, so on cold days they can be up and about in the warmest part of the day.
The moon: evidence and folklore
Hunters argue about the moon more than anything else in this chapter. British deer managers note that deer tend to move more under a bright moon than on dark nights. Solunar tables go much further and promise set feeding times every day from the moon's position. They grew out of fishing folklore an American angler gathered in the 1920s, not out of deer research. Treat them as folklore with a following.
On the Silent Grove weekend the moon turns new at about 2:50 on Sunday morning, so the nights will be as dark as they get.
Lore
Deer hair is hollow, and it kinks like a bent drinking straw. Find a fresh couch, pick up one of the hairs left behind and fold it, and you'll see it for yourself.
October, when we're here
The Silent Grove weekend sits in the middle of spring, about as far from the rut as the calendar allows. It's an honest look at fallow in their working clothes: does heavy in fawn, bucks carrying last season's hard antler right up to the day it drops, and everybody feeding hard on the spring growth.
Bucks. Mostly in hard antler or freshly cast. Casting runs through October and November with the oldest bucks first, so on any night you might see a bald old buck with raw pedicles next to younger ones still carrying a full hard set. The new antlers come later, growing in velvet through summer. Bucks mostly keep their own company at this time of year, away from the does.
Does. Most adult does are heavily pregnant and feeding hard. Last summer's fawns, now about ten months old, are still running with them, the young does especially. The young bucks have left or are about to.
Coats. The dull winter coat should be giving way to summer's chestnut and spots, so expect animals to look patchy and scruffy. The timing here is a best estimate, worked out from British records.
A freshly cast buck at a hundred metres in poor light looks a lot like a doe. Before anyone calls it, look for three things. The brush, the tuft of hair hanging under his belly, is there all year and easy to see on a buck. His neck is thicker, his throat carries a prominent Adam's apple, and his whole build is heavier. And look hard at the top of the head for the pedicles, with raw scabs where the antlers came off.
A doe looks lighter and smoother all over, and she stands slightly higher at the hip than at the shoulder. She has a tuft too, below the tail, but her long tail usually hides it.
A bald buck
A doe
- 1PediclesTwo bony stubs on top of the head, raw where the antlers dropped off.
- 2Neck and throatThick, with a prominent Adam's apple. Bucks are heavier all over.
- 3The brushA tuft of hair under the belly. There all year, antlers or not.
- 4Smooth headNo pedicles, no knobs, and a longer face on an older doe.
- 5Slim neckLighter and smoother. She stands a touch higher at the hip than the shoulder.
- 6No brushHer tuft sits under the tail, usually hidden.
Is it legal to shoot deer in October?
In New South Wales, yes. There are no deer seasons for any species, on any land, at any time of year, and since September 2019 deer on private land haven't needed a game licence, just the landholder's permission. Firearms law still applies in full, and The Law in NSW covers it. Anyone telling you October is a closed season is remembering older rules, or another place.
Then what's the issue?
Biology. A doe in October is about three-quarters of the way through a pregnancy of about 230 days, and in many populations nine adult does in ten or more are carrying. Shoot a doe this month and you are almost certainly ending two lives, one of them a fawn six to ten weeks from being born. That's not a reason to look away from it. It's a reason to make the decision on purpose.
Why shoot does at all?
Because the does are the population. One buck can cover many does, so taking bucks barely changes how many fawns are born next summer. British deer managers reckon a fifth of the females may need culling every year just to hold a fallow population steady. Australia's National Feral Deer Action Plan says control means removing more deer than are born, around 35 to 50% of the animals in an area each year, with females the priority. Feral deer are a priority pest in every Local Land Services region in NSW, and landholders carry them on their pasture all year.
What changes after October?
From late November the question becomes the fawn at foot. A doe shot between December and March may be feeding a fawn that still needs her milk. The NSW Game Hunting Licence Code of Practice requires licence holders to make every reasonable effort to find and humanely kill the dependent young of a lactating female they shoot, and it's the right standard for anyone. In October that problem hasn't started: last summer's fawns are about ten months old and long past needing her.
And the bucks?
A buck in October is carrying an old set he's about to drop, or nothing at all. Hard antler is still hard antler right up to the day it falls, so some bucks will be wearing full heads on the weekend and some will be bald. The venison is the same either way, and taking a buck in spring leaves the next generation of fawns untouched.
Who makes the call on the night?
Whoever is guiding you. Ask them what they take in spring, and why. It's one of the better conversations you'll have all weekend, and you'll learn more about the animal in five minutes than this book can teach you.