Early roe rings...

[J Darcy 5,870]

See wildlife section for pic.

[foxdropper 17,092]

See wildlife section for pic.

 

 

False rut i fear .

[novice 25]

I thought I would put this in this thread as I'm hoping Foxdropper can shed some light on the matter.

 

Just how early is it possible to see rutting behaviour? I ask having returned from a 2 day trip to Dumfires and Galloway. We saw 13 deer over the 2 days, 3 of which were bucks.

 

Of the bucks, 2 of them were seen travelling across open fields. They were undisturbed and weren't feeding, but moving across goodly distances, sniffing, rootling about and generally 'on a mission'.

 

The chap I was with felt that they were displaying behaviour more normally seen in the rut and was amazed to see it at this time of year (to be honest he was surprised that we saw 3 bucks at all and that they were so far away from cover).

 

He suggested that the hot weather (costa del Galloway - it must have been mid twenties on Saturday) may have brought on the behaviour.

 

So the quesiton is, has anyone seen anything similar this week/time of year, can anyone explain what they were up to and what is the earliest folks have seen the rut start

 

Cheers,

 

Novice

[v-max 2]

The doe goes & gets the buck she wants to mate with what you have see is the build up & bucks on the move testing there marches or neighbouring bucks.

Dont take this to heart but for anybody new to this i would advise they read up on the species of deer they stalk & learn there behavour & patterns as what you have seen is normal & may/june are very good months to catch them out on the move & see new bucks or big bucks.

[novice 25]

The doe goes & gets the buck she wants to mate with what you have see is the build up & bucks on the move testing there marches or neighbouring bucks.

Dont take this to heart but for anybody new to this i would advise they read up on the species of deer they stalk & learn there behavour & patterns as what you have seen is normal & may/june are very good months to catch them out on the move & see new bucks or big bucks.

 

 

Cheers for the reply v-max. I'm more than happy to listen to people such as yourself who are out there and doing it. I try to read everything I can on stalking and don't doubt that I will never stop learning. I was looking for comments as the guy I was with, and others he had spoken to, expect June to be fairly quiet with so much cover about and we were surprised to see them well out into the fields.