Maine Outdoor Journal

Throughout my life, veteran woodsmen have taught me plenty about nature, but occasionally, they have steered me wrong – way wrong.

One example involves the timing of the rut. In my youth, experienced deer hunters swore that unseasonably cold weather kicked off the rut. But an impressive, long-term research project from the Maritimes to the Carolinas proved that polarized light influences when white-tailed deer breed.

In short, whether the thermometer plummets below freezing or stays unseasonably warm, most deer along much of the Eastern Seaboard procreate over a certain 10-day period every year, starting around Nov. 13 to 15 and running through Nov. 23 to 25.

The study impresses reasonable minds, too. State and provincial wildlife biologists in this vast region took myriad fetuses from does killed in auto accidents and determined the exact age of each one. Data revealed that bucks impregnated most does over that 10-day period in November, particularly in the opening days.

No one should criticize deer hunters of yesteryear too harshly, though. They lacked scientific training, so a point about deer behavior could easily lead to such a mistake.

Cold snaps influence whitetails to wander widely, so naturally, they leave tracks behind them everywhere in their travels. Bucks also make more scrapes and rubs over a wider range, too. Hunters noticed the increased signs and erroneously thought that plummeting temperatures had started the rut.

However, in warm weather, bucks and does mate just as much, but they do it in a smaller core area, creating much less sign. Lack of widespread tracks, rubs and scrapes makes hunters think deer haven't gone into rut yet.

Rut ranks as one of the most misleading terms in hunting, beginning with a fact. Does determine breeding time, not rutting bucks. For example, bucks go into rut from around mid-October to well into December, but most of the breeding occurs in the 10-day period when the majority of does enter the estrus cycle.

The exception to the 10-day rule follows: Older does may go into estrus in October and younger females in December. In a nutshell, nature insures that bucks impregnate does whenever females are physically able.

Science has debunked another long-held belief about deer behavior. In my youth, the average hunter often called bucks "cowards" because does would walk down trails and across fields ahead of the males, particularly old monarchs. Furthermore, bucks exhibited this behavioral trait all year – not just when does were breeding, leading to the fallacious assumption.

Bucks have a reason for trailing behind, though, and it involves defending smaller and immature deer:

All animals travel with their noses into the wind, which tells them what predators lie ahead in ambush. The one weakness involves the back trail, which is naturally on the downwind side. A predator can sneak up from behind without the prey smelling the approaching danger.

So, for animals such as deer that travel in groups, the dominant male guards the back trail while smaller members of the group travel ahead. In short, as spineless as this behavior might appear, the dominant male is protecting his group's one Achilles' heel.

This thought about old timers steering us wrong popped to mind just this week while looking at a wonderful tree book put out by the Department of Conservation (DOC) – "Forest Trees of Maine" with a subtitle "Centennial Edition 1908–2008."

All my life, I have misidentified green ash because of a mistake my father made in my youth. As we walked along a brook behind our home, he pointed out a pair of green ashes and said the trees were black ashes.

Because of that erroneous info, I had mixed up the two species most of my life, and why not? For decades, I've walked by these two trees that my father had called black ash and took his word as gospel.

No one should judge my father harshly, though. In his lifetime, woodcutters over-harvested black ash, a valuable wood in basket-making. This abuse made the species somewhat rare in central Maine, and unfamiliarity leads to mistakes.

This topic reminds me of a sociology professor who once told our class that occasionally – and he emphasized the word occasionally – "collective ignorance" proved a good definition for "common sense."

To a rural Maine teenager, that notion smacked of blasphemy, but examples such as cold weather starting the rut, bucks being cowards and me mixing up ash species have led me to think the good professor had it right.

Ken Allen of Belgrade Lakes is a writer, editor and photographer. Contact him at:

KAllyn800@aol.com