deernut

I don't know if it is appropriate to post a large piece like this, but it is related to this topic. This is an article I published in the NRA's Hunter Magazine in about 2001. Jim Heffelfinger http://www.deernut.com Stalking Bears and Vice Versa On a warm August afternoon I was hiking in the beautiful Chiricahua Mountains along the borders with Mexico and New Mexico. During this particular trip I was accompanied by retired wildlife researcher Jerry Day and we were looking for deer/vegetation research plots located back in the rugged canyons of this mountain range. Jerry had not visited these research plots in the 40 years since he completed his research on the relationships between high deer populations and important forage plants. After a few hours of trying to keep up with my 70-year-old companion, we located the most inaccessible study plot and sat to rest. Jerry remarked that the hills had become steeper in the intervening years - either by perception or recent geologic activity. Not long into our rest, we heard the bleating distress call of a Coues white-tailed deer fawn across the canyon. After a short search with binoculars, we located the fawn but only by the wild flapping wings of the hungry golden eagle which was attached, via sharp talons, to its back. The fawn was trying to seek cover in the scattered oak brush but the eagle's flapping wings slowed his progress. As we watched this remarkable scene, it was obvious the eagle would make quick work of the fawn and we would witness an event few people have the opportunity to see. Suddenly, the large bird of prey flew away and we wondered what would make this eagle abandon such a sure meal. We did not wonder long, for the eagle was almost immediately replaced by a young black bear who had come running to the sound of the fawn's distress. The fawn had hid amongst the brush and the bear simply waited for some direction. It soon came with a loud bleat from the nearly scrub oak. The bear charged immediately for the sound; there was no question what he was there for. After a few minutes of cat and mouse, or rather bear and fawn, the fawn succumbed to the inevitable and the bear slept well with a full stomach that night. A month later the bear season in that mountain range opened. I was confident because I knew there was a bear in that area that associated the sound of a fawn with a dinner bell. The opening weekend of bear season I went back into the same area where I saw the bear kill the fawn. After teaching a wildlife class at the University of Arizona, I left Tucson Friday evening and arrived at the end of the road in the Chiricahua Mountains at midnight. I parked my truck and strapped on my backpack already loaded with all the gear I thought I’d need to bring back a bear. I headed into the mountains by moonlight and set up a camp 1 mile from the nearest road, high on a ridge top. Saturday morning I left camp and hiked along the ridge, stopping at intervals to set up and call like a fawn in distress with a predator call. I was fully camouflaged and my fawn imitation was apparently right on the mark, because a few white-tailed does walked up to within 10 yards of me looking very agitated and making the soft buzzing noise they use to locate their fawns at close range. At noon, I sat under an oak tree at the end of the ridge to eat lunch and shortly after sitting down I saw a bear look at me from behind a clump of tall grass from a mere 6 yards away. I was stunned at this unexpected, although not uninvited, lunch guest. He immediately saw his error (or my rifle) and backed up quickly. I sat in disbelief for a second and tried to recount what I ate and if it could cause such hallucinations. I stood up with my rifle and the bear was still standing 10 yards away looking at me. I realized then that he was a very small yearling so I lowered my rifle and he scampered down the slope. Mid-afternoon that day, I was calling from the next high ridge overlooking a large canyon and saw a bear one-half mile down canyon swimming across a small pond. At that distance, I was not sure if he heard my calling or if I happened to spy him before he was within hearing range. He stopped on the near side of the pond and shook off. I screamed like a fawn with the call and he immediately broke into a run at full speed towards me! It took a while for him to cover all that ground so I kept calling to keep him on track. Bears really look much larger when you are on the ground and they are running full speed at you -- you start to wonder if even your high-powered rifle is enough for this sudden incarnation of Nature's wrath. As he approached I stopped calling because I didn’t care for him to know my exact location. When he closed the distance to 25 yards, I dropped him in his tracks (that's close enough, thank you). I quickly went to work skinning the beast where he lay. There were no trees of suitable size to hang him within the distance I could drag him alone. I first skinned back the hide on one side and boned all meat off that side, and then repeated the procedure on the other side. After the outside meat was boned, the animal was dressed to retrieve the tenderloins. Since it would take more than one trip to get meat, hide, and camp gear out to the truck, all meat was placed into cheesecloth meat bags and secured high in an oak tree 100 yards away. The head and hide were strapped to the daypack and brought back to my ridge top camp. The camp was hastily disassembled and repacked onto the pack frame and then the bear head and hide was added and tied down securely. I packed (staggered) the head/hide and camp gear out that night (1 mile of very rugged terrain), slept in my truck through a terrible storm. The next morning I left the truck at first light with an empty pack frame and full canteen, heading back to my secluded cache of meat hung high in the oak tree. The cool rain during the night kept the meat chilled. I was thankful for that rain but not the torrential downpour that hammered me when I was halfway out of the mountains with the meat on my back. I took one of those shortcuts that are never shorter, thinking I could cut right over the last ridge instead of contouring around. The backside of the ridge was almost too steep to negotiate with my meat-laden pack and consisted of a field of jumbled granite. I could hardly walk with the rain pelting me hard, but the sharp crackle of the lightning so close to my packframe helped quicken my pace off the ridge top. Besides a freezer full of meat and a beautiful rug, I also came home with chigger bites, sunburn, a twisted ankle, blisters on hands and feet, bruised knee, and aches in muscles I didn't even know I had. My fellow biologists said they had never seen a deer biologist go through so much trouble to avenge the loss of one fawn.

I love this stuff. Anytime anyone finds a freak, they think of me. Not sure that was the legacy I was shooting for. However, I have been interested in odd things like this for a long time. I do have a picture (Fig. 18) in my book of these maxillary canines (not the one below). On rare occasions deer can grow upper canine teeth. They certainly are an evolutionary hold-over from a time when deer ancestors had well-pronounced fangs (Like Dicrocerus and Stephanocemas here). Through evolutiuon, the tusks gradually got smaller as antlers became larger. Maxillary canines have been found in white-tailed and mule deer throughout the country. They are usually very small and may not break through the gums. In populations where these teeth have been documented, 0.05 to 18% of the deer had upper canines (I think 18% is a gross over estimate). It has been theorized that the incidence of upper canines in whitetails increases as one travels south. If this is true, they may be more common in Coues whitetails than we know. Keep your eyes out for them. I ran a deer check station in 36ABC and started to check every single deer for maxillary canines this year. Checked 91 MD and WT and none had them. JIM

Coues have a wide range of different colorations on the back of the tail. I have seem some with a mostly white tail (on the back surface). True hybrids do frequently have a black back side on the tail, but many pure Coues also have black-backed tails (as do most South Texas whitetails). This sounds like just an unusual Coues tail color - I see many different kinds of tails out there. JIM

Check out the thread in the Bowhunting section for more on this topic. JIM

There is nothing better than hunting with family. I am a hunter of meat and memories. I am lucky enough to hunt with both my son and father. My son's first buck is a much bigger trophy than the 4x4 I shot this year! JIM

A deer’s eyes are set on the side of their head which allows them to watch for danger from almost a complete circle (~310 degrees). Because of the location of the eyes, deer have weaker binocular vision and poor reduced depth perception. Because detecting movement of approaching predators is important, a deer’s vision is extremely sensitive to movement. When a deer spots something it can’t identify, it just freezes. We’ve all had these stare-downs with deer, and they usually win. The hoof stomp is used just to get you to move. Deer have excellent night vision. As Amanda mentioned, they have a specialized membrane, called the tapetum lucidum, behind the retina that reflects light back through the retina a second time to increase the amount of light the eye can use (this membrane is what causes the night time eye-shine in your headlights). On the subject of color vision, we know deer are not color blind (B&W), but can see the color spectrum from ultraviolet through the yellow (not orange/red/infra red). Some recent work shows they may have some very weak sensitivity to yellow-orange, but not enough to see blaze orange as we do. RuffCountry’s post about using “redder” orange (if legal) makes sense in this regard. This morning while walking midday, I spotted 2 whitetail up on a hill at about 400 yards and they were already watching me. No big surprise, if you are walking in the sun and in the open, they can certainly see you a long way off. Javelina, on the other hand, evolved in the thornscrub and never needed to see at great distances – their whole world is within 30 yards and you can generally walk upright (quietly ) to within 100 yards. JIM

Sorry for the delay, I was out deer hunting. The peak of rut is influenced by genetics and seasonal changes in the daylength. A pea-sized gland near the center of the brain, called the pineal gland, receives input from the eyes and triggers the release of a hormone called melatonin every night when it becomes dark. As days become shorter in the autumn, the pineal gland secretes more melatonin, which acts on the pituitary gland and regulates the release of an array of hormones. By artificially injecting pure melatonin in the spring to simulate the normal autumn increase, some researchers have made whitetail bucks shed velvet, harden their partially grown antlers, molt into a winter coat, and begin rutting behavior in mid-summer. Once photoperiod has prepared a deer herd physiologically for breeding, a period of cold weather, or especially a cold front with falling barometric pressure, may increase deer activity. Unseasonably warm weather seems to prolong the rut and suppress rutting activity, especially during the day. Cool weather and storms do not influence the physiological readiness of breeders, but simply provide a comfortable temperature range that allows deer to move more. About 10 years ago, Charlie Alsheimer and Wayne Laroche (Vermont) started to write articles in hunting magazines saying that the lunar cycle acts in concert with changes in day length to set the reproductive clock each year (more recently in a book called ‘Strategies for Whitetails’). They say the peak of the rut corresponds to the “rutting moon” each year, defined as the second full moon after the autumnal equinox. They have been the most active supporters of the lunar theory, but not the only proponents. In my opinion they publish the dates the rut will be the strongest based on their theory and then about 50% of the time they end up explaining why this year was the exception. I once tried to talk to everyone claiming to have unlocked the secret of deer activity and the lunar cycle (in otherwords, they were selling a lunar chart). Everyone I talked to could provide no data whatsoever other than saying they had records of observations from hunters and would not show anyone these data because then no one would buy their moon charts. To research this properly, you would want deer with radio-collars (especially GPS radiocollars) so you could actually monitor movements and activity patterns during different lunar phases and other lunar correlations. Currently there is no scientific basis for moon effects on deer activity that I have been able to find (that is, none that appear in any peer-reviewed scientific journal). Here’s some interesting bullets: More than 19 years of research by John Ozoga in Michigan involving 503 recorded breeding dates of white-tailed deer indicated no connection between the timing of the moon and the onset of breeding activity. Buss and Harbert (J. Mamm. 31:426-429) reported more mule deer visits to a single salt lick during a full moon vs. a new moon. This was over a 1-month period in one year - no replicates, no control of other factors Truett (1971, UofAZ Ph.D. dissertation) compared the length of time desert mule deer were active feeding in the morning among the various moon phases and found no difference in morning activity following the different moon phases. Studying desert mule deer night-time activity, Hayes and Krausman (JWM 57:897-904) found no difference in deer movements among 3 periods of moonlight. Based on deer observations, Knipe (AZ WTdeer book, 1977:50) felt that moon phase had little to do with Coues whitetail activity patterns. Beier and McCullough (JWM Mono. 109, 1990) analyzed a large amount of movement and habitat use data from whitetails in Michigan and concluded that moonlight did not affect deer activity or its effect was minimal at most. Kufeld et al. (JRangeMgmt 41:515-522, 1988) analyzed a large body of data and found no effect of moon phase. Grant Woods wrote a 2-part piece in Deer and Deer Hunting Magazine (aug & sep 1995) unveiling a calendar that takes into account not only the lunar phase, but also the declination of the moon's angle from the equator and the distance of the moon from the earth (which is variable). He reports a predictable pattern of deer movement based on his chart. The fact that he is profiting from this “analysis” and that he will not provide statistical methods or data to any other scientist are good reasons to be skeptical in my opinion. Given all this, I personally don’t believe there is a connection between moon phase and deer activity. These kinds of questions frequently have some scientific work behind them, but the results are buried in the scientific literature that most hunters don’t see. That was the whole reason I wrote my book. BTW, I took this buck with my dad last Friday (11/3/06) morning as it fed with another 4X4 at sunrise two days before the full moon and after a very bright night. Jim Heffelfinger