Forest Bathing with Black Tailed Deer: Hiking, Tracking, and Replenishing Myself
I spend a lot of time at my computer. It's the nature of what I do here on the platform, and for my meatsack world job... so it's really crucial to me to eke out time where I can step back and disappear out into the world.
I love all of the possibilities and opportunities and creations and relationships I've been able to form in my digital life, but at heart, I am a wild woman. I belong under open skies and torrential downpours, teetering in the boughs of trees and clinging to rock faces, shaded by the forest and exposed to the desert. If you've followed any of my photography here, you probably know that I spend any trip I can away trying to experience more of our incredible planet. Each of these little jaunts powers me up to spend more time on my technological pursuits; it's an important balance to maintain, I've discovered. Whenever I'm feeling like I'm backed into a corner by the pressure or the workload or by a problem that I've been stuck on for a long time, I put down the mouse and pick up my backpack and go.
I have the great fortune to live in the Pacific Northwest — a forested ecosystem with incredible wildlife and stunning views. Mountains, rivers, valleys, deep forest, sparse brush... it's all home to wildlife that I hunt (despite being a shooting enthusiast) with my camera only.
In the past few years, I've been working on rudimentary tracking skills. I'd love to say I'm some awesome, stealthy huntress, but I'm more mud-in-my-hair-and-tear-the-ass-of-my-pants than sinewy-warrior-who-speaks-to-beasts. But as time goes on, I'm getting better at finding and identifying scat (gross, but seriously important when worrying about whether I'll meet a bear, which is a real possibility for me even near my home,) prints, trampled brush, and food sources are all things that I'm starting to understand the interplay of a little better. So, to give me a break from all of the stuff I now take on with community building and witnessing here on the platform, I went looking for shit of a different kind.
Once you find water with signs of wildlife, if you have enough patience to sit still and quiet for potentially hours, you'll likely be rewarded.
Something moves in the bracken quietly. I squint just enough to pick out an animal shaped blob.
A black tailed deer emerges and takes a cautious sip, but hasn't seen me yet.
Well, shit. He sees me now. I suck in a breath and move the camera slowly to see how this will play out.
Unimpressed deer is unimpressed, but also has decided that I'm too slow and non-threatening and feels safe enough to decide to move around me. Hurrah, a deer thinks I'm a loser! Success!
Everything is quiet. I'm quiet, he's quiet; we're both so intent on each other that in our minds the birds and the wind and the leaves are all quiet. It's kind of like magic.
He manouevers around me delicately, picking his cloven hooves up distastefully from the sucking mud as we walk carefully in lockstep back towards the hidden gravel trail. I wonder what happened to his antler, but know it can't have been a human given how cool he is with my presence. (This delights me. Then I realise it's probably from smashing the fuck out of another deer and remember he thinks I'm a loser and I remember who is the bigger, faster, pointier-weapon headed boss here.)
He fixes on a point in the distance and chooses his path confidently.
I can't help but giggle at his little bobbing black butt puff of a tail as he marches off. (Majesty and serenity right there, folks.) I hope I never lose the childlike delight and respectful wonder required to be awed in the presence of any wild animal; even more so, I hope he never loses his disdain for we inferior bi-pedal annoyances.
These photos and words are my own work, inspired by travels all over this pretty blue marble of ours. I hope you like them. 🌶️
We have a little over 9 acres in Ok.
There is a doe that has two fawns every year that we see often. I think she hangs here because I don't hunt. I do like to watch her and the fawns every year as they come very close to the house. I have footage of them about 20 yards from my back door. If I go outside to take pictures they run off after I get a few shots of their white tails. We have some bucks, I know because of the damage they have done to my fruit trees but have not seen one yet.
The day we moved in she came to the street and greeted us in the driveway, waited for us to pull in then looked back and ran into our woods. It was a special moment for @lovenfreedom and I.
Great post, like you I enjoy being in nature myself and the natural things man has not corrupted. I spent many hour justs listening to bees and rolling water in our creek and watching birds do their thing.
I love to see deer and elk, as well as far more elusive creatures that live hereabouts, like bobcat, bear, and cougar.
It's magical!
About the buck's rack: you can see the injury isn't cleanly broken, but healed. Since antlers are bone that grow each year anew in a skin of 'velvet', the injury happened during the growth phase of the antler that spring. They are as sensitive as the most delicate parts any of us have, and it is highly unlikely the buck did any sparring while his antlers were covered in velvet--just as unlikely as men undertaking ritual combat by smashing each other with their testicles.
Deer seem preternaturally graceful, but slip and fall, stumble, and walk into stuff just like you and I. Given the complex fractal nature of his environment, he probably broke his delicate growing antler on some obstruction like a branch or stone. And, it hurt!
Each winter, the old antlers fall off, generally around late February to March, and soon new ones start budding, to be scraped free of the velvet in August and ready for sparring during the rut late September to October (dates vary per weather, and climate, as well as local genetics). If you look very carefully in places where deer bed down, you can find these 'sheds' before the rodents eat them for the nutritious calcium--in scarce supply in Pacific Northwest forests.
Deer are very aware of hunting season. The size of his rack indicates he is probably only two, depending on the genetics of the local herd, and may yet be quite incautious. After deer have been hunted a few times, the bucks particularly become very cautious. Those that aren't don't get older. If it wasn't hunting season, he may simply have known you weren't gonna shoot him down because of that.
I have been able to sneak right into a herd of elk during July, when they're not being hunted, as well as creep within touching distance of a doe and fawn about the same time of year. A couple months later, when people are stomping all over the woods trying to kill them, they are much more wary.
It's amazing how good at hiding they are. There are as many as 500 blacktail deer per square mile between N. California and SouthCentral Alaska (estimates vary regionally depending factors like availability of cover, food, and hunting pressure). I know that almost every moment I am even near the woods, deer are probably watching me from good cover. I have seen a doe and fawn take cover in the only tree within a dozen yards, and could not see them under it's branches at a range greater than 10 feet.
Perhaps, like me, you will be pleased to know you are constantly under surveillance by the deer in your local woods =)
Thanks!
you are a font of nature knowledge! I actually look for dropped antlers for my dogs to chew on for exactly that reason~ we have no hunting permitted in a certain radius of habitation, so the deer nearest me (two mins behind my place, for example) have never known that particular fear. Interesting about the dropped antlers... Amber mentioned that also, but I took this mid-April and I have some doubt that he dropped his antlers and grew those in about a month. I wonder if we are ahead here, or behind?
I was raised on an island in Alaska, so roaming around the woods taught me a lot. When I worked as a biologist for the state of Oregon, I learned more. Enough to know how little we know =p
I would expect antlers to have dropped long ago there, but I have no personal experience in your area. It's also as variable as any other genetic or environmental factor, so it could be that particular animal, or something else.
I would be interested if you could find any fresh sheds, or other bucks that retained antlers. Soon you will be seeing the antlers popping up wrapped in fresh, tender velvet, and that may help to determine when sheds drop and start to grow anew. They take months to grow, and require a lot of calcium to make. Stag in Scotland have been observed preying on birds, presumably for the calcium in the eggshells and bones.
I am quite surprised that rack is still on a deer's head this time of year!
Thanks!
I'm jealous of your photography and inspired storytelling. If this was me, it'd be a blurry photo and something like, I went out and saw this deer! Then he ran away. The end.
I’d still read it and think it was brilliant
Hahaha. Thanks Kubby!
well, it sort of is that, really. If I'm posting once or twice a week I need to make it count~ but I always appreciate you nonetheless. I will never steal your bikini.
...
because it won't fit on my big toe
Thanks Crimmy. It's nice to know I can trust you around my swimwear.
I didn’t steal it!!!
:)
What an absolutely spellbinding post. The deer photos are so expressive and your words resonate deeply. Following now!
These pictures are ruddy brilliant.
Everything is quiet. I'm quiet, he's quiet; we're both so intent on each other that in our minds the birds and the wind and the leaves are all quiet. It's kind of like magic.Damn.
Cute Little Black Butt of Fluff
I found my band name, in my next life.
BTW, is this a Mule Deer?
or White-tailed? Methinks Mule, but what do I know?
very good eye! They're called Black Tailed Deer here, but they're an offshoot of Mule Deer that live specifically in the Pacific Northwest. Pretty sure the genus is BlackFuzzicusButticus though if you're particularly scientific.
... and now we have our first Album title!
Odocoilus hemionus, IIRC. I'm not sure if the subspecies in BC is the Sitka Blacktail, or the Columbian Blacktail, which is endemic here in OR. As you correctly state, all the blacktail deer are subspecies of the Mule deer.
The idea of staying still and waiting for what the nature to your eyes sounds very stimulating as well as "reward receiving" . I got similar experience by living abroad Great post!
thanks! truly, getting 'out' (from where can vary wildly, from the house to the entire continent) is where the biggest rewards are to be found- but that may just be our wanderlust talking...
Powerful animal spirits to be sharing energy with, @crimsonclad! I had never seen one of these up close before. I love their coats!
truly lovely, and almost worth getting headbutted over petting; almost <3
Beautiful. And don't try to bullshit me with your 'I got lucky' line. You've learned your craft, and that buck is proof. You don't get those pictures by being lucky.
Glad you got some time out and about. I grew up in that part of the world. Not only location but forest skills. I love seeing this, makes me remember.
Thanks Crimsonclad, for a great look at the world.
ahhh, well you know that it's a bit of column A and a bit of column B. If he had decided I was huntress material, he'd be gone in a flash, so today I'm glad to be taken for something smaller and weaker than the forest. It's a good reminder, really, isn't it?
I love your comments. Thank you.
your deer up there look weird...