Bucks Sparring At Nobscot

 

                                                Bucks Sparring At Nobscot

 

    On the rainy hike I went on to Tippling Rock, in This Post, I ended up setting up a trail camera on a tree along the edge of a vernal pool. I had very low expectations. I thought I would get maybe a doe, fisher, or raccoon. There were tracks everywhere in the mud, but because of the recent rain, I couldn't tell whether they were the tracks of dogs, deer, foxes, or coyotes. Just a bunch of fist sized indents all over the dried up, muddy area. I left the camera for 3 nights, and then picked it up.

The first visitor was actually a great horned owl. It's difficult to see because its so far from the camera, but it looks like a little white lump along the log in the center of the below video:

          

 And then a whitetail "spike" buck showed up. Spikes are the younger bucks, which tend to grow much smaller antlers, then the older bucks. This male will most likely not get any action this year.

                

    On the first night, though, it was revealed what made all those tracks. Every night, for the three nights the camera was set up, A bachelor herd of older, larger antlered bucks used the pond as a sparring arena. The rut began very recently, as bucks shed their velvet in response to temperatures dipping into the 30s. I had a handful of clips with bucks sparring each other (turn up volume)...

I apologize for the low quality. The bucks decided to fight in the center of the pond, which is far away from my camera, placed at the edge. They barely ended up within the camera's infrared flash.

                               A few of them got closer though, to check out the camera:

I plan to set a camera in the same area in early November, which is the peak of the rut in Massachusetts, and I will use either peanut butter or corn kernels to bring the bucks closer to the camera.