chasing the rut pt 6

Around 11,000 years ago something big happened across North America. Actually, it happened across part of northern Europe as well. To the best of our knowledge, a comet exploded over top of the Laurentide Ice Sheet that covered much of what is today Canada and came as far south as New York City and St. Louis, Missouri. This was the same event I spoke of in the section about pronghorn. And much like pronghorn, whitetail deer were one of the few species that survived. In fact, when it comes to the eastern forests of North America, this entire region fared better than the rest of the continent.

Whitetail deer, like pronghorn, coyotes, and black bears, are considered to be a true North American native – whereas most of the other species in this article migrated over during interglacial periods.

I like whitetail deer. There is something sleek and elegant about their lines. There is something stately about their antlers. Though they may not get as large as elk, or even mule deer for that matter, these are one of my favorites to photograph and they can be found in every state and Canadian province from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean.

Whitetails are a prolific species and should be given far more credit by wildlife photographers. Consider the range and adaptability of this animal for a moment. I have photographed whitetail deer in the swamps of south Florida and in the northern plains of Alberta, Canada. I have images in my stock files of whitetails in heavy snow high up in the mountains of Montana, and I have photos of them on the sand dunes of the barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina. You can find them in both Toronto and Texas, outside Bismarck and Boston. These animals have adapted to swamps and forests and muskegs and prairies and savannahs and marshlands. Whitetail deer are survivors.

It is this survivability of whitetail deer, however, that is largely threatening moose across the southern edge of their range. Whitetails do not out compete moose for food, however. Instead, it’s this unique situation we have happening across the globe that we call climate change which has allowed for these two species of animals to exist in the same place at once. Historically, moose lived just north of whatever edge there happened to be with whitetail deer. Though whitetail deer are extraordinarily adaptive, they never fully adapted to thrive in the same places that moose called home – until now.

As I mentioned above though, moose are a relative newcomer to North America whereas whitetail deer have been around for a very long time. During their evolution here in North America, whitetail deer picked up a nasty little parasite the bores into the brain. Much like how bats coevolved with rabies and are not sickened by it, whitetail deer somehow managed to learn to live with this parasite as well. Moose, on the other hand, have not.

What we’ve seen over the last couple of decades is a surge of whitetail deer into moose habitat. And when this happens, moose begin dropping like flies. Take Jackson Hole for instance. In the 1990s, there was a population of around 2,000 moose in the valley. Once the whitetail deer showed up, that population dropped to only around 500. In places like Minnesota, huge populations of moose that exceeded 4,000 in one part of the state have completely disappeared for similar reasons.

This is the impact that climate change ultimately has on wildlife. It’s not so much that it is killing animals directly. It’s more like an ecosystem contracting AIDS. It weakens the systems and causes all its parts to behave differently. It allows for new pests and parasites to invade from warmer climates and habitats. It creates heat stress on the animals, weakening them to the point where they are unable to fend off brain boring parasites such as those brought in by whitetails, or population explosions of ticks that made the situation exponentially worse in Minnesota. It causes fish like sand lance to dive deeper in search of more appropriate temperatures, putting themselves out of diving range for puffins, and resulting in the complete failure of entire breeding colonies of these birds as tens of thousands of chicks simply starve to death.

But enough about that.

Where one chooses to photograph whitetails matters greatly in terms of the size of the animal. In Florida, the average weight of a whitetail deer is 115lbs. In Kansas, however, the average size is 200lbs. In Montana, it’s 250lbs. In Alberta, Canada, the average size of a mature buck is 300lbs.

Do you see the pattern emerging here?

In essence, the further south, the smaller the deer. And the further north, the larger the deer.

This is Bergman’s Rule in effect. In general, members of a species are larger the further north they are observed. So much of this has to do with their surface to volume ratio. The more volume one has, the less surface area they have in proportion to that volume. Volume equates to heat generation and retention. For that reason, it’s advantageous to be big in the north. Meanwhile, more surface area means a greater ability to “dump heat,” making it much easier to be smaller in the south. So, if you want BIG whitetails, go north.

When it comes to the rutting season for whitetail deer, from Florida to Saskatchewan, the peak of the rut is the second week of November. The one exception to this rule though is South Texas. Of course, they would have to be different. Down there, everything is bumped back one month, and the second week of December tends to be the peak. And, for the record, the average size mature whitetail in South Texas is 105lbs – even smaller than Florida.

But the rut is like a bell curve. Though the activity tends to peak during a certain week or two each year, there is activity building up and winding down from this peak time.

This bell curve is a good thing when it comes to photographing whitetails as it means that the beginning and the end of the rut are happening in very different looking seasons. In the eastern deciduous forests for instance, this means that the early part of the rut occurs when the leaves are changing colors. Tulip poplars, sycamores, buckeye, hickories, ash, elms, and oaks are turning a brilliant yellow and orange intermixed with the reds of red maples, persimmons, sassafras, sourwood, and black cherries. And you can use all of this as your backdrop in places like Shenandoah National Park or the Smoky Mountains. Likewise, on the tail end of the rut you can find whitetails in peak physical condition with heavy snow fall in places like the Rocky Mountain Arsenal outside of Denver, Colorado.

Although I do try to make opportunities to photograph whitetail deer during the peak of their rut, it’s quite often the edges of that bell curve that produce the best photographs for me. I want color or snow, and I’m always looking for forest of some sort as this is uniquely their dominion.

Another major factor here, like all the species I am discussing except for bison and pronghorn, is that temperature plays a major role in your photography. There is an old myth that whitetail deer don’t going into the rut until temperatures drop to a certain point. This isn’t true. They have a very short window to do what they do and it’s going to happen one way or the other. However, just like you and I, whitetail deer are impacted by how hot and cold it is outside. Warm days means all the action is happening at night. Cold days means you can capture photographs of big bucks in the mornings and evenings.

Whitetail deer are largely creatures of forests. In the west, where their populations overlap and intermix with those of mule deer, you find the whitetails sticking very close to river bottoms where they can retreat to the cover of tall cottonwood trees, while the “mulies” remain perfectly at home in the wide-open shortgrass prairies and even alpine areas in the summer months.

Locations . . .

East Coast

Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.

Shenandoah is one of my favorite national parks in the eastern part of the country and one of my favorite places to photograph whitetail deer in the rut. Like many national parks in the east, you can find deer hanging out around just about any campground. But when it comes to Shenandoah, you want to look for two things: apple trees or Big Meadows.

Early European settlers to the region planted apples everywhere they went. And then, during prohibition, apple cider was the one exception to federal law when it came to the criminalization of alcohol. Johnny Appleseed? He was just trying to make America drunk again.

Apples are a big staple of deer around Shenandoah. And, if you time it right, you can watch them get drunk on the fermenting apples at the base of the trees. There really isn’t anything great to photograph here, but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye out for! And the apples, given that they are not a native species, they are also not protected. So, pick away. I usually fill up a couple brown paper grocery bags full of apples while I’m up there.

More importantly to our discussion though is Big Meadows.

Read this with capital letters like I wrote it because it’s a proper noun. Big Meadows is an actual place, complete with a neighboring campground, restaurant, and hotel inside of the park. And this is the epicenter for photographing the elk rut in Shenandoah.

Though the actual big meadow at Big Meadows can itself be great for wildlife photography at certain times of the year, it’s more often what goes on just behind the curtain that really matters. Ringing Big Meadows is a beautiful mature forest of deciduous hardwoods. The landscape inside of this forest is open and park like due to the shade overhead and the browsing of the deer down below. Turkeys can be found in tremendous numbers through this area as well. But the real showstopper is the giant whitetail bucks.

Stay at the Big Meadows hotel or campground or cabins. Work the forest around the campground and especially around the meadow itself. You will find bucks out in the meadow if the temperatures are cool enough, and all over the forest around this area. These deer are highly acclimated to people. And although you have to put a little more work into what you’re doing than places like the Smoky Mountains, the photography can be incredible and the number of people is a fraction of the Smoky Mountains.

The one catch here is that you will likely need to work a bit harder and would be best served by learning more about whitetail deer behavior than is necessary at other public lands. Learn what a scrape line is. Hike the fringes of the woods in search of these scrape lines. And if you find them, you will find bucks.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina / Tennessee

Let’s face it: this place is legendary for deer. Cades Cove on the Tennessee side of the park contains some truly massive bucks for the southeast, and they are often quite easy to find. The whole of the place is ringed with a one-way road that can really get busy at times. People come for the leaves and the deer. In fact, I know of no other place where people line up like they are going to a football game, with tailgates open, coolers, and lawn chairs, just to watch the deer come out in the afternoons.

The Smoky Mountains is the most visited national park in the country with nearly twice as many visitors as the next busiest – the Grand Canyon. Given how crowded the place can get, a large part of being able to successfully photograph the whitetail deer rut here, especially when the leaves are changing colors, is about understanding the strategy of how best to avoid those crowds.

First and foremost, do not go on the weekends during the peak leaf season if at all possible. The short loop around Cades Cove can be bumper to bumper traffic and will often take as long as 5 hours to make the 11-mile loop without stopping to photograph. You do not want to get caught in this. It’s pure mayhem.

Second, you will want to work the areas of Cades Cove where most people never go. Much like Shenandoah, this requires a little hiking if you’re up for it. There are two primary dirt roads that cut across the middle of Cades Cove, and this is where I recommend concentrating your efforts. And running right down the middle of it all is Abrams Creek which is buffered on either side by forest.

If you visit the Cove when it’s not busy, you can easily loop around the place looking for deer or bear or coyote or turkeys before making the decision to park and walk a bit. When you do make that decision though, I recommend parking on one of the two dirt roads and working your way off trail along the edge of the trees that buffer the river.

There are many great places to photograph highly acclimated whitetail deer in the Smoky Mountains and Cades Cove in particular. Honestly, an entire book could be written just about photographing wildlife in the Smoky Mountains. If this is something you’re interested in, let me know and maybe I will write that book. But in the meantime, the information above is enough to put you on some incredible opportunities with whitetail deer in the Smoky Mountains.

The West

Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Denver Colorado.

Most wildlife photographers that know of this place tend to think of the area only in terms of giant mule deer. However, it also happens to be one the best places in the Rocky Mountains for whitetail deer as well. And they are huge!

Rocky Mountain Arsenal is an odd place to travel to for wildlife photography. Established in the early 1940s, the Arsenal was a chemical weapons manufacturing center for the US military until it closed in 1992. Today, the place is a National Wildlife Refuge sitting just 8 miles from downtown Denver. And this is my absolute favorite place in the west to photograph deer.

One thing that is important to understand about photographing deer in the west is the different habitats you will find them in. When you travel to a place like the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, the first thing you are going to encounter will be mule deer. They are everywhere here. But if you specifically want to photograph whitetails, then you will have to find your way toward the forested areas around the lakes and wetlands. In the west, mule deer are a species of open grounds and prairie. They are quite comfortable out in the open and high in the mountains. Whitetail, on the other hand, stick to the riparian zones where water and forest meet. Understand this, and you will always know where to find these animals in the west.