A few years back, around Thanksgiving Day, I headed out to get some pictures in an area where I’d had good luck getting wildlife images. I got in the stand before daylight, where I had gotten a quick glimpse of a nice buck a week before.
On this particular morning, the sky was overcast, and there was no sunrise to speak of. The trees slowly materialized out of the darkness into dawn. As they did, the sounds of morning began to be heard: a woodpecker drumming on a dead tree and crows leaving their roost, fanning out and calling to each other.
As the morning slowly grew brighter to reveal actual images rather than the hallucinations my imagination had created from memory, faint images began to emerge from the trees into the hayfield. A flock of turkeys had just come off their roost. They were starting to feed and occasionally spook a bit, making low yelps and clucking calls as they got to the top of the hill in the hayfield.
I noticed a larger lone figure making its way out of the woods into the open area. There was enough light to tell as soon as it left the trees that this was a deer, a doe. She was also feeding as she made her way up the hill. When she got to the flock of turkeys at the top of the hill, she politely went around the flock of turkeys and out of sight down the other side of the hilltop.
Just as she went out of sight, another deer came out of the trees on the same path she was on. This was a larger deer with visible antlers. I pulled up my camera and saw that it was the same nice buck that I had seen the week before. It was the same rack missing a brow tine on the left side.
I was amazed at the change in the appearance of this buck due to the effects of the hormones of “the rut.” In just one week, his neck had gotten visibly larger, and his behavior was now a restless pursuit of the doe. He was tasting the air with his tongue and curling his lip up. He was focused on the scent of the doe in heat. As the buck went up the hill, he encountered the flock of turkeys at the top. He was determined not to lose the doe’s scent and wasn’t interested in going around the flock. As he headed straight into the flock to stay on the doe’s scent trail carried by the air, he met his match.
To my surprise, the flock’s gobbler challenged the buck and stopped him with wings and tail spread wide. In all my previous years in the woods, both deer and turkey hunting, I had never seen a “standoff” between a buck and gobbler.
That buck wasn’t going to let a gobbler stand in his way. He took a poke at the bird with his horns.
Unfortunately, the low light prevented me from getting a photo of the fast-action flogging the gobbler gave the buck. Still, I was able to catch what happened next. The gobbler bowed up and started after the buck.
The chase was on!
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The gobbler chased the buck back and forth, and soon, the flock joined in. Those wild turkeys went wild on that stag and, to my surprise, chased him away.
I lost sight of the buck and the doe, but the turkeys continued feeding. As for me, I sat there in awe, marveling at the gumption and bravery of the feathered flock, once again grateful to witness the wonder of God’s creation up close.
Happy Thanksgiving!
