Here’s lookin’ at you, kid
doe than that of man. Even the merest touch will deposit on the kid the alien scent of human and it is likely that, as a result, the doe will reject the kid and it will subsequently starve to death.
So, for the present, kids will obey instinct and lie still, waiting for occasional visits from their mother to suckle and clean them. Meanwhile, their father is oblivious to their needs and, indeed, even to their whereabouts. He has other things on his mind.
Most animals – and birds for that matter – establish a well-defined territory and then make every effort to defend it from rivals. Ironically, just as their progeny are arriving, the thoughts of roebuck are becoming utterly focused not on them but on the need to repel rivals! For it is now that rising testosterone begins to infect bucks to prepare them for the defence of their realm.
Thus the very presence of other bucks, many of them young, virile animals, prompts a rapid shortening of tempers. Far from being the “gentle roe”, a roebuck, aware that there are others in the vicinity and up for the challenge, are the antithesis of gentle. Indeed, the mere sight of a rival is enough to cause a red mist to descend.
I once had to rescue a young doe from the clutches of a group of children who had “found” her. She was the epitome of the gentle roe and lived here for some 10 years or so. But how glad I was she was not a buck. I knew one fellow who rescued a little buck, which was apparently very tame … until its rising testosterone in May caused it to completely change character. Roe are of course quite small – usually less than 30 inches at the shoulder – and bucks are equipped with sharp little prong-like antlers. The aforesaid gentleman was just about “gralloched” by his frenzied pet.
If you happen to hear a series of gruff little dog-like barks issuing from the woods, you are almost certainly listening to the vocal challenges of competing bucks. I once remember standing in my garden and hearing a veritable cacophony of such barking from a plantation to the east. Suddenly, from out of that dark wood sprang a panicstricken buck, hotly pursued by another. The pursuer was a master buck and soon stopped the pursuit to return in triumph to his woodland realm. Meanwhile, the defeated buck continued its flight, clearing field fences in the manner of a Grand National steed. In fact, so terror struck was he that he just kept going across the fields long after the pursuing buck had called off his chase, until at last he reached the apparent safety of another plantation. Actually, I could have told him that there was another master buck installed in that wood as well! Thus, now out of my sight, he might well have found himself still running!
If that rise of the roebuck sap begins to test the dander in May, “bad temper” stays with them until at last the final focus for all these tantrums arrives and the first steps in the creation of next year’s family happen as courtship reaches its peak in August.
Roe employ a curious technique called “delayed implantation” whereby, whilst mating occurs in August, the growth of the young does not begin until January.
Thus, the lives of roe bucks and roe does in the so-called merry month of May are so utterly contrasting, caring and loving on the one hand; belligerent and aggressive on the other!