Bucks Out Back - 2020

Northcentral Pennsylvania has no reindeer for Santa, no caribou either, but we do have white-tailed deer. White-tails are major ecological, recreational and economic factors here; and deer hunting is so ingrained that, even in normal times, many schools were closed on the first day of firearms deer season.

Deer hunting season in Pennsylvania is now essentially over. Although there are still opportunities for bow hunters and those who use muzzleloading firearms, by far the greatest number of white-tailed deer to be killed by hunters in 2020 are already in the freezers or at the taxidermists. Most of those hunters would prefer to shoot a buck rather than what is euphemistically called an antlerless deer; that’s almost certainly a desire for a trophy combined with a cultural artifact from the days when only antlered bucks were legal.

Traditional deer season may be over, but there are still lots of deer out there in forest and field – including a lot of bucks. The camera traps out back, on the hill above the house, captured videos of bucks that are still roaming forest and field. Here are some of those bucks in our little corner of the world –

 

We’ve not seen any of the bucks in the daylight and the only clue we have to their presence is a small tree about 50 feet from the house that a buck soundly thrashed one night. Without the camera traps we wouldn’t know the bucks had been here. They’re here to visit these winsome ladies –

There’s a good chance that most of the bucks have home ranges some distance away and most have returned to their usual haunts or will return there over the next few weeks.