Bucks Battle In Captured Video
Posted on December 05 2019
A video of two male white-tailed deer battling on a New Cumberland street has gone viral on social media, garnering more than 160,000 likes and thousands of shares on Facebook in less than two days.
“I never would have imagined two fighting deer would be that popular,” said Doug Weaver, of Newville, shot the video of the antler-pushing match between the two bucks at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, in a spot he regularly sees deer.
While neither buck is a monster trophy, each one carries a nice rack of antlers, and both have the hormonally swollen necks of male whitetails in rut, the breeding season which is now ending its peak for the year.
According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, “By far, the most popular question in the fall is ‘When is the rut in Pennsylvania?’ To answer that question, the Game Commission collected breeding date information from road-killed does in the spring from 2000-2007. Fetus length from these unlucky does was measured.
“From these data, we can determine the age of the fetus. Since the gestation period of deer is about 200 days, knowing the age of the fetus allows us to estimate when conception took place.
“Over 6,000 does were examined over this period. What did those unlucky does tell us? Nine out of 10 does were bred from mid-October to mid-December. And the peak of the rut occurred in mid-November.”
The problem for the two sparring bucks is lack of traction on the relatively smooth surfaced of the paved roadway. They easily push each one across the road.
Bucks in rut have little on their minds other than fighting, chasing does for breeding and protecting their territories. Their testosterone levels are elevated, their necks are swollen, their glands are oozing, and they urinate on themselves intentionally. Their aggression levels are elevated, and they can through caution to the wind.
Story re-posted from Penn Live. Written by Marcus Schneck
