GETTING STUCK INTO THE RUT

At the time of reading the article, I had just come through the fallow deer rut without killing a buck. In fact, it had been a few years since I had wrapped my hands around the very thing that sends hunters silly for a month or two each year, a good bone or two. I had missed out again and would have to spend another off-season stuck in a rut about not being in the rut, if that makes sense.

My rut hunting experience last year was a logistical nightmare. I had to balance a busy work schedule, a pregnant wife, a ‘terrible’ two-year-old kid and hosting my in-laws from overseas. Despite all this, I did manage to get in a few half-day trips in late-March and early-April. However, my approach to hunting the rut was sporadic. Cursed with limited time, I did far too much walking around and busting my way through the bush, spreading my scent. I finally sat down and rattled some antlers to imitate fighting bucks in the hope of drawing in a curious or angry buck. Nothing happened, so in angst I stood up and set off again. A few paces forward brought into vision a curious buck who had slipped in quietly to investigate. The buck stared at me for a few seconds before turning on the spot and vanishing into thin air. The deer took enough time to peer into my soul and uncover my deepest held inadequacies as a hunter, but not enough time to raise my rifle, switch off the safety, acquire the target and pull off a shot. Like many ladies in my pre-married life, the deer didn't like what it saw and quickly vanished. I weigh about the same as an adult male fallow deer, but the only time you will see me vanish as quickly is when one of my kids has stocked the lake with brown trout. And by lake, I mean their nappy…

The month of April came and went, and I ended the rut empty handed. I needed some advice and the article I had stumbled across about getting stuck in a rut became the catalyst for change. The psychologist’s advice in the article was broken down into three key actions for the reader:

I had the framework that I needed to build a successful pre-rut season training regime. I would adapt these three tips into my own ‘buck killing’ program. I made these fundamental life changes leading into this year’s rut and have outlined the undisputable reasons why you should try them too.

The Venison Diplomat’s 3-step program for getting stuck into the rut.

Step 1 - Mind. Think like a buck.

To properly prepare your mind for the rut I recommend committing as many hours as possible to deer-based study. To become a deer killer, you need to become a deer lover first. It is one of the biggest ironies of hunters and hunting, that we greatly appreciate and admire our prey and the environment that it lives in. Who would have thought that a bunch of bushies like us could have this level of mental and emotional range, to love something that we seek to kill.

To achieve a buck-like mindset coming into this rut I have focused all my spare attention into studying deer and learning to think like a buck. I find that searching for photos of deer and deer hunting on social media is an accessible way to get your ungulate on. But proceed with caution. Social media is the hunter’s equivalent to going down to the beach to ‘take in the view’ and ending up with a sore neck. You are seeing above-average specimens from both sexes, but not a balanced representation of society. Similarly, social media presents a snapshot of the best deer hunting action on offer to only a select few. These are not deer that the average hunter has the access or skill to obtain. Online content is just one of the tools to get a hunter through the off-season. But to become more like a deer you need to see ‘real’ deer. This can be achieved through regular scouting trips or, if you are lazy like me, you can just use some game cameras.

Reviewing game camera images is the married man’s version of Tinder. I often find myself behind the computer looking at images of deer I have caught on camera, swiping left or right in my mind based on whether I would shoot them or not. Much the same as a bloke using Tinder to assess potential partners, this act of swiping left (no) or right (yes) is purely hypothetical as the chances that the deer (or lady) crosses my path (or also swipes right) is quite low. I was recently discussing my game camera obsession with an older and more seasoned hunter that I work with. He fixed me with a look of sympathy and casually asked me to take a seat in front of the white board in his office. He picked up a Texta and proceeded to draw a simple chart. In the top right he wrote the word “Deer” and drew a straight line to the bottom left. He then wrote the word “You” on the top left and drew a line to the bottom right. He then tapped his finger at the intersection of the two lines in the middle and told me that to get more deer you need to be where the deer are, not behind a computer screen. His advice was simple; you’ve got to be out hunting to hunt.

Personally, I find the review of game camera images to be addictive. I am considering doubling down on this addiction and looking to create an app called Antler, as a version of Tinder designed specifically for hunters. If you work as an app designer, please reach out to discuss. As a Beta version of this App, I have included some images of deer I captured on my game cameras. Many seasoned hunters would swipe left on all these deer, which are young or have poor antler quality. But there is another graph that is highly relevant to choosing a ‘shooter’. The vertical scale of the graph rates the quality of the buck, with a trophy animal at the top and progressively poorer bucks down the scale. The horizontal scale is time, from the start of the rut to the end of the rut, left to right. As the time scale pushes from left to right, and the rut progresses, the bar you have set for the quality of deer you would be happy with progressively shifts downwards until you would be content to end the season with any buck. The young leg-scratcher I caught on one of my cameras with the damaged left antler is a good example of a deer that fits well into the bottom right of the ‘buck v time’ graph.

Step 2 - Body. Be like a buck.

Cameron Hanes, the famous bow hunter from Oregon, would be a logical figure to influence my physical preparations for the rut. Running a half-marathon every morning and carrying heavy boulders up a mountain is one way to prepare your body for hunting. The evidence suggests this intensity and focus is why he never fails in his bow hunting pursuits, when the average bow hunting success rate in the US is only 10%. Despite this, I like to think of myself as an industry leader and not just a follower. My generation of influencers don’t tend to let age, wisdom and experience get in the way of telling other people how to do things anyway. So, I developed my own physical routine based on simple logic; be a buck, kill a buck.

To achieve my physical aspirations, I have adjusted my off-season routine to a simple program of doing little-to-no exercise. I took it easy throughout Winter, Spring and into Summer. I needed energy to thrive in the next rut, and this meant blissful days relaxing and eating good grub. I was amazed at how easy this program was to adjust to. But it isn’t completely true that bucks do nothing in the off-season. They focus vast amounts of energy on developing new weapons. Deer are among the fastest organ-growers in the animal kingdom. With ample food, a buck’s tines can grow at a rate of around three-quarters of an inch a day. But this growth comes at a cost. A male deer will siphon off nutrients from other parts of the skeleton for use in the antlers. This process is called cyclical reversible osteoporosis. The facts were irrefutable. If I was going to be in sync with my prey, I would need to put myself into osteoporosis too.

I studied the risk factors for osteoporosis and was dismayed to learn that I was not ticking enough of the boxes. I had no family history of bones issues and am not over 50. I don’t have a history of underlying medical conditions, such as diabetes or arthritis. My bones were consistent with a healthy male in his thirties, so to reduce my bones to the consistency of chalk I needed to adopt the contributing lifestyle factors for developing osteoporosis. I had already reduced my exercise significantly, which helps, so I also stopped eating dairy and limited sun exposure, as Vitamin D assists in calcium absorption. After a few months of this regime, I booked in to see my doctor to review my blood test results. She was dismayed at the rapid decline in my overall health. My program was working, and my bones had become weaker than matchsticks.

To achieve my buck-like physique before the rut I also rethought my diet, focusing on a deer’s seasonally based variety of available food. My research told me that a deer's diet consists of crops, grasses, vegetation, fruits, and nuts. Consuming large volumes of fruits and nuts wasn’t going to be too much of a challenge. I am completely addicted to peanut butter and will eat it off a spoon straight from the jar, no shame. However, I learnt that deer also eat about eight percent of their body weight in green foliage and browse. I adopted a diet high in fibre and I was amazed at the transformation, not just physically, but emotionally too. Despite feeling weak and increasingly moody, I suddenly started to illegally break into abattoirs to film their activities and share my videos with the media. I found myself picketing at agricultural shows with homemade signs with “meat is murder” pasted in red ink. I carried a permanent marker with me so I could modify ‘Stop’ signs by adding the words “eating meat” afterwards. I would spend weekends throwing red paint over unsuspecting diners at the local steak restaurant whilst yelling “murderer” at them. I had set out on this new diet so that I could better prepare myself for killing a buck during the upcoming rut. Instead, I had inadvertently become a vegan.

Step 3 - Soul. Feel like a buck.

Talking to friends and family helps to identify what is causing the feeling of being stuck in a rut. I had little trouble with adapting this to my pre-rut routine. My friends will attest to this, ‘motormouth’ is one of my nicknames after all. I can bring up the topic of deer hunting with any audience and in any conversation. I have developed this skill after years attempting to foster access to private properties. Just as there is nothing as certain in life as death and taxes, there is nothing as certain as a hunter asking for access.

Talking about deer wasn’t enough. I needed to find a way to align my soul with that of a buck’s in the off-season. After the rut, a male deer’s testosterone begins to reduce and they leave the does to gestate, birth, and then support the next generation of fawns. This is a prime example of absent parenting, and I quickly realised that my failures during last year’s rut were in part due to being present with my own children. After the rut, the bucks will form bachelor herds, a nature-based example of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. A group of bucks will bed and feed together. Groups can be of many different ages and are usually not related to each other. Bucks will get along well and even groom each other, but they still establish a basic pecking order using aggressive physical displays and vocalisations.

There was little option for me but to move away from my house and my family, and into a shared house with a bunch of other blokes for the off-season. Like a six-month long buck’s party, it would be just me and a bunch of lads sharing a kitchen and bathroom. We would establish a pecking order through passive-aggressive banter and unprovoked bouts of physicality. I spent many hours last winter searching for an available room in an already established shared house with male flatmates. I settled on a room in a four-bedroom house with three software designers. I quickly established physical dominance over these computer nerds and maintained it throughout most of my stay.

The final, and by far the most difficult, task was to abstain from intercourse. It would be remiss of me to ignore the fact that bucks only mate during the ‘mating’ season. In the southern hemisphere, this occurs in Autumn between March and May for Fallow deer. Like a top-level athlete abstaining in the lead up to a sporting event, I would become celibate until the rut. I’d become an ordained priest in the hunter’s church, focusing every essence of my being into worshiping the one true Buck. If this church did exist, then the Jesus of hunting would be Profty from Aussie Bush Harvest. Praise be to the messiah of hunters, leading us to the public land.

I needed to break the news to my missus delicately, so I booked into the nicest restaurant in town. I would attempt a bad news sandwich, using a night out with a fancy meal and a few drinks as the receptacle (the bread) to deliver my declaration of abstinence (the fillings). We had a lovely meal and I waited until after the main course, before dessert, to break the news to my wife. I regaled her with my fool-proof plan and willed her to understand my logic in the hope that she would support my decision. My wife took the news well, in fact she didn’t seem too concerned at all. I was expecting a little kick-back, or even a few tears, but they were not forth-coming.

That concludes The Venison Diplomat’s 3-step program for getting stuck into the rut. As I write this, Autumn has arrived, and the days are beginning to shorten. I feel a little ‘bone-tired’ and severely lacking in energy, but I have achieved my physical goal. I am well-feed and have a decent layer of fat to carry me through the rut. We often describe plump game animals with a nice layer of fat as being in good condition. I can confidently report that I have never been in better condition in my life.

Discontent has risen within the share house, along with the testosterone levels. The computer nerds are starting to fight back. The sparring is not too serious, but we are gradually becoming less tolerant of each other. It was time for me to re-establish my home-range and reconnect with my family.

I have successfully navigated a gruelling six-plus months of intense physical, mental, and emotional changes to ready myself for the upcoming rut. My preparations have come with downsides, however. My marriage is on the rocks, my children have forgotten me and my vegan diet has me hating myself. I feel physically drained just going up a set of steps, let alone hunting every day of the rut. It would seem I had inadvertently got myself unprepared for the rut. But I have lived and breathed the life of a buck with every fibre of my being. I have never been more focused on my goal for this year’s rut and continue to live by the motto; be a buck, get a doe. I have never felt ruttier, and I am ready to chase some does. Wait, was it bucks or does that I was planning to chase? Maybe I did get a little carried away acculturating to the life of a buck. Maybe I should have catered my pre-season preparations to being more like a doe so I could attract more bucks? Oh well, nothing left now but to get stuck into this rut and hope that I get bucky.

May the Rut be with you.

I have focused all my spare attention into studying deer and learning to think like a buck.

Reviewing game camera images is the married man’s version of Tinder.