Exploring Kootenay Lake

White-tailed deer can bound; mule deer can bound, but can also stot. The bound is a variation of the gallop, but the hind and front legs act together rather than individually. The bound, the gallup, and the stot are all types of gaits the animal employs when it travels.

The first time I saw a deer seemingly suspended in air was when I watched a white-tailed deer leap over another. It had been standing on the left side of its neighbour, but chose to head to the other side. The bounding deer pushed off with its two hind legs, jumped overtop its neighbour, and landed beyond it when its two front legs touched down together. 

This morning my daughter, Cynthia, managed a shot of a white-tailed deer in mid-bound as it travelled across a field. As with the earlier deer, this one had pushed off with its hind legs and landed first upon its front legs. 

The bound is a distinctly different gait than that sometimes practised by the mule deer. In addition to the bound, they often stot. This gait involves pushing off with all four legs simultaneously, bouncing up into the air, and then landing on all legs at once. Travel is slower than when bounding, but the stotting gait allows a quick change in direction and easy climbing of hills. When in suspension, the leg position of those who stot is distinctively vertical, rather than spread. Here are two mule deer stotting.

My favourite shot of a mule deer stotting is this one taken by my wife, Dorothy. Notice how the position of its legs differs from that of the bounding white-tailed deer, above.

You would think that any self-resecting bear would have bedded down for the season. But, no, despite it being mid-November and snowing, for a half hour around midnight last night, I was kept awake by two black bears foraging on rowan berries beside my home and even climbing from a tree onto the roof of my bedroom.

I chose to stay inside, judging that the difficulties and hazards of getting a good shot of a black bear at midnight were not worth the effort. However, I did discover that nighttime bears can be spooked by shining a spotlight through a window and into their faces.

The big fellow adjacent to my window could have been the twin of this earlier visitor.

My home is equipped with bird feeders: three, sometimes four, of them. Recently, they have been vanishing. We have feeder thieves. 

Now, I am not talking about interlopers, such as squirrels, that merely steal the contents. I am talking about thieves that steal the whole feeder. I first encountered the problem of feeder thieves when a bear dragged the woodpecker feeder off about 40 metres and tore it open to get at the suet. The solution, which worked until recently, was to take bird feeders in at night, because thieves are usually nocturnal. 

That procedure worked until yesterday, when the finch feeder was torn off the the tree and just vanished. The thieves returned again today during daylight hours.

Raccoon: “I can smell the seeds; they have put up yet another feeder, one that looks like it is catering to chickadees, nuthatches and sparrows.

“Come on, let’s grab it before those bipeds spot us.”

“OK, I tore it off the tree and tested the contents. They are good. Now let’s drag it home.”

“Why did you stop us? We are hungry.”

White-tailed bucks experience rising levels of testosterone in the fall and this leads to the rut, a gathering in November where bucks challenge one another for access to does. 

I have not witnessed the head butting and mating of the rut, but this last week, I was fortune to be able to watch some pre-rut sparring. Three bucks were congenially grazing together in the rain. There were no does to be seen. Yet, their rising testosterone was urging them to spar and they did, after which they just returned to grazing.

These were a mismatched three. There was an adult buck with four-points on each antler, along with one-spike and two-spike yearlings. But, fitness is irrelevant when grazing.

The sparring started when the two-spike youngster challenged the one-spike youngster. The contest just fizzled.

Then the youngster challenged the adult. It was a clash with butting and head twisting, but the adult appeared to be gentle with his young challenger.

They went at it a couple of times, with the adult seemingly reluctant to put much effort into the contest.

“Well, what did you expect me to do? He’s a youngster.”