looduskalender.ee

 

 

 

We had hoped to get the red deer into webcam view at the most important event of their year, and very nearly made it, but regrettably forest felling machinery is at work near the camera already from the beginning of the month and the traditional path of the red deer is cut off. The mating calls of these magnificent animals on a quiet early autumn night can be heard on the video and their doings can be imagined. Calls are at loudest in late night and early morning hours.

 

The powerful deer bull (stag) has collected a ”harem” of 8 or more cows whom he must protect from other powerful males. Sometimes quite bloody tourneys of equally powerful bulls take place. The younger bulls are curious but back off quickly and without fight. Such a breeding stag mates with all at least two-year-old cows in the flock. During the three weeks a bull of about a couple of hundred kilos loses some twenty percent of his weight; the hormone-reeking meat from such a bull cannot be eaten if a hunter might accidentally have hit one.

 

WHen the matings are over the stags abandon the herds of cows – male flocks begin to form as we saw them in winter in the web camera, all with splendid antlers.

 

Last year Peep Käspre, Lääne-Virumaa, caught mating-time photos.

 

Note the powerful ”mating-time” neck of the bull

 

 Bull with his harem

 

The number of Estonian red deer is somewhere around 3000 individuals according to the estimate of hunters. More than half of them live in Saaremaa, and one-fourth in Hiiumaa. In mainland Estonia most deer inhabit the southern parts. In Latvia the species is spread everywhere and from there also a migration takes place.

 

More precisely about the stand of red deer in the surveillance report of large animals of prey, pp. 23-27: LINK

 

Spread of red deer in Estonia according to the 2013 winter square count.

Map of Keskkonnagentuur (KAUR) / Estonian Environment Agency.

 (EEIC).