Red Deer - Scottish Natural Heritage

*
STORY
*the red deer.
Gaelic name: fiadh ruadh
ROAR ENERGY.
When a thousand shades of scarlet and gold spark magic
from woods and mountainsides.
When nights turn chill and there’s a chance of northern
lights dancing in the heavens.
When Borders dales and Highland glens echo to a primal
sound – deep, strange and wild.
That’s part of the essence of a classic Scottish autumn.
Trees, grasses and fungi give the strongest seasonal colours, together with the shifting
tones of clouds and sky. But red deer, more than any other creature or other source, give the
sound on still days: the roars and rumbles in the hills; the natural thunder in the glens.
It’s the males – the stags – who shape this soundscape. And they’ve plenty of lung
power to do it.
*
STORY
*the red deer.
Gaelic name: fiadh ruadh
BIGGING IT UP
The red deer is the largest land mammal in Britain and Ireland
and one of the biggest deer in the world. Individual red deer
vary a great deal in size, with stags larger than females (hinds).
A fine stag could stand well over a metre high at the shoulder
and weigh as much as 190kg. A big hind, in contrast, would be
shorter and many tens of kilos lighter.
But there’s more: the keynote feature that sets stags apart from
hinds; the headgear that gives the classic red deer profile, seen
in silhouette against the sky; the crown that makes the red deer
the iconic monarch of the glen.
Antlers. Only the males sport these bony, much-branched head
growths. They sprout each year, are shed and
then grow afresh from under a covering of
blood-rich ‘velvet’ skin the following year.
Antlers grow larger as a stag gets older,
and there are characterful names for
different stages of this progress. A
one-year-old stag with small antlers can
be a ‘knobber’, a two-year-old a ‘pricket’.
By the time a stag is six, he might be
a magnificent twelve-pointer – a ‘royal’.
Later, some might even achieve the top
score of 16 points. Some stags, called
‘hummels’ lack antlers, as do all the hinds.
Because the hinds usually stay together in all-female groups,
this gives the stags a chance to try and mate with more than one
female. To do this, they need strength, stamina,
antler power, sometimes a bit of cunning and
certainly some magnificent voice projection.
LISTENING IN
Roaring is a guttural, deep-throated sound,
pushed-out from lungs in blasts of noise as
the stag’s breath steams in chill air. It’s an advert
to hinds – ‘Listen to how strong I am: choose me
and you’ll do just fine.’
A STAG'S
ROAR TELLS
RIVALS HOW
STRONG HE IS
It’s a warning to rivals – ‘I’m dangerous: fight me and I could
injure you for life.’
Magnificent
antlers
Both hinds and rivals do listen. A female can tell
a great deal about the quality of a possible
mate by the way he sounds, since it’s hard,
for example, to fake the deep bass that
only a big chest can produce. That helps
her to choose a suitable partner.
Rival stags can also get a fair idea of the
competition by keeping an ear on those
bellowing broadcasts. If one answers,
that’s when the Scottish hills can come
alive to the sound and sight of sexual
competition, red-deer style.
Huge
roar
thE POWER OF LUST
LET THE CONTEST BEGIN
For much of the year, the adult stags live apart from the hinds,
wandering alone or grazing quietly with other males. If you’re
lucky, you might see a group in the distance if you’re hillwalking,
perhaps as silhouettes against a ridge: glimpsed, then gone.
The first stag bellows back. The challenger appears, highstepping (red deer walk as if on tiptoe) over a ridge. Five hinds,
the number in the first stag’s defended harem so far, stop grazing,
look up and watch.
Come autumn, everything changes. The stags get restless. Their
antlers, newly grown in summer, have hardened. The bloodengorged covering of ‘velvet’ skin on them has peeled off or been
rubbed away. But there’s a fresh itch – and no wonder.
Heads and antlers held high, hairs bristling, the two stags come
closer. Their bellies are matted with the mix of peaty mud and
urine that is the lusty stag’s body lotion of choice.
In September, levels of the male sex hormone – testosterone –
skyrocket in mature stags, increasing fifty-fold or more. Suddenly,
the males seem irritated by each other’s company. They strike
poses to show-off their size, get tetchy, pick small fights.
By the middle of the month, it’s every stag for himself.
Each turns his back on the summer grazings and
goes off to stake a claim elsewhere.
For what every stag over five years old wants, now
that autumn is in the air, is a group of hinds that he
can win and keep for himself: a harem.
The stags walk parallel to each other, a few metres apart, each
moving stiffly as he tries to further weigh-up the opposition. The
first stag turns, lowering his antlers.
Almost immediately, the challenger locks horns. As each stag
pushes, their bodies move – sometimes forward, sometimes
back. Then the first stag presses home the attack, shoving
and shoving the rival back down the slope.
RED DEER
ARE THE LARGEST The challenger rises, turns and runs. Then the first stag
returns, high stepping, to near the group of hinds. The
LAND MAMMAL harem
for him – for now.
IN BRITAIN And whenis hesecure
reaches the hinds, he pauses.
It’s the hinds that take responsibility for guarding and
rearing deer calves. Stags are not involved in such childcare.
Then he roars.
see more at snh.gov.uk/big5