Sika Rut

Dorsettaff

Well-Known Member
Sat quietly on my patch last evening, watching a group of hidden deer rustling maize and noting the last days of Summer.
The nightjars and swifts have gone , the swallows are massing and as the early autumn mist rose off the fields there came the plaintive whistle from across the heathland of a sika calling!!!
Early I know but someone was making his pitch !!
 
I've seen wallows in late July but I wonder if they are related to behaviour other than rutting? The stags around here really start moving just right on the end of August. By the first week in September the big ones are arriving in the general areas where they will rut. I know that people talk a lot about the weather and other factors but that I can see they are completely reliable in arriving in that first week of September. I've heard them calling right into the end of November, maybe even into December now and again, but I've never heard them this early. That may mostly be down to the fact that I'm never out for them this early :) What I've also noticed is that they seem to "stage" in their movements. I know of an area that has lots of stags, often big ones, on it for the first 2 or 3 weeks in September and then they just vanish. I suspect that they move on somewhere else, nearby, to actually rut. The behaviour is certainly very interesting and at least to me a lot of it is unexplained and, largely, not part of common knowledge of how sika work.
 
Interesting your point about 'staging' Caorach as where I used to stalk in Argyll there would be no sika stags in August, they'd appear in September and then disappear come the rut. If we had no frost/snow to flatten the cover in September we'd end up shooting no stags that season.
Our assumption was they'd moved off the summer ground higher up (hill and some native broadleaf woodland) through our ground (forestry) to then rut on some more open ground below or parallel with our ground (half way up the hill.) It was bl**dy frustrating but at least the reds hung around!

I've seen wallows in late July but I wonder if they are related to behaviour other than rutting? The stags around here really start moving just right on the end of August. By the first week in September the big ones are arriving in the general areas where they will rut. I know that people talk a lot about the weather and other factors but that I can see they are completely reliable in arriving in that first week of September. I've heard them calling right into the end of November, maybe even into December now and again, but I've never heard them this early. That may mostly be down to the fact that I'm never out for them this early :) What I've also noticed is that they seem to "stage" in their movements. I know of an area that has lots of stags, often big ones, on it for the first 2 or 3 weeks in September and then they just vanish. I suspect that they move on somewhere else, nearby, to actually rut. The behaviour is certainly very interesting and at least to me a lot of it is unexplained and, largely, not part of common knowledge of how sika work.
 
An old college friend of mine who lives in the New Forest heard a stag whistle last night..
 
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