The rutting season is in full, violent force, with every swaggering stag out for himself – and woe betide walkers, farmers or even park rangers who get in their testosterone-heavy path, writes FIONOLA MEREDITH
WHEN TOM MORGAN set off for a leisurely autumn stroll on the slopes of Camlough mountain, Co Armagh, he never dreamed he’d end up gored and pinned to the ground by a wild red stag more than twice his own weight.
Morgan had been photographing the impressive beast when it turned on him last Sunday afternoon. It was only the intervention of local man Rory Coffey, a cage-fighting afficionado, who spotted the attack and grappled with the stag himself, that prevented Mr Morgan sustaining even more serious injuries.
“The stag just lifted him off the ground and shook him,” says Coffey. “Its antlers were lodged into his leg and it was still attacking him, ramming him again and again. I grabbed the antlers and pushed the man to one side. Then I pushed its head down [and] I tried to hold it on the ground, but it was pushing me towards a ditch.
“But I ran out of strength and it lifted me and rammed me into the ditch. As it retreated to take another run, I saw the gate and ran for it, not looking back. Three times it gored me to the ground as I ran, and three times I got up and ran again. The fourth time I made it to the gate and just threw myself over.” Coffey’s hands are criss-crossed with deep cuts from the animal’s sharp antlers, and both men sustained several puncture wounds.
This week marks the height of the deer rutting season, when male testosterone levels rocket and normally shy, docile animals are bursting with aggression and lust. So how scared should we be of stags? Prof Tom Hayden of the Mammal Conservation Unit at UCD, who has been observing the fallow deer in Dublin’s Phoenix Park for many years, says dog-walkers and joggers have nothing to fear from these stags, despite their noisy bark, strong musky smell and violent clashes: “They’re aggressive towards each other, not to humans.” Living in the park since the 17th century, these deer are well used to sharing space with people. All the same, Prof Hayden thinks it’s wise not to go too close. Even the older male stags, who spectate but no longer take part in the rut, keep their distance from the swaggering young bucks.
Fallow deer are the most widespread species of deer in Ireland, and some people find them popping up in their gardens from time to time, nibbling the plants or raiding the bird table. Joan McCullough, from Co Down, occasionally sees a pair of antlers pass by her bedroom window. “I enjoy their visits, but I think it’s important to show respect by keeping your distance,” she says. “A neighbour of mine saw a stag in her back garden and she went out and shook a brush at it, but it refused to budge. It just stood and calmly stared at her until she went back into the house.”
But as Tom Morgan discovered to his cost, it’s the big red stags you really want to avoid during the rutting season.
Unlike the Asian sika deer or the fallow deer, red deer are the only species native to Ireland, here since the end of the last Ice Age. Herds can be found in the Glendalough Valley and Turlough Hill in Co Wicklow, and in Glenveagh, Co Donegal.
During the rut, the red stag turns into a really thuggish brute: roaring, wallowing in peat, thrashing bushes and trees with his antlers as well as jousting with other males.
Pat Scully, from Wild Deer Ireland, an independent national organisation for deer management and conservation, says the bucks lose their natural fear of humans at this time, becoming more visible to the general public.
It’s all deeply elemental: the stag’s mission is to gather together female deer, or hinds, for his harem, which he will then try to possess exclusively. And it’s precisely at this point that people should steer well clear. “Stags think someone coming up to them must be a rival, coming between them and their women,” says Will Warham, chair of the Irish Deer Farmers and Venison Association. And face to face with an aroused but frustrated stag is not a place you want to be.
Deer farmers usually take the precaution of removing stags’ antlers, to protect both themselves and the rest of the herd. “Their temperament literally changes overnight,” says Warham, who farms in Co Wexford. “They can be calm, cool and collected in the paddock one day, and the next day they’ll go for you.”
Warham says one farmer was tossed 6 ft in the air by a stag, landing on concrete, while he knows of two others who have been killed by their own animals. “Even when their antlers are off, they’re like a bull – they’d knock you down and kneel on you, crush the life out of you. A stag is fully capable of doing that.”
As autumn draws to a close, the mating mania lifts, and the stags become placid and retiring once again: more Bambi than Rambo. Even their antlers lose their knife-sharp edges, becoming velvety and rounded, and their only thought is to fatten up for the winter. But until then it’s every stag for himself.
