In a rut.

So many deer in the forest right now, more than I can ever remember, their population appears to have mushroomed in recent years. At the moment they're very visible. It's rutting season and throughout the woods the Fallow stags roar and bellow at each other, and occasionally lock antlers in displays of prowess, as they go through their mating rituals. Today I was in Amberwood again and you could hear the bucks bellowing wherever you walked, you could tell they were all around you, all staking their claims and shouting their worth. Throughout the enclosure bucks with small groups of does, bucks with harems and lone bucks show out. The stands they choose to rut in are worn bare and muddy with activity, the bigger the group the more extensive the damage. The rutting stand in the photo is quite a large one, you can see another one behind it, and all through the wood are small rutting platforms where lone bucks call. Usually around these rutting stands are stumps which have become the focus of antler rubbing, being mostly coniferous stumps their bright orange inner punk wood sticks out amongst the muddy stands. It's quite a spectacle out there at the moment.