German Game: Roe Deer

In Germany we have a small relative of the red deer which is called roe deer and does not occure in America. Red deer is practically the same as wapiti and used to live almost everywhere in Germany. But nowadays red deer ist restricted to certain areas because it does much damage to agriculture and sylviculture. If red deer appears outside these areas hunters has to shoot it unless it is a stag with the desired form of antlers.  A roe buck and a doe

The roe deer looks much like a smaller version of red deer but in fact - at least according to  the zoological systematic - it is closer related to the elk because like the latter it belongs to the telemetacarpalia and the first to the plesometacarpalia.     

Roe deer is the most common game for german hunters, only in the last years closely followed by boar. Only few hunters here can affort hunting on red deer, so roe deer ist sort of substititution for it. The roe deer is sometimes called "poor man's deer" an still some hunters are very proud if they have roebucks with big trophies in their hunting grounds.

In the former German hunting laws there used to be strict rules about shooting roe deer much like the rules for red deer, trying to produce strong trophies by preserving stags with the desired form of the antlers. Anyway, in the meantime one found out that in the case of the roe deer - unlike with the red deer -  the quality of the antlers does not much depend from  genetic endowments but merely from nourishment and other vital circumstances.

Because the roe deer looks much like a small version of the red deer many people - esp. in urban areas - believe that it was the wife of the latter. As a matter of fact, the roe deer is a species of its own.  An interesting detail of its reproduction is the fact that the fertilized ovum rests for a couple of months in the uterus of the doe (the female roe) until it starts to grow. This explains the fact that the rutting season of the roe deer is by late july and early august and the fawns ar born in may of june althozgh according to its size the roe should gestate for only six months.

Obviously this serves to shift the rutting period to summer. So after the exhausting rutting season the roe buck has enough time to recover before the winter comes with cold and shortage of food. Red deer ruts in fall and although the stags are much bigger than roe bucks they often dont survive the winter because they had not enough time to recover from the stress and exhausting rut.

German hunters traditionally shoot big game during the rutting season and although roe deer counts to the small game it is a treated a bit like it was big game - "poor man's red deer" you see...  

Unlike the hunters many modern German state forest rangers don't like roe deer very much. They consider it to be a sort of varmint ("small red forst eater") because it does much damage to the woods by nibbling off buds and sprouts of young trees. The trees dont die from this but tend to not grow properly and only deliver lumber instead of valuable timber.

By the way, Bambi the young white tail buck from the nice Disney movie originally was a roe deer.  The plot for the movie was taken from the novel "Bambi" by the Austrian author Felix salten, which tells the story of a young roe buck.