Mature Bucks Rather Fight Than Mate

It was midnight at the hunting camp about six weeks ago. We’d been down on a dove hunt—deer scouting— stand hanging—work day weekend and it had been hot. The night temperature was comfortable, if clammy, and the soft breeze was just enough to keep the mosquitoes away.

Light from a naked bulb 50 feet away cast a soft glow on my companion as we leaned against my truck and talked. I could make out the heavy dark frames of his glasses peering from beneath his hat and below that a face that needed a shave as bad as mine. The voice was soft and careful, meticulous with its words.

This is Dr. Marchinton with his best buck, a deer taken near his home outside of Athens. Most of us would guess that this big 8-point buck would be the dominant buck in his area, but Dr. Marchinton also mounted what he believes is proof of this buck’s dominant status—the heavily stained tarsal glands.

“Suppose I was to tell you,” he said, “that buck urine is more attractive to bucks than doe urine is. What would you think about that?”

Sportsfans, when he said that, I did a double gulp. Then I said something real intelligent like “Uhh,” followed closely by “What’d you say?”

What he said is something that you will want to understand. What he said is important for two reasons. One of those reasons is because of who this fellow is.

The other reason is because buck urine will likely attract more bucks than doe urine.

Before I introduce him to you, let me first say a word about where most of the outdoor “information” you read comes from. Measured almost any way you’d care to measure it, including by the line or by the pound, the vast majority of stuff you read is written by outdoor writers. Outdoor writers work for outdoor editors who work for outdoor publishers whose job it is to sell ink to people like you. If we don’t have some interesting thing to say, we’re afraid that you’ll keep your hard-earned money in your own pocket. So we find interesting things to say. Most of us outdoor writers would find it very difficult to “prove” that what we say is a scientific truth. For that matter, so would most hunters.

That is not to say that everything we are writing is either made up or wrong. On the contrary, the outdoor press has done a pretty fair job of educating the hunting public. But when most of us writers or layman types are standing around discussing things, mostly what we are saying are things that we “think” or “believe” to be true.

That is a very long way from proving that what we are saying is in fact true.

The guy leaning against the truck that night was Larry Marchinton. Also known as Dr. Marchinton. Also known as one of the foremost experts on white-tail deer in the world. He is currently a college professor at the University of Georgia in Athens.

Larry is from Florida; not the blonde, beach bum, tourist Florida that first pops to mind, but the working, agricultural Florida. He grew up hunting and fishing and with dogs. Today, behind his house there is a very large pack of beagles in a pen, and he works them regularly. In his living room, a bookshelf sags under the weight of trophies his dogs have won. If you met him outside the classroom or seminar hall, you’d never peg him as the bookworm type. He’d fit right into any hunting camp I’ve ever been in.

Larry Marchinton was the first person who ever hung a radio tracking collar on a deer. You’ve all read that a deer has a home range of about a square mile and will likely spend its entire life within 3 or 4 miles of where it was born. Larry Marchinton is the guy who first figured that out. And he’s right here in Georgia.

He has done a great deal of other equally important work on whitetail deer. When Larry learns something, there is an academic review process. The investigator must publish his findings and present it to other experts in his field for their review and investigation. In other words, just thinking something is right isn’t enough. These guys put their reputation as scientists on the line when they open their mouths. When they say it is true, they have to be able to prove it.

And so it was six weeks ago, late at night, that Larry Marchinton told me something that transcended merely something that people think about deer. He was talking about something he KNEW about.

With that in mind, suppose I was to tell you that buck urine is more attractive to bucks than doe urine?

Only recently have deer scent manufacturers and outdoor articles been keying on the buck-to-buck scent relationship. Many of us have guessed that there must be something going on because bucks, particularly big bucks, have such greasy tarsal glands on their hind legs, and they smell so strong during the rut. But why do they smell so strong, what does that mean?

The answer put forth by most non-academic types was “dominance.” But they couldn’t prove it.

For the past several years, Dr. Marchinton, along with a host of other researchers, many of them trained by Dr. Marchinton, have been trying to figure out what all this scent communication means to deer and how it affects their behavior. 

They have come a long way. Still, Dr. Marchinton would be the first to say they have a long way to go. But they have recently learned some things that you will find interesting, particularly now, just as the rut is beginning to crank up. 

Let’s talk abut does and doe urine first. Bucks want to breed does. That, after all, is what the rut is all about. Many a good buck has been killed as he followed a doe that led him into a hunter’s sights. Does are receptive to bucks only when they are in season or estrus. Consequently, most hunters and scent manufacturers attempts to provide “doe pee” from does that are in estrus. They idea is that if you can place a scent lure in a spot, perhaps a buck’s nose will tell him that there is a doe ready to breed over where you are and he will come to your scent lure. It is a good idea. It certainly works for bucks and does. It works for hunters, too.

There are, however, a number of problems with his doe pee sex lure approach.

The first problem is that no one knows what this sexual attractant is. It is classified as a sexual pheromone and those pheromones are common in nature from insets to dogs to cats. But while we know about them and we can observe the effect of these naturally produced perfumes, the things we don’t know about them are also very important. Where in the body are they produced? What kind of chemical(s) are they? How do they work? And, how long do they last?

There are many very good scientists currently attempting to isolate and describe this pheromone. They haven’t found it yet. 

They do know, again thanks to Dr. Marchinton and his colleague Dr. Karl Miller and other researchers at UGA, that this pheromone is not produced in or present in the urine in a doe’s bladder. It is most likely produced in the reproductive tract of the doe because the pheromone is present in vaginal secretions of a doe in estrus. They also surmise that it is relatively short lived, i.e. its potency doesn’t last very long. If it did persist for a long period of time, a buck would be chasing a doe that was already out of estrus. Mother Nature doesn’t want her bucks off chasing does that can’t be successfully bred nor does she want her does practicing false advertising. 

So if you knew what the pheromone was and if you could reproduce this pheromone in a stable form, it is likely that you would really have something. Right now, manufacturers and the hunters who use doe pee are doing the best they can. Often, the trick works. But it is impossible to determine ahead of time that what a hunter really needs to attract a buck is actually in a particular bottle.

Now, let’s talk about bucks and buck urine. 

If you have ever smelled a big buck in full rut, you know they stink.

Question. Why do they create that stench on themselves?

The answer to that question is key to the premise that buck urine may be a more effective attractant to other bucks than is doe urine.

Dr. Marchinton said to me that he is beginning to believe that bucks, particularly dominant bucks, would rather fight than mate! If that is true, then smelling like a big buck would be better than smelling like a hot-to-trot doe.

Now let’s think about this theory for a moment. If, while turkey hunting, you’ve ever set up a hen and a jake decoy and then called in a good gobbler, you have witnessed the gobbler go first to the jake and stomp all over that male decoy before turning to the hen. Why is that?

How many times have you seen male dogs, when first introduced to each other, run up and smell each other. It is worth noting that they sniff each others privates. It is also worth nothing that a fight is often the result. Yet male and female dogs rarely fight when first introduced, though they do smell each other. Why is that?

Why do males fight?

The answer is dominance. The theory is that if an individual is dominant, then he has access to all the females. It follows that it becomes more important for a dominant buck to meet any challenge to his dominance than to tend to a receptive female.

This dominance business with bucks results in some fairly well-developed behavioral patterns.

The first and most obvious has to do with the greasy black tarsal glands (often known as hocks) on the inside of a buck’s back legs. Bucks and does practice what is referred to as rub-urination, wherein they urinate of these tuffs of longer hair and rub this part of their legs together. Both sexes do it, and they do it at all times of the year.

But in the fall, with the rut coming on, a buck’s hocks turn black, get greasy, and really begin to stink. The hair covering the tarsal glands does not change color. Instead, the deposited urine nurtures a bacteria, the by-product of this bacteria is the dark, greasy stuff that covers the hair making it appear black. Now, here is a small but very important point. Most bucks do not allow this dark greasy stuff to stain the leg below the hock. Most bucks lick off the greasy stuff below the hock. But most bucks aren’t dominant. The dominant buck in an area leaves it on, apparently, the larger the stain the better. Dr. Marchinton said, “if you kill a buck with stains below his tarsal glads, you can bet that he thought he was the baddest buck in the woods.”

The stain itself can be a visual signal to other bucks. Additionally, because the dominant buck leaves the greasy stuff on, he carries a larger scent repository. It is obviously important to a big buck that he smell like a big buck.

But is it important that he smell so strongly because it helps attracts does or because it helps establish and/or signal dominance to other bucks? Dr. Marchinton thinks both are important but believes the buck dominance aspect may be much more important than we have ever realized.

He points to another relatively newly discovered phenomena. Only dominant bucks make scrapes.

Read it again Sportsfans. One of the best deer scientists in the world says that only dominant bucks make scrapes! Is that true? No, not entirely. In the absence of a dominant buck, any little buck is likely to do a bit of scraping. But in an area where there are enough big bucks around to handle the breeding chores, subordinate bucks do not make scrapes. They do, however, visit scrapes regularly.

Here’s the deal. When a dominant buck makes a scrape or returns to re-work a scrape, he will go through the entire scrape sequence. He will mark an over-head limb, usually chewing on it and often working with his pre-orbital gland. He will paw out the ground, and he will urinate in the scrape, usually rub-urinate.

These dark streaks below the tarsal glands are the mark of a dominant buck. Unlike dominant bucks, subordinate bucks lick off any stain below the hocks, not allowing it to streak their legs.

Subordinate bucks routinely visit the scrapes of dominate bucks. They too chew and mark the over-hanging branches. But they do not paw the scrape nor do they urinate in the scrape.

Scrapes are visited more frequently by bucks than by does.

Why does this scrape dominance etiquette exist?

We don’t know exactly. The more these scientists learn, the more they realize that the chemical communication between deer and the behavioral hierarchy among both bucks and does is a complex intertwining of many factors often poorly explained by current research.

But it does seem to be that dominant bucks go to some trouble to mark their area of dominance and to mark themselves as dominant in it. Additionally, the subordinate bucks apparently keep pretty close tabs on these dominant bucks. If something happens to the bull of the woods on their home turf, a new dominant buck will emerge from the subordinate ranks. Perhaps they are awaiting their chance.

So far, most of this has been classroomish history and background. What is the point of it to a hunter?

The point is this. An individual doe is of keen interest to a buck for one or two days per month during hunting the rut. Bucks are continuously interested in other bucks. They keep checking out the status of their competition by smelling either him or his urine. The key is that all bucks are interested in all other bucks at all times during the rut. Additionally, if the scent used by the hunter suggests a buck that is dominant, the real dominant buck in that area will be in search of the challenger… because bucks would rather fight than mate.

While Dr. Marchinton and his group have only very recently been able to test and substantiate some of these observations regarding buck urine and buck behavior, they have yet to determine exactly what information bucks and does get from buck urine and how buck urine might best be used under hunting situations.

But Larry is also a hunter. I asked him if he had the option of using doe urine from a doe he knew to be in estrus or buck urine from a buck he knew to be dominant, which would he use? Like a true researcher, he went through about five minutes of listing all the unknowns that could, in the future, change the way he’d decide which to use. But then he conceded that if he had to decide right now, he’d likely be leaning toward using buck urine.

So, how can you use this information to your advantage? The outdoor magazines are full of theories on exactly that question. Several manufacturers are marketing products to take advantage of this buck urine-dominance theory. Yet there is little “proof” around to indicate that one method of using buck scent may be better than any other.

Buck urine can be collected from a buck you or your hunting buddy has bagged. Use some of it fresh, just sprinkle it around. Freeze some of it in small plastic vials to keep it fresh. This will allow you to be able to use a portion of it while still keeping a stock of fresh buck urine frozen.

Probably the best method of buck urine collection is with a needle and syringe and a clean zip-lock bag. Collecting urine can be a bit dicey because you don’t want to contaminate any of the meat with spilled urine.

How should urine be used? Larry doesn’t know for sure so he wouldn’t say. Sorry, but now you’re back to outdoor writer-eze.

Likely the best, surest buck-to-buck lure to be had is the tarsal glands and urine from a freshly killed dominant buck. By taking the tarsal gland into a new area where another dominant buck exists and by hanging the tarsal gland near your stand, freshly annointed with urine, you may have established a scent cone that every buck within scenting range will be compelled to investigate.

If you try it, let me know how it worked out.