In the Outdoors: Moonlight and the deer

Duke: It seems logical that certain species of animals and plants would use the moon

By Oak Duke

     It’s enlightening, if not mesmerizing to observe a hatchling, a baby sea turtle, rhythmically flap tiny flippers across a wide expanse of sand in a headlong rush to the sea.

     How do those newborns know the way?

     According to NOAA researchers, and others, most make their pilgrimage at night, guided by the moon and stars.

     It’s safer then to avoid daylight predators.

     On the East coast of the United States sea turtles breed, and have for over 200 million years, even before dinosaurs.

     Sea turtles don’t breed on the West coast, California because… for one thing, the water is too cold, 10 to 20 degrees cooler than the same latitude waters on the East coast.

     And since the Full moon rises in the east, just at dark, there is no guiding light over the Pacific waters of the West coast, like on the East coast.

     When we were walking on a Carolina beach, signs were posted, driven into the sand dunes, announcing the requirement that Red or Amber lights are to be used instead of white incandescent bulbs so as not confuse turtles.

     And people are actually doing it.

     Red lights on the beach houses!

     Not so long ago, before people became enlightened about the danger of our societies’ lights affecting orientation to the ocean, baby turtles would crawl, not towards the sea and the reflected moon and starlight, but towards highways and hotels, beach houses, and beachside convenience stores…their brighter lights.

     A baby turtle roadway apocalypse threatened extinction. 

     Anyone who has noted that potted plants turn their leaves to the sunny window has no doubt that light is a powerful guiding force in nature.

     I first became aware that indeed, the moon affected spawning bass back in the 1990s on Keuka Lake.

     Whenever the moon was full in May, buck bass would swim up on the shallows to annually sweep out their nests and thereby entice a mate.    It was all catch-and-release fishing of course, a full month before the New York state Black bass season had its traditional opener in mid-June.

     The precise date in May became unimportant.

     But what was critical was the timing of the Full moon.

     What a bass-catching fish-fest! Sure it was fun, but also enlightening.

     When I was a young man, I hunted deer every day in the morning before work and in the evening (until Daylight Savings Time) after work, through archery and the firearms season, starting in the early 1970s.

     And back then it was common knowledge, written in stone, everybody said that deer had their rut at the same time every year.

     Only problem was it didn’t happen when it was supposed to every year.

     Sure, once in a while, but not regularly.

     Sometimes the rut would fire up in early November, sometimes in mid-November…and even once in a while in late October!

     What gives?

     Deer hunters who travel out-of-state know this conundrum well. One year the rut is at one time, the next…meh.

     Tag soup.

     How can a deer hunting vacation, maybe a few days, or a week, be timed in advance?

     By the mid-80’s certain successful hunters and wildlife researchers, from Dr. James Kroll in Texas to Charles Alsheimer of Bath, NY, and others began writing about the moon and finding significant correlations with the Full moon and the peak of the buck rut, not only with wild animals, but also penned, research deer.  

     Since I had extensive notes and writings about deer hunting, going back into the mid-1970s, it was only logical to correlate what I had observed and experienced with the Full moon.

     Simply chart it on an Excel spreadsheet.

     Could it be that animals, termed Short-day Breeders like deer are ultrasensitive to light and instead of temperature, barometric pressure, or a specific date on a calendar, whitetails are affected by moonlight like turtles and bass and plants?

     We know that much has been written about the power of moonlight; poems, songs, odes, stories, and explanations for behavior, natural and of course the freakish, strange, and supernatural too.

     Puzzling, but the moon used to be a much more romantic symbol in our culture than nowadays.

     Nope, not so much anymore.

     However the moon is and has always been an icon in man’s lexicon.

     Celebrations around the world, in many different cultures, use the moon as a clockwork timepiece to celebrate events and even religious holidays.

     Even Christianity uses the moon to time its Easter celebrations, always on the first Sunday after the first Full moon after the Vernal Equinox, after March’s Full Snow moon, this year March 31, 2024. Created by the Nicaean Ecumenical Council in 325 A.D. now over 2,000 years ago, Easter’s date moves with the moon, unlike Christmas and others with fixed dates.

     The moon has been used by many cultures to time planting and harvests as a better mechanism than the use of ambient temperatures which vary often dramatically from year to year. But the moon, with its Metonic (19-year cycle) is always the same.

     It seems logical that certain species of animals and plants would use the moon too, as a timing mechanism for reproduction, much more reliable than variable seasons with temperature fluctuations.

     Though the moon is spooky and scary to some, having grown up with horror movies with werewolves and other mythological creatures as fanciful entertainment on the one hand, and a recalcitrant stubbornness against science and commonsense on the other, it’s no wonder people have turned their back on the moon.

     But on the contrary, in a world of constant change, of weather events, hurricanes, floods, volcanic eruptions, droughts, climate change, seasonal shifts, not to mention manmade catastrophes, pollution of all sorts, the moon is always constant, always able to be relied upon to appear when expected, no matter our feelings.

      Many species over the millennia, including deer have hardwired the moon into their DNA, internal circadian rhythms, and behavioral patterns because it works.

     We left human footprints on the moon back in 1969, and just put a robot lander there, Odysseus, back in February (2024.)

     The moon is one thing we haven’t screwed up yet.