Listening for the red deer rut

For a few weeks each autumn the forests around the Zărnești basin do the loudest thing they do all year. The red deer stags roar, and on a still evening a single stag can be heard across the whole valley. People who have walked these hills for years still stop in the track when they first hear it, and then look at each other. It is not a sound you expect from a deer.

It is also the one wildlife evening we run where the odds are genuinely on your side, because hearing counts. Most of what we do in the field is waiting for an animal that may or may not walk out. The rut is different: on the right evening the thing you came for is audible from a kilometre away, and you do not need to see a stag to have had the evening. This is what it is, when it happens, and how to be at the forest edge without spoiling it, for yourself or for the deer.

What the roaring actually is

Red deer spend most of the year apart, hinds with their calves on one piece of ground and stags in loose groups elsewhere. In September the stags move onto the pastures and forest edges where the hinds are, and for a few weeks each one holds a group of them there against every other stag in earshot. The roar is how a stag says where he is, how big he is and how much he is prepared to fight, mostly so that he does not have to. Two stags that roar at each other for long enough will sometimes walk side by side, sizing each other up, and now and then lock antlers. You can hear that from a distance too: a dry clatter, like sticks dragged along a fence.

It costs them a great deal. A stag in the rut barely eats, and by the end of October he has lost a good part of the weight he needs for winter. That matters for how you behave around them, and we come back to it below.

When it happens

Roughly mid-September to mid-October, and it does not consult the calendar. A warm September pushes it later; a cold snap brings it forward and makes it louder. The peak, when several stags are answering each other at once, usually falls a week or two either side of the first of October. We run the evening while it lasts and stop when the roaring stops, rather than selling an evening in November when the woods have gone quiet.

Within the season, the evening is the time. The roaring starts as the light drops, carries on through dusk and, on a cold clear night, well into the dark. Dawn is the other good hour, but the evening is easier to reach and the light is on your side for the first part of it. Still weather matters more than clear weather. On a windy evening the sound is torn up before it reaches you and the deer keep to cover; on a calm one, with a bit of cold in the air, it carries.

Where to stand

Stags roar from cover, often several at once from different parts of the same wood. What you want is a place above open ground, with the forest edge in front of you, the wind in your face and enough distance that the deer do not know you are there. In the Zărnești basin that means a viewpoint over pasture with beech forest behind it, reached by a short walk on a track. We do not publish the exact spots, for the same reason the hides have no coordinates anywhere on this site: a place that draws a crowd stops being a place the deer use.

The wind is the part people forget. A stag will tolerate a shape on a hillside a long way off; he will not tolerate the smell of one. Check which way the air is moving before you settle, not after.

How to behave at the edge

Most of it is doing less than you would like to.

Stay out of the forest. Pushing into cover during the rut disturbs animals in the most demanding weeks of their year, and a hind that is moved off the ground takes the stag with her. It also means the next group, or next year's, finds an empty wood. We watch from a distance with scopes and we do not go in after them.

Keep still and keep quiet. Not silent, a low voice at a distance is fine, but no walking about, no phone screens lit up in the dark and no torch beam swept across the pasture to see what is there. If you need a light, point it at the ground. And do not imitate the roar. It is a party trick that works, which is exactly the problem: a stag that comes to a call comes to fight, and he has been fighting for a fortnight.

Leave the dog at home. If you go on your own rather than with us, go in a pair and tell someone where. The same ground carries bears in October, feeding hard before winter, and the forest edge at dusk is their hour too. That is not a reason to stay away. It is a reason not to wander into the trees after a sound.

What to bring

The evening is mostly standing still after sunset, in October, in a valley that collects cold air. Dress for two hours of not moving, not for the walk in: a warm layer more than you think, a hat and gloves, and something windproof on top. Dark, quiet clothing; a rustling jacket is audible further than you would credit. Binoculars if you have them, and we bring the scopes. A flask of something hot. A headtorch for the walk out, with a red setting if it has one. And a bit of patience, because the first half hour is usually nothing, and then it is not.

What to expect, honestly

Hearing them, on a still evening in the season, is likely. Seeing a stag is sometimes: one walks out onto the open ground in the last of the light, at a distance, and stands there roaring with his breath showing, and it is one of the best things these mountains offer. But treat that as a bonus on top of the sound rather than the point of the evening, and go in expecting the sound. We publish no figure for either, here or anywhere else on this site, because we have not counted enough evenings to state one honestly.

On the rut evening we read the calls as they happen: which stag is holding which ground, when a challenger has arrived, when the roaring changes from advertisement to argument. That reading is what turns a sound in the dark into an evening you understand. But the sound itself belongs to anyone who stands still in the right place with the wind in their face, and the habits above are worth having whether you come with us or go on your own.

Quick checklist for a rut evening

• Mid-September to mid-October, on a calm evening, in position an hour before dusk
• A viewpoint above open ground, forest edge in front, wind in your face
• Stay out of the trees, keep still, keep lights on the ground, do not imitate the roar
• Warm layers for standing still, hat and gloves, quiet dark clothing
• Binoculars, a flask, a headtorch for the walk out
• Hearing is the point; seeing is the bonus