Watch: Close Encounter With Buck and Doe Caught on Video

I’ve been up-close-and-personal with some deer before, but not this close, not while they were still alive and kicking, anyhow.

These guys are hunting in the snow when a young mule deer buck comes trailing behind a doe, who eventually leads the buck right up to the guys while they both do their best to stay still. Until she actually sniffs the one guy’s pants and decides she’d better try something else!

Here’s what the video description says about it:

Hunting on public land and a young, rutting mule-deer buck chased a doe right to us. The doe actually smelled Travis’ pants. The young mule deer buck just stood there at 10 yards confused.

When I started watching, I was intrigued by the red color of the buck’s antlers. My guess was that he had just rubbed the velvet off of his antlers, but the video description says otherwise:

The reason that this deer rack appears red is because there are a lot of Douglas Fir trees in the area. When the deer rub on the trees over time, it can leave the rack more red rather than brown.

They were clearly hunting in a good spot; in the early part of the video I saw at least one (and possibly two) more deer in the distance.

The buck even hung around afterward and didn’t leave until one hunter blew a grunt call.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.