Vál lies roughly halfway between Budapest and Székesfehérvár, little more than half an hour’s drive from the capital, where the Royal Hunting Reserve is located. The reserve is a special place: the park holds all the large game species living in Hungary in a single area: red deer, fallow deer, roe deer, mouflon and wild boar.
The fallow deer and mouflon populations stand out among them, both for their numbers and their quality. Now that the red deer’s roar has quieted down, it is worth paying closer attention to the fallow deer, one of the park’s most important large game species, not least because we have now entered the fallow deer rutting season.
The strongest, most vigorous buck wins the best rutting ground.
The rut is a key period for the survival of the fallow deer species. The word has several meanings: it refers to the behavior of male fallow deer during the mating season, to their mating call, and to the mating ground itself, the 1–2 meter trough-like hollow that the buck scrapes out for himself. This is the rutting pit.
The process is far from as simple as a buck finding a spot, sounding his call, and the fallow does arriving at once. To succeed, he has to fight off the other bucks. The battle for spots and does is an integral part of the whole season. The strongest, most vigorous buck wins the best rutting ground. There he scrapes out his trough and lures the fallow does to him with his call and his scent.
The rutting season lasts from early October to the end of November, and it coincides with the hunting season for mature bucks carrying the finest, largest antlers. From a hunter’s point of view, these brief two months therefore offer the chance to take the most magnificent, largest fallow deer trophies.
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