Clearcut Bedroom

A thick eight-point tends a doe through an early succession forest, head low and focused, while a second deer beds in the tangle of brush below. This is textbook rut behavior—a buck locked on a doe, shadowing her through the nastiest cover he can find. Young pines and goldenrod choke the old logging road, turning what was mature forest a decade ago into prime bedding habitat. Any hunter who's pushed a clearcut knows this scene: the does bed here because nothing can see them, and the bucks follow because that's what bucks do in November. Warm, natural light and soft brushwork give the moment an intimacy, like you stumbled onto something you weren't supposed to see.