Red Deer Feeding Ground - Tehumardi, Saaremaa, Estonia

Red deer aren’t originally from Saaremaa. The first four were brought to the island from Russia’s Voronezh region in 1965. Estonia sits at the northern edge of where red deer can live, and today most of the country’s deer are found on Saaremaa and neighboring Hiiumaa.

Estonia’s state forest agency, RMK, runs this camera over a winter feeding ground in the pine forest of western Saaremaa. The deer are busiest after dark, so night is the best time to watch. A grown stag weighs around 200 kg, about twice as much as a hind. In late winter the stags shed their antlers, sometimes right in front of the camera.

These woods have a darker past. On the night of October 8, 1944, Soviet and German troops ran into each other here in the dark, and the fighting turned into hand-to-hand combat that left hundreds dead. A sword-shaped memorial still stands nearby.

Did You Know? The camera once caught a strange, shaggy-coated deer that left experts puzzled. It may have been a cross between a red deer and a sika deer.

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