It's mating season! Be on the lookout for deer on the road (and in your yard)

This is the season when you need to be on the lookout for deer. The deer are heading into mating season , so they are moving around a lot. You need to be very cautious driving through wooded areas, especially at night.

This is also the season when trees and some shrubs are vulnerable to deer damage. Fall is their mating season, also known as rutting season. It is called rutting season because "rut" comes from the Latin word rugire which means "to roar." This is in reference to the loud noises the male deer, referred to as bucks, make to attract females.

During the mating season, the bucks will fight over the females, which involves crashing their antlers into each other. In preparation, the bucks will practice on the smaller trees and some shrubs in our landscapes. The damage they do by rubbing their antlers on the trees can kill the tree. They are also attracted to taller, woody shrubs. This damage might not be deadly but will require some serious pruning.

Any tree with a trunk that is less than 4 inches in caliper should have a protection on the trunk. A trunk protector made out of a rigid, plastic mesh is the best to use. You want to make sure it is covering the trunk from the ground to the first set of branches. These are made to be left on the tree until the tree outgrows them.

Smaller trees, trees with multiple trunks and vulnerable shrubs should be protected with deer fencing. Deer fencing is a thin, black, plastic mesh that is 6 feet tall. It should be supported by wooden stakes and installed around these plants to prevent the deer from gaining access to them.

The deer fencing should remain up through the spring. This is because in the spring, the deer will rub their antlers again. After the mating season is over, the bucks lose their antlers. In the spring they grow back. When they first grow back, the new antlers have a fuzzy covering referred to as velvet. The bucks once again damage plants by rubbing to remove this velvet. You can remove the fencing in late spring. Keep the fencing so you can put it back up in the fall.

What about those fall colors?

There was a lot of talk during our long, dry period that turned into a drought that we were not going to have a colorful fall season. Had the drought continued, this may have very well come true. Thankfully we did receive substantial rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Helene.

With this rain, a colorful fall should be back in the future. There were some varieties of trees shedding leaves early during the drought. The trees that did this were doing so to protect themselves. They drop the leaves to reduce their need for water and simply go to sleep early for the winter. This describes just a few of the different types of trees we have. The trees with leaves should provide the colors we all enjoy.

The rain also did a great job of waking up our lawns, both the good grass and weeds. If you would like to eliminate the weeds, this is a great time to do so. If you don’t do it now, your next opportunity won’t return until the summer months.

Weeds are plants, and when plants are preparing to go dormant, they intake nutrients at a faster rate. Since this intake process is accelerated, when you use an herbicide, it becomes more effective. A great selective, broad-leaf herbicide to use is Fertilome’s Weed Free Zone. It can be used in temperatures as low as 45 degrees.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: It's mating season! Be on the lookout for deer on the road (and in your yard)