AUTUMN is the season for one of the most spectacular sights in nature – the deer rut.

Between September and November, many species of male deer will compete for a female mate in a dramatic display of action as they lock antlers.

Stags and bucks will try to make themselves look bigger than their opponents by charging around and rolling on the ground.

The impressive creatures will put on lots of weight in the months leading up to the rut, when they put all their energy into winning as many females as they can. The deer charge back and forth and challenge each other.

At the Knepp Castle Estate near Horsham, there are three species of deer – fallow deer, red deer and roe deer.

While the reclusive roe deer are native to Britain and have always been present at Knepp in small numbers, red deer, although indigenous, are now mainly found almost exclusively in the Scottish Highlands.

Red deer like to wallow in rivers and at Knepp they grow almost twice the size of their Scottish counterparts, with huge antlers. It is believed they were once a riverine species who were pushed out of their preferred habitats as humans took over fertile floodplains.

The fallow deer at Knepp are strains from Petworth Park, where Henry VIII is said to have hunted them in the 1500s, and from Gunton Park in Norfolk, chosen for their impressive antlers.