When I came home from work yesterday afternoon around 5:45, I went into the house by the way of the front porch to head off a roofing contractor who was wandering around the neighborhood, soliciting business for his ailing company. As I glanced to the side of our large, wrap-around front porch towards the wooded area to the north, I spotted a newborn fawn nestled at the base of a tree. This fawn was only days old, left in a safe spot while its mother was out foraging for food.
I have never seen a fawn so young and vulnerable! We see them every year, of course, when they’re old enough to start following their moms around in the fields in our neighborhood. Usually, we start seeing them about the end of June when they’ve gained a little weight and strength.
When I left for the airport at 11:15 PM to pick up my husband from his latest business trip , that fawn was still at the base of the same tree. Our household was beginning to get a little worried that this was an abandoned fawn. Perhaps Mom wasn’t coming back to care for it. Unfortunately, this happens often in the wild, particularly when the doe is a first-time mother or has been in a marginal state of nutrition during the pregnancy. I wasn’t sure how long does usually leave their fawns to go out browsing, but I thought that six hours was getting to be the outer range of what was normal for that behavior.
From the book Whitetail Spring that we have in our collection at home:
Typically, fawns born in areas of high-quality habitat where deer numbers are maintained below carrying capacity of the range through adequate hunter harvest have the best chance of surviving early life. For example, more than 90 percent of the fawns born on rich farmlands in portions of the Midwest survive to weaning age. Conversely, infant mortality rates ranging from 50 to 90 percent often prevail in poor-quality habitat where food and cover are inadequate, in northern areas following particularly severe winters, or wherever deer are overly abundant.
Sad to say, we live in a suburban area of St. Paul where the habitat is shrinking more all the time due to residental and business development using up the available land. It is publically acknowledged that we have a deer overpopulation in the area, and there are routine spring “harvests” of the herd using DNR sharp-shooters at controlled times. My observations are that they don’t seem to be particularly stressed or malnourished right here in our area, but I was still skeptical about our fawn survival rate given the paragraph I had just read.
Our resident 12-year-old, new to the world of whitetail deer, was very concerned about this fawn upon going to bed and wanted to know when we were going to intervene if Mama didn’t come back soon. My plan was if by morning, the fawn had not moved from the base of that tree, we would give a call to the DNR, get some advice, and if they felt it was warranted, they could come and remove the fawn from the property. Better that than to have a newborn fawn die next to our house.
Living up and close and personal with Mother Nature is not always an easy thing. We had a yearling deer get hit by a car in front of our house in February, and it made it as far as the side yard where it died. The DNR removed its body from our property. We had a much older deer, the matriarch of our deer herd at the time, pass away from what appeared to be a malignant lesion of her hip which ulcerated and spread. We watched that process since she took to spending a lot of time resting under our back porch. One day she just disappeared and never came back. We see birds and squirrels and bunnies die. Ducks lose their lifetime mates. Their eggs get eaten by raccoons. The raccoons get hit by cars. The cycle of life and death is often hard to observe.
We were spared from making any calls to the DNR this morning. The fawn was gone from the base of the tree. Hopefully, it is safe and sound with its mother and all is well.
