Mother Nature’s Amazing Ways

 

The photo to the right comes to me from Raleigh County.  It’s Gary Hall who spotted the fawn from the tractor seat on his farm at Bolt, WV a few weeks ago.  He successfully moved it out of harms way while mowing his hayfield.

It’s a pretty common encounter around this time of year.   Does are still dropping some late fawns here in the latter part of June–but the first part of July they should be finished.    Certainly, it’s a fragile time for a young whitetail.  However, many well meaning people probably put a fawn in more jeopardy by trying to help out. 

Gary‘s actions were fine.  He picked up the fawn, moved it on to the edge of the woods and then left it alone.  That’s the prescribed way to deal with a young deer you’ve found abandoned in the woods.   Leaving a helpless fawn alone without the protection of its mother may seem like the worst thing to do, but that’s because we are compassionate humans.  We wouldn’t leave a human baby all alone, but a human baby is the most helpless creature on earth. 

Does give birth to their fawns and soon afterward will leave them on the edge of a field or in a secluded out of the way place.  They do this to protect them.  The newborn fawn has no scent.  Predators can’t sniff them out as you might imagine.   The doe’s presence would only draw the attention of a predator toward the location of the offspring.   So she moves away and only returns on occasion to nurse the fawn.  Fawns have the speckled coat which offers them another layer of protection in the form of camouflage against a forest floor backdrop. Therefore most lone fawns you encounter aren’t "abandoned" at all, they’re "hidden." 

Some also worry picking up that fawn puts human scent on the young deer and it will be rejected by its mother.    It’s a wives tale.  Deer will not reject the fawn just because there’s human scent around. 

There are some occasions when a fawn is orphaned.  Perhaps the doe was struck and killed by a car or met some other demise which leaves the fawn all alone in the world.   Eventually, the offspring is going to get hungry and will start whining.  The sound of a fawn’s bleat is quite distinctive.  It will attract the attention of other does in the area. Almost always, another doe will adopt that fawn and feed it instinctively–even if she’s already nursing one of her own.

Gene Thorn, manager of the West Virginia Wildlife Center, tells me there’s research published which discovered a high percentage of fawns and does showed differing DNA.  The research proved adoption in the wild is a fairly common occurrence.  

Thorn said during his days as a wildlife manager on the R.D. Bailey Wildlife Management Area in southern West Virginia he would often get a fawn delivered by some well meaning individual believing it was "abandoned" or "orphaned."  Thorn would place the fawn on the edge of a field where deer were known to feed in the evening.  He tells me 100-percet of the time one of those deer which would wander into the field toward dusk would be alerted by the fawn’s cries and take care of it. 

Amazingly, the same is true for black bear cubs.  Occasionally, though not nearly as often, biologists will be delivered a bear cub.  The best way to take care of a bear cub–is to let another bear take care of it.  Typically a cub is deposited into the den of a sow and she’s none the wiser that one of those may not be hers. 

Sometimes, the undesirable happens and a fawn gets taken down by a coyote or other predator.  A young squirrel gets picked off by a hawk.  Sometimes, a wiley fox finds a rabbit’s nest.  Now and then a bobcat jumps a clutch of poults.  However, the coyote, hawk, fox, and bobcat are part of the state’s fauna too.  They have to eat.  A "happy ending" depends on whose perspective you’re coming from and they don’t all turn out the same way.  However, one thing is for sure–one way or another–Mother Nature takes care of her own.