00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host Tony Peterson.
00:00:20
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation’s podcast, which is brought to you by first Light. I’m your host, Tony Peterson, and today’s episode is all about fawns and how they survive their first few weeks when everything is trying to eat them. We take it for granted how incredible it is that any deer can survive to adulthood, mostly because we don’t usually witness, or at least aren’t aware of, how many fawns don’t get so lucky. It’s a lot, and it’s pretty wild to think that they are born sort of defenseless, yet enough of them still manage to see their first birthday, even in areas with high predator dencidents. The real story of Bambi is pretty crazy, and I’m going to tell it right now. Every spring, the Peterson household goes through a similar roller coaster of emotions after getting attached to some baby animals. The most common well eats in our world are ducks and geese, which nests in our backyard pond. The goslings come first, and while they are pretty quick to grow up, you know, enough to be able to run kind of, it’s still interesting to see how from day to day we can watch the number of goslings drop. We have a healthy fox population here in the burbs. We have plenty of coyotes too, and we have plenty of birds of prey, so it’s really no surprise that some goslings are getting whacked.
00:01:43
Speaker 3: Then the mallards come, and then the wood ducks.
00:01:46
Speaker 2: Now it’s pretty hard to find a cuter critter than a tennis ball sized duckling, all covered in fuzz. But they also must be delicious because they attract a wide range of predators. The hawks do a real number on the ducklings, and it’s not on common for one of my daughters to remark in the morning that the mallards are down to six, then five, then four or whatever.
00:02:06
Speaker 3: Young animals in the while.
00:02:07
Speaker 2: Have it rough, but they aren’t without survival strategies. The good geese parents here keep a close watch out, you know, when they’re younger feeding, and they often stage up close to taller grass and cover that allows the youngsters to scatter and immediately disappear from overhead predation. Other critters, you know, like frogs or toads, for example, engage in a reproduction style that I’ve talked about before. You know that results in so many juveniles on the scene at one time that your advantage is, you know, the run of the mill. Predation can’t really wipe out the population to a lot of species, It’s just a numbers game. It’s called prey saturation. It’s actually pretty widespread throughout the animal kingdom. Even animals like deer, which are generally only going to produce either one or two offspring, often have a condensed breeding window, which results in a condensed berthing window pray saturation. Even the high predator density areas will have some fawns slip through, you know, the most vulnerable stage due partially to this strategy. There’s just too many of them to all take out. But it’s not just about the fawns hitting the dirt at roughly the same time that saves them. There’s more to it, which is pretty cool. But before I get into that, I want to address the difference between Northern born fawns and Southern born fawns. Up here close to Canada, the bulk of the fawn drop just happened or is about to happen. This is no accident and coincides nicely with the time when they’re you know, just a ton of food available for mama so she can produce some high quality milk, but also a ton of cover available for her to stash her fawns away. Down south, the drop happens earlier, and due to their not being such clearly defined seasons, it’s often a little bit more spread out. Northern fawns are usually a bit larger than their southern cousins, which only makes sense when you consider the general size difference between adult deer that hail from either the north or the south. Northern fonds tend to have a little thicker of a coat and often live their lives like their batteries on twenty percent, and they need to conserve energy. Southern fawns, with their thinner coats, tend to focus less on wasting energy and more on heat avoidance, which is a real issue. The farther towards the bottom of the country, you go. This difference can be framed up another way. A northern fawn’s real big challenge, besides avoiding predators and a host of other dangers, is to grow enough before winter sets in life is rough for young deer. They aren’t likely to command the top spot in the best feeding areas or get to bed in the most beneficial places on the land. This is part of the reason why they are so easy to see, especially in the early part of the bow season. Young deer down south have to answer a different question, which is how can I avoid overheating and getting chopped by predators long enough to reach maturity. That predator question is a big one, and it’s always a topic that fires up deer hunters. We have almost kind of a bizarre way of thinking about predators. This was highlighted to me this past Turkey season when a good buddy he sent me a pick of a newborn fawn leg which he followed up quickly with a comment about how when he has the time, he’s going to try to call in some coyotes and send them out. That is not an uncommon reaction to finding a fawn that has been eighty six by a predator, but that place he found that fawn has tons of deer like tons, And I’d argue that if you’re going to have a high concentration of deer, hell, I’d argue that a big part of the land management aspect of deer hunting is specifically designed to produce an unnatural concentration of deer. You know the consequence of that is going to be anything that eats deer is likely to move in and set up shop.
00:05:36
Speaker 3: And why wouldn’t they.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: I recently listened to a well known deer farmer type of hunter, who was bitching about all the people who set up on his fence lines every year. Look, I get that great, because it just kind of sucks. But I also know there aren’t very many people in the entire country who do more to concentrate deer on their land than him. If game animals are a shared resource, which they are supposed to be, and if you hoard them, you know you’re likely to attract predators, even if they walk on two legs and hunt not with teeth and claws, but instead with sharp sticks and controlled explosions that send a nice little hunk of lead or maybe copper through the air at two or three X to speed a sound. Two other things immediately occurred to me when my buddy texted me about that dead fawn. One was that, yes, coyotes eat deer, and they always have, they always will. I don’t begrudge them for that because I feel the same compulsion, and I bet you do too. I don’t know why it’s so fun to hunt deer and to shoot them and all that. I just know that it is, and it’s not something I chose. It’s just there, and I suspect it’s an echo from humanity’s long, long history and the fact that success killing an animal like a deer was one of the primary ways in which we were granted another sunrise and the opportunity to make more of us. That coyote out there is motivated by the exact same stuff as you and I. He just doesn’t have a choice to have a whole bunch of easy food delivered right to his mouth like we do now. It also occurred to me that my buddy didn’t actually know whether it was a coyote that killed that faun. There are a hell of a lot of other fawn eaters out there. You have the big bad wolf in some places and where they live, they tend to eat a lot of deer, including newborn fawns. But then you have black bears, and boy do they not get enough credit for chopping on Bambi. Bears are masters of finding newborn fawns. And what’s worse is that we know, through plenty of research that they specifically target newborn fawns. I mean, think about it this way, at least for northern Yogis. Spend all winter in a little cave or under a root water in a brush pile, and you wake up after like five months of sleep, and when you finally get out of bed, you have a world full of salad and some protein, but it’s mostly lower nutrient stuff right out of the gate. And then after a little while, a nice little tender package of venison gets left out in some grassy field somewhere, or should I say dozens and dozens of nice little packages of tender venison. What’s he gonna do? Keep munching on roots and shit? Nope, you wouldn’t either. Of course, there are other kinds of fawn eaters out there. Bobcats are one, and I think it’s truly fascinating how common they are becoming in some areas. I never saw a bobcat my life until probably ten years ago, and now I see them almost every year, in addition to getting trail camera images of them all the time. In fact, in southern Wisconsin this year, I filmed a pair of bobcats making a pretty good stock on my Dave Smith decoys, and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.
00:08:39
Speaker 3: In a wild.
00:08:51
Speaker 2: Cats are unreal predators, and dear know it. I’ve talked about this on here before, but if you’ve ever had a domestic cat wander through while you’re deer hunting and then had the deer notice that kittie, it’s never a non issue. They always blow and stomp and keep a crazy close eye on that cat, which might not seem to make sense considering your average tabby isn’t a real threat to pretty much any deer. I think they don’t like them because they have a gene deep fear of cats, because some cats throughout their history did represent real danger, and there isn’t much difference between how a tiger moves and hunts than a mountain lion or a bobcat or yes, mister Whiskers mcfluffy Butt, who mostly lays around your house waiting to be fed or get a belly scratch. Coyotes and bobcats, and in a lot of places bears are predators that will actively hunt and kill newborn fawns pretty much from the north to the south and out east and in some parts of the West. They like deer, they seem to do pretty well in a wide variety of environments, especially coyotes, so they are just like a prevalent predator. But Southern fawns have a couple other predators to worry about, including faral hogs and even snakes. I didn’t know faral hogs would eat a deer until I shot an axis dough in Texas one time, and then farreal hogs eight.
00:10:12
Speaker 3: He But of course they do, because why wouldn’t they.
00:10:16
Speaker 2: I imagine that there are a lot of places where snakes don’t eat newborn fawns, but there are areas where they do, and that’s pretty wild to think about. So how does Bambi run through the gauntlet and not get snacked on? Well, they mostly don’t do much running. In the first few weeks of their life, they’ll spend about ninety percent of their time just not moving. This is no accident. But this behavior did help create two myths about fawns that persist today. The first is the whole olderless scent free thing. They aren’t sent free, they aren’t olderless, and in fact, they have to have scent so mamma can identify who is who. But when you’re small and you don’t move much, you don’t leave a lot of scent around. Factor in that they cake out on the forest floor and their sense signature is just as pretty small. The other myth is about the abandoned fawn thing. Every spring, all across the country, people who don’t know much about deer find abandoned fawns quote unquote, and they do what they can to help them. But mostly those fawns aren’t abandoned. They were stashed away through some wisdom does have or acchoir, and they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. You know, when you walk up and realize there’s a baby deer laying on the ground in front of you, their default strategy to stay alive is to not move. And once you understand that, and you understand that bucks also do that throughout their entire lives, you become a better hunter.
00:11:42
Speaker 3: For it.
00:11:44
Speaker 2: Now, if you started an episode of Family Guy right now, when a new faun was born, by the time the credits were rolling, that fawn would be able to stand. If you threw on I don’t know, the Titanic right before, you know that faun was born, by the time the credits rolled on that film, the fawn would be able to walk. They can get around pretty early in their life, but they mostly don’t do much getting around because that is a prime opportunity for predators to move in. So when they are first born, they might stand up for a few minutes in the morning to nurse, maybe take a little grooming from mama, and then possibly a short walk around the area. But does know that not only is the clock ticking on the whole deal, but that they are also directly responsible for giving away their fawns’ locations, So mama doesn’t stick around long. After a little snack and maybe a walk about in the morning, the fawn’s gonna lay right back down to snooze away the midday. And on that note, do you know what’s absolutely crazy how rare it is to see a deer sleep. I’ve gotten trail camera images of bucks that went to sleep usually during the rut, but sometimes not. And once I killed a meal deer buck that took several micro naps in front of me, But I can’t honestly remember for sure seeing a white tailed deer of any age that was definitely sleeping, and I’ve been looking for that a lot. They do, though, and no one does it better than young fawns. Throughout the heat of the day, They’ll just lay there in the same spot, snoozing frequently and just not moving until mama shows up again for the afternoon or evening feeding session. These nursing sessions are really short and as a side note, I watched this happen last year in northern Wisconsin as a doe fed to fawns, and what was really bananas was that both of the fawn’s tales were going so fast they were in a helicopter mode. If you don’t know what that means, consider your average Labrador retriever that’s used for hunting and he happens to get a very fresh scent of a rooster in his snout and watch him get excited, so excited because he knows that a flush is going to happen and his tail will stop going side to side like windshield wipers, and instead will start going in a circle. I think it’s pretty cute that fawns do that when they are getting fed. Now, as the sun starts to set the woods switch over to night mode. Does often move their fawns to a new location they get another snack on the way or once they’re there. But again, it’s all about minimizing movement and staying statues still on the forest floor. I couldn’t find a definitive answer to this in any of the deer research I looked up, but it makes me wonder if dose tend to stash their fawns in more open grassy areas during the day and then in the woods at night to sort of play the opposite game with predators. It would seem to make sense that bears and bobcats and coyotes and wolves and whoever else would be less likely to visit a wide open grassy pasture at noon than they would at midnight, which means it might be safer for fawns to be in the timber all night long than out where the tooth. Your critters can course and course until they run across them in the knee high grass. It’s an interesting thought anyway. Whether it’s remotely true or not, I don’t know. While fawns have the software to be as invisible as they possibly can, they also have some handy hardware. Their stippled coat is one of nature’s wonders, I guess, like all deer and their coats are. It allows them to blend in so dang well to so many different types of cover. I shot photos of a fawn a few years ago standing in the north woods where the light was coming through and it was all bright beams of sun and dark, dark shadows, and it was one of those moments where I just kind of got it.
00:15:25
Speaker 3: It just clicked.
00:15:26
Speaker 2: I was like, that little dude has such a perfect paint job for this situation. Now, as the first week tick spy into the second and then the third, both northern and southern fawns grow up fast. It isn’t long before they can mostly keep up with mom, and also not long before you see them playing with one another or just kind of generally getting the zuomies. The easy scientific explanation for this is, you know, it’s kind of practice for evading real predators. Learning to use your body, the juke and move and change directions quickly and jump high. No, it certainly lends itself to doing those things when a coyote starts running in like a blitzing linebacker. But I’m not so sure it isn’t just play that happens to have beneficial side effects. I think deer have more emotions and consciousness than we probably would guess, And I just wonder if it’s just fun for a fawn that has been laying around all day not moving to suddenly do some parkore in the field and kind of think of it like recess for grade school kids. Maybe they don’t even know, but again, it’s kind of fun to think about. In bear country, there is a huge uptick in fawn survival once they reach the ten to twelve week range, and that probably goes for nearly all predation. When a fawn can really run, it’s not an easy snack for most predators to obtain, although they certainly do keep killing them if they get the chance.
00:16:45
Speaker 3: But it’s not so much the four.
00:16:47
Speaker 2: Legged petators that are really the threat then, though, because by the time the bo season starts to kick off, they’re going to lose their spots and start to look like adult deer, even though when they stand next to an actual adult deer, even the dimmest of hunters knows what he’s looking at. Sometimes that matters, Sometimes that doesn’t. And as much as it sucks to think about shooting fawns in the fall, it happens a lot.
00:17:08
Speaker 3: It’s just part of the deal.
00:17:10
Speaker 2: They have a tough go of it all through their lives, but it’s those first couple weeks that.
00:17:14
Speaker 3: Are the real test.
00:17:15
Speaker 2: Think about that the next time you spot a little set of twins plodding along behind a mama. Do and think about coming back next week as I drop more whitetail knowledge.
00:17:26
Speaker 3: That’s it for this week. I’m Tony Peterson.
00:17:27
Speaker 2: This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast. If you haven’t checked out our podcast Blood Trails by Jordan Siller’s, go listen to it. Murder Mysteries set in the outdoors and Jordan does such a good job on it.
00:17:42
Speaker 3: It’s absolutely incredible.
00:17:43
Speaker 2: The whole family will like it, but I promise you your wife will.
00:17:47
Speaker 3: If she’s anything like my wife. Check it out.
00:17:50
Speaker 2: If you don’t want to check that out, go to the mediater dot com anyway and look at all of the content we drop. We’re dropping how to articles, conservation news, new films, new podcasts, literally new content every day. Go check it out, and once again, thank you for all of your support.
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