In this week’s blog post I am going to talk about a whitetail deer encounter I had this past week and a bit about how hardy these animals are.

With it being may when most adult does drop there fawns I have been wondering if I would have an encounter with one. Spending so much time outside around woods with a lot of deer living around. Well I did!! Last week while at work I came across a small fawn that was only a few days old if that. The little tike still wasn’t even fully steady on his/her hoofs yet with legs still wobbly. I was on a mower cutting grass when I happened to catch fast movement and looked up to see a fawn staring at me on the edge of some tall grass. The fawn stood there for only a second or two before darting off down a ditch on its wobbly legs only to jump into the water that was surly deeper than the fawn was tall. It swam through the water like nothing and ran up the other side of the ditch on pure instinct. I am always amazed by these animals and how they act. Whitetail deer fawns can walk and nurse off of the mother just minutes after being born. So I don’t really know how old exactly the fawn was. I do wonder what happened to the mother because usually they stay around a hundred yards or so away but clearly there were no other deer in the area for at least 200 yards and I knew that because there was not really any cover. From what ive researched does usually move their fawns away from the spot where they are born within three hours because of the high probability that the smell of the after birth will attract predators. I have actually seen whitetail mothers eat the afterbirth in an attempt to conceal the fact that they gave birth at all. The fawn I seen will nurse 2 to three times daily increasing to 6-8 times a day over time. They will begin to feed on vegetation after they reach two to three weeks of age. The whitetail deer is an amazing animal and that little fawn proved that to me like I have been proved over and over again.