Can you see what lies almost hidden in the first photo? At the very center of the frame there’s a bit of bright chestnut color that doesn’t match the faded leaf litter around it. This spot is in a hedgerow that I often pass by when I walk my dog, and that’s what I was doing a few weeks ago when I saw that patch of incongruous brightness. I immediately moved away and headed for home, and my dog never seemed to realize the fawn was there. I returned, sans canine, and carefully approached to take some pictures. The fawn’s spotted coat and bright chestnut color didn’t blend very well with the ground or the green leaves, but its stillness and lack of scent were effective–at least for my dog. When danger is near a fawn’s heart rate and breathing actually slow down, making it even more undetectable.
Very young fawns spend most of their time lying hidden while their mothers forage and rest in separate locations, but this was a surprising place for a doe to leave her fawn. The hedgerow is not far from several village streets and it lies between grass lawns that are mowed regularly. But contrary to what you might think, this closeness to human activity may actually be beneficial. The survival rate for newborn fawns is low–perhaps 50% or less in the first few weeks of life. Any wild hunter that comes close enough to detect a resting fawn will take advantage of the easy meal. For animals like bears, which struggle to find enough nourishing food in early summer, a fawn is a nutritional bonanza. As it lay in the hedgerow, the risk to the fawn from humans and dogs (mostly on leashes) may have been offset by the reluctance of coyotes and other predators to forage in such areas.
Fawns gain strength rapidly, and in a few weeks they begin to move around. The young ones are soon accompanying the does wherever they go, and that’s when we start finding their tracks. Generally the first ones we see are about one inch in length, noticeably smaller than their mothers’ tracks.
But sometimes an even younger fawn leaves visible tracks. In the photo below a housecat print lies on the left, facing to the left, and a fawn track lies on the right, facing right. The cat track was only 1 1/2 inches wide and the fawn print was not quite 3/4 inch long. That’s the smallest fawn print I’ve ever found.
At first does and their fawns move slowly and keep to themselves. As the young ones grow larger they begin to travel more, and family groups may join together in small herds. The photo below shows the tracks of a fawn walking beside its mother.
The hooves of fawns are small copies of the hooves of adult deer, but they don’t show the wear that is characteristic of the hooves of the grownups. In the photo below you see a fawn’s left rear foot. Although this fawn still had a spotted coat, it was old enough that it would have been making limited movements with its mother. But even with its increasing mobility it fell prey to a predator, probably a coyote.
In the next photo you see the tracks of a fawn galloping (or more accurately, bounding) from bottom to top. At first glance the track group may look ordinary, but there’s something unusual about it. The sequence of prints, starting at the bottom, is right front, left rear, left front, right rear. Normally in this kind of movement we would expect the two hind prints to fall outside of the two front prints, but instead the left hind track is just inside that of the left front. It’s as if the left back leg were going to pass to the inside of the left front leg instead of to the outside. You’ve probably seen playing kittens or puppies take on strange positions, and fawns are no different. Their flexible bodies can do things that we don’t often see in adults.
Just as for other animals, play serves a serious function, preparing the fawns for a future that brings all sorts of challenges and dangers. Along with bouts of play, fawns are busy imitating their mothers and absorbing other knowledge: good areas to forage and bed down, escape routes, communication with other deer, and a multitude of other skills that they’ll need as adults. The first three months are the most precarious period of their lives, and once they’ve survived that long, juvenile deer have a much better chance of survival.