Ep. 552: Foundations - The (Sort Of) Secret Lives Of Fawns

trail camera images. You might have seen a few of them in your backyard or from the road while you're head into the lake to do some fishing. They're adorable, but it's also worth understanding them and how they survive because the lessons they learn when they are a few weeks old and covered with spots carry them right through adulthood quite often. Yeah, I know, I know. I said I wasn't going to talk about Bamby the movie, but

I'm gonna have to. It's only fitting to this episode anyway, and we might as well get a lesson in propaganda that can be used against us as hunters, which probably wasn't the intention of the original movie, but it sure wasn't. Like the fine folks that Disney were interested in representing real deer and real deer hunters. Anyway, did you know

that Bambi was released eighty years ago? Smack dab in the middle of the Second Grade War, the House of the Mouse released a movie based on a novel that was actually written about a row deer, considering the author was Austrian. Since Bambi was set to be a big hit in the United States, they ditched the row dear look and they decided on a mule deer. No, really

they did. It was going to be a California mule deer apparently, but one of the illustrators, and I can only speculate here, but I assume he knew his ship when it came to deer convinced the production team that a white tailed deer would be more relatable and more recognizable. The adorable little anime precursor with his big eyes when the Hearts of Americans with his story of survival in the face of the antagonist, a hunter aptly named Man just Man, it's almost like, I don't know, almost like

that was a representative of how evil people are or something. Anyway, the old Bambster is raised by his mom until Man made good on a shot and took her home for backstraps. So then Bambi's dad decides to come back into the picture and raise him to be the next great Prince of the forest, along the way to inheriting his crown under the tutelage of his father, who has a full rack. Even when Bamby is just a newborn, the youngster makes

friends with a rabbit and a skunk. I can't prove this because I wasn't in the writer's room, but I don't think Bamby is based on a true story anyway. It ends with the bad man bringing his vicious hunting dogs into the woods, where not only does he shoot Bamby non lethally, probably because he was carrying an a r chambered in two twenty three or something, but his campfire gets a little out of control and burns the

forest down too. So essentially humans are bad and destructive and animals are pure, adorable and the rightful owners of the forest, you know, Never mind that we are basically just hairless apes and very much a part of nature ourselves. I could go on and on about how hunters are portrayed in film or television or hell. I don't know, just popular media these days, but I won't because my

blood pressure cannot handle it. In fact, if my wife and I are watching a show and a hunting scene comes on, I know she's going to roll her eyes and point out how I'm definitely going to bitch about every stupid little thing I see. But to be fair, she's a physical therapist who can't stand to see an act or use a cane or a walker incorrectly, and never once has she let that slide without bringing it up.

The lesson there for my young, unmarried listeners who think they'll be the prince of the old household instead of the forest, is that you won't. You'll be on the silver metal podium until you start having kids, and then you'll just keep getting bumped down Cubert style. How's that for an obscure video game reference? Now, if you can't tell my real and prescription ran out, I'll get back on task now. Fawns, they're cool, right, I mean, who

doesn't love seeing them? Who doesn't love glassing a field in a summer and seeing a dough with a couple of youngsters in tow or who doesn't love having to slow down on a gravel road that winds its way through the big woods to let mom go, knowing that any second junior is going to spring across the road to meet up with Mama. There need to see. But what does that mean? It probably depends on where you live and where you hunt. If you're in much of the White Tails range, seeing a bunch of fawns in

the summer is probably very routine. You're probably used to it. But you probably also always expect there to be plenty of deer in the landscape. That's a luxury, my friends, one you can't really appreciate until you hunt a place where the population ebbs and flows to the point where the hunting might go from okay to downright terrible. If you hunt the North country, you know what I mean, one bad winner and the reset on the deer population might be like a fifty percent reduction. One wolf pack

moving in, and you might see similar results. Now they might not all be turned into wolf poop, but they might be gone, And for the hunter who has lost the deer, it's damn near the same thing. Now, if you hunt a region like that, seeing fawns is real nice. I saw that recently in northern Wisconsin, and it made me happy. And this is especially true if you're in an area where are single fawns are kind of the rule, and seeing twins or triplets, it's pretty damn rare and cool.

If you see that a fair amount of the does have at least one fawn, that's kind of time for some hope. I know this sounds like I'm being facetious here, but where I hunt in northern Wisconsin, like I just said, we pay close attention to the fons. We like that next generation. We also at least we hear is my hunting buddies, and I we don't kill certain does who seem to be pretty good at raising fawns. There are too many predators up there and those bad recent winners

that knock the herd down. They are always coming. It might be every couple of years, might be every five, might be every eight. They're coming. Just like there is an asteroid out there somewhere with the address for Earth written on it, and if Jupiter doesn't soak it up first, whatever life is still here could be in real trouble

and that's coming. Side note, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I read about the other day there's an archaeological dig in North Dakota where they found glass that they believe was thrown from the impact that killed the dinosaurs you know where that hit Mexico. Imagine the power behind that one thing hitting the earth to toss physical pieces of the earth from Mexico to

freaking North Dakota. Anyway. Now, bad winter in the North Country isn't quite that severe, but it does suck, just like it sucks to have a c w D slaughter fest in your county, or maybe a local e h D outbreak, or hell, a neighbor who just breaks all the laws and kills every dairy can in season or out. In all those situations, and probably a ton more that I'm not thinking of right now, a new generation of deer is most welcome. That generation of fawns is a

new beginning. Sure, it'll take them a few years to grow into big bucks and big does that make more babies, But you can't be too impatient with this stuff. It takes time. And you know what's cool about fawns, besides what they represent for the future, how they behave We see videos of newborn fawns playing with dogs and laying in people's yards and gardens and not exactly exhibiting the kind of survival skills that you'd want your dear to have.

But that's a short window. In fact, most of that dumb behavior probably only the last a few weeks at best, maybe a couple of months for the really slow learners. But what's important is that they're always learning, and what's interesting is that they might not have to learn everything. Some of their behaviors seem to be almost like generational memories, and we don't really know how that works. For human babies,

it's a slow development. We take like a year to walk and talk, and then how a lot longer to mature, sometimes at least forty two years according to one mean physical therapist I can think of. Yet when fawns hit the dirt, they are learning. They're usually standing and nursing within the amount of time it would take you to watch a Simpsons on and they can walk within a few hours, within like three weeks, they can outrun most predators, and in the first few weeks of their lives they

spend their time bedded. This is because you guessed it, they can't outrun predators. Yet if you can't run, you better freaking hide. And they hide well and they learn valuable lessons from it. Now you know, there are predators out there that are just good at mopping up babies that are stashed away. I'm talking about bears. Of course, there is an animal in the woods that is better at reducing deer numbers in June and July than a black bear. Other creditors make up for it later in

a fawn's life. But if you want to not recruit too many generations, a deer on your place make it awful friendly for the yogis to live there. Even with that threat out there, like we see in these northern states and the big woods, there are still fawns that make it. They make it simply by hiding where mama tells them to hide. How do they do it? How do they know just like where they should lay? Who knows? Maybe some of them stand up and get eaten, which

is undoubtedly true. But most of them, and you've probably seen this yourself, or I hope you have, they just lay down across their hoofs. The danger will pass them by. I've seen this dozens of times in my life, and it amazes me their resolve. But I guess you know they don't have much of a choice. They also learn, when they lay still and they don't get eaten, that there is real value in just hiding. I think dear, especially older dear, understand this game so well that we

can barely fathom it. I think they probably know tons of spots in their home range where they can hide while using their conditions to their advantage in ways that would just blow our minds if we didn't have the underdeveloped senses of a potato. Those fonts out there now, they're learning that survival skill, and they'll use it against you.

They are also learning how to communicate with the herd, and who will tolerate them getting too close, and who will throw a right cross at them when they invade their personal space. If you're confused by that, listen to a last week's episode about how animals are assholes and as far as communication is concerned. I want to tell you a story I've told a few times in various podcasts,

so apologize if you heard this one before. But it's one of those moments in the woods that changed my way of thinking, and it comes back to me all the time. I mean, I think about this a lot. I was sitting in a wood edge in northern Minnesota with binoculars in a spotting scope while the early August sun beat down. I had obviously gotten out a little

bit too early for my nightly glassing session. But there was a bachelor group of bucks with one really cool old seven pointer and a high and tight ten pointer that I was super interested in watching but not spooking. So I had settled in real early and the first hours ticked by, and then suddenly, out of the blue, there was a deer standing right in front of me. It was a fawn. It was maybe ten yards away, and I'll never forget the way the sun hit his ear that I could see through the veins in it,

and it was glowing right through him. It was just a neat look, and he was looking into the field, and that's when I saw his mom standing at the far end in a point of grass and brush. Then from the farthest corner of the field, I caught movement. A different faun was running towards the dough and I thought, well, maybe this is just a coincidence, But that's when that faun that was close to me took off ran straight

across the field of that dough. As well, and they had a little greeting, tried to nurse, and they started to feed in the field together as a little family group. Now, the dimensions of that field were roughly two d by four hundred yards, and the distance between the does and fawns was pretty far. The fawn closest to me was probably two fifty yards away from his mom. Yet he knew right when she stood up, and his sibling did too,

from the far corner of the field. And I thought, you know, how the hell did they know how to get up? Now, we know that dogs learn our schedules by the level of evaporation in our scent, like throughout the day are sent lessons to a certain point and then boom, we come home from work. Over time, they recognized that level of evaporation as the time it takes for us to go to work and then come home. But I promise you that dough doesn't pick up her fawns at the same time every day. She also probably

doesn't stash them away in the same spot. So how did they know it was time to all simultaneously stand up? You might be thinking, maybe the dough stood up and the fawn saw her. I thought of that too, but that faon was buried enough on the edge of that field that I never saw it for hours. From ten yards away. It would have had to stand up to see her. And when he stood up, she was already up. So was the other font I mentioned several times. And I don't think dear have a sixth sense, and I

believe that. I don't think they do, and there's no evidence to prove it exists, but there is something going on with them communication wise that you and I are just probably not privy to. And what's wild about it is that it's happening even when they are in newborns, even when they are still super vulnerable to any set of sharp teeth that happens to saunder pass their hiding spot. I think that's pretty cool. And I also think it's pretty cool what fawns can do and how old or

deer hold tight to those survival skills. I mean, you know, it's not exactly rocket science that prey animals either run and hide, but they do it so well, and that's pretty cool. And think about that fawn. In my area in northern Wisconsin, bare numbers are high, coyote numbers are high. Bobcat numbers are high, and wolf numbers are sometimes high

depending on how close a pack gets. That's a lot of hungry, cunning predators out there that, by most accounts are probably at least in order of magnitude or more smarter than the average deer. After all, to hunt something and catch it, you've got to get lucky or outthink it, and luck doesn't carry you very far in nature. A

lot of both happens, though. I think at that loan fall in the north Woods Wisconsin, because somehow managed to avoid getting caught and eaten by all of those predators when it's likely they have an encounter a day, maybe more. And even if I'm overshooting that number, what if it was a couple encounters of predators close encounters of predators I should say every week within the first year, I

don't know, they'd have dodged death. What a hundred times how many hungry grizzly bears would you have to have within say, twenty yards of you before you were featured on the local news station in Bozeman. As a statistic I doubt it would be a hundred. I think personally I wouldn't make it into double digits before metetor was replacing me with another white tail writer. Yet those little fawns, those little soft dyed bambies, they're out there doing it

every day. Then they get to the fall and they encounter the deadliest predator of them all dogs Just kidding, it's people, the dreaded Man and capital m Bamby man with his out of control campfire, snarling dogs and propensity for spraying and praying with those guns. They make it through that too. A lot of them do, anyway, and when they do, they're still young and by a lot

of accounts dumb. But we've talked about this before. Intelligence isn't really like ubiquitous across animals the way we like it to be. Well, hell, it's not really ubiquitous across humans, but that's a different story. Survival is, though, at least for most of us. Fortunately in dear, including little fawns, it certainly is. And while they are cool to see and encounter and know that they're out there growing into bigger dear, it's important to remember the lessons they can

teach us. Running works, but so it does hiding, and the more we understand how dear hide and where they likely to do it, the better we are at hunting them. That's going to be the topic for next week. Actually, I want to get into bedding and what summer scouting can do for you on that front. That's it for this week, my friends. Thank you so much for the support. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.

If you want more whitetailed content, feel free to check out the meat eator dot com slash wired to see our latest articles, or visit the wire to Hunt YouTube channel to watch our latest how to videos.