Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
spots; the overall effect makes excellent camouflage for a fawn resting quietly on a sun-dappled carpet
of dead leaves.
Perhaps it was inevitable that such appealing little animals would generate their own particular mis-
conceptions, and there are at least three major fallacies surrounding fawns. The first is that fawns are
virtually scentless as a defense against predators. According to John Ozoga, a consultant and former
research biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, even newborn fawns have a
definite scent, and research biologists have used dogs on occasion to locate fawns by scent.
It's true, however, that very young fawns have a scent that's much less pronounced than that of adult
deer. In addition, very young fawns lie down and stay where their mother puts them, so that they don't
leave a scent trail. Together, these two traits act as a defensive mechanism and clearly make it consid-
erably more difficult for predators to locate a fawn; still, the fact remains that a fawn isn't completely
scentless.
A second fallacy is that a fawn found by itself is either orphaned or abandoned by the mother. This
erroneous idea has led to all kinds of problems relating to people taking “orphaned” fawns home to
raise, in clear violation of the laws of most states. The fact is that a doe habitually stashes her very
young offspring and wanders off to feed, returning two or three times a day to nurse them. Sometimes
she's close by, but at other times she may be at a substantial distance. She always knows precisely
where both she and her young are, and there is not the slightest chance that she will lose track of them.
Fawns are actually orphaned sometimes, of course. Only the does care for the fawns; as with most
mammals, the buck assumes no family responsibilities whatsoever after breeding the doe, so the fawn
is effectively orphaned if something happens to its mother. For instance, a doe may be killed by an
automobile or by predators, or may die from other causes, thereby leaving an orphaned fawn.
A recent personal experience is illustrative. One day in May two years ago, I heard a peculiar and
unfamiliar sound through an open window. Roughly halfway between a mew and a soft bleat, it con-
tinued for an hour or two, but finally subsided. It resumed the following morning while I was working
in the garden just below our home, and kept on and on. The sound, sometimes almost inaudible and at
other times fairly loud, seemed less than a hundred yards away and appeared to emanate from a spot
just inside the woods.
Curiosity got the better of me, and I finally entered the woods to seek the source of this unusual
noise. It took me some little time and considerable quiet sneaking about, because the sound had a vent-
riloquial quality, seemingly coming first from one spot and then from another. Finally, however, I saw
an obviously very young fawn standing in an area of ferns that over-topped it by a considerable margin.
I backed quietly away, returned to the house, and called Gordon Marcelle, our local game warden.
I told him that the fawn's prolonged bleating over two days struck me as abnormal, and that it seemed
likely something had happened to its mother. He replied that fawns with healthy mothers had occasion-
ally been known to bleat a great deal. He counseled patience and said that if the bleating continued the
following day, he would come to pick up the fawn.
