Fawns: The impressive facts about how the next generation of whitetails survives

They’re just starting to show up. Maybe you stumble upon a stippled fawn bedding in the grass while walking the dogs, or maybe you just spot a doe with a couple of youngsters in tow while you’re heading to town to pick up some groceries.

Most of the newest generation of deer are here, and a good percentage of them will survive to adulthood. How they do that is pretty impressive, especially when you consider all of the dangers out there that are just waiting for a fawn to make a mistake.

The following is a breakdown of fawn facts that illustrates just how good they are at making it through their first month, and shows just how impressive the No. 1 game animal in this country truly is – even when they are just infants.

Staying invisible

Deer that are approaching their first birthday are spot-free. This is because they used their keen senses to detect predators as early as possible, and then their speed to escape them.

Newborn fawns don’t have either such weapon at their disposal, so they need to stay hidden. They do this by bedding down for up to 90% of the time during their first few weeks.

Moving as little as possible is crucial to their survival, but so are the light-colored spots on their coats. Fawns average 300 spots, and while these fade with age, they work exceptionally well to break up the outline of their bodies when they’re newly born.

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This works while they stand, but is most effective when they’re bedded down and unmoving. It’s effective during cloudy conditions, but works extremely well when the sun is overhead and the forest floor is a mixture of light and shadows.

Scent-free fawns?

There’s a myth about fawns that won’t die. It’s that they are born scent-free so that predators from bobcats to coyotes to bears won’t be able to get a whiff of them.

Fawns actually do have scent, which is one way their mothers identify them. What they don’t do is move around a lot during their first few weeks of life. This means they aren’t leaving an abundance of scent trails in the woods for predators to key on.

They also weigh on average 6 to 8 pounds at birth, which is tiny. Their diminutive size, combined with bedding in thick cover and moving little, reduces their chances of being smelled by predators (but they are far from scent-free).

Miniature movements

Fawns are capable of standing, and nursing, within about 30 minutes of birth. Three hours after they’re born, they are capable of walking. After three to four weeks, they can run fast enough to outrun most predators in the short term.

Once fawns reach the age at which they can run fast enough to avoid the teeth of most predators, their survival odds increase dramatically. Not only do they have (and use) the ability to sit tight while danger passes, but they also can simply out-sprint danger if they’re detected.

This ability to run coincides with a shift in their diets, where fawns go from only nursing to nursing and feeding on foliage just like their mothers.

Fawn encounters

Another fawn myth that has been with us for a long time is that if you handle a newborn fawn, its mother will abandon it. This isn’t true, but it’s best not to handle them, just the same.

This also ties into something that happens every year as May gives way to June. Folks find fawns and assume their mothers have abandoned them, because the fawns seem to be left on their own.

A far more likely explanation is that the fawn was stashed in a safe spot, which is a one way that does help their offspring avoid predators. They do this with singlets, but also hide twins and triplets in separate spots in order to ensure a higher survival rate.