Scott Rall: How long do the spots last?

I was driving down a gravel road the other day in Ransom Township south of Rushmore and I saw a spotted white tail deer fawn. Then I saw two, and as my eyes focused I saw three.
My wife quizzed me as to how long the spots on a fawn lasted. I did not know the answer, so I sought out the information and learned a lot of other interesting things about deer fawns in their first few weeks and months of life.
The answer to the first question as to how long the spots lasts is 3-4 months. How many spots does a fawn have? The answer is about 300. The spots act as camouflage so as to help hide the fawn from predators. When a doe is bred as a fawn (meaning it is less than one year old) there is usually only one fawn. When they are bred as a 1.5-year-old or older they can have twins quite often, and in some cases even triplets, as I saw a few days back. The time period from conception to birth is 200 days, with most of those births happening from April to early July.
A fawn is born with no scent. This is why the doe will stash her fawn in the tall grass and then move a distance away. This keeps the scent of the adult from attracting predators who might make a meal of the newborn.
If there is more than one fawn, they are stashed in different places. Only after three to four weeks are they then gathered up together and form the family group. When you see a fawn the doe is normally with in about 100 yards. If the fawn vocalizes distress the doe will come charging in to defend her offspring. Ninety percent of a fawn’s first few weeks is spent hiding in the grass.
The location where the fawn is born will most likely become that deer’s home range as an adult. When they are born they weigh between 6-8 ponds. By the time they reach three weeks of age they can outrun most dangers. They can stand and nurse in only 30 minutes and are up and walking around in three hours. They normally nurse 2-3 times per day about 20 minutes each time. The frequency and duration of nursing lengthens to 6-8 times each day as they get older.
A fawn will be eating vegetation within about three weeks. By November that fawn will weigh between 80 and 85 pounds and its coat will have changed from a reddish color to more of a gray hue. I see the same does and fawns in the same place almost every day. They are not chased or pressured to move off of our wildlife property and as a result they stay pretty much in the same place.
Deer eat corn plants and they seem pretty satisfied with the corn food plot I planted a few months back. There is a 160-acre corn field next door but they seem to prefer my little 1.5-acre planting since they can eat and then lay down in the grass only a few feet away. I keep trying to tell them to save some for this winter but they don’t listen very well.
If you are a deer fawn there are many things that would like to make a meal of you. The first and foremost in this area is coyotes. I saw a You-Tube video of three coyotes taking down an adult deer. I figured the deer would just run off but they followed and relentlessly pursued and finally wore the deer down and killed it. If they can take down adult deer, then eating a deer fawn must almost be like fast food to them. With the rise in coyote numbers I think they do have and make a measurable dent in fawn mortality.
This would make very good motivation for the deer hunters in the area to do their part to keep coyotes from expanding any further than they already have. We used to have very few coyotes in our area, but a few decades back the red fox was almost wiped out by a disease called mange. Mange caused the animals to itch and scratch their fur until it falls out, and then they die of exposure. With the fox almost gone the coyotes filled that vacuum and are now here to stay. Red fox populations have never rebounded to their pre-mange populations, but you do see one from time to time now.
I was out driving down a path on my parents’ property. We saw a deer fawn and slowly inched the truck forward. The fawn had no idea we were near. When we got to within about 30 yards the fawn saw us and immediately dropped to the ground. I got out of the truck and slowly walked up to it. Momma was about 50 yards away so the fawn was in no danger.
As I got closer I could see its ears fanning around to hear everything that was happening. I had no desire to chase it off, so after I watched for a minute or two I slowly started to walk backwards to the truck. The little fawn must have thought I was momma because it started to run after me, and when it was about five yards away it became aware I was not what was expected and it froze in its tracks.
Being that close was very cool. A deer fawn is one of nature’s most precious sights.
It finally bounded back to momma and I backed the truck out the way I had entered.
I have seen many sets of twins this year and one or two sets of triplets each of the past 3-4 years. Deer hunters who hunt by archery in many cases don’t shoot a lot of deer. They archery hunt for the challenge of getting up very close to our area’s largest mammal.
Getting close to a doe or fawn is easy. Getting close to a 5-year-old buck with huge antlers is almost impossible. I have said that when you harvest a rooster it does not matter if it is your tenth rooster or your hundredth one. They are all amazing and the thrill of the flush is the same no matter how many times you have done it. Seeing a deer fawn is just as cool after I have seen hundreds as it was when I had seen only a few. There was a time many decades ago that seeing a deer in Nobles County was a very rare sight indeed.
This is not the case today. Deer numbers are lower now than, say, 15 years ago. There is a whole new set of regulations under way to change this to some extent. The objective is to set deer population goals based on a deer harvest similar to what it was about 6-8 years ago.
There will never be deer numbers that will make everyone happy. Hunters want more deer. Crop producers generally like less deer than more. All I know is that when I see a deer fawn I can’t imagine anyone who would want them all gone.
Get out and go for a drive in the next few weeks and see the wildlife and all of the wildlife habitats in what is considered their season of plenty. The flowers in bloom on the Worthington Wells WMA near Lake Bella is worth the trip on its own.