Leave fawns alone

–Staff Photo

Even if a doe leaves her fawn by your house, Conservation Officer Dave Webster says let the fawn be and don’t feed it.

While people may be inclined to help a lone fawn (baby deer) when they come across one, Gail Porter says that people should leave them alone.

“We had a situation the other day where a doe (mother deer) left her fawn under a large bush at the neighbours and everyone thought she had abandoned it,” said Porter, a concerned Christina Lake resident.

“After much convincing on my husband’s behalf, they left it alone and did not touch it.”

While the fawn did wander off, the doe eventually found it again and Porter says that mother and baby were seen in the forest near her house afterwards.

According to Dave Webster, a Grand Forks conservation officer, leaving a fawn alone is the best thing to do.

“Basically that’s what happens with newborn deer fawn,” he explained.

“The mother will leave them unattended for significant amounts of time to go feed and she will wander away from them once she figures she has them in a safe spot.”

Webster says that the fawn doesn’t have a distinct odour yet and that acts as a defense mechanism.

“Predators really don’t pick up on (fawns) unless they fumble across them but it’s more luck than anything,” he said. “They are fairly secure when they’re left in instances like that. The doe will leave but she does come back.”

With compassion being a part of human nature, people sometimes assume that a fawn has been abandoned and try to intervene, and while Webster says that people’s hearts are in the right place, it could have a negative effect.

“It’s really tough to get fawns back to the does after that,” he said.

“We had a case this year already. A local daycare picked up the fawn, the kids played with it, the adults played with it and they dragged it around town looking for milk for it.”

Someone that recognized the situation tried to bring the fawn back to where it was left by the doe but it had trouble recognizing it as her own.

“The mother was there but was quite agitated. They put the fawn out, (the doe) went to the fawn five or six times and would not accept it again.”

Webster says the fawn is currently being raised by humans with the hopes of releasing back into the wild.

“It’s not the best-case scenario for the animals,” he said.

However, while the conservation officer says the general rule is to leave a fawn alone, he also suggests people keep an eye on it to see how long it is left alone.

“In some cases, the doe may have been killed or something and in that case the fawn maybe is abandoned but we want to give it every opportunity and we want to give that doe the chance to come back to it.”

He says that if a fawn has been left alone for 24 to 48 hours, chances are something has happened to the doe and conservation would monitor the situation at that point.

“Nine out of 10 times somebody phones us and asks us what to do and he say, ‘Just watch it or leave it,’ and we’ll get a call back and the doe came back.”

He says that does often come back under the cover of night when people aren’t watching.

Webster also says it is an offense under the Wildlife Act to pick up wildlife, such as fawns, and possess it without authorization.

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