The fawn factory...yes as in baby deer

in #nature6 years ago (edited)

Doe feeding fawn.jpg

Today I was looking through the archives and decided to stay with the deer theme for this post. Four or five years ago I set up a game camera on a piece of property that I own. The main purpose was to photograph the numerous deer that travel through my small sliver of land. The property included some long-established deer trails within its 75 foot width. The lot is about 1 acre on the very edge of a rural abandoned town.

The town itself was in a flood zone so they basically moved the town out of the flood zone with just a few residents remaining. My property is literally the first lot as you enter the old abandoned town. The property connects to about 100 acres of bottom ground woods that floods a couple of times a year. Bottom flood zone land makes great deer habitat because many nut trees grow in bottom ground. Pecan, hickory, oak, and walnuts are abundant in those ecosystems.

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The primary fall food protein source for deer around here are acorns. Acorns small, large, or in between fall from oak trees which are found in abundance in bottom ground areas. I have a small creek that separates my property from the 100 acre woods next door. The deer use the creek for water when the creek is holding water. They cross freely between the woods and my lot. Over the years I have added food plots and fruit trees to make it even more appealing to the deer.

Doe fawn creek.jpg

My goal was to get some deer to hang around so I could get game camera pictures/videos of them to study their behaviors and lifestyle here on the edge of town. They are almost urban deer that close to civilization. The property has many other natural food sources that the deer love. There are two giant pine trees that drop pine nuts yearly to the deer's delight. The deer scrape the area up with their hooves looking for the little morsels that they cherish. For grazing they have rye grass, clover, and even poison ivy vines they nibble on.

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Click the DTube link above for a short video of a doe crossing the creek into the neighboring woods if you are interested. This clip has an audio track included also.

Some of their favorites are blackberries, mulberries, and pawpaw fruit. I planted a small apple tree for them as well. Apples are a very interesting part of a deer's diet when they can find them. Apples help the deer digest their food better enabling them to eat more acorns in the fall adding to their winter fat reserves. I always knew deer loved apples but until recently didn't understand why. That is one of the reasons nature fascinates me so much. Incredibly there are so many seemingly minor details that are an integral part of the bigger picture once we began to unravel the smaller mysteries.

Deer eating apple.jpg

Nuts are a great protien source with lots of fat content and are needed in the fall to bulk the deer up for the coming harsh winter. Bucks especially load up before the rut because they literally can't think of food during that time period each year. That is why you will see many nice bucks in early fall out in farmers fields gorging themselves for the upcoming rutting activities. There will be lots of contests and challenges amongst the bucks to show dominance in the herd.

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I have taken some time here to describe the environment of the property so I can explain the fawn and doe cover picture for this article. There is a large dominant buck that has claimed my lot as his own and he frequents there often leading does and fawns there to eat, drink, and be merry lol. A dominant doe also claims this area as her fawning place. The past few years I have got fawn pictures on the game camera. The main series of fawn photos was from two years ago. Last year I kept the camera out so as not to disturb the doe and her new fawn this year.

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Click the DTube link to watch a short dominant buck video

A doe will look for an area she feels is the safest possible for her fawn or fawns; twins are quite common. I have even seen several triplet fawns over the years. I have let the land go back to nature since I have had it so the weeds and small shrubs cover the lot to about a 3-5 ft height as the smaller saplings are beginning to take over and will start shading the tall weeds out soon. I am letting many oaks, mulberry, and pawpaw trees grow while cutting out other less nutritious varieties.

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Click DTube link for video

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Click DTube link to watch fawn nurse

This year my plan is to put the game cam back up but only check it every two weeks or so to give the doe her privacy while being able to hopefully enjoy watching another fawn begin its great adventure of life. Thanks for taking the time to view this blog post it is much appreciated as always and until next time keep on Steemin' Steemians ...

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Great pics! With spring time upon us, if you have a local feed store, and sometimes wal mart carries these supplement called “Trophy Rock” it’s literally a rock that I believe is mined from Utah? (May be incorrect on that) anyway, they aren’t very expensive, and this is the time of the year that the doe seems to crave minerals that are necessary to maintain adequate milk for their fawns that they will be birthing in the coming months. It also helps the young bucks in antler growth. Try to place it on a stump or something to slow the rate that it dissolves. It’ll establish a spot, that the deer will frequent regularly and make a great place for a camera. I have an established mineral spot here in my small farm, I’m brand new to steemit, when I figure this out I’ll make sure to post some pics or video. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks the pics have given me great pleasure over the years also so glad to share that experience with others. I have many still photos in the archives yet and plan to get more videos this spring. Getting ready to install the game camera very soon. The deer have an established scrape where two trails cross on the property. I had the game camera there last year taking still photos. I can set the camera to shoot 6 rapid fire shots at 2 second intervals. That allows me to get much better views of bucks antlers enabling me to count the tines in most cases.

Just about every deer in the area visits that scrape so I get a good sampling of the deer population moving through the property. I created the scrape last year and the does started using it within a few days and then where the does go the bucks are soon to follow. I have found that does are the best lure out there especially during the rut. I think it is considered baiting here to use Trophy Rocks or salt blocks so I try to stick with planting food plots and scent lures.

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