“Leave Them Alone” A message concerning the interaction between humans and fawns.

By Theo Helms

I took this photo while on my evening walk with my dog Hugo. The exact location will remain a secret but suffice it to say, it was here in Marsh Creek. The fawn did exactly what instincts lead it to do. It lay motionless as I walked around it. I never saw the mother, but I suspect she was close. They usually are. As a retired Michigan Conservation Officer, I have much experience with human / fawn interactions. Most of the complaints I handled came from well meaning people who thought they were “rescuing” the fawn, thinking it abandoned by it’s mother. They would pick up the fawn and take it home. Sometimes they would try to feed it. In most cases they would hold it, touch it, and treat it like a pet. Sadly, many of those incidents did not end well. Fawns are difficult to raise in any form of captivity. Those that do survive lose their fear of humans and suffer the consequences of that.

If I could respond to the complaint soon enough, I would try to return the fawn to the exact spot where it was found. If I could get it to stay, and not try to follow me away, it wouldn’t be unusual for the mother to find it and lead it back to safety. Many people think that a doe will never care for her fawn once it has human scent on it. I can tell you with absolute certainty that this belief is false. I’ve watched the mother deer take her fawn back many times.  I would just back out of the area a good distance, hide, and watch through my binoculars until she came to get her baby. Sometimes it takes minutes and sometimes it takes hours. But it was well worth my effort to wait her out and see her lead her newborn away.

Occasionally there were times when I had to take the fawn to a rehabilitation specialist. These people were specially trained to raise fawns to adulthood…usually in a fairly large fenced in area. They fed them with the proper diet and did so with very little human contact. Before the deer was big enough to release back to the wild, they used effective methods to instill a healthy fear of humans. These fawns were the lucky ones. I’ve responded to complaints of people who tried to raise a fawn on their own, only to find a very malnourished and sick baby deer that didn’t survive.

So all of this information I share with you is to ask…PLEASE…leave them alone. If you encounter one like I did today, take a peek, enjoy the moment, and then walk away knowing that you did your part by letting “nature be nature”.