A lot of people are super upset by this, so here is a reminder from someone who has worked professionally with deer:
A fawn tucked down alone like this is almost never an orphan.
Fawns are extremely small, and their best defense is to stay hidden as often as possible. Unless they are nursing or moving to a new spot, tucking themselves down in grass or against bigger objects is their best defense.
What would be an easy giveaway to a lurking predator that there is a vulnerable baby nearby? A much larger, much more visible adult female deer!
To protect her baby, a female deer will avoid the baby most of the day (except to nurse it or move it), and she will keep an eye on the baby from a distance to make sure everything is alright.
If you approach a fawn (or god forbid pick it up and take it home), I’d bet money that 9.5 times out of 10, mama is alive and well, watching you from a distance, desperately hoping you’ll move on without hurting her baby.
It’s not orphaned, it’s not abandoned.
Working in wildlife, if there is one thing I could magically make the entire human population know, it would be this information.
Every summer, people show up at wildlife rehabbers, state park offices, ranger stations, and even deer farms, with allegedly orphaned fawns that they’ve “saved.”
Tragically, we pretty much have to destroy these animals every time.
Deer farms legally cannot take in wild deer because of the extremely dangerous risk of disease transmission to their livestock population (look up chronic wasting disease). Contact with a wild deer could doom their animals and their livelihoods.
I have worked on deer farms and in wildlife rehab.
Deer are extremely difficult to raise, rehabilitate, and release. Mostly, it’s impossible. Often, they simply refuse to eat from anything but their mother, and we have to decide between letting them waste away for three days or so, or euthanizing them.
Deer are also overpopulated in many states now, and we can’t afford the resources to raise them. There are species more in need of our assistance.
If you see a fawn all alone, unless it’s next to its dead parent, it’s not an orphan.
I am begging you to leave it be.
In this case, this fawn is almost certainly fine. It’s just hunkered down like it should be, waiting for Mama.
But it does make for a great photo!
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