by Joe Hutto
Flower was a gorgeous deer, enchanting but strongly opinionated. Her eyes were almost black, enormous, and widely set, giving her an appearance of extraordinary intelligence—but these eyes were always filled with apprehension. Her proximity to me remained rigidly defined by a safe flight distance no closer than fifteen meters, and there was no question that she was not to trust this humanlike creature.
Cappy was a revelation. She was the first fully wild deer to make physical contact in a matter of days.
Cappy, in direct contradiction, was a revelation. Although these two young deer were completely unknown to us and were completely wild and rightfully confused about our strange proximity to other deer, this individual—Cappy—quickly assessed my intentions and initiated direct contact with me in only a few days. In a month, Cappy treated me like a family member, displaying absolute trust and confidence in our relationship. She was the first deer who allowed me direct access into her midst and into her world with complete comfort and resignation. This relationship quickly developed into one of companionship, and, at least insofar as Cappy was concerned, I was probably the safest creature in her environment. Cappy relished being groomed and scratched and would paw my backside for attention if I walked away or ignored her. This deer taught me much about the intelligence of the mule deer and the depth of their abilities to make appropriate discriminations concerning the many complexities of their world. Cappy had assessed me up and down and made a rational choice that somehow included me in her life. Though, like the other deer, if a stranger neared the house, she was gone in a flash. Her ability to convey meaning to me in the form of some unspoken communication that was decidedly clear and complex suggested to me that I was now dealing with a creature of extraordinary potential—perhaps even the potential to reveal the more obscure and secretive nature of the mule deer, the innermost workings of personality, motivation, intelligence, and behavior. Cappy made it obvious if she thought danger could be near or if she was in need of a grooming session.
Clearly, at last, I had my foot in a door—a possible portal—an entrance into the complex universe of another species. Rayme and Anne had stirred my imagination and suggested phenomenal possibilities, but Cappy represented not only the potential but also the means to enter a place I had not anticipated. This one deer represented the irresistible siren call—some small but powerful force of nature that left me helpless to avoid surrender. Cappy casually opened a door, and I simply stepped through. But as this door silently—unknowingly—closed behind, the world was decidedly different than I had envisioned it to be. I realized that, in fact, these deer had not come into my life, but rather I had been admitted into theirs, and there was no going back. Now in retrospect I wonder—perhaps this was not a door at all but the proverbial rabbit hole into which I had not stepped but stumbled.
Cappy and Flower had filled my life with new knowledge and revelation when I cheerfully bade them farewell at the onset of spring migration. But I was naive and had not yet learned that knowing—even loving—a wild mule deer was a double-edged sword—a sword that would open up a secret world with one edge and pierce your heart with the other. The powerful lesson that I quickly learned from both Rayme and Cappy is that these creatures are simultaneously enduring and rugged but also fragile. The swath that they cut through the world and your life can appear wide and deep—imbued with great substance—but they are also ephemeral, and their longevity is never assured. Although Flower reappeared the next fall, Cappy did not, and it had never occurred to me that such a young, vibrant, and capable force in the world could be so quickly overcome. It was seemingly implausible that Cappy’s vitality, intelligence, and wisdom were not enough to sustain her into her third year. However, this was to become a consistent pattern that sadly defines the plight of the mule deer, and all too quickly I came to know that heartache would be an overriding component of any relationship with these creatures. In these times, an early death is not the exception in mule deer reality but the rule. Even though Cappy is only one of two hundred such fragile relationships I have formed, rarely a day goes by that I do not think of her strangely beautiful, inquiring, gentle face and the unexpected vacuum she left in my life. But, after all, I considered myself to be a hunter, a rancher, and an objective man of science—even once trained as a warrior—a man on every level fully acquainted with the inherent and sometimes necessary brutalities of our world—fully resigned to the inculpable and even noble realities of life and death, and not to the childish mythology that life somehow favors and protects the living. In fact, it could be said that, at least to some extent, all living things persist in spite of life, not because of it. Now this reality has come to define my life, as I am haunted by so many missing faces.
However, Flower proved to be another phenomenal deer full of surprises, and she, just like Raggedy Anne and others, decided one day during her second winter that I was reliable and safe, and moved into my immediate space and allowed me into hers. Flower appeared that fall without a fawn. Her face was so remarkably similar to Cappy’s that on many occasions I thought that the missing sister had been restored to us. But mule deer are completely faithful to their home winter range, and if Cappy had lived, she would have surely joined us early on.
C H A P T E R F O U R
Peep’s Diary
It didn’t take us long to realize that mule deer are under assault, everywhere and at all times. Life is a perpetual gauntlet for this animal, and there is never a time when they are not being compromised or killed by some means—starvation, parasites, disease, predation, human pollution, activity and development, collision with cars, and of course hunting both legal and illegal. The highway accounts for more mule deer deaths than any other single cause. And those are easy to track. It had always been my assumption that mule deer had a relatively free ride during late spring, summer, and early fall, but this is not at all true. Many mule deer die during the warmer months, when they tend to be in more remote locations and thus out of sight and awareness. In spite of the ferocious and protective intentions of mule deer does, younger fawns are notoriously vulnerable—frequently at the mercy of coyotes, bobcats, eagles, wolves, and mountain lions—and, perhaps worse, they must contend with hundreds of unnatural obstacles, including woven wire fences, domestic dogs, and traffic. Mortality of mule deer fawns between birth and four months (before hunting season begins) can be 50 to 70 percent and surpass the numbers of overall mule deer killed annually by hunting. Then, by September 1, fawns and their mothers are legal fodder for bow hunters for most of the month. By the time deer survive one year, they have probably evaded death hundreds of times.
However, we have been surprised to find that fewer and fewer mother does are reappearing in fall—having disappeared during the summer months by mysterious means, and leaving behind orphaned and starving fawns. By about twelve weeks, mule deer fawns eat significant amounts of natural browse, but they still nurse heavily to obtain the high levels of protein necessary to keep up with a growing young body in hyperdrive. Without large amounts of mother’s milk that may average 20 percent protein, and with natural browse rarely providing 10 percent, fawns are sure to experience some level of malnutrition if they become orphaned before they are six months old. Some does will spontaneously stop lactating or intentionally wean their young toward the end of November, but most mule deer fawns will continue to nurse into their fifth and even sixth month, with sessions that last for up to one minute and may occur two or three times a day. Does can nurse fawns well into December. The earlier nursing is terminated, the more compromised a young deer will become. Remarkably, Wyoming has continued to allow doe and fawn hunting to occur with a species that has clearly been in decline for decades, and although fawns are shot with regularity, it is more common for the doe to be killed because of her larger and more desirable body size. In addition to malnutrition and a greater susceptibility to disease, motherless fawns will inevitably suffer social, emotional, and physical depression if the maternal bond is broken. Depend
ing on its age, the orphaned fawn may never find its rightful home winter range and its protective maternal clan, and, of course, knowledge of historic migratory routes and the timelines for those migrations are never learned. So, logically, and most important, all the mother’s vital wisdom is lost, and a small, uninitiated animal must invent its entire life or perish. The fawn has, in essence, lost everything that can be expected to sustain a young mule deer. In severe winters the mortality of orphaned fawns is almost assured. Never let any wildlife manager or politician tell you that a fawn orphaned in September or October will do fine. That is absolutely untrue. Even a fawn with a mother has barely more than an even chance of surviving a difficult winter.
Every year, the orphan fawns that appear in early winter are already so desperate that they will seek help even from a human. As we struggle to save a few orphans each winter, it is frustrating to watch them continue to waste away and die before warm weather and rich green vegetation can save them. Because we never use any sort of enclosure or protection for sick, injured, or starving individuals, they remain exposed and particularly vulnerable to predation. Still, young mule deer can be surprisingly resilient if given any reasonable chance, and we have managed to save a few orphans—both lone individuals and twins.
It is, of course, always impractical to rescue orphaned wildlife and even arguably inadvisable, but any suggestion that there are sound biological grounds for allowing orphaned fawns to starve is a convenient but entirely baseless rationalization. It is circumstance—largely unnatural—that has “selected” these individuals out of the population and not biology. Some of the most robust and perfect adult mule deer specimens that I have known are individuals that I have rescued from starvation. These deer have thrived to become successful, productive does and fine, strong, dominant bucks that are fully capable of surviving a relentless hunting season and a brutal Wyoming winter.
But never have we bottle-fed newborn fawns. That would invite human imprinting, and, as a consequence, fawns would be confused about their own identities as individuals and as members of a species. Human-imprinted deer experiments, unless conducted in the most ideal and unusual of circumstances, can be expected to end tragically for the deer and for the handlers. Many human-imprinted buck deer—especially whitetails—will predictably become aggressive toward humans, and even does on occasion become dangerous, especially around children. The orphans we were able to rescue were somewhat older, starving fawns that were simply given supplemental food and thus a slightly improved chance for survival. The youngest fawns we have rescued were about ten weeks old when they lost their mother.
Our third winter at the Slingshot was a tough one, with average temperatures much colder than in previous years and with heavy snows that had accumulated early in the season. When severe winter grips Wyoming range lands, mule deer enter a genetically prescribed starvation mode that may last for two or three months as their bodies naturally anticipate a period of low availability of nutritious forage. In some years this represents a lean time and a mere inconvenience. In other years, it can become catastrophic, and mule deer can starve by the thousands. The owner of a large ranch to our immediate north mentioned finding twenty-seven dead mule deer around his stack yards that spring. By December, I begin feeding a commercially prepared alfalfa “hay cube” in relatively small quantities in various locations to ward off any starvation that may come later in the season. Alfalfa can be a relatively safe and nutritious supplement for mule deer but not preferred, as native browse will always be selected over cubed alfalfa when winters are open and natural forage is available. However, when heavy snows blanket the land, deer will choose hay cubes over starvation. It should be mentioned that mule deer are easily choked on commercial, dry, cubed forage, and the dehydrated feed must be soaked for thirty minutes in warm water to make it safe to consume. Abruptly feeding rough forage to a starving deer can create fatal impactions in the gut. Having watched in the late 1970s large numbers of both elk and deer starve around me while ranching in the vicious Wyoming winters, I can say it is the slowest, most agonizing, and most brutal way for any animal to die. Although technically a violation of the law, I would commonly have to look into terrified eyes and put a gun to the head of a starving elk lying in the snow that was nothing but skin and bones, that had lost all its hair to parasitic scabies, and with nose, udders, and vulva chewed off by marauding coyotes. I do everything in my power to prevent the deer in this study group from enduring such agony and horror. However, the good news is that we occasionally have wonderful success with some unlikely little stray urchin who wanders up desperate and confused. Of course I fully recognize that our “rescues” have absolutely no bearing on the ultimate survival and welfare of mule deer generally but merely represent a choice that we have made and perhaps even an opportunity to make closer observations. That choice is a purely personal commitment and at best can be viewed only as a meager humanitarian gesture that may preserve only one small—and, some would say, insignificant—life.
During the midwinter of 2008, while out distributing feed at first light in eighteen inches of fresh snow, I found myself surrounded by thirty-five exceedingly hungry deer. As I spread well-hydrated alfalfa cubes about in steaming, wet piles, deer began closing in behind me like two intersecting tides. While deer stirred all around in a frenzy of feeding activity, I suddenly did a double-take, seeing a fawn that was only half the size of the other fawns. This was a stranger. Judging by a distinctive face and petite size, there was no possible way this deer could have been from this herd. As I watched the fawn, it ran desperately about the group as if confused and with no understanding of the nutritional possibilities that lay all around. The mature does wanted no part of the little creature and struck and chased the runt, driving it completely out of the yard. As the fawn would again approach, another adult deer would chase it through the snow. After one particularly brutal, hammering attack that left the fawn kicking upside down in the snow, it retreated, and I could see it struggling with mouth open wide, occasionally stumbling and having difficulty getting through the deep snow. Clearly this little one was on its last legs and could be only hours away from death. Judging by how much smaller this orphan was than even the smallest resident fawn, it must have somehow managed to live not weeks but months without a mother. I quickly scanned the herd to see if there might be a strange doe with this young runt, but, as I sadly suspected, there was no new doe in the area—but it just seemed impossible that this little thing had by some means managed to survive so long. We have since discovered that fawns orphaned from a former member of the resident maternal clan are accepted entirely and are exposed to none of the brutality that this fawn was suffering. Obviously emaciated, this fawn had bristling, erect hair with short, stocky legs and miniature shiny black hooves that reminded us of little patent leather shoes. It had a rather dark facial mask with expressive pale eye linings and large oval ears that were droopy, lending her an appearance of even more despair and longing.
As the herd returned for two more feeding sessions that day, the little fawn remained, tagging along, unwelcomed. On the second day, while feeding a frenzied mob of hungry deer, I looked at my side, and there was the little fawn, nervously looking up into my eyes with a heart-wrenching expression. The foundling was shaking with desperation, terror, confusion, and mortal urgency. I reached for a high-protein horse cookie in my pocket, and to my great surprise the pitiful little creature sniffed and took the wafer from my hand. In seconds the wafer was gone and the orphan was at my side, once again looking for another possible handout. Having to actually block the path of several resentful and aggressive does, I shielded the fawn until my pocket was emptied of the nourishing wafers. While desperately taking wafer after wafer, the fawn seemed completely oblivious to my hand as it ran through the fawn’s dry, brittle hair and down onto a back that was a ragged ridge of vertebral spines, more like a picket fence than a deer’s back. The skin along the sides felt as if it was shrink-wrapped over the tiny ribs.
Engorged winter ticks protruded though the dense hair along the edges of the ears. That afternoon when I went out to visit the deer, the little fawn was back at my side in seconds, and this time I emptied two pockets into the starving animal, and a shrunken stomach was partially filled for perhaps the first time in months. These pelletized wafers are made from a vegetable paste and are therefore easily digested. The little deer wandered to the edge of the yard and stood with head down and eyes closed, as if in a hyper-glycemic stupor, while night began to fall and all the other deer wandered out of the yard, away from the house. However, the fawn did not follow but rather sought out a solitary refuge in a dense thicket of gnarly plums, collapsing motionless in a heap with nose down and ears barely protruding above the snow. Even a persecuted fawn’s preference for solitude over the safety of the herd is an ominous sign, so it seemed that the likelihood of this little fawn’s survival was remote. I feared that by morning I would find it dead where it lay.