by Joe Hutto
Perhaps the fawns only knew that there was some relationship between the location of our house, the two strange creatures that lived there, and the safe haven that their mother had sought out so many times in their brief life.
But the next day Will and Sprite returned without Possum. They chose to remain in the immediate area of the house, as if somehow knowing that if their mother were to return, she would surely come to this location. They understood that this was a place where they felt some measure of safety. The fawns remained in or near the yard but cried day and night, as we could offer only comfort in the way of companionship and as much nutritious supplemental food as possible. The late afternoons seemed to be the worst for the two fawns—and for us—as the fawns would begin their continuous, desperate mewing. It was gut-wrenching sitting helplessly as the two cried incessantly, even throughout the night, and on the second night we became convinced that some tragedy had befallen Possum, and her death by some means was now assured. As the sun set behind Table Mountain, I sat on the porch feeling sick and angry, and I could hear Leslye sobbing inside the house. It felt as if some terrible tragedy had descended upon the Slingshot, and as I later confessed somewhat apologetically to a friend, I cannot remember a more bitter and irreconcilable sadness than the loss of this little deer and the undeniable grief experienced by her two frightened fawns. She had tried so very hard, and the fawns’ expectations and trust in their mother were powerful. Her absence was beyond their understanding—their disappointment immeasurable. No matter how hard I tried, it became impossible to assign any measure of insignificance to the lives of these deer.
Both fawns were of an age where they had begun to eat significant amounts of browse, and with the food that we could provide, they seemed to eat heartily. Of course there was no feed that we could provide that could match the 20 percent protein of their mother’s milk. We clearly were affording them some consolation in the way of company as well, and Will and Sprite both seemed to be encouraged by the scratching and grooming that we offered while they ate their grain.
The two were also obviously comforted by Rodenta and her fawns as they would enter the yard for some feed, and it was heartening to see the four fawns integrate nicely while in the immediate area. Mercifully, this wise veteran doe, Rodenta, never seemed to express any resentment or hostility toward the orphans as they interacted with her young. As Rodenta and her fawns would eventually browse away from the yard in the evening, Will and Sprite would accompany them to the edge of the meadow but then soon return to the yard. During the day the fawns would alternately browse and bed down around the house, and I would try to find time throughout the day to sit and provide some company and perhaps even some meager sense of security. A week passed, and the fawns gradually stopped calling for their mother, but even after two weeks, one or the other would remember their mother and start calling just before dark.
Getting to know Will and Sprite as orphans.
But, then, one evening we took our positions on the front porch, just as four fawns walked with Rodenta around the side of the house and started eating seeds from the platform feeder and the seed rings provided on the edge of the porch. As darkness approached, Rodenta and the fawns walked to the fence along the front meadow, and as Rodenta jumped over into the tall grass, all four of the fawns climbed under the wire and began browsing alongside the big doe. We watched as the four began gradually working their way down the hill, until it occurred to us that Will and Sprite were not returning as in previous nights, but were obviously remaining with Rodenta and her fawns. From that moment on, Will and Sprite were always with Rodenta and her fawns Tom and Jerry, and the five became an inseparable family. Something truly remarkable had occurred. Although I never observed either of the orphans nursing, Rodenta was without question allowing the two to be a part of her family, and it clearly seemed to constitute a rare instance of mule deer adoption. Without Rodenta’s protection, and without her keen knowledge of the lay of the land and its many hazards, these two orphans would surely have met with disaster. My admiration for Rodenta is unbounded. Even as yearlings, the orphans Will and Sprite still recognize Rodenta and her more recent fawns, Stella Luna and Fledermaus, as their adopted maternal family and prefer their company. As young bucks are often prone, both Tom and Jerry, from the previous year, abandoned their home range in late winter, and have either been killed or found a permanent home elsewhere.
Young Will as an orphaned fawn.
Will as a yearling after playing in the barley hay.
Will at two years with the author. Photo by Dawson Dunning.
Possum at the back door.
Will and Sprite are now entering their third year and are in every way still attached to one another, to this home range, to Rodenta and her new fawns, and also to the two people who have invested so much time and interest in their lives. In spite of the nutritional challenges of their youth, both deer are exceedingly well-developed, with robust Will approaching full maturity and with Sprite now expecting her first fawn. Sprite’s nose still wrinkles when she eats. Will is endowed with those big, magical black eyes and a most beautiful face—even for a deer. Possum still occupies a place in our hearts, and not a day goes by that I do not think of her and expect to see her sweet face looking for us through the door. Possum.
C H A P T E R E I G H T
The Babe
Dauby was probably a resident on the Slingshot long before we arrived. She was closely allied with Rodenta, and it was apparent that they might be sisters or even perhaps mother and daughter. Both of these deer are large does, but Dauby looked distinctly tired and I would say distinctly disappointed, and her appearance suggested that she might be an older deer than Rodenta. Dauby clearly wanted and needed our help during the long, hard winter, so with some reluctance she allowed herself in our midst. There was little doubt that her ability to trust had been somehow destroyed—in all likelihood by what she perceived to be some unforgivable travesty at the hands of another human. There was always an irreconcilable fear in her eyes that made me feel ashamed for being the creature that I am. Dauby’s ears always hung downward—a result of some former injury or disease—which accentuated the appearance of fatigue and sadness.
During our first winter on the Slingshot Ranch, Dauby produced a rather homely fawn who came to be known as Stinky. Stinky survived to become a mature buck, but he did not live up to his name. Although extremely nervous as a fawn, he eventually became friendly and gentle, allowing me to feed him from my hand and ultimately to give him a welcomed scratch on the head or neck. In fact, even though Stinky achieved rather enormous proportions, he was always kind and gentle but a loner who seemed to avoid any involvement in the unpleasantness of the rut, spending most of his time near the herd but always somehow outside the mainstream. In later years he seemed to gravitate in our direction when other deer were gone, following me around the yard, begging to be groomed and scratched on the sides of his great neck. With lazy, sagging eyes, he was obviously consoled by the affection and would nudge me with his big nose if I stopped before he was properly satisfied. We lost Stinky in his fourth year to hunters just below the house.
During our second spring, Dauby had another buck fawn who came to be known as Babe. A year later, she would have twins, Button and Beau, also bucks, and they were to be her last; however, Dauby’s last reproductive efforts were good ones. Button, an engaging personality, was killed in his first winter by lions or coyotes, but Beau and his older half-brother, Babe, survived to become fine, handsome deer.
In our second year on the Slingshot we knew little of Dauby, as she was such a cautious doe, and we would see her and her lone fawn only on rare occasions in the meadows throughout the summer. But by August they had joined Rodenta and her fawns, and once again were about the business of becoming an extended family—a maternal clan of mule deer. It was only Rodenta’s encouragement and example that provoked Dauby and her fawn into our presence. However, it wasn’t until winter that we began to interact clo
sely with these deer and began to recognize individual fawns by their appearances and personalities. In late October and early November, when deer are returning to their home winter range, most fawns are not only strangers to us but also expressing a little independence, so when thirty deer are around the place for the first time in six months, it is often hard to tell who belongs to whom. I immediately began to see a particular fawn as unique in the herd. This one was conspicuously brawny, unlike most fragile-looking little deer. He looked more like an aspiring Charolais bull calf than a mule deer fawn. The shape of his head was broad and boxy, without the more gracile nose seen on a younger deer. He was darker than most, and his pelage, although quite luxurious, appeared rather coarse and grizzled, and each hair was distinctly agouti, or tri-colored. His hindquarters were truly robust, and from behind the underlying musculature and texture of his coat brought the appearance of a Russian wild boar to mind. He was, nevertheless, only a sixteen-week-old deer, so he got stuck with the name Babe in a poorly conceived reference to the pig character of the movie Babe, which Leslye had just seen. We both agreed it was at least preferable to Piglet. In a couple of years, a reference to Paul Bunyan’s blue ox “Babe” became more appropriate.
Babe, a fawn with extraordinary eyes, at five months.
Babe had rather distinctive personality characteristics as well. Although initially a bit suspicious of me—a probable result of Dauby genetics and Rodenta clan conditioning—he was still far bolder than the average fawn, and was possessed of some self-confidence rarely found in any three- or four-month-old deer. His personality could be described as alert and plucky and obviously ahead of the curve in relying on his own wits and judgment rather than waiting on a consensus of other deer responses to various stimuli and situations. He was well versed in all the standard mule deer social graces but was clearly overflowing with self-confidence regarding his status among the other fawns. Self-assured deer tend to be the least aggressive and even when Babe attained his unchallenged role of the dominant “master” buck in this area, he simply seemed to somehow command respect, but never displayed arrogance with any deer willing to be even remotely polite or amiable in his presence. Babe, in spite of all his apparent strength, preferred to avoid conflict.
In just a few weeks, this interesting little deer had sized me up, and was relatively certain I was not only harmless but perhaps even an asset that could meet some of his needs as he boldly came forward for an alfalfa cube. This unusual fawn was engaging, and when little Babe looked you in the eyes, something was conveyed—something transpired from one being to the other.
Babe’s eyes were his truly defining characteristic. Strangely enchanting, enormous, and obviously full of intelligence and inquiry, his were wide, almost jet-black, open, and stop-you-in-your-tracks beautiful—not wide like the look in the eyes of a fearful horse, but, rather, wide with an appetite to know all that was in his world. Babe looked at you and before you could avert your gaze, you were spellbound—captivated. The few people who ever had occasion to see—or “meet” Babe—immediately recognized something extraordinary.
As an adult, Babe fulfilled all his apparent promise as a fawn and became a mule deer leviathan—a real “handful,” as the cowboys often describe a big, strong horse that possesses a mind of its own. Babe became not just the biggest deer you ever saw but, more important, the most powerful creature who ever cared to look behind your eyes in a startling effort to make contact with you. Babe survived six rigorous and relentless hunting seasons, and, without any exaggeration, there were moneyed-up trophy “hunters” who would have gladly paid me $10,000 for the opportunity to simply kill this deer standing innocently in our backyard fifty feet away.
Babe was completely and definitively wild, cautious, and in maturity—hugely intelligent. His powers of discrimination must have bordered on the supernatural. Even from a quarter-mile away, he could sum up your intent in seconds, but if there was anything of significance residing in the depths of your being, he wanted to know that place, and he would bravely take the time to explore you as a possibility. Babe was willing to grant you your individuality, and it was impossible not to recognize this unanticipated and extraordinary favor with gratitude. Babe would meet you straight on, face to face—eye to eye—and make an effort to know not what you were, but who you were. By merely wielding those most powerful but gentle eyes, he would knock you and all your preconceived notions about human superiority and animal consciousness to their knees. And when satisfied that he had discovered and explored the most important thing that you had to offer as a fellow creature on this Earth, those vast, black orbs would soften, and he would look into the distance, lower his head, turn, and then slowly walk away—as if satisfied he had taken away something that was, to him, valuable. On a couple of distinct occasions, I clearly watched this animal forever change people’s lives, possibly as a result of standing eye to eye with his massive rack of lethal antlers looming higher than a person’s head, and at first incorrectly interpreting the apparent magnitude of overwhelming potential for destruction—some immeasurable power that remained harnessed, but could perhaps unleash some monster hidden within. But Babe confounded with his gentle nature, never causing anyone to feel the chill and discomfort that less powerful and insubstantial creatures project when fear sticks in their throats and binds their hearts. Babe possessed the innocent and authentic confidence that comes with full self-realization.
Babe as a young buck, only a few days into his first quest for dominance.
Babe, after the rut.
By his third year, Babe had quickly ascended into prominence, if not total dominance, in part because of his monumental proportions, but also because of a more prominent and indomitable spirit. Babe was that rare individual buck deer willing—eagerly willing—to die that very day and very moment if absolutely necessary to prove his worth as a potential master buck. Even older deer with fifty pounds of advantage and much larger antlers quickly learned of Babe’s indisputable prowess, and, often without the need for bloody conflict, surrendered the road to this absolute force of nature. On that rare occasion when Babe was called on to defend his authority, the sheer abandon and power that he unleashed was stunning. Witnessing such an event at dangerously close range is—for lack of more appropriate language—humbling.
Babe was migratory, and of course when these deer disperse in springtime I have no idea where any individual may call home during summer. Mule deer are known to occasionally migrate more than one hundred miles, but I suspect that some of these deer merely disperse up into higher elevations and are not more than five or ten miles away in summer. Babe disappeared in spring around mid-May and apparently began his summer journey earlier than some other migrants did, but he stayed with us just long enough to have a new installment of velvet antlers well underway. Furthermore, Babe returned home later in autumn than many deer, suggesting that perhaps he traveled longer distances than some of the other winter herd members did. This winter herd does not migrate as a cohesive unit at a particular time or in a particular direction, but rather staggers its migration in smaller groups of close family members. Babe also had a disquieting habit of returning toward the end of hunting season, so he must have been in transit during this vulnerable time. Yet, for six years he managed to elude the hordes that flood our mountainsides with unrestricted “general licenses” in a designated “general area”—which means every Wyoming resident and out-of-state license holder can hunt this area with absolutely no management plan or strategy involved in the annual “kill” other than the length of the season. One year I stood on a promontory above the ranch and counted fifteen hunter-orange jackets at one time distributed across the mountainside. With every hunter carrying a rifle and scope capable of killing or at least crippling at one half-mile in this open terrain, it is a rare deer that survives three hunting seasons. In spite of decades of decline in mule deer numbers, this species is regarded falsely as ubiquitous and relatively inconsequential compared to the more economical
ly significant big game animals, such as elk, moose, and bighorn sheep. Management initiatives for mule deer have only recently gained any prominence on the screen of the public, political, and therefore game management consciousness.