By Gita Smith
Photo by Deane Winegar

Fawns are often born as twin pairs if a doe has enough food to eat. In years when there's not enough food, a doe might have just one fawn or none at all.

Fawns are born in warm weather months. Amazingly, they stand up on their wobbly legs just minutes after they are born. The doe cleans them and eats the birth sac that surrounded the fawn while it was inside the doe. The reason that does lick their young and eat the sac is to get rid of the smell so that coyotes, wolves and other predators won't smell anything and come to attack the fawn.

She moves the newborn fawns to another place as soon as possible, away from any smells of their birth.

A fawn has a natural instinct to hide when it is very young. It can even slow down its heartbeat and breathing so that it is perfectly motionless. Fawns curl up in grass or brush, making themselves as small and flat as possible with their heads down at any sign of danger. They can stay that way for hours. In fact, a newborn fawn spends up to 96 percent of its time curled up in its bed. It gets up and changes the location of its bed about five times a day.

Every year, game wardens hear about people who have picked up “orphan” fawns that they have found, thinking their mothers had abandoned the fawns. That’s a mistake, because the mother was probably nearby, just busy feeding. If a fawn is touched and petted, some human scent is left on it. There’s a good chance the doe won’t take care of it after she smells human scent on her fawn, and that makes it truly orphaned.

If you know of a fawn in the area, it’s better to stay back and watch it through binoculars or better yet, take a photo of it.