NEWBORN FAWN SURVIVAL RATES
If not for their adaptive survival strategies, newborn whitetails would be easy meat for marauding wolves, coyotes, black bears and bobcats. This is not to say that certain predators aren’t proficient fawn-killers. To the contrary, there is mounting evidence that coyote predation of fawns, for example, is creating havoc and impacting annual deer recruitment rates in some environments (see the “Party Crashers” article about coyotes in the March 2011 issue of Deer & Deer Hunting).
Recent research has also shown that white-tailed fawn-rearing behavior, as well as the pattern and magnitude of fawn mortality, tend to vary annually and often from one area to the next depending upon a host of factors.
Therefore, successful deer management demands a firm understanding of deer reproductive behavior. It’s essential those involved recognize that relatively minor differences in fawn-rearing behavior, for whatever reason, might require innovative management strategies in order to combat and/or accommodate periodic excessive natural fawn mortality.
BASICS
Newborn ungulates can be categorized as hiders or followers. These are differing adaptive strategies for protecting the young from predation, tend to relate to the species’ mobility and social habits, and vary according to prevailing habitat conditions.
Followers include those species that live in
