What the heck is that?
I was pulling on my boots in preparation for an early morning trout fishing session on a gurgling spring creek in the hill-and-bluff country of southeastern Minnesota when a glance to the open field across the road-flanking stream led to a small animal jogging along, all alone. It was exactly May 16, and a perfect, cool and sunny springtime morning.
My thought process went as follows. Raccoon? No way, moving too fast and gracefully. Coyote? Na, too small. Bobcat? Could be, but it’s awfully red. Fox? Gotta be.
I grabbed my binoculars to confirm what bare eyes were telling me, but was quickly proven wrong.
It was a whitetail fawn, all alone, in the middle of rolling field that had been soybeans last year, jogging at a fairly ground-eating pace from the wooded bluffs behind. It was tiny … maybe the size of a fox … and could not have been more than a couple days old.
