Background

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White-tailed deer are extremely common in Central Texas. Deer do well in urban areas and have very few predators. People also tend to feed deer in their yards which can lead to overpopulation and more fawns in the roads. Deer are crepuscular, which means they are most active at dawn and dusk.

 

Fun Facts

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• Deer are the only animals who can grow antlers.

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• Deer are known as browsers (as opposed to grazers), and eat browse which consists of woody vegetation.

 

Deer Concerns

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A mother deer will leave her fawn in a safe spot for up to 12 hours at a time. When fawns are born, they are not strong enough to keep up with their mother, so she finds high grass or another safe area (sometimes your yard) to leave her fawn while she eats or sleeps elsewhere so she does not draw attention to her baby. Fawns do not have a scent so it is hard for predators to find. 

 

Does a fawn need help?

You can check the list below if you are concerned:

1. Is the fawn’s bottom clean under the tail? If so, mom is still caring for it. If not, but it is late in the day, mom may be back soon. If it's very dirty, the fawn is orphaned and needs to be brought in for care.

2. Is the fawn curled up and sleeping (good!) versus laying on its side (bad)?

3. Is the fawn free of ants and flies?

4. If you lift up the skin on the fawn's back, does it go back down in place (good!)? Or stand up, meaning it’s dehydrated (bad)?

*Do not feed a fawn and do not bring it inside unless it truly needs help -- we don’t want to take a fawn from its mom, she will be looking for it later.

*You can touch a fawn (if necessary) and mom will not abandon it, this is a myth. If you need to carefully move a fawn to a safer location (not far from where you found it), you can do that and mom will still come back.

 

Do not feed deer, this can cause over-population

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Adult deer

Rehabilitators are not allowed to take adult deer. Any deer that no longer has spots is 6+ months old and considered an adult. If you find an injured adult deer, you have two options.

1. If the deer is not visibly, severely injured, please give the deer 2-3 days to get up and recover. Deer are very resilient and often recover from injured (even a broken leg!). When adult deer are handled and transported, they can suffer from capture myopathy, which causes them to severely stress and can lead to death. It is better to give a deer time to recover on their own.

2. If a deer is severely injured, or has not gotten up 2-3 days after an injury, then the most humane option is have the deer euthanized so it does not suffer. You can contact your local Game Warden or Country Sherif for this.

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