Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Is this fawn weaned?

Is this fawn weaned? If we kill this Doe next weekend will the fawn live?

FYI: East of Dothan ~40 miles (GA). It was legal to kill this Doe 4 weeks ago.

It's probably not weaned but I'm sure it would survive.

If you kill the fawn, itll fit in a big crockpot. Mmm mmm good

I don't have a problem with someone killing & eating the fawn. I just don't want it to starve to death.

Just my opinion but why dont you try to shoot a doe without a little one. Obviously she will breed why don’t you shoot the ones that don’t breed and are just another mouth to feed

bucks and does breed. Or at least they are designed to.

Just as an FYI. I had a friend hunt with me one day and he shot his first deer. His excitement was really great to see. I carried the deer out of the field like you would carry a lunch box. I cleaned and boned it out, and it fit in a 1 gallon zip loc bag.

He was not embarrassed or ashamed, and he will tell the story to anyone who will listen. He says it is one of his best memories. I really like that in him.

Sorry to derail, that fawn in the pic made me think of that.

I can remember the days when we just wanted to kill a deer, and it wasnt easy.

Weaned no fawns are usually not weaned until the rut start to get close and with that one still in spots I'm gone guess that's a month or 3 off.
I have seen fawns get weaned in the wild and really something to watch and it's almost sad

I'd hold off on anything that's got a baby with spots unless I was over ran with does...I ain't killed a doe in years and my sightings are about even with bucks which ain't much 😀

I know a calf will suck their mother dry but they need it for a good while
I'll add if it's a younger person's 1st kill then whatever makes em happy

I’ve been dropping momma does in October for 30 years. There’s a reason deer season starts when it does.

I will readily shoot a doe with fawns in archery season if they have lost their spots or nearly so. Like globe, been doing it since I was old enough to hunt. One year I orphaned 7 fawns from the same tree and in January all 7 were still fine.

My rule of thumb , if spots are fading or gone completely , momma is fair game.

You may have grown up when I did. Calhoun County AL didn't always have decent deer population. I remember when a "good season" was when you actually SAW a deer, whether you shot it or not.

Rookie

if you shoot a doe with a small spotted fawn, no matter the date, the fawns chance of survival just went down the toilet. Fawns have enough trouble surviving WITH momma around.

I’ve always found it astoundingly stupid that either sex harvest rules are open when such a large quantity of fawns are still spotted and nursing. I can remember many years ago when we bow hunted and the biologeest were saying 300 does needed to be killed. Every doe we killed into the first 3 weeks of bow season was full of milk, so they had a fawn somewhere even if they were alone when we were wholesale murdering the momma deer for a “ balanced “ herd.

^^^^^^^


Something else too is I think you can take what you saw 10-20 years ago and throw it out the window because the dynamics of the impacts of coyotes has been changing the whole time. They are becoming more and more efficient at their job here in the southeast......I think its naïve to keep looking at does and fawns the same way

You could come to south Marshall county and still get excited if you SEE a deer.

Everyone is free to do what they want but I don’t fool with any til later in gun season. I would think it doesn’t help to shoot any with young one but I don’t know that for sure but just not my thing. Also I don’t bow hunt but I can see where a bowhunter would and I might as well if I did bow hunt.

On our property we try to harvest does early so that rest of the herd can survive better during the winter. Our policy was that if they had spots, leave the mamma alone. We had someone drop a big doe a couple of years ago that had two fawns that had just lost their spots. These two young deer stayed together and they were stupid. If we did not have feeders out, I'm sure they would have starved to death that first year. These two deer would come run you down during turkey season and the next fall - they were still stupid. By stupid, I mean that they did not behave like a normal deer and they would typically go to noises instead of fleeing. They also did not grow like the other one year old deer.

If they are still traveling with their mamma, leave the mom and the spotless fawns alone. The mom will teach them about dangers and also teach them how to get natural food. The mom will typically allow a female offspring to run with her for a year or two, but she will run the buck slap off when they are 1 year old.