A few years ago the PGC conducted a study of harvest rates of deer in southeastern Pennsylvania. The first adult female captured was caught on video walking into a Clover trap.
And she was filmed NOT getting caught a second time.
But we can still catch her on camera. Now she is at least 5 years old.
Why is there no fawn with her in these pictures? It seems strange because nearly all 5-year-old does give birth to fawns. It’s possible her offspring may not have survived, but we also know that fawns and their mothers are not inseparable even when the fawns are only 3 months old.
How do we know this? Well, because in our current study we use collars (on the doe and fawn) that email us when the doe and fawn separate. More than once a day I get emails whenever a doe and fawn are more than 400 feet apart.
That means these mother-offspring pairs are wandering apart and then rejoining each other throughout the day. We’ll be able to share more details on the behavior of does and their offspring once we “blow off” the doe collars in January 2016 (the complete data are stored on the collar and can be downloaded once we recover the collar). Then we can share with you how the movements of females and their fawns change as the fawn grows older.
-Duane Diefenbach
Check out the photo gallery on our webpage of our collared deer.
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