SerpApi.Org
South Carolina’s fawn season is April into July, when deer give birth — then the mothers often do something that startles homeowners. They hide their newborn in backyards and flower gardens in busy neighborhoods.
A fawn’s brown fur spotted with white is effective camouflage for baby deer nestled in the dappled light amid shrubbery and shade trees.
The S.C. Department of Natural Resources gets calls from resident who want to help fawns they think are abandoned.
“Leave the fawns alone,” DNR big game expert Lee Kennamer advises people who want to feed, adopt, cuddle, pet or play with the delicate, beautiful babies. “As we say at DNR, don’t kidnap the deer.”
He explains that a doe will return at twilight to nurse her fawn. She drops her fawn in a yard safe from predator coyotes, dogs, gators and cars zipping along roads. Unlike adult deer, fawns are blessed with a faint scent that won’t attract predators.
“Fawns can stand up and walk around from the day they’re born,” Kennamer said. “They just don’t have lots of endurance and can’t keep up with mama until they’re stronger.”
If a fawn is orphaned or if an animal lover notices a badly injured deer, DNR works with a list of deer rehabbers who share DNR’s guiding principle that the way to keep South Carolina’s herd healthy is to treat deer like wild animals. That can be tough in fawn season.
Although state laws prohibit people from keeping deer as pets, when they see a fawn no bigger than a house cat, they see adorable Bambi or lonely Rudolph. Those beloved characters don’t hint at how drastically a fawn’s personality changes once it becomes the equivalent of a teenager.
“When it’s mating season, the males can be very dangerous and really hurt people,” Kennamer said, adding that the territorial males fight to become dominant in the herd.
But females can be dangerous, too. He recalled trying to help a forest ranger transport someone’s pet doe to a sanctuary when she became too destructive for her adoptive human. “She kicked the ranger in the leg. I remember it sounded like a baseball bat crack.”
A deer that has become too accustomed to humans may be unable to survive in the wild. That’s when DNR turns to deer rescuers whose rehabilitation have been inspected and certified.
Magnolia Fawn Rescue founder Connie Hall cares for about 70 deer of various ages in her Gray Court facility. She has been a deer rehabber for 27 years. She recalled transporting an 8-month-old pet deer allowed to roam the adoptive humans’ house until he almost destroyed it.
”The whole house reeked of urine,” she told The Post and Courier. She knelt by the couch to scoop up the deer, who a volunteer vet had sedated. The urine-saturated carpet soaked her jeans immediately. “My jeans and boots were ruined. I threw them away; the stench was strong.”
The volunteers she trains help her with tasks like bottle feeding fawns. She got her start when her daughter wanted to take a wildlife class on how to care for injured squirrels, rabbits and songbirds.
Her goal is still to release deer into nature once their wounds heal. But she has deer who can never go back to the forest due to head trauma or blindness. Some cannot return to the wild because they spent too much time with humans.
Charleston-area deer rehabber Debby Hill has 20 years’ experience caring for wildlife. She’s trained a volunteer from Monck’s Corner and one from Awendaw for the Lowcountry’s Keeper of the Wild rehab center. She calls them "fawn mamas."
One of her most urgent guidelines is: don’t talk to orphaned fawns or touch them unless absolutely necessary, even when bottle feeding them.
“Deer mustn’t lose their fear of humans to survive,” Hill said. ““What helps keep a deer alive is that instinct to run fast the second it hears leaves crunch or a twig snap, because a human or predator is nearby.”
It breaks her heart when well-meaning but untrained rescuers put deer in walled enclosures that are too small. If dogs barking or loud noise suddenly scares them, they will keep running into a wall expecting it to part for them the way the forest branches, leaves and vines part for them when they run.
