This topic may have been discussed before, but I am new to this forum. I put my camera out about 2 wks ago, and have pics of 5 different does. One is with a 1.5 to 2 yr cow horn spike, another with fawn. The other three have nothing. I have two question.
1) Do you all believe that the doe with the spike is barron?
2) Should we be worried about the other 3 does not having fawn?

We're in the middle of the worst drought in known history. Many does had to kick their fawns off so they could survive. I don't think I'd try to draw any conclusions until this drought is over with.

Fawn crop this year is low. If I remember correctly, fawn crop is around 27% from what we saw on survey lines.

Around here it is about 0%. All the fawns I had seen earlier are DOA. Every time I see buzzards milling around I find a dead fawn. If it doesn't do something soon the larger deer are going to go.

I haven't been out to the lease in over a month and a half, and I figured I'd go and sit this morning and see what showed up, and mainly to see if I could see some fawns.

I was surprised as we haven't had much rain in the eastern part of what is considered south Texas, but maybe a stray shower here and there in what seems like forever.

Anyway it's dry like everywhere else but the creek bottom I hunt has a lot of mesquite beans but the creek is dry.
There are also several ranches in the area that raise cattle, and so they irrigate, and have, or have had crops planted so the deer have it better than most.

The two of us went this morning, and the other guy saw about ten hogs that came to his feeder, and he also saw several does and a couple of fawns with one doe.

I was sitting in a stand about half a mile away and I saw 11 does, 5 fawns and six bucks, with two that had high racks, long tines and racks that would probably measure from 15" to 18" wide on the larger buck, with the other three being young forkhorns with one being a spike.

They all seemed to be in good body condition with the does that had the single fawns looking a little lean, but no more than usual as in a normal year.

So overall, I was pleasantly surprised.

I put out a couple cameras, so I'm hoping to get some good pictures in the near future.

My trailcams are showing somewhere around a 25% fawn recruitment. Gonna be some bad years for bucks in the future.

Most of the does on my place seem to have a fawn, at least half of them. Had one fawn running down the road in front of me this morning, and when she tried to turn to leave the road if slid and fell, but got up and ran off.

Deer are some tough critters and have been surviving since hunters used stone arrow heads, so it's natures way of taking care of overpopulation.

Texas has a very large deer population and it can use some help in lowering those numbers when the populations get too high for the land to support, so in the long term we should see better quality in the years down the road.

Isn't much we can do about it, and we are just in one of those cycles that we just have to do the best we can with what we've got!

If there's no rain, there is less grass for the fawns to hide in. They become lunch for the coyotes. I'll bet we have a yote population boom before this drought is over. Nature is one bad mother sometimes.

weve been lucky on the fawns... already seen countless fawns but there have been a noticeable amount of doe without fawns

weird to see it considering that I was seeing triplets last year and was getting worried about overpopulation

oh and to comment in response to palehorse... maybe we are looking a lot better since the only thing we cant get rid of are bobcats

On our place we rarely get many pictures of fawns this early. They will start showing up a little later on when they start moving more.

Our fawn crop is down this year with the drought. By the way welcome to the forum

Fawn numbers can be down or up due to lots of reason. Where exactly are you at? Just because fawns are not in pics does not mean the doe does not have any, they may just be on the outside area around the feeder. Remember they are not born knowing what corn is and when young they do not eat feed other than milk until around 5 or 6 weeks of age. If in deep South Texas your fawns might be just being born and still in hiding and not traveling with the doe. Grazing pressure and lack of fawning cover can greatly effect numbers if you are in areas with high predator numbers. Deer numbers on the range and the amount of browse you have can effect numbers. Supplemental feed will greatly effect numbers of survivors if they have cover to hide in. If all or some of these things are happening or not happening then the doe will likely walk off from the fawn/fawns to save herself so she can recover to breed this fall and start over next summer.
I have been on quite a few ranches in the last 5 weeks now and I can tell you fawn numbers range from 0% on most to as high as 50-60% on a couple of well managed ones.

spike with doe is likely to be last year's twins... or he's still hanging with his mama and she wasn't successfully bred to have the encourangement to run him off.

We just did our MLD counts this past weekend south of Sweetwater and every doe we saw had no fawns with them. On the third count, we spotted 3 fawns bedded together under some shin oaks.

We summized that the does had kicked them off to survive on their own early due to the dry year. The fawns had pulled together forming their own group.

So with only 3 fawns spotted, I'm still happy to see that. At least some survived till now.

I wont go as far to call us well managed, but we have good cover and brush have water availale and have been feeding and try to keep our numbers in check according to our census data. We have seen multiple sets of twins still with mommas and all deer are looking healthy so far. I bet the areas of the state that were caught in fires and havent gotten rain are hurting thought!

matt

I feel pretty lucky that most of the does we've seen on our place have a fawn or twin fawns! I'm sure having water on our place helps! We even got a pic of twin fawns feeding off of momma!





Hey Palehorse we are working on keeping our coyote population down too!!

Looking for buzzards and have started finding some dead larger deer. Found a dead spike this afternoon. I don't think we have had 3" of rain since last Oct. If it doesn't do something in Sept. there is going to be a record die off in this area.

That bites.

Hell yea!

Never had a camera. Hunted without them for 40+ years. Just takes the fun out of it for me.

Drought is making it very tough on the fawn crop.