Here’s what to do if you find a fawn alone in Northern California (don’t worry, it’s probably OK)

Do you know what to do if you find a fawn alone? 

Every spring, wildlife rehabilitation groups across Northern California are inundated with calls from people who have come across a baby deer and worry that they’re orphaned. Most of the time, they’re not.

Dave Cook fields many of these calls in our area. He’s a facilitator and fawn rehabber for Sierra Wildlife Rescue in El Dorado County. He spoke with Insight host Vicki Gonzalez about the start of fawn season.

If you find an injured or orphaned fawn in the area, you can call Sierra Wildlife Rescue at 530-621-4661. People in Placer County can call Gold Country Wildlife Rescue at  530-885-0862. Nevada County residents can call the Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release at 530-432-5522.

This Q&A has been edited for length, clarity and flow. 

Interview Highlights

Is it now peak time for fawn season or are we just on the cusp of it?

We're on the cusp of it. Fawns start being born every year about April on the coast, then May in the valley and then June in the foothills. The first fawns have already been born on the coast, but they're coming our way. (Update: Dave sent a photo Monday, April 29, of his first fawn of the season that he took in Sunday, April 28)

When does a fawn actually need help?

Well, there's two times. One is when it’s an orphan and one is if it's injured. But the orphan question is one that comes up a lot. 

Most of the time when people see a fawn alone, it's not an orphan and it doesn't need to be rescued. But people don't understand that moms leave them alone for hours at a time to avoid attracting predators because they're [the fawn] too weak to have any chance of running off. So the mom goes off and feeds and leaves the fawn alone. People find them alone and think it's been abandoned. 

Do you come across that often each season?

June's a big season for birth in the foothills and that's when the phone starts ringing off the hook. More than 80% of the calls that I get, [the people calling] say they’re abandoned. We monitor for a while and usually mom shows up and we close the books on that one. But there's 20% percent that are [orphaned], so we have to take every call seriously.

How crucial is it for a fawn to have a mama deer in order to survive?

Well, it's absolutely crucial first not to disturb the scene. So that's why people should always call a rehabber first, rather than just jump out and grab the fawn. But if they have already grabbed it and then called, we can put it back. The good news is deer are not one of those kinds of animals where the mom is repulsed by human scent. So if you picked one up out of ignorance, we're going to go put it back and then we'll monitor for a while. Make sure mom does show up and it's not an orphan. Although there are signs that can tell us that it may be orphaned.

How do you determine if a fawn is orphaned?

Healthy young ones will just hunker down in the weeds and hope you go away. The spots [on its coat] and its lack of scent is protection from predators and so it just hunkers down hopes — whether you're a coyote or a human — that you don't notice it and you leave. 

But if the fawn is up, wandering around and crying — and by crying I don't mean tears, I mean crying out — that's a bad sign. The final test that really tells you if it’s an orphan is what we call the dirty butt test. Every time the mom feeds the fawn, she grooms it and that includes cleaning around the anus because the fawn doesn't know how to do that. So if you lift up the tail and there's poop material around the anus, mom hasn’t been there for a long time and that’s a bad sign. But that should be a last resort.

How did this all begin?

Well, you know, it's really an accident. I had signed up with Sierra Wildlife Rescue to be a volunteer for an all-volunteer group and I was in our center feeding baby songbirds when a call came in about a fawn hooked on a fence. And they couldn't find the fawn person, so I told him I'll go and get it off the fence. I won't know what to do with it afterwards. But let's get it off the barbed-wire fence. And so I went out and picked it up off the fence and fell in love. So 25 years later, I'm still rehabbing fawns.

Why have you been doing it for 25 years?

It’s just so rewarding. It's difficult physically, financially, emotionally, but it's so rewarding when you see a wild animal run back into the woods that would have died if you had not taken care of it and returned it to the wild. 

You’re a volunteer and you’ve been doing this work for a long time, but we’ve heard you’ve started to move into a transition phase. What is that transition and what does that mean for Sierra Wildlife Rescue?

Well, as I've gotten older, I'm thinking I might want to do a little more traveling. But you want to hand it off well. I don't want to just walk out the door and they're lost. So I’m training new people to know those things. So I'm not totally out of the mix, but I'm doing more training and mentoring and less of the doing this year.