The future of every whitetail herd is the success and survival of each year’s fawn crop.  Deer are exceptionally adaptive but certainly require adequate cover for safety.  Trying to grow “giant bucks” is futile if you fail to maintain a positive fawn recruitment rate. Habitat management is one of the four cornerstones of Quality Deer Management and it’s imperative to analyze and assess annually.

Fawn recruitment estimates the number of fawns per adult doe that survive to at least six months of age.  Therefore, a rate of 1.0 is one fawn recruited into the herd per one adult doe.  Effective tools to capture this data are trail camera surveys and recorded observations during the Fall season.  This is a topic I discussed on Episode 529 of the Wired To Hunt Podcast.  

Fawn Predation

Predation is the primary cause of fawn mortality.  But what’s killing newborn deer?  A 2020 study in the Chattahoochee National Forest of the Southern Appalachian region in Georgia found 16% fawn survival, with predation accounting for 81% of mortalities.  In a 2016 research paper “The Impact of Predators on Deer in the Southeast,” David Osborn and Mark McConnell reported “of 91 radio-collared fawns, 56 (80% of deaths) likely were killed by coyotes.”  A University of Georgia study conducted in southwestern Georgia collared 47 fawns, of which coyotes killed 11.  A few other deer survival studies have similarly shown that coyote predation can be the primary source of fawn deaths and might limit their recruitment in the Southeast.

Coyotes have continued to expand eastward in recent decades, though the canids already had a storied history of surviving and acclimating to a broad array of environments in North America.  Trapping can help but you cannot trap your way out of poor habitat.  They will quickly recolonize and inhabit areas left by packs that have been killed off.  Their ability to rapidly bounce back make them quite arduous to manage.

Yotes, along with wild dogs, wreak havoc on my farm.  Several years back, I drove upon a feral dog clinching a fawn in its jaws.  It stood its ground briefly and bolted with another dog.  If you trust coyote data, you must assume a large portion of fawns fall annually to wild canines.  It’s of my opinion that wild dogs should be tightly managed.  Canid management has its place, and you should likewise monitor ground nest predators that may prosper without the presence of yotes and dogs.   

What options do land stewards have to combat fawn predation?  Even with trapping and predator hunting year-round, you will never keep new yotes from filling vacancies.  If you ask any land manager, they’ll tell you the best defense against predation is habitat improvement.  Inferior habitat equates to heavy predation and low survival rate.  Whitetails will not maximize expression of weight, health, and antler size under poor land management.  

Ground Disturbance 

Prescribed fire and light disking are great examples of ground disturbance, which can create high-quality, dense bedding sites.  Results from controlled burns and disking largely depend on available canopy sunlight, basal area densities, and the frequency of disturbance.  It doesn’t take much to disturb the ground and let the native seed bank take over.  Monitor the results and repeat as needed.  Annual rotation is ideal and effective as ground disturbance can produce excellent fawning cover and quality nutritional options for many years.  Surveying initial growing season results is key, along with every year thereafter.  Adjustments and planned repetition should reflect your sweat equity return.  

Early successional growth not only provides cover for whitetail fawns but exceptional forage.  Consumption of browse begins with 14-21 days.  New growth is tender and easily digestible for deer and native forage supplies exceptional nutrients for lactating mother does.  Be very deliberate with site selection for bedding and fawning cover.  Avoid narrow strips tight along roadways as predators routinely hunt from easily traversed roads.  Proximity to destination food sources is of high importance for survival.  The more time mothers spend away from fawns, the greater the odds of predation.  Mothers periodically leave during the first 60 days which directly correlates to the highest timeframe of fawn mortality.  Remember that sunlight is the key ingredient for fawning cover.  Without direct exposure, the site won’t be efficient and will ultimately fail to meet objectives.  

Clear Cuts

Cutovers are another excellent practice to promote fawn survival through deep bedding and native forage production.  When Quality Deer Management Association and National Deer Association Founder Joe Hamilton visited our farm in 2019, he left me with many enhancement suggestions.  One in particular stood out.  We have a series of agriculture fields with an open and bare timber block on one side.  It’s too exposed for whitetails to comfortably travel through in daylight.  Therefore, deer won’t hit the fields until after legal shooting hours.  Joe suggested clear-cutting a portion within the block, letting it grow up wild, and resetting the vegetation after three years of natural growth by burning or cutting and thus repeating the cycle.  By dividing the area into thirds, the reset process will maintain a continual thicket at all times.     

Edge is Key for Fawns

The example above provides concentrated bedding adjacent to high-quality planted fields, allowing hunters a realistic opportunity to fill a tag.  The newly grown thicket will offer mother does outstanding fawning cover with a distinct edge.  Whitetails are creatures of edge and like to vanish within two bounds.  Habitat that allows deer to visually disappear from danger within two bounds increases daylight movement.  There is a direct correlation with edge and whitetail usage and sightings.  

According to a 2017 research paper, “fawns with the least edge in their home range were 2 times more likely to be predated by a coyote than fawns with the greatest edge availability.”  That is staggering data, to say the least.  The study was conducted from 2007 to 2012 at the Savannah River site in South Carolina.

Diversity is king and monocultures are typically not well-suited for fawn survival.  Especially, if the landscape is predominantly open timber with little to no cover.  I’ve written several articles on pine stand management for whitetails detailing my “checkerboard” approach.  By consistently clear-cutting small 5-to-50-acre sites every 5 to 10 years, you will seamlessly maintain thickets with abundant fawn safety and forage.  

The Basketball Benchmark 

Dr. Bronson Strickland and Dr. Steve Demaris of the Mississippi State University Deer Lab gave us a simple and yet highly effective technique to measure fawning cover:  Take a basketball and throw it as far as you can in the woods.  If you can still see the ball, it’s poor cover.  If the ball disappears from sight, it’s likely superior cover.  Predators typically travel paths of least resistance—roads, field edges, firebreaks—hunting for their next meal.  If a section is thick and nasty enough that you don’t want to run through it, chances are, neither does a predator.  Deer, on the other hand, will close their eyes and bury right into a briar thicket with ease and agility.

By improving and maintaining bedding sites, you will increase the carrying capacity for your local herd.  This should be done in tandem with enhanced food sources.  Furthermore, you most certainly will need to harvest more deer and establish a Quality Deer Management program.