Watched four bucks chasing a doe around the backyard last night. All had antlers yet. She was a small doe but I guess she was hot. She sure had an audience.

They can become sexually mature at 70 lbs. - you probably have good habitat, that helps.

Probably a last spring born fawn. About ten of fifteen percent will breed their first winter - usually Jan or Feb

I saw a young buck mount a receptive doe in front of the house a few days ago. I thought it was a bit late but what do we know. If it smells right and she is willing that is nature at work.

That's not the case around here. The majority of them do breed in November and December. Anything that breeds in January will not have fawns old enough to survive their first winter. It can happen but it's extremely rare in the upper midwest.

Someplace I have a picture I took on Dec.14th one year here in southern WI of a road killed fawn with spots, it was a winter thick coat, not the summer coat, but spots. It was right in front of my Dads place and when I got out of the truck I thought it was just a deer hide someone had tossed out, threw it one handed into the truck bed and left it in my field edge for the scavengers. Couldn't have weighed more than 25 lbs, I am not real strong.

Fawns coming in

Ya the fawns that get bred now have young quite late and the babies from those fawns are the size of coyotes even through the winter if they make it. There were 5 bucks behind the fence last night-all smaller guys but 4 of the 5 were scrapping it out.

In areas where winter severity is mild to low as in most of WI's central and southern farmland zone those fawns have quite high probablity of surviving winter and one of the reasons those areas keep their anterless permits as high as they do.

Bryce

Found a fresh rub last week while tracking a bow shot deer in NE Ohio. We had gotten fresh snow the night before and the rub shavings were on top of snow. It was a sapling tore up pretty good.

Rut around here is usually first week of Nov.
28 days later the does that did not get bred come in again
Had buck on camera chasing a doe here last week. Looked like a <1yo doe

So if she did breed, 200 days from now (mid August) she will drop a fawn

Driving to a meeting this AM I passed a smaller 5 point buck laying dead along the road. Antlers were still intact

Bryce

A lot of our bucks are still carrying their headgear…just got this pic a minute ago.

I’ve also seen two bucks ready to fight over a “mature” fawn the first week of April. One still had a rack and the other didn’t. They’d charge at each other but the buck with no antlers would back off…he was the larger mature deer.

Saturday I saw a group of 4 small bucks all still carrying both sides. Not at all unusual for here. There will be some still carrying til the very last bit of March.

Probably 12 -13 years ago I came across a doe dropping a fawn on Labor Day weekend !!! Go back 200 days.............. She was bred in mid-February.