I've been relentlessly and unsuccessfully trying to get the deer around here to eat out of my hand and let me pet them for a few years now. I've tried a couple different bags of pellets that were guaranteed to drive deer crazy, but they didn't give two shits about any of it. They'd sniff it and walk away. Squirrels, rabbits and racoons were loving it. The deer love corn, but not enough to tolerate me being close to them.
Meet Fly Baby...
...my wife hates that I named her that 😂
I started noticing this youngish doe a few months back mainly because she was eat up with flies. I've never seen any animal so covered with flies before. Even 100' away you could easily spot her because you could make out the swarm of flies that far away. There were two large patches of black on her neck where the flies could be seen burrowing under her fur. The back side of her ears were so rough and warty looking that it reminded me of barnacles on a whale. I'm not sure she was able to move her ears. I tossed some pellets at her one day and she devoured them. Staring at me for more. The same pellets no other deer would touch.
She started hanging around the house more and could be seen sniffing around for pellets in the usual places I would leave them. Before long she gave birth and the fawn looked healthy and active. That was cool to see since the fly situation really had me worried, but apparently she's healthy enough to birth and feed a fawn, so that's good news.
A few weeks later she starts showing up with two fawns. The one she's always had and another that's noticably larger, probably 3-4 weeks older. It's not her own and I'm not sure how she came to adop it, but she's nursing two fawns now.
Over the past few weeks she gets braver and more tolerant of my presence. I don't reach towards her, but I I talk her constantly in a normal tone of voice. If I see her out in the pasture I can start talking to her she she'll instantly recognize my voice and trot over for pellets. She still devours them while no other deer will touch them. Her coat has changed from a sickly pale yellow to the auburn color she ought to be. The flies on her are maybe 5% of what they were. You can still see a couple places on her neck where some flies still seem to be burrowed in to her fur, but it's not a quivering mass like it used to be. Her ears are still rough, but smooth enough that she moves them around freely now where they used to hang heavy.
I don't know what's up. I don't know if she was deficient in something that the pellets gave her, but she gobbles them up. I'm 43 and never saw a doe, or any other animal that was still alive, being swarmed with flies like that. But in the past couple months I've watched her health improve drastically. Her little belly ain't sucked in and ribby like it was.
I'm standing five feet away from her in this picture. When she finishes the pile of pellets she'll take two steps back and wait for me to put down some more. Still shy, but she won't run. Once she came up while I was on the lawn mower and watched me mow for half an hour, waiting for pellets. Her two little ones don't come any closer than 15-20 feet, but they're not worried when I talk to them either. They just cock their heads at me and wait for me to back away from the pellets 😁 Slowly building trust.
