Deer Tracking

By Mel Evans

We recently shared a post about making a Footprint Trap to help discover what wildlife is living in your area. You might remember Kev captured a footprint of a deer and later filmed some footage using the Wildlife Camera.

Well, this week I came face to face with a very young deer. I was off to the meadow to pick Clover for Sun Tea when it came bounding towards me. It stopped, starred at me for a while and then turned and ran off again!

We were both surprised to see each other!

I was really keen to find out what type of deer it was and how many young are in the area so I started to investigate. There are some obvious tell tale signs that deer have been visiting and you can look out for them while walking in the woods or countryside.

Deer tracks are a great indicator and looking at the size of the footprint can even give clues to the age and type of deer that left it. I found these tracks accompanied by lots of deer poo!

Deer poo is small and round. It is highlighted in the top left corner above the track.

At this time of year you might find areas where the grass is very long. The deer leave corridors through the grass as they trample it. You can follow these paths to see where the deer are travelling.

This corridor led to a gap in the hedge.

I also found a ‘Deer Couch’ in the long grass, This is the flattened area of grass where a deer has laid. Mother Deer will leave their young sat hidden in the long grass while they go off to feed. The size of this couch indicates this might have been where my baby deer had been sat before I disturbed it.

Looks comfy!

Once I had put all these clue together I found a spot which looked like the deer were travelling through regularly. I set up my wildlife camera (the same as the one we have available to borrow) and was rewarded with some footage.

The film below show two young deer. Their bouncy tails indicate these are probably Fallow Deer. Although Fallow Deer are commonly tan with white spots they do some in three other colours. The ones i filmed are Melanistic Fallow Deer and are a beautiful chocolate brown near black. This means my ‘baby’ deer are Fawns. Not all types of deers’ young are called Fawns. Red Deer and Sika Deer have Calfs and Roe Deer have Kids.

If you are interested in learning more about deer or identifying the deer you have seen then the British Deer Society website is a great place to start.