The photos above are what I’ve seen of the O.G.’s family so far (aka Pi’s family), mostly in 2021 and 2022. The does and fawns in the photos with red circles are the only ones on the property in 2021. The others came in 2022.
In 2021, the first summer Pi and her fawns made consistent use of this place, she was here with what I believe was a yearling (year-old) daughter who did not have fawns. At the time I also wondered whether the doe with Pi was a sister, but over time kind of concluded Pi was older.
The yearling was almost always with Pi and fawns, and I saw only Pi nurse the fawns, so I’m assuming Pi was the mother. I’m not going to say the daughter was assistant to the three-legged doe, but she was definitely doing some of the family jobs. In 2022, the no-longer a yearling and the O.G. both spent a lot of time here and both had twins. Additionally, before they showed up in 2022, a third doe brought what I think was a one day old fawn here, and I think that doe was one of the Pi’s 2021 fawns, a yearling in 2022.
Deer family constellations confounded me for a while. They’re ridiculously compressed. Pi’s “grand kids” were born the same time as her own “toddlers.” In just two years, her family has grown into a constellation that would take humans 36 years to accomplish, using 18 as the age at which human females give birth. The O.G. was in grandmother status by the time she was 3 or 4 years old. Even if she lives only 7 or 8 years, that’s still young, half her life span. That would be like an 80 year old woman who had been a grandmother at 40. Not impossible at all, but young. It’s a fast life. I’m sure this isn’t how wildlife biologists look at animal lineage, but I have no idea how they do nor of what importance it is. I guess I should add that to my question list.
It’s the O.G.’s daughters that have born fawns who I said I needed language for (names), in order write clearly about about them. Part of that is because I’ve got nothing really to base a hierarchy on, and that’s how I’ve often seen both does and bucks discussed, alpha, beta, etc. Deer are social animals, but they definitely follow a hierarchy. The older “daughter” would likely have had more status than the younger sister-doe, but I’ve not seen the two daughters interact so I don’t know how or if that plays out. I wonder whether the O.G. had more status (rank) in 2021 than she does in 2022 because she’s aging into a disability. Anyway, for the older daughter, I went with “the Auntie” because of her multiple roles with the fawns. The younger daughter, the one who brought the day old fawn, I’m just calling Guinevere in my head so far and that’s all I’m going to say about it for now. In lieu of alpha, beta, and whatever comes next, it’s Pi the O.G., the Auntie, and Guinevere.
As previously noted, I saw flashes of the O.G. in 2019 and 2020. I remember taking the photo above, but I didn’t remember I had it until pulling these notes together, and it’s hard to pin it to the right year.
Prior to fall of 2020, any photos were taken on a funky Cannon Elph whose date stamps all said 1968 because every time the battery died, the dates reset. And the battery died a lot. So for a few of the earlier pics, I have to sleuth. I look at photos sequenced near each other for something I can tag to a year and look at things in the photo for other time clues. In the photo above, I know it’s September because those little perennial Maximilian sunflowers don’t bloom until mid-September. The river also looks a little high for September, so I could maybe look at the river gage station archives for yearly differences, but I didn’t. So it’s September 2019 or 2020.
The reason I remember taking the photo is it was the first time I finally grabbed the camera to take a pic of “this weird deer” who’d been popping in. She’s in that “favorite” spot in the backyard on the bank. So I grabbed the camera, opened the back door quietly, and right as I snapped the pic, she unexpectedly squatted to pee. I was thrilled. I’d never seen a deer pee before. It’s hilarious (and fitting) that she peed right on everyone’s favorite spot.
The O.G. showed up early in spring 2021 and spottily during July, but made regular use of the place in August and September. Photos above are off the back deck. She was really healthy, agile, and strong. I saw her jump that falling down barbwire fence, scoot through tight spots, etc. She was competent with her fawns, and they looked great.
She was pretty comfortable around the place. She would browse or move casually through the backyard with fawns while I was sitting on the deck doing something or browse the grape vines that start about 5 feet from the corner of that deck. Deck’s about 12 feet long. It’s a perfect viewing platform. But she’d also split if I was moving around too much or working close to wherever she was holed up.
I’ve asked a number of people, largely hunters, to speculate how Pi might have injured her leg so badly and survived, or whether they thought it was some kind of a birth defect. Mostly I got a lot of “I dunno’s.” The closest, most thoughtful speculation came from a young female hunter who said that if she’d lost it through injury, it most likely occurred when she was very young and still being taken close care of by the herd and a mother.
During the first extended encounters with these deer, I was repeatedly googling some version of “what does it mean when a deer does XYZ?” This is how I learned about bleating. Of course I assumed deer vocalized, but I’d never thought about it or had a daily chance to listen for it. And right after learning about bleating, I walked out the front door and heard— for the first time— a doe and fawn bleating to each other back and forth across the driveway. The next day, I was having coffee on the back porch watching Pi, the Auntie, and Pi’s two fawns on the bank when I realized Pi was bleating at the fawns. I grabbed my phone to see if it would capture the audio, and it led to filming the fawns nursing (vid above). They’re behind a red osier dogwood bush, but you can still see the little buggers. They almost trip mom up when she shakes them loose. Like the peeing, I’d never seen a doe nurse fawns before.
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