What a crappy year for the fawns. I went up to the Crawford Mtns. in northern Utah antler hunting the other day. I went up there primarily just to get a feel for how hard the winter was on the deer that come out of region G. The area is part of the winter range for the deer from regions G and K in Wyoming.
I would guess that 90%+ of the fawns were lost up there. I found 50-60 dead deer. Most were fawns, 4-5 were what I estimate to be yearlings and a couple that were probably adult does. I didn't find any dead mature bucks, but I'm sure the winter got a few. I did see a couple fawns with groups of deer, so a few survived.
I made it a point to look closely at all the dead deer I saw, because I wanted to know for sure whether they were fawns, does, young bucks, older bucks, etc. I sure hated seeing all the fawns like these photos below. It's a real bummer that there's nothing more sportsmen can do. Just nature.......
Not sure if there was any feeding going on up there or not. Maybe it would have saved some of those fawns had it been done. I don't know...???
It'll be interesting to see what I find in Wyoming in May. Hopefully it's no worse than this, I'll see.
These were your words just a few short months ago.