I've often seen two fawns per doe. This year there's three fawns hanging with a doe. They hang out within shooting distance of my front porch.

Triplets are rare but they do happen. I had 2 does at the Ranch that had triplets last year.

A friend collected several hundred white-tailed deer each year, from Wisconsin to south Texas. He examined and recorded the fawns in utero in the does that they posted. Base on a several thousand does examined over a period of years, he found that triplets occurred about once in every 200 births.

For your trivia file...

mudhen,
That's pretty good info - I would have thought it'd be a little more common than that. Thanks for sharing.

Wow! When I hunted WV a lot.. One old doe had four fawns.. We told my pals relatives and told them to leave her be.. On little prick went right back and shot her.

oh my,

some people define STUPID !!

Stupidity is a bottomless pit.


Jerry

Mule deer around here regularly. Twins maybe 50%. Triplets maybe 1 out of 15 does and they do drag her down over the summer.

A pre-rut fall green up and boost in nutrition seems to elevate fawning.

Working with whitetails in south Texas and Kansas, I found that deer living in within the carrying capacity of their habitats typically had twinning percentages ranging from 70 to a little more than 80 percent. In good habitat, virtually all the adult does were carrying twins, with a low incidence of triplets. Those carrying single fawns were virtually all yearling females.

That's been my experience as well on our two ranches and the big hill country Ranch I manage. Also pretty much the same as we found on the studies we did at TAMU when I was working on my Wildlife Management Degree.

Occasionally when you see three fawns with a doe, one may be an orphan that hitched up with the group. Especially in late summer/ early fall.

I learned something here thanks.
We've had a wonderful year for deer, plenty of green grass and water. Mild weather etc. I expect to see quite a few deer after the corn is out of the field. Even now I see does and fawns feeding and running around.

I have seen triplets one time. I didnt know it was that common.

I have a ladder stand that I have had out a few years that I hunt occasionally. I have a big doe that comes by and she has had 3 fawns the last 2 years. I almost shot her the first year till I saw the 3 yearlings with her.

Don't know a lot about the incidence of triplets here, but like mudhen said, anything with a single fawn is likely to be a yearling. But... when we have a late spring following a hard (er) winter, does often also lose a fetus. I am of the opinion that the period from March through April is extremely critical to fawn production.

What I am unsure of is just how much body mass contributes to multiples. The does that have twins are virtually always the larger does. The does that have single births are almost always a little smaller. The body mass correlates with age as well, so a captive herd would be needed to help sort it out which carries the bias of nutrition and nutrition at specific times with it. Separating that from genetic propensity would be interesting.

To see triplets these days is pretty rare indeed in my area as the yotes have decreased our recruitment by around 40% or more..

Just read an article that says habitat wide recruitment is down 20% all from yotes.

That would be true in the fall, I have seen does with triplet fawns when they were a few days old. I would assume it is more common than the one in 200 in my area.

It's hard to be sure just who's with whom in the field, especially after the fawns get a bit older. Groups of whitetails can be pretty fluid while feeding and stragglers and wanderers are common. The doe I shot last year was trying to catch up with the group that had caught me flat-footed about 15 minutes before. I had climbed down from my stand to stretch and pee when she popped up less that 50 feet away in very thick cover. My rifle was leaning on the tree and I managed to grab it and pop her while she was wondering where the giant pumpkin came from.