Another unforgettable fawn �
High in the Cabinet range above Vermilion River late one night in 1956, I had to stop my pick-up on a steep grade to keep from running over a just-born fawn.
The logging road was just one narrow lane with a sheer drop-off on the left and a high cutbank on the right � just a narrow ribbon of gravel between two blobs of night.
Mama doe had jumped up the high bank with ease and stood stamping and snorting up there in the dark. The fawn staggered back and forth, awkwardly zig-zagging across the road.
I stopped, cut the engine, and left the Ford in first gear, with the high-beams stabbing two bright cones of light into the night, and got out of the cab.
My intent was to take the fawn up to its mama, but it immediately relaxed nestled-down in my arms with no struggle, and I couldn't bring myself to let it go.
I remembered what I'd read and heard so often, for years � that a new-born fawn had no odor (nature's protection against predators, supposedly). So I thrust my face into that soft, warm flank and sniffed.
Oh, yes! There was an odor, all right! Outdoorsy, unique, and very, very faint.
I wanted so badly to take that fawn home. I'd wanted for years to raise a deer. But I knew that I shouldn't. So I clambered up into the dark above the road and set that little bundle on its feet. I never saw the doe, but I heard her a few yards away as the fawn tottered-off to her in the dark.
