Don't know where else to ask this question. Last spring a whitetail

[sinkingfeeling]

doe had twin fawns in my neighborhood (in the center of town) and I thought one was male and the other female. I named them Bert and Nan. I saw them with their mother almost daily through November. I have been feeding deer at my house for a couple of years

We'll, this spring there's been a doe and a guy with budding antlers coming to eat together.

Is it common for siblings to remain together? Could they be my Bobbsey twins?

[GulfCoast66]

1. Not uncommon at all

When the adult doe went into estrus this past fall a buck chased off the siblings and she is now most likely pregnant again. This is a very vulnerable time for yearlings in the wild. They may hang together all summer but next fall the maiden doe will go into estrus and a buck will run her brother off. He will be a button buck and try to breed also but will be rejected by most does and get the shit kicked out of him by nature bucks.

He may breed by the time he is 3 if he avoids hunters, coyotes, dogs and cars.

Enjoy watching while they are around.

[sinkingfeeling]

6. Thanks, that makes me happy.

[TexasProgresive]

2. What GulfCoast wrote

I do a bike ride nearly every day and see deer- does with their twins and then the twins by themselves, often male and female.

[Docreed2003]

3. GulfCoast is spot on...

When we lived in RI, our house backed up to a protected woods. We would see the various deer families season to season and watch them grow older. It was one of my favorite parts of living there.

[FakeNoose]

4. Sinking I know you have good intentions

... however it's not a good idea to feed wild deer. If they're caged then of course you need to feed them.
But if you feed wild deer they never learn how to find their own food, and the results are usually bad.

I live in Pennsylvania and we have white-tail deer all over the place - city, suburbs, and country. They can't be hunted in city limits (for obvious reasons) so they just go around getting into people's gardens and eating their shrubs. They're quite a nuisance in a lot of areas.

[sinkingfeeling]

8. Thank you. I live in a woods with a creek, downhill from vacant land.

I have 2 acres one block from a US Highway. The deer follow the creek and the whole neighborhood has kind of adopted them. Many homeowners put out food for them and yes, they repay us by mowing off the tulips and eating ripe tomatoes.

[WePurrsevere]

5. Just a possible heads up on feeding deer...

In some states, like where I live in NY, it's illegal to feed deer so I checked your state. I don't know if you're in one of these counties but if you are you might want to read this.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission would like to remind people in Boone, Carroll, Johnson, Logan, Madison, Marion, Newton, Pope, Searcy and Yell counties that feeding wildlife outside of the Sept. 1-Dec. 31 baiting season is no longer allowed.

http://www.thv11.com/news/local/agfc-restrictions-on-feeding-wildlife-and-using-deer-urine-in-effect/385522359

[sinkingfeeling]

7. Not in one of those counties. That list looks like the one where

some type of wasting disease has hit the deer hard.

[GulfCoast66]

9. I guess I just read your first post carefully and had my attention called to the feeding deer part

The worst thing we can do to any wild animal is practice Anthropomorphism. They are not pets and they are not people. They live a precarious life and their chances of living beyond 5 is slim. Deer are on the menu of so many animals, number one on that list in most of the eastern US is hunters. If you feed them is lessens their chance of living a long life since they will change their natural behavior and eating habits to frequent your house.

And it may sour some people's opinion of me, but the reason I know so much about deer behavior is that I am a hunter. I love nothing more than observing deer and any other animal in their natural habitat and because I sit in the woods for hours at a time I get a birds eye view. And for every deer I kill, I watch 10 walk away.

Where I hunt the deer are not acclimated to hunters, but deer which have been fed by humans lose their fear of humans and often dogs. And the last thing I want is for animal I am hunting to have its evolutionary skills dulled due to someone feeding it.

So enjoy these two deer and I hope you get to watch them as they grow mature. The change you see in he buck will be profound if he sticks around. Hopefully in the next year or so you will see the doe with a fawn of her own. Make sure you really pay close attention to her. If you do, you can often learn to recognize a deer for years as it changes because there are subtle difference in them as there are in us. I love seeing a doe I saw as a fawn rearing fawns of her own. Especially knowing the challenges she overcame to successfully raise that young deer.

Have a nice evening

[samnsara]

10. we see the same family group for a cpl years