A juvenile white-tailed deer with its mother in a forested autumn setting, light brown with darker legs, surrounded by green foliage and fallen leaves. 5:24
Texas Backyard Wildlife channel icon Texas Backyard WildlifeOriginal creator 695K views Save

Never get between a mama deer and her twins

This doe is no beginner. The people behind Texas Backyard Wildlife have known her for six or eight years, and she has had young ones on their land every year. more

This time she has twins, and she tucks them away in different spots around the property. She has raised at least one fawn every year, but two is harder. Often, when a doe has twins, coyotes get one of them.

Then, one late-spring day, two coyotes come in together. They're here to hunt, and they know the fawns are around. The twins are hanging out side by side when the first coyote walks in. Their mother leads one fawn away down a trail, guarding her baby as she goes.

A deer stands alert in a green forest, head turned slightly to one side. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
When the first coyote walks in, the doe leads one of her fawns away down a trail.

She knows where her second fawn is and knows the baby will follow her. So she leads both of them out through a break in the fence.

About 15 minutes later the coyotes are back, both of them, coming in from two different directions. This time the doe is out to get one. She goes after him by a little island of brush, right beside the spot where one fawn is, and the fawn comes flying through in the middle of it all. She gets very, very close to catching him and stomping him. He gets away.

A juvenile white-tailed deer with its mother in a forested autumn setting, light brown with darker legs, surrounded by green foliage and fallen leaves. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
This doe is no beginner.

She steers that fawn around the corner. A few minutes later the whole family has slipped back out through the break in the fence, and she is at it again, running round and round the brush to catch a coyote.

The coyotes have a trick of their own. Just out of sight, they swap. A fresh coyote, one that hasn't been running, picks up the chase and leads the doe away from her fawns. It's a tag team.

It does not work. While she's being led off, the two fawns, out past the fence, get away from the coyotes. Later they turn up back inside the property, holed up near a big gray tree stump with a fox den underneath it. That spot is safe from coyotes, if not from foxes.

Everyone rests. Then, just over the doe's shoulder, a fox pops out of the weeds right under her nose. This fox is a female, and she's no threat to anybody. The doe sees her and starts huffing, the deer way of saying you need to get out of here.

A deer stands among dense green trees with sunlight coming through the branches above. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Safe at last, the doe spots a passing fox and huffs at her to move along.

And that is all she does. The fox slides across the trail, and the doe lets her go. A coyote got a chase and a fox gets a huff, and a lot of people were amazed she knew the difference in a split second. Her two babies stay right there beside her.