It’s dawn in a meadow in southern Bavaria. A faint breeze ruffles the grass and whispers through the leaves of the woodland nearby. It seems deserted. Yet look closely – there, in the shadow between blades of grass, two glossy brown eyes glitter. Curled unseen in its green den lies a tiny roe deer, with black nose, outsized ears and fur dappled with spots.
Not far away, farmer Klaus Waldschütz is busy attaching his mower to his tractor. It’s hay season, and the weather is fine and dry – perfect for haymaking. Klaus has 6ha of grassland and meadow to cut, dry out, rake and bale. It will be a long few days, but the hay crop is vital nourishment for the farm’s dairy herd through the winter months.
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With a dry weather window this morning, farmers all over Bavaria are preparing their hay mowers. These are impressive pieces of kit containing whirling knives that swiftly reduce the knee-high grass down to a few centimetres.
Evolution has not prepared the fawns for such behemoths. The loss of life is staggering: in Germany alone, between 50,000 and 100,000 deer are thought to perish beneath the blades of hay mowers each year, according to Deutsche Wildtier Stiftung (German Wildlife Foundation).
Such collisions trouble farmers. Klaus remembers when his father accidentally killed a youngster during mowing. “It was after a long period of rain. The grass was pressed down, so he didn’t notice the deer. He felt bad because a living creature was harmed. A farmer works with nature and its animals.”
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Working with nature
Why don’t fawns simply run from the mowers? The answer is rooted in the ingenious strategy roe deer have evolved to protect their newborns from predators, a strategy that has served the species well – until relatively recently.
Klaus’s farm lies 50km south of Munich in the foothills of the Alps, amid rolling grassland and forest – perfect roe deer country. While primarily woodland creatures, roe deer often stray on to farmland, both to graze and to give birth. In long grass, the doe can more easily hide her fawns from predators. In this part of Bavaria, Mangfalltal, these include foxes, badgers and an occasional golden jackal.
Newborn fawns are small and frail – it takes time for their legs to become strong enough to carry them far. For their first few days, a youngster remains where it was born, gathering strength as it is slowly fortified by its mother’s milk. If twins are born, which is not unusual, the doe separates them as soon as they are strong enough to move, to maximise the chances of at least one surviving a predator attack.
The doe must also feed. If she stays close to her baby she will lure predators, so the safest course is to graze some distance away, foraging for grass, leaves and ferns. Every two or three hours, once her udder is full, she returns to feed her fawn. With its mother away, the fawn’s only defence is to stay hidden, as it cannot outrun its predators. For the first week or two of its life, it obeys an innate instinct in the presence of threat: lie low and stay silent, no matter how close that threat comes.
If you are wondering why farmers don’t simply check their fields for fawns before mowing, well, they do – and not only out of compassion. German animal welfare laws require farmers to take reasonable precautions to protect wild animals. Farmers also have obligations to deer and other game animals under the Reviersystem, which governs hunting rights. If a deer dies on their land, they may have to compensate the district’s holder of hunting rights.
Farmers are also keen to keep their hay free of animal remains, which may poison their cattle. Partly for these reasons, most farmers walk the hay meadows, often with dogs, to drive deer out before mowing, or ask their local hunters to do so. Unfortunately, despite these inspections, fawns are so well concealed that many lie undiscovered.
An unusual coalition
If these young deer are to be rescued in significant numbers, something much more effective is required – something that can see through the grass to the unmoving fawn beneath. Happily, technology now offers a way to do just that.
The fawn blinks at the morning sky above, inhales the scent of grass and listens to the faint sounds of the meadow – the bass tones of distant cattle lowing, the song of a skylark, the buzz of bees. Then she catches a strange new sound, something like the whine of hornets. Fortunately for the fawn, the whining sound is a friend not a foe: a drone fitted with a thermal-imaging camera.
In 2020, the growing availability of drones inspired an unusual coalition of animal rights campaigners and hunters to set up Rehkitzrettung (‘Deer Rescue’) Mangfalltal. The team now has five drones and is supported by the German agriculture ministry, which funds two-thirds of their cost – up to €4,000 (around £3,400). There are 12 volunteer drone pilots and 45 active members that assist with rescues. The drone teams set off before dawn, while the rescue teams follow a couple of hours later.
A self-confessed tech geek, Tim Rau joined the deer rescuers two years ago, after a neighbour – an elderly farmer – accidentally killed a fawn during mowing. He has assisted with rescues but this morning Tim finds himself standing at the edge of the field, staring at a black control box in his hands. A few metres away, a small drone rises slowly from its landing pad and sets off on its mission to survey the field.
Deer rescue
Tim’s work has been made easier by one key supporter of the deer rescuers: Martin Israel, who moved to the area in 2020. An advisor to the group since 2021, Martin says he was the first person to mount a thermal camera on a drone to rescue fawns, back in 2010, while studying for his doctorate in the subject.
According to Martin, many rescue groups don’t use drones efficiently. The pilots, he explains, tend to watch the live view of the thermal camera on the monitor and, on finding a hot spot, stop the drone and send in the rescuers. “This takes time and the drone has to wait in the air, emptying the battery,” he says.
Martin claims his method is five times faster. The drone flies around the field, recording a geolocated image every second. The images are then downloaded to an app, developed by Martin. Tim looks for objects emitting heat, which show up in thermal images as light, warm colours (colder objects are rendered in dark, cool hues). “The thermal signature of a baby deer is very distinctive,” says Tim. A hare or a cat is of similar size but “you can definitely recognise the difference”.
When the image reveals one or more hidden fawns, the drone pilot takes the GPS coordinates, shares them with the rescue team, and moves on to the next field. Now it’s the turn of the rescue team: they must find the fawn and carefully remove it from the field. There are two people in each team: one carries a basket and the other a pole.
“You trust the GPS coordinates,” says Tim. “If you can’t see the fawn, you put the pole in the ground as a marker and search a 5m radius around it. You are full of anxiety – can you find it? Can you grab it?”
Once located, the youngest fawns, who have the strongest instinct to freeze, are the easiest to pick up. Rescuers wear new gloves each season – if strange scents transfer to a youngster, its mother may disown it. They’ll often take a handful of grass in each hand before picking up the fawn, too, to avoid directly transferring their scent to it.
“The fawns are always lighter than you think, and gangly – their legs are very thin,” says Tim. “They look at you with their big eyes. They are usually stressed – you can feel them breathing fast, and their heartbeat.”
“You’re up at 3am and then comes your day job. But it’s all worth it”
Later in the season, when the fawns start losing the instinct to freeze, picking them up becomes trickier. “They will run for it but you can grab them if you’re quick,” says Tim. The slightly older deer tend to struggle more and cry out “like an eagle call, a high whistle”.
Any distress is brief. The rescuers carry their quarry to a nearby woodland edge, gently placing a basket over it to keep it safe while the hay mower cuts the field. It will rarely be moved more than 10m from where it was found, so when the time comes to release it – ideally within two hours – the mother has no difficulty in finding it again.
“The moment you release a fawn back into nature, that’s super nice,” says Tim. “Silently, you lift the basket. If it’s very young it will lie there until you move away, and then it cries for its mother. If it’s a bit older, it runs away into the woods and then calls out. But in either case, you know the doe will be along soon.”
The haymaking season may only last for two months but there is a lot of ground to cover. Last year, Deer Rescue Mangfalltal searched 650 fields, a total of 2,000ha. It can be hard work for the volunteers but it’s rewarding. “You’re up at 3am and then comes your day job. But it’s all worth it,” says Tim. And, of course, the sheer number of lives saved encourages the deer rescuers to keep going. On the peak day in the 2024 season, the team saved 45 fawns.
While drone use is more expensive than searching with a dog, it is nevertheless growing, says Martin Israel. With government support helping to fund 2,446 drones since 2021, plus a similar number of privately owned drones, he says there are now enough to mount deer rescues in up to 40 per cent of Germany’s grasslands.
Farmer Klaus Waldschütz is one satisfied customer. “I’ve been doing this for a few years already,” he says, “and I would recommend it to my fellow farmers.”
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Top image: holding a fawn within handfuls of grass prevents the transfer of human scent, so a mother won’t abandon her baby. Credit: Viktoria Pezzei