♪ MUSIC ♪
NARRATOR: The North American wilderness
is smaller and more fragmented than ever.
Yet somehow, the white-tailed deer population
has exploded.
They flourish where civilization
meets the forest.
On the jagged coast of Canada's Eastern shore,
A delicate and diverse ecosystem thrives
on the fringes of the continent.
Welcome
to the Wild Wild East.
NARRATOR: White-tailed deer were once totally eliminated
from some parts of the range,
but today there are more white-tailed deer
in North America than when Columbus first arrived.
Their success comes from a mix of human intervention,
and evolutionary adaptation.
Deer are highly attuned
to the sights, sounds
and smells of predators.
They flee
in the flick of a tail.
They're highly adaptable to new surroundings.
And they feast all summer to survive
winter famine in the northern woods.
Today human development is fragmenting the wild,
crowding individual herds
into smaller and smaller areas.
And the deer's range is criss-crossed
with roads and highways.
Yet somehow the white-tailed deer continues to thrive
right at the collision point between man and nature.
This is how life begins for a white-tailed deer.
It's the most dangerous time in a deer's life.
It's mid June
and this fawn is just a week or so old.
This little fawn has been left alone
while mama goes out to graze.
It's vulnerable.
The fawn's weighs about as much an an average house cat,
without any of the sharp teeth or claws for defense.
A fawn can stand within minutes,
and walk within hours of birth.
But its wobbly legs aren't strong enough
to flee from a predator,
like this eastern coyote,
who would love to make a snack of the little fawn.
The newborn fawn's defense strategy
is hiding.
They spend more than 90% of their time
bedded down in tall grass
and other leafy cover.
Its brown coat stands out to us,
but predators don't see color the way humans do.
This is how a bedded fawn appears
to a coyote or bobcat,
whose eyes don't see the color red very well,
Its white spots help it
blend into the sun-dappled forest floor.
The fawn has much less of an odor than an adult deer,
thanks to underdeveloped glands.
This also helps them disappear to predators
who see as much with their nose
as with their eyes.
Despite every protection nature gives it,
about one third of all fawns die
in the first 30 days of life.
Most snatched by predators.
If she runs into trouble,
this little fawn will call to mama.
Even though she wandered off to graze,
the fawn's mother is rarely out of earshot.
(fawn bleats)
(doe huffs)
She calls to baby by grunting,
and stomping her hooves,
(doe huffs)
(fawn bleats)
(doe huffs)
Mama raises her tail as a flag for junior to follow.
Now that mother's finished grazing,
it's baby's turn for lunch.
The fawn will nurse four to six times each day.
When feeding's over, mama licks the baby
stimulating it to defecate and urinate.
The fawn will stay close to mother
for its first year of life.
But even with the security of family,
only about 25 per cent of all fawns
make it to their first birthday.
White-tailed deer are not native
to this neck of the woods,
Hunters introduced them to Nova Scotia
in the 1890s.
Within 40 years, the deer forged their way
into every county in the province.
Today, officials reckon the herd in Nova Scotia
is 100,000 strong.
White-tailed deer now range from southern Canada
all the way down to the northern part of South America.
The white tailed deer is a medium-sized member
of the same family that includes
moose and caribou.
It measures about three feet at the shoulder
and six feet from nose to tail.
An average buck weighs about 100 pounds
but in the northern parts of the white-tails range
bucks grow big,
with some outliers weighing 400 pounds.
To tell the story of the white-tailed deer
we need to go beyond Nova Scotia,
to look at the North American herd as a whole.
At the dawn of the 20th century, there were
believed to be as few as 500,000 white-tailed deer
in the continental U.S.A.
The species disappeared from many places,
mostly thanks to unregulated hunting.
Hunting restrictions and habitat expansion,
have helped the American herd
grow to at least 15 million deer today.
They've become so successful,
not in spite of human encroachment,
but at least partially because of it.
The white-tailed deer is a creature
of margins and edges,
These deer are foraging for succulent shoots
and grasses, where the forest canopy yields to sunlight.
Nowadays, the same low growth can be found
in clear cuts,
subdivisions
and beside highways.
In other words, white-tailed deer are uniquely suited
to thrive at the place where
the human world meets the wild world.
It's autumn.
This time of year bucks become territorial and aggressive,
establishing dominance in time for the coming rut.
Male deer thrash branches and leave scent
to warn off other bucks.
Each winter, the male sheds his rack,
and new antlers grow in the spring.
Antlers can grow up to a quarter-inch each day.
They're made for jousting over mates,
but can also serve as a formidable defense
against any predator.
Battles like this one determine which bucks
get access to the most fertile females.
By the time October rolls around,
the little fawn has lost her spots,
but she still doesn't stray too far from mama.
With winter on the horizon,
a windfall of apples in this orchard
is just what a herd of white-tailed deer needs.
Between now and the time the snow flies,
they need to increase their body weight.
They'll need it because the tender green plants,
acorns, mushrooms and flowers they dine on
will be nowhere to be found come winter.
Every few minutes or so, a deer stops,
smells and listens for danger.
Then they keep walking,
eating on the go.
Foraging like this keeps deer on the move
and helps elude predators.
The white-tailed deer is adapted
to a life of constant vigilance,
and they feed and move in herds,
protection in numbers.
More than forward, a deer's eyes look out.
They're situated on the sides of the head,
to provide a wide field of vision.
To amplify the tiniest noise,
their ears move independently.
Their nose contains 297 olfactory receptors,
that's more than dogs have,
and 60 times what a human has.
They can sniff out a predator approaching
from a distance of greater than 100 yards.
When they do catch a whiff, they let the herd know,
a snort, a stomp, a flick of the tail,
warns other deer to flee.
They run beautifully, powerful legs
propelling them at speeds
of up to 30 miles per hour.
And a fleeing deer is capable of leaps
six feet high and thirty feet long.
Depending on how much there is to go around,
a deer's quest for food can require a lot of space.
This time of year,
grazing can bring them into human habitations.
Deer will happily eat a gardener's prized lettuce
or chow down on agricultural crops.
That's put the white-tailed deer in the crosshairs
of some people who see these backyard browsers
as a pest.
Living too close to each other can be dangerous
for both deer and people.
Suburban deer habitats are fragmented by roads.
Roads mean cars.
Cars can be fatal.
Nobody keeps track of how many deer
are killed on highways.
But they do track the human casualties.
In the United States alone about 200 people die each year
from collisions between vehicles and deer.
Governments have tried raising hunting quotas,
and building high fences around roadsides
to curb the problem.
But the jury's out on whether these measures
are working to prevent clashes
between mankind and deer.
It's December.
Snow blankets the ground
as the mercury plunges below freezing.
This is a time of tremendous stress
and difficulty for white-tailed deer,
They must brave a long, cold, and hungry winter.
This time of year,
deer typically retreat into the forest.
Stands of evergreen trees provide some shelter
from snow and wind.
Smaller family groups merge together into
larger herds in wooded areas
known as deer yards.
By now, our little fawn looks a lot like her mother,
just a little smaller, with a shorter snout.
Evolution provides all deer
with some specific adaptations
to survive this bleak season.
Thick grayish fur replaces spring's sleek reddish coat.
The shaft of each hair is hollow
providing an extra layer of insulation.
Fall feasting packed fat on the deer's body
to survive the coming cold.
On the whole, it gives the deer a sturdier, thicker appearance.
The tender green shoots and grass of spring are gone.
To find food in the frozen forest
deer forage for meager meals of woody stems
and bits of dry leaf.
The deer often venture closer to the human world,
to find something more tempting on offer.
Humans hoping to catch a glimpse of deer,
leave out apples and grain in their backyards.
But what's good for well-meaning nature lovers,
is bad for white-tailed deer.
They could be conditioning the deer
to spend even more time close to people.
And they could be feeding them to death.
Over the winter, microorganisms in the deer's four stomachs
become accustomed to digesting woody material,
like stems and branches.
the deer's natural wintertime diet.
Like a ravenous teenager glutting itself on junk food,
a deer may gorge on tasty apples and corn,
though she has trouble digesting them.
The radical menu change is a shock to a system
already weakened from winter stress.
It's a feast, when they're supposed to be in famine,
and it can be fatal.
Deer sometimes starve to death
with bellies full of apples and corn.
They just can't process
the sudden onslaught of unfamiliar food.
Their digestive systems are simply overwhelmed.
Fights over the unexpected bounty
could lead to competition,
and displays of aggression.
Deer communicate with each other through body language.
Ears back, the lowest level of threat.
Back off, those are my apples.
That's usually enough
to calm everyone's temper,
the deer's non-verbal communication strategies
manifest themselves in the subtlest ways.
A head held high connotes dominance within the herd,
sending smaller deer searching for greener pastures.
The deer-loving human's want to help the animals
make it through winter,
but they've accidentally created a turf war.
Smaller deer are easily chased off by their older counterparts.
The waters of March signal the end
of the cold season.
As the snow melts,
patches of green appear in the fields of white.
The white-tailed deer's burned through
almost all its reserves of body fat by now.
If the thaw comes late, many don't survive.
On the outskirts of the city,
the deer come out to graze
on manicured lawns and in public parks.
Still, the workers at this office
rarely see these visitors.
Deer are crepuscular,
which means they're most active in the hours
around dawn and dusk.
These creatures of the forest
make their city homes along rail lines,
in electricity corridors
and other urban green spaces,
living their lives
on the edges of our world.
Some of these doe are almost certainly pregnant.
They'll carry their fawns for another three months.
This little fawn has beaten the odds,
surviving her first winter.
Female fawns spend longer with their mother than males.
This mother/daughter combination
could stay together for another year.
Some stick together for life.
Some researchers think
city deer have an easier life than their country cousins.
There's plenty of food, and fewer predators
and hunting is against the law inside city limits.
But there are trade-offs to each way of life.
If she can stay away from cars,
this yearling might live to be 20 years old.
The life of the white-tailed deer is lived on the edge.
On the boundary between nature and civilization,
On constant alert for predators.
Yet, against all odds,
the white-tailed deer
has been wildly successful.
In just 100 years,
its gone from a species on the brink of collapse,
to an almost ubiquitous resident
on the fringes
of the Wild Wild East.
♪ THEME MUSIC ♪