Six fawns to re-enter the forest

Tracy Leonhardy with her six foundling fawns. photo by Tom Chace

Deer hunting season ended October 12. Six baby deer will be set free to roam the woods this weekend, October 17.

Tracy Leonhardy has mothered six fawns from infancy to independence during most of last summer and has now decided they are ready to try it on their own in the wilds of the nearby Sisters forests.

This is the sixth year she has mothered a group of orphaned or abandoned babies and then set them free.

"They come to me from all kinds of sources," said Leonhardy. "I get them from Fish and Game, the State Police, the sheriff's office and even from local vets," she said.

This "rescue mission for animals" started when Leonhardy, a licensed veterinarian technician, was working at Sisters Veterinary Clinic and "a couple of well-soused cowboys came in with a bucket full of what they called baby badgers ... 14 in all."

Leonhardy recounted that, "they found them in a big snag while burning a field. It turned out they weren't badgers at all but marmots and there were only seven. It just seemed like 14."

Leonhardy took them to Jane Stevens, who had a Wildlife Rehabilitation license and volunteered to help her care for the baby marmots. They built an incubator and nursed these babies to maturity.

Stevens taught Leonhardy how to care for wild animal babies. Within a year, the neophyte had her own license and took in her first fawn.

"What happens in most cases," Leonhardy said, "is that people who wish to do well find what they think is an abandoned baby deer and they take it home. It's not abandoned at all but left by its mother while she forages for food."

Sometimes a doe may be gone for several hours but invariably returns to find and feed it's own baby.

"People should not take any wild animal into their homes," said Leonhardy. "That's where the problem starts. Sure, I sometimes get a baby that has been orphaned, but it is the do-good public that really is the problem."

It costs between $500 and $600 a year to keep these fawns from harm until they are old enough to fend for themselves. That includes feed, fencing, veterinarian care and medicines where necessary.

"Mike and Sue Floyd of Tumalo have been very generous with their time and money to help," Leonhardy said. "They work on the fences and provide me with special gear."

To get the animals ready for release, she pulls a horse trailer into their field and rounds them up like cattle and herds them into it. As soon as the vehicle starts to move, the young deer lay down and are quiet.

"We used to haul them to the White River Wild Game Preserve on the East side of Mt. Hood," she said. "But this year we have a contagion of Adenovirus that is deadly to deer. It probably spreads from a sick deer getting too close to others at someone's backyard feeder."

Another reason not to feed deer or other wild animals.

Leonhardy's deer will be released at a time and location that she will keep confidential in order to protect the animals and keep the looky-loos at bay. The same goes as to the exact location of her ranch.

"We had one bad problem earlier this summer when one 'owner' of a fawn wouldn't give the animal up. After the State Police delivered it to me, the family wanted to come see and they became very disruptive," Leonhardy said.

Tracy is the daughter of Bruce and Bobbe Leonhardy, who operated the B-Bar-B Tavern in downtown Sisters for eight years at the present location of El Rancho Grande on Cascade Avenue.

Bruce Leonhardy, a long-time resident here with dozens of life long Sisters friends, is now living with his sister in Dublin, California where the climate is better for his critical emphysema. He is now basically confined to a wheelchair and breathing from an oxygen tank.

In addition to her baby deer, Tracy Leonhardy takes in sick or abandon raccoons, mink and squirrels. At one time she had two bobcat kittens. She lives with five dogs, three cats and two horses.