My Month Fostering an Orphaned Fawn - Lessons for Whitetail Hunting

[wildernessmaster]

And I am not trying to discount what you are saying either, only that your experience was not “natural”. You took a deer that you admit would have died very early had it been left to It’s native instincts, to me that is adjusting nature. And it’s ok. As I mentioned I enjoyed reading your observations. Some very astute observations (esp about the moon phase).
However, you are falling victim to observational bias. We can’t generalize to a whole deer population what you see in one deer. Esp given that it was such a unnnatural environment it was provided. You were acting as it’s doe, you were it’s protector and you offered protections a doe couldn’t. Therefore we can’t generalize, only observe.

Again, appreciate those observations, I just want to lend caution to make too many conclusions based on your one observation. That’s all.

I am sorry... "falling victim"... As an engineer by education and 30 years of work, every observer mechanical or non has observational bias. If we discounted any observation based on this fact, we would never move science forward. A simple sensor (observer) in a system that is hotter than others has bias.

There are 3 outcomes of bias... truth, false positive and false negative. If a bias produces truth then it is a neutral bias. If a bias produces false positive, then the bias has caused the interpretation to be positive when it is in fact negative. Vice versa for false negative.

All in all, I attempt to provide the observation as close to its origin and true state (like if I were giving you observations after months of foster, the bias would be much larger from true state due to conditioning) and limited opinion on the observation.

Has the animal been in an unnatural state yes. For a limited time. Most of my observations were made initially in the first days - and re-affirmed as time progressed.

Its yours to do with as you please.

 

[Texasbuckeye]

Man, don’t get me wrong. As I stated I appreciate your observations. I really do.
But we just have to accept them
For what they are. Observations. That’s all.
I don’t think you are trying to portray them
Any more than that either.

 

[jspradley]

I've known quite a few wildlife rehabilitators over the years, and as such nothing happening in this thread is surprising me.

 

[slick]

Read through a bit, but, what’s the end result for this deer? Released back into the wild?

I worked at a wildlife rehabilitation facility and 98% of it is just to make people feel better. Upon release I would wage most of those critters fail to make it.


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