What is this on the side of this doe?

I’ve been seeing this doe and fawn all summer on the trail cam. Easy to recognize, she’s the only doe with a fawn that we’ve been picking up on this camera, which is positioned at a mineral lick that I established this spring.

I pulled the chip this weekend and sure as heck, there’s mama and the fawn, but then what the…

Is that a big, nasty scar on her right side? What is that mark? I’ve never noticed that before and I have dozens of pics of her.

It looks like something took all the hair off that big streak on her side. Did she have a near miss with something so big that I don’t wanna think about it? We HAVE seen cougar tracks…

Grouse

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shedding her summer coat and probably rubbed against something that scraped a line of hair off.

Well, that’d be a relief John. Didn’t know they could rub the coat off like that.

I was worried, as I said, having see so many pics of her without those marks. Looking at the pattern, they look like slash marks, like a very big cat’s claws raked her down the side. Which would be a very bad sign.

During predator season 2 years ago, about 400 yards from where this picture was taken, I came upon a cougar track in the snow. It was obviously a cougar track, it was about2x bigger than even a big bobcat track would be. I have to say, at that point I questioned the wisdom of continuing to sit in the woods sounding like a wounded animal… Yikes.

Grouse

Or a near miss with a motor vehicle?

I had a buck a few years back look very similar. Once he put on the winter coat you couldn’t see a thing.

John Schultz wrote:

shedding her summer coat and probably rubbed against something that scraped a line of hair off.

I think John is right on. That summer hair is reddish orange like those deer appear to be.

Joel

Fairly sure its from a Sasquatch. We have been seeing them for years up in N MN but they have not been confirmed by the DNR so they don’t exist. Whats up with that?

“I saw it on the internet so it has to be true”

Grouse, do you have wolves in your part of the world? Might be, or a big cat, or all of the above

wkw wrote:

“I saw it on the internet so it has to be true”

Grouse, do you have wolves in your part of the world? Might be, or a big cat, or all of the above

Yep, we’ve got wolves in the vicinity, although the closest neighbor who has actually caught them on a cam is over a mile away from me. I’ve never caught a wolf on cam on our property or on the ranch adjacent where I have permission to hunt.

But on looking closely, it’s pretty clear to me that John is on the right track. There’s nothing that shows the skin has been broken, it’s just missing hair. It’s pretty unlikely that a wolf or any other predator could have taken a swipe at this doe and not even scratched the skin.

I have pictures from 2 weeks ago that don’t show this mark, so whatever happened, it was recent and had it been a predator attack, it’s doubtful that it would have just resulted in missing hair. Also, the fawn probably would be a goner if a wolf had gotten that close.

Grouse

She was probably scratching ticks and took some of the hair off.