Fig 1.
Study area included portions of Coopers Creek and Blue Ridge Wildlife Management Areas within the Chattahoochee National Forest and intermixed private land holdings in northern Georgia, USA.
Table 1.
Description of landscape, class, and feature covariates measured within white-tailed deer fawn usage areas used to model the effects of predation risk on fawns in northern Georgia, USA, 2018–2020.
Table 2.
Mortality causes of collared white-tailed deer fawns to 12 weeks of age in northern Georgia, USA, 2018–2020.
Data represented 55 mortality occurrences from the monitoring of 71 total fawns (2018 = 11, 2019 = 21, 2020 = 39).
Fig 2.
Daily Kaplan-Meier estimate for cumulative survival (n = 71) and vaginal implant transmitter (VIT) survival data (n = 30) collected from radio-collared white-tailed deer fawns to 84 days (12 weeks) of life in northern Georgia, USA, 2018–2020.
Each ‘step’ indicates a mortality event while corresponding shaded areas depict 95% confidence intervals.
Fig 3.
Contribution of specific causes of mortality (e.g., coyotes, black bears, bobcats, naturally occurring) to estimated Kaplan-Meier white-tailed deer fawn survival rates of cumulative (n = 71; A) and vaginal implant transmitter (VIT; n = 30; B) fawn data in northern Georgia, USA, 2018–2020. All other sources of mortality were censored in each survival curve associated with a specific mortality cause. Symbols indicate the occurrence of mortality events within the first 84 days (12 weeks) of life for radio-collared fawns.
Table 3.
Hazard ratio models assessing the influence of intrinsic fawn covariates on the mortality risk of radio-collared white-tailed deer fawns to 12 weeks of age in northern Georgia, USA 2018–2020.
Model sets are differentiated by use of cumulative fawn data (n = 71) and data including only fawns captured via vaginal implant transmitter (VIT; n = 30).
Table 4.
Hazard ratio models assessing the influence of landscape covariates on the predation risk of radio-collared white-tailed deer fawns to 12 weeks of age in northern Georgia, USA 2018–2020.
Model sets were developed using a hypothesis-based approach associated with landscape heterogeneity (Hypothesis 1), land cover (Hypothesis 2), and fawn predator evasion (Hypothesis 3). Models used a subset of fawns (n = 54) including only those that survived or succumbed to predation.