Predator-prey interactions unfold in the wild every day, but few humans get the chance to watch them play out firsthand. A trail cam video posted to the Trailcampro YouTube channel last month delivers a rare and brutal look at nature in action, showing a black bear discovering and killing a newborn whitetail fawn.
The footage, timestamped May 23, 2024, opens with a tender scene: a whitetail doe grooming a wobbly-legged fawn. But just 12 seconds in, something in the woods catches her attention. The doe stands alert, ears forward, as a young black bear enters the frame. She stomps the ground and snorts, placing herself between the fawn and the approaching predator. The fawn drops to the ground in response, instinctively playing dead.
The doe snorts again, then bolts out of the frame. Moments later, the bear rushes in, bites the fawn in the back, and violently shakes it as the fawn lets out piercing bleats. Off-screen, the doe continues to snort.
Although black bears are omnivores whose diet typically consists of vegetation, they are opportunists, and newborn fawns are easy targets in the right conditions.
“Bears don’t really actively hunt fawns. They’re so consumed with just getting whatever food they can,” Myron Means, the former large carnivore program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, told OL about black bear eating habits. “Of course, they’d pounce a deer fawn if they had an opportunity.”
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Although predation rates vary by region and habitat type, research has shown that black bears can add significantly to whitetail fawn mortality. One Pennsylvania study, in which 218 fawns were fitted with radio collars, found that black bear predation was statistically similar to coyote predation, accounting for over 31 percent of predation mortality. A 2023 Georgia study of 71 radio-collared fawns saw 12 study subjects fall to hungry black bears in the first few weeks of life.
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