To tame a wild animal has never been an easy task, for carnivores, omnivores, and even herbivores.
For sensitive animals like deer, you would have to take things slow, steady, and easy with them.
Also, the ultimate goal of taming a deer is to be able to release it back to its natural habitat when it’s fit to survive on its own.
If you see a deer in distress, the first step is to contact your local wildlife regulation authority.
In many states, it’s illegal to keep wild animals like deer. In some other states, you would need to get a permit to keep a deer.
Check the wildlife regulation laws in your state before you attempt to tame a deer that is coming to your garden regularly, lost or in pain.
How to Tame a Deer?
For most animals, catching them young would be the best way to let them get used to you, nevertheless, you can follow the following approaches to tame a deer.
Start with a young deer
Starting with a young deer (fawn) can help in building relationships over time. It is preferable to go for a young female deer since a buck (male deer) can be potentially dangerous when he grows to maturity.
Make sure you’re the only one feeding your deer, giving her water, and caring for her. Also, try and spend some quality time with her, and visit her often so she can bond with you.
Keep your appearance unchanged
While caring for your deer to get her tamed, you should not appear differently every time.
It’s preferable to have some set of green and red clothes you should wear when going to your new pet so she can easily sense you from afar, and also remember you.
Cage her to make the work easy
Keeping a deer in a large cage where she can work freely may work for female deer, but not advisable if you want to tame a buck as it can make him aggressive during the rutting season.
Deer, both male and female are naturally skittish and don’t want to be in captivity for a long period.
The best approach however is to rear a deer in a fenced garden so he/she can feel its natural habitat and, thus, is likely to develop aggressive behavior.
Feed her properly
You must understand the task ahead of you if you want to tame a deer. You should feed a deer a combination of natural foods such as cereal grains, hay, fruits, and veggies, and also a formulated meal.
Deer loves to eat apples, clover, acorns, cowpeas, forbs, alfalfa, beechnuts, corn, soybeans, brassicas, milo, pears, etc.
Don’t be in haste to build trust
If a deer keeps coming to your yard and eating your fruits and veggies, gaining its trust requires patience because deer are always alert, and sensitive to potential threats.
Don’t rush to get close to her, but try to be friendly and let her develop the trust to walk towards you.
Conclusion
It’s not ideal to tame a deer as an individual. It takes skills and experience to keep such a wild animal. Even wildlife control authorities, only tame care for a lost or stressed deer for a while before they are released back into the wild.
Domesticating wild deer can be very challenging because they have retained instincts and behaviors, which make them not suited for domestication.
They have not undergone generations of selective breeding to develop friendly traits that make them suitable for human companionship.
However, you can follow the above-mentioned approaches to tame a deer provided you have the right to do so, and return it to the appropriate authority so the animal can be returned to its natural habitat.
