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by John Beatty, KTA Member
I was along hiking on the Mason-Dixon Trail and had just come out of the woods along some power-lines outside of the Otter Creek area. I always have my digital SLR camera with me so I can take photos. As I quietly walked along the old maintenance road for the power-lines, I could hear some noises coming from the woods to my left. To my right was a downward slope that went under the power-lines and down into the woods. I lifted my camera with my 300mm zoom lens, hoping to capture a deer or something neat. All of a sudden, I heard the sounds of something running quickly through the woods. Before I knew it, a fawn leaped frightfully onto the maintenance road and made a turn directly towards me!
Deer have very poor eyesight, so I stood still to take a photo, hoping it wouldn't see me. It came towards me so quickly that I couldn't get a lock on my focus to get a good photo. Within a couple seconds, through my camera lens, I was seeing the entire deer's body leaping right at me! As I lifted my head to see the deer with my own eyes, it made an abrupt, skidding halt and proceeded down the hill to my right into the valley. The fawn was so frightened that it fell forward doing a somersault through the thick weeds and grasses.
I watched as it disappeared down into the forest and tried to process how close that deer came to crashing right into me. I looked at the couple of pictures I was able to take to see what they looked like, and the photo, although a little blurry, made me laugh. The fawn was almost mid-flight as it was nearly on top of me. I wished I had more time to adjust my settings, but sometimes nature doesn't give you that luxury.
KTA is collecting silly, startling, and surprising anecdotes to include in our newsletter! E-mail your stories to info@kta-hike.org. Thanks!
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