One of the effects of a mild winter is high survival of fawns.

Which means lots of yearlings the next year. One of the main reasons we do classification surveys every year is to get an idea of how tough the last winter had been.

Last winter was mild.

Having been here, we knew that.

But all the yearling bucks in this summer's classifications confirms it. And when you have a lot of yearling bucks, many of them end up congregated into teenaged gangs. Usually with one older buck as a guide.