Welcome to this issue of Stumped by Nature, where we notice nature lurking just beyond our screens, curate a list of outside-y events in Austin, and build community with other folks in the thick of the startup ecosystem.
In this week’s issue:
🦌 Deer! + Baby deer!
🌤️ Upcoming outdoors events
🚙 Adventures just beyond Austin
Let’s dig in!
-Nicole
PS. ATX Outsiders is the batch of newsletter readers who meet IRL outside each month. We’re rallying TUESDAY, MAY 12 with peacocks, charcoal pencils, sketchbooks, and your nature-curious peers. Come to this collaboration with ATX Art Club for a beginner-level art/nature experience. See you there!
NATURE SPOTLIGHT
With Mother’s Day this weekend, what better way to celebrate than with a species who knows how to fully lean into the village for parenting support.
Today we’re digging into the deer who’ve taken over Austin suburbia.
The Twins 2026*
White-tailed Deer Rap Sheet
When we’re seeing deer in Austin, the most likely breed is the white-tailed deer. Here’s the overview:
They’re edge creatures, found where forest meets field. Central Texas offers live oaks and cedar thickets for cover + open areas for browsing
Deer are hyperlocal—they remain in about seven square city block radius year-round. Females usually remain close to their maternal home range, and young bucks disperse further as nature’s mechanism to prevent inbreeding
Deer can live 10 or so years in the wild. With few natural predators, Central Texas’s residential development kind of ironically creates an idea edge habitat
Consume mostly forbs (aka weedy plants) and shrubs, but are also known to eat most/many of the lovely plants you pick up out of curiosity and ambition at a nursery
unsolicited landscaping rule of thumb: see what the deer haven’t eaten in your neighbors’ yards, and still prepare for loss
Deer are ruminants with four-compartment stomachs. A foraged bite mixes with saliva before it’s swallowed, and there are stomach sections with words like rumen, bacteria, protozoa, reticulum, and a regurgitation/cud chewing situation that result in deer being able to process plant material that would be indigestible to humans
Deer diet follows the seasons: green in the spring and summer, acorns in the fall, woody buds and twigs through winter
Grown deer need 10-12 pounds of feed per day, and they stack their eating before and after midday heat
Yes, my kids cried over this fall snack session
Deer are nappers—they need 4-6 hours of not-continuous rest each day, and when they do rest, they angle downwind to sense threat if solo, or facing opposite directions if they’re tag teaming the watch with buddies
There’s an estimated four million white-tailed deer in Texas, with overpopulation as an issue
there’s a limited set of food resources, and urban deer can get sucked into starvation cycles
white-tailed deer in particular significantly impact the forest understory by reducing native plant diversity, abundance, and structural complexity because of their selective browsing. With a too big population mowing down favorite foods (like tree seedlings and native wildflowers), invasive species have a chance to thrive. Boo invasive species.
In September, rut begins. Bucks (male deer) use their antlers to fight for the favor of does (female deer). This is a several month season of duking it out to maintain a serial polygamy mating system with such vigor, they can lose a third of body weight during the rut
Antlers are used to mark territory and as an aide in neck-strengthening workouts. The antlers drop annually, and grow back bigger and more complex until about age six
Antlers are among the fastest-growing tissues in animals. They start with a layer of soft skin and short hair called “velvet,” which peels off as testosterone rises
Doe, a deer, a female deer
Throwback to 2022
Deer are excellent reproducers—during one study, 92 of every 100 does sampled statewide were pregnant
Gestation is 6.5 months
Over half of does carry twins
First-time moms usually have a single fawn, then twins become the norm for subsequent births
Fawns (baby deer) are brown with white spots on their backs as camouflage from predators—the dappled pattern breaks up their outline in filtered light
Fawns are often left alone for hours at a time during the first week. This is often by design, not a Bambi retelling. Let ‘em be.
My friend says if I want to use this photo + asterisked photo, I need to attribute them to "a petite and feisty brunette with a cute butt and love of NY pizza.”
Related: she recommends the Tomato Tomatoe at allday
Predators + Deer In the Headlights
There are roughly 1.5 million motor vehicle + deer collisions nationwide annually, with a billion bucks in vehicular damage
Texans have a 1 in 158 chance of an animal collision, putting it in the top five states for deer-related accidents
Rut season in the fall is the most accident-prone, especially between dusk and midnight
Fawn season, like right now, is also tricky, in part because fawns are wired to freeze and hide, not run. And when they’re a month old, fawns follow their mothers erratically, include in/around roadways
FYI: Swerving is a bad idea. It leads to worse outcomes. But do brake fiercely.
If you’re in your car and have a, uh, negative relationship with a deer, 311 could help reduce the amount of black vulture support needed
Side note: growing up in Appalachia, “watch out for the deer” was a parting phrase of endearment
Hunting deer is a thing (see: feeding people venison and deer jerky, population control to prevent animal starvation, reduce widespread deer disease risk), and there are specific fall seasons for bow-hunting and gun-hunting and just staring longingly at the calendar until one of those seasons arrives
Side note: as a teenager in Appalachia, I was invited to a rival high school’s homecoming dance (flex, right?), but I was uninvited when he opted to go bow-hunting instead
FWIW, it rained all that day
You can learn how to hunt axis deer or whitetail deer at ROAM Ranch
Welcome to the world, little pal!
First fawn in the next street over’s group text, May 6, 2026, with no pizza proclivities associated with the use of this photo.
It’s officially fawn season.
This means the NW Austin neighborhood group chats are boiling over with baby deer sightings, hopes, aspirations, dreams, longing.
My friends on surrounding streets and cul-de-sacs have collective eyes on the whole team.
It’s a full nature lottery, with the big question of which house will be The Chosen One to coparent a fawn for the day.
Whose shrubs scream safety.
Whose car tire invites security.
Back in 2022, I admit to full-bodied envy when my pal Sean posted about his baby deer porch offering.
This exchange has lived rent free in my head for years now
After half a decade of hoping to be deemed A Safe Location by The Deer, it finally happened to me in 2025. And it came with the dilemma of how to not leave my house fully open to society.
Garage doors are a tricky concept to factor into fawn stowing decisions.
And resolved peacefully with a very wise choice to relocate.
The “I’d like to speak with a manager” of stoop dwelling, 2025
In all of this, a lesson in community.
The doe’s job is to strategically ditch the fawn.
The fawn’s job is to fawn and freeze—to be cute AF as it survives the spell of dangers, both real and perceived.
And the community’s job is to geek out in the group texts, send all of the photos, and practice restraint. To let the thing be the thing.
PSA
UPCOMING EVENTS
🗓️ May 8: Birding at Pease Park with Travis Audubon
🗓️ May 8: Austin Consumer Week Walk & Talk: Stroll with your CPG pals with rucks at the ready
🗓️ May 9: Kayak Cleanup: Get on the water with a grabber and gloves
🗓️ May 9: Austin Ruck Club: rucks ready for you to borrow
🗓️ May 9: The Board Walks Step your way into good conversation
🗓️ May 9: Movies in the Park: Steel Magnolias
🗓️ May 9: Mushroom Walk: The Magic & Science of Fairy Rings: Folklore and fungal networks
🗓️ May 9-10: Mother’s Day Tea @ Mozart’s + a Flower Market
🗓️ May 10: The Austin Symphony Concerts in the Park: String Ensemble
🗓️ May 10: Family Day: Take Flight! at UMLAUF
🗓️ May 10: Mother’s Day at the Wildflower Center: Catch some live music and a bird feeder craft
🗓️ May 12: Bat Houses: What You Need to Know
🗓️ May 12: Bike Night at COTA
🗓️ May 12: Charcoal in the Garden- I’m co-hosting this with my pal Lara from ATX Art Club + the resident peacocks. Zero artistic talent required.
🗓️ May 12: Water, Texas Film Festival
🗓️ May 13: The Art of the Wild Bouquet with local blooms and harmonious color stories
🗓️ May 16: Backyard Chickens workshop: take the leap into your urban farming hobby
JUST OUTSIDE OF AUSTIN
🚙 May 9: Star Party at West Cave Outdoor Discovery Center. Y’all—this is place is hidden gem.
🚙 May 9: Mother’s Day Saturday: Mini Goat Snuggles: Kids all around
🚙 May 9: Herp Hike: Reptiles and amphibians and you
🚙 May 9: “Big Sit!” at the Woodland Blind: This is basically a tailgate party for birders.
🚙 May 9: Mountain Biking for Beginners: Some biking experience required—this is for insider tricks/safety tips to up your game
🚙 May 9: Knot Tying: Never know when you’re going to need to tie something up
🚙 May 9: Sunset History Hike: Special access to a region not normally open to the public. Spend 2.5 miles chatting about 1800s Texas settlements
🚙 May 10: Pop-up Mushroom Walk: Seeking post-rain mushrooms
🚙 May 12: Preschool in the Park: Insects: Take your favorite 3-6 year old(s) to bug catch
🚙 May 13: Wildflower Bingo Walk: Another perfectly acceptable use of OOO
That’s all for this week!
In the meantime, I hope you have exactly the amount of fawns in your life as you desire.
-Nicole
OPTIONAL SIDE QUESTS
🪵 Are you looking for a community of people in the startup ecosystem who go outside together? I’ve got you.
🪵 Are you sitting on a misogi-esque story? Spill.
🪵 Do you need to commission a writer? I’m happy to discuss projects that might make me cry in public/funnel my experiential/existential dread into essays like this one.
🪵 Is this newsletter not your vibe? Forward it to your enemies to make them suffer too.
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