Clive man Mark Corlett is finally putting right the Bambi story - by hand rearing a fawn orphaned after her pregnant mother was accidentally shot.
Mr Corlett, owner of Pioneer Reel'n'Rifle, said he was guiding a hunting tour on a local block of land when one of the party shot thewrong deer and killed a pregnant sika doe.
Cam the fawn was then delivered by Mr Corlett via emergency caesarean.
"Luckily I got there before the mother's heart stopped beating and got the fawn out," he said, patting the now two-week old Cam. "She was only two or three days away from being born, so we were lucky.
"I was slimed as, with muck all down my front, but it's just like calving, you've got to swing her round like a rag doll to get all the mucus out of her nose and throat, then tube feed her for a few days, like a lamb."
The unlikely pair haven't been separated since, with Cam living in his Main Road shop by day, and family home by night.
"She's like a dog, she follows you round and when we get home she sits on the door step with the dogs," he said. "When they run out to bark, she trots out with them."
The friendly fawn is bottle fed six to eight times a day, and is likely to live for 14 years.
"Some of the guys have offered to take her on their properties, or I could put a collar on her and release her back on the block she came from, but we have a bad poaching problem and I would hate to see her go like that."
Editorial, p6
