Joanna Returns to the Scene of the Crime

June Deployment · June 1–mid-June 2026

Content note

Trail-camera footage in this post includes deer carcasses and scavenging-related imagery.

Doe investigating trail cams…(or Joanna taking a selfie with Brenda’s corpse in the background)

There are several recurring characters in the June camera-trap footage, but none have generated quite as much completely unjustified suspicion as Joanna the doe.

According to the entirely fictional version of events, Joanna’s baby daddy, Steve, left home one evening “to get berries” and was later discovered deceased at the carrion site. Beside him was Brenda, another doe and Steve’s alleged mistress.

Joanna then proceeded to repeatedly return to the scene of the crime.

Suspicious.

At the time of publication, Joanna has not been ruled out as a suspect in the deaths of Steve and Brenda.

Before anyone contacts the Massachusetts Environmental Police on behalf of a dead deer named Steve, I need to emphasize that none of this lore is real. I do not know whether any of these deer were related, acquainted, romantically entangled, enemies, coworkers, or had ever met before becoming characters in my camera-trap soap opera.

Steve did not abandon his family for berries.

Probably.

Doe inspecting carcass (or perhaps Joanna making sure Steve is dead)

So what is actually happening?

The most obvious thing about “Joanna” is that she is extremely curious.

Several clips show a doe approaching the camera closely enough to produce what are essentially trail-camera selfies. A recently installed green box strapped to a tree is itself a novel object, so some of those close approaches may simply represent investigation of the equipment.

There is also one fairly enormous limitation here:

Joanna may not actually be Joanna.

She may be Joanna on Monday, Cassie on Wednesday, Kelly on Friday and Kendra the following Tuesday.

These are inexpensive trail cameras, and the footage does not consistently provide enough detail for me to confidently identify individual unmarked does. I looked for reliable distinguishing features such as scars, ear damage, obvious coat irregularities, or other persistent markings and came up empty.

So when I say “Joanna returned,” what I can actually defend is:

“A visually similar adult doe returned.”

Less compelling television, much better science.

Can you find Joanna?

So why are does wandering through a pile of dead deer?

That is where things get interesting.

1. They may simply be investigating it

Carrion is an enormous sensory event. There are carcasses, decomposition odors, disturbed vegetation, scavenger scent, insects, and periodically new objects appearing in an area these deer may already use.

And despite wandering around literal dead members of their own species, the does captured during this deployment often don't look particularly alarmed. Their posture and movement in the footage are generally relaxed rather than suggesting an immediate flight response.

That does not prove they understand the site is safe. But it does suggest that, during these particular visits, they weren't behaving as though they perceived an immediate threat.

There is also a beautifully boring possibility:

the deer were already going this way.

This is a long-established human-created carrion site. If it happens to overlap an existing feeding area, travel corridor, or familiar part of their home range, a carcass appearing there may not be sufficient reason for them to abandon the area.

Especially if random dead deer appearing has effectively become part of the neighborhood.

2. The bones themselves may be interesting

Here's where the story gets considerably stranger.

Deer sometimes practice osteophagy, meaning they chew or consume bones. This behavior has been documented in white-tailed deer and other ungulates and is thought to provide minerals such as calcium and phosphorus, particularly when dietary mineral demand is high.

I did not capture Joanna definitively gnawing on Steve's skeleton during this deployment, so I cannot claim osteophagy occurred here.

But June makes the possibility particularly interesting.

In Massachusetts, most white-tailed deer fawns are born during May and June, placing this deployment squarely within fawning and early-lactation season.

And yes, I spent an embarrassing amount of time enlarging trail-camera images and staring at deer nipples trying to determine whether this doe showed obvious signs of nursing.

Wildlife biology is glamorous.

The answer was: inconclusive.

She also appears relatively lean, although not obviously emaciated, but body condition from these cameras is nowhere near sufficient for me to declare that she was lactating. Taken together, nursing remains a plausible possibility, not a conclusion.

So:

Did Joanna come looking for a calcium-enriched chew toy?

Maybe.

Can I prove that from this footage?

Absolutely not.

3. The dirt here is probably doing some WEIRD shit

This might actually be one of the most interesting long-term questions at the site.

A decomposing carcass does not simply disappear. Nutrients and fluids move into the surrounding environment, creating highly localized changes in soil chemistry and biological activity. Research on terrestrial carrion describes these areas as nutrient hotspots or “decomposition islands,” with changes in things like nitrogen, ammonium, moisture, pH, microbial communities, and eventually vegetation.

And this isn't a site where one animal happened to die once.

Carcasses have been deposited here repeatedly over a long period.

That raises a question I currently cannot answer but desperately want to:

Has repeated carrion deposition changed the vegetation enough to make this an unusually attractive feeding patch for herbivores?

Maybe the grass is premium.

Maybe Steve has become fertilizer.

Maybe Joanna simply came for salad.

There is an important complication: scavengers remove and redistribute carcass material, and research suggests vertebrate scavenging can actually reduce how much of a carcass's nutrients leak directly into the soil beneath it. So even the apparently simple hypothesis of “lots of bodies = supercharged plants” is probably much messier than that.

I haven't tested the soil.

I haven't measured plant nutrient content.

I don't currently have vegetation plots comparing the carrion area with control sites.

So this stays firmly in the folder labeled:

HMMM. FUTURE QUESTION.

What can we actually conclude?

Not that Joanna murdered Steve.

Tragically.

What the June footage does show is that one or more adult does repeatedly used and investigated an area containing decomposing conspecific carcasses without displaying obvious panic during the recorded visits.

Why they continued returning remains open.

Maybe it's their normal route.

Maybe they're investigating novel scents and objects.

Maybe the vegetation is attractive.

Maybe bones provide a mineral resource.

Maybe several of those explanations are happening simultaneously.

And maybe Joanna is simply waiting to see whether Steve finally decides to get off his ass and help raise the kids.

One final biological disclaimer

The entire Joanna/Steve/Brenda domestic drama is fictional. The names exist solely because staring at thousands of camera-trap files eventually does something irreversible to the human mind.

The footage does not establish relationships among these deer, and the project is not attempting to reconstruct their social lives.

Joanna remains innocent until proven guilty.

But I am keeping the case open. 🦌🔎

Doe investigating trail cam at night (Yes…I accidentally mounted the camera upside down…in my defense a carcass pile in June isn’t exactly a place you want to hang out for long periods of time)

Sources & Further Reading:

Morera, B., Montalvo, V., Sáenz-Bolaños, C., Cruz-Díaz, J. C., Fuller, T. K., & Carrillo, E. (2022). Osteophagia of sea turtle bones by white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in Santa Rosa National Park, northwestern Costa Rica. Neotropical Biology and Conservation, 17(2), 143–149. This is the cleanest source for the fact that white-tailed deer do engage in osteophagy and that bone consumption may provide minerals including calcium, sodium, and phosphorus.

Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife. Fawn Phases: Why It’s Normal to Find Fawns Alone. MassWildlife notes that most Massachusetts fawns are born in May and June, which supports your point that the June deployment overlaps fawning and early lactation.

Taylor, L. S., Gonzalez, A., Essington, M. E., et al. (2023). Soil elemental changes during human decomposition. PLOS ONE, 18(6), e0287094. This study documents decomposition as a localized nutrient pulse and examines changes in soil elements including phosphorus, potassium, sodium, sulfur, calcium, and others.

Wenting, E., Jansen, P. A., Burggraeve, S., et al. (2024). The influence of vertebrate scavengers on leakage of nutrients from carcasses. Oecologia, 206, 21–35. This is the source for your important complication that vertebrate scavengers can remove carcass biomass and reduce the amount of nutrients leaking directly into the soil underneath the carcass.