It’s 9 PM, the phone rings. A farmer wants to mow tomorrow — five fields, no coordinates, “the meadow behind the inn, left along the dirt road.” I’ve already spent eight hours at the office today, was out in the field at 4 AM, and now I need to put together a team for tomorrow morning. I’ve lived through this exact scenario countless times over the past few years. Welcome to fawn rescue.
There are many challenges in this volunteer work — from recruiting volunteers to insurance obligations and various regulations. But I want to write about what I see as the biggest ones. Not the things that come with the territory and are occasionally annoying, but the massive blockers. Problems that make life difficult for fawn rescuers time and again and stand in the way of the actual mission: saving fawns.
For some of these challenges, I’ve found solutions over the years. For others, I’ll be honest: I don’t know what the answer looks like yet.
The biggest challenges
- Conflicting objectives
- Organization and dispatching of assignments
- Protecting your own health at the breaking point
- Knowledge transfer between teams
1. Conflicting Objectives
Fawn rescue always involves multiple people with different backgrounds and needs working together. In particular, farmers, fawn rescuers, and hunters come together. Farmers want to mow a meadow — either to produce their own feed or for a biogas plant. Fawn rescuers want to save fawns, hares, and ground-nesting birds from being killed by mowing machines. Hunters have a strong interest in a healthy wildlife population.
The Individual Perspectives
Farmers
Farmers don’t want mowed-over fawns. Beyond the animal suffering, which deeply affects most of them, carcass parts in silage are a major risk. The resulting botulism pathogens can, in the worst case, kill entire livestock herds. At the same time, the timing of mowing is only partially flexible — weather, farm missions, and feed quality limit the room for maneuver.
Fawn Rescuers
Fawn rescuers work as volunteers, alongside their regular jobs, often with their own or donation-funded equipment. Capacities are limited: few drone pilots, many requests. missions need lead time — pilots and helpers must be organized, routes planned. One to two days’ notice is ideal; two hours beforehand is not enough.
Hunters
As the leaseholder of hunting rights, the hunter bears the duty of game management — they are legally responsible for a healthy wildlife population in their district. At the same time, they depend on the goodwill of the landowners whose fields they hunt on, and therefore often hesitate to confront farmers about neglecting their obligations. They are frequently the first to learn about an upcoming mow and know their district best.
The Conflicts
The core problem is timing. Fawn rescuers work with thermal imaging drones, and their deployment is bound to a narrow time window: early morning, before the sun has heated up the ground. Only then do fawns stand out clearly as individual heat sources against their surroundings. During the day, every molehill and every dandelion appears as a potential fawn — the error rate climbs, and efficiency drops dramatically. The time window is therefore a technical necessity dictated by the currently most effective method.
Farmers, on the other hand, often don’t mow until during the day or in the afternoon. The biggest factor is the weather: if rain is coming in two days, mowing has to happen today. On top of that, especially in Bavaria, many farmers work their land as a side business — like the fawn rescuers, they have to be at the office by 9 AM. The difference: when fawn rescuers are finished, the work for farmers is just beginning. There are also technical arguments against early mowing: morning dew increases the risk of mold in hay and can cause faulty fermentation in silage. Likewise, the sugar content in grass is lowest in the morning, which reduces feed value and silageability. Farmers therefore often want to mow in the afternoon. Alternatively, they call in the evening because they’ve just decided to mow tomorrow — and expect the fawn rescuers to simply fly over the field.
The hunting leaseholder is caught between two sides or doesn’t even know what’s happening. They might also live farther away and seriously wonder whether it’s worth getting in the car for an hour to stand at the edge of a field at 4 AM.
Achieving More Together
So how can these different perspectives and needs be brought together? Ultimately, everyone wants the same thing: safe fawns, a safe harvest, minimization of animal suffering, and good comission. Whoever understands the other’s perspective has already taken the most important step.
Still, one has to be honest: a classic compromise where both sides meet in the middle is hardly possible here. The thermal imaging technology dictates the time window — morning or not at all.
On top of that, fawn rescuers are effectively providing a free service to the farmer. This service protects the farmer from botulism in their silage and from the emotional and legal consequences of mowed-over fawns.
The “compromise” here is therefore: the farmer gets in touch in good time — ideally one to two days in advance — and accepts the morning mission. In return, the fawn rescuers are out in the field early in the morning, often starting at 4 AM. Mowing must happen immediately after the flyover, especially toward the end of the season when fawns can often only be driven out of the area and quickly return.
Once someone has understood this, comission typically works excellently. The vast majority of farmers are grateful and cooperative — problems almost always arise where expectations and the reality of the technology don’t match.
2. Organization and Dispatching of Assignments
Fawn rescue is logistics. And it’s the kind of logistics where conditions constantly change, most of those involved are volunteers, and planning for tomorrow morning at 4 AM often doesn’t start until the evening before.
Incoming Requests — The Chaos Before Planning
Before any planning can even begin, there needs to be a clean assignment. And that’s often already the first hurdle. A farmer calls, says he has five fields. GPS coordinates? Coming later. Or wrong. Or they’re addresses instead of coordinates, pointing somewhere onto a property but not to the meadow. At best, it’s “the meadow behind the inn, left along the dirt road.” When you’re operating in a county of nearly 1,000 square kilometers, you don’t know every corner. So you ask, wait, ask again.
In the evening, two more fields come in that “should please also be done.” The plan you painstakingly put together can be thrown open again.
On top of that: before you’re allowed to fly, you need the hunting leaseholder’s permission. They virtually always say yes — but you first have to reach them. And sometimes the farmer doesn’t even have their leaseholder’s number, turning a quick call into a research project.
All of this sounds like minor issues, but in total it eats up an enormous amount of time — time you simply don’t have during the day or in the evening after your own job.
Dispatching — The Puzzle
Once the assignments are set, the actual dispatching begins. In our case: seven drones, one to three of which I’m responsible for — depending on how busy things are in the other three zones of the county. The goal is to bundle assignments into logical packages so that driving distances are minimized and each team flies a sensible route.
The problem: mission duration is barely predictable. An empty meadow can be flown in ten minutes. If there are several fawns in it, you quickly need half an hour or more — each fawn has to be located, the helpers guided in, and the fawn secured.
With more than one farmer per drone per day, it becomes a domino effect. The first mission takes longer than expected, the second farmer waits — and actually wants to mow immediately after the flyover. Someone is always waiting, and the pressure on the team rises.
Coordinating Volunteers — The Bottleneck
The best dispatching is useless if no one shows up in the end. Pilots and helpers have to be found individually for each mission. Some can’t come that early or late, some don’t want to drive that far, some are happy to go there but not here. Availability changes on short notice. Beyond that, we work with volunteers who all have different strengths. Some are proficient with the drone, others simply need more time for the same area. Not a problem in itself, but it makes coordination even harder.
All of this is sorted out in WhatsApp groups where most people don’t properly read along. You write in, wait, write again, then call anyway. By the time a team is set for the next morning, you’ve sometimes spent the entire evening on the phone and replanned three times.
The Complexity Trinity
Each of these steps is already demanding on its own. But they all depend on each other: without clean assignments, no dispatching; without dispatching, no team allocation; without a team, no mission. And all of this under time pressure, alongside your actual job.
The Solution?
On one hand, clear processes are needed — and those primarily concern the farmers. When do I get in touch? What information do the fawn rescuers need? In what format? Once a farmer has understood this, comission usually runs smoothly. But this “understanding once” requires education work that you start over from scratch every season with new farmers.
On the other hand, better tools are needed. Much of what currently happens manually via WhatsApp and phone calls could be solved through a platform: farmers add their fields themselves — with coordinates, not with directions. Teams see at a glance which assignments still need people and sign up on their own. Dispatching becomes visible instead of being stuck in one person’s head.
It was precisely this operational pain that led me to start developing Scout for myself — a platform that bundles assignment intake, dispatching, team coordination, and much more in one place. That I’m not alone in this became clear quickly: other fawn rescuers face exactly the same problems.
3. Protecting Your Own Health at the Breaking Point
The fawn rescue season lasts roughly from late April to late June. Six to eight weeks during which you regularly get up at 3:30 AM, have already flown missions before your actual workday, and plan the next ones in the evening. That works for a while — but not forever.
The Downward Spiral Toward the End of the Season
At the start of the season, motivation is high. People are well-rested, the weather is still cool, and the morning time window is relatively long. In late April, it doesn’t get truly light until around 6 AM — that gives you a good two hours for flying.
Early June looks different. The sun rises earlier, temperatures are higher, the ground heats up faster, and the usable time window shrinks. At the same time, the number of assignments increases because the second and third cuts are due. On top of that, more farmers contact us every year — which we’re thrilled about, but it makes the capacity limits visible even faster. Less time for more work.
And that’s exactly when the first people go on vacation. The remaining volunteers have to take on more missions but are themselves already weeks into sustained deployment. Motivation wanes, fatigue grows, and sleep deprivation accumulates. Anyone who has been getting up at 3:30 AM every other day for weeks and then working a normal day is simply worn out at some point.
The Dilemma
You know: fawns are lying out there in the meadows. Every mission that doesn’t happen potentially means animals killed by mowing. That makes it incredibly hard to say no — to yourself and to farmers asking for help.
At the same time, you also know: anyone who enters the final phase of the season burned out makes mistakes. You miss a fawn on the thermal image or drop out entirely. In the end, that helps no one.
Motivating Others When You’re at Your Limit
As a coordinator, there’s an additional layer: you not only have to keep going yourself but also motivate others. Asking people who are just as tired to head out early again tomorrow morning. At some point, that starts feeling wrong — you’re asking for something you can barely manage yourself.
No Easy Solution
I don’t have a ready-made answer for this problem. What I’ve learned: honesty within the team helps. Openly saying when it’s too much. Deliberately canceling missions when the capacity isn’t there, rather than half-heartedly pushing through. And accepting that you can’t fly every meadow.
But that’s damage control, not a solution. The real question — how to reconcile six weeks of sustained deployment with a full-time job and a personal life without grinding yourself down — remains open. I think about it a lot. So far, there’s nothing I could point to and say: this works reliably. Perhaps the upcoming season will bring new insights.
4. Knowledge Transfer Between Teams
Our county is divided into four zones, each with its own coordinator. Together, we operate eight drones and fly around 200 assignments per season. I’m one of the four coordinators. You’d think we’d exchange notes regularly — but we barely do. Most are so consumed by day-to-day missions that there’s time at best for a brief exchange of experiences, but not for a real discussion. You share what works for you, but for collectively reflecting — what’s transferable, what could be done differently — there simply isn’t time.
After the Season Comes the Silence
After the last mow, everyone is wiped out. Understandably, no one feels like dealing with fawn rescue for a while. Then months pass with little to nothing happening. And when the next season starts, everyone picks up right where they left off — with the same problems, the same workarounds, the same open questions.
A structured exchange between seasons practically doesn’t exist. Knowledge remains locked within individual zones or even in individual people’s heads.
The Problem Is Bigger Than Our County
It’s not just about us. Across Germany, there are hundreds of fawn rescue groups and associations, all facing the same challenges: dispatching, volunteer coordination, communication with farmers, technology, burnout. The same problems, over and over, everywhere.
I recently attended KitzCon, a trade fair for fawn rescue. Every conversation there painted the same picture: the problems are identical, but every group has found their own solution — or hasn’t. What works excellently in one region is completely unknown in the next. A lot is invented in parallel and little is learned from one another.
What’s Needed — And Why It’s Hard
More formats like KitzCon, but also more accessible ones: regional meetups after the season, shared channels, documented experience reports. Not another association, but simply more willingness to look beyond your own backyard.
But I also notice: that’s easier demanded than implemented. Anyone who’s wiped out after the season isn’t organizing a regional meetup. And anyone in the middle of the season doesn’t have time to write up their experiences. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem for which I don’t yet have a convincing solution. Perhaps part of the answer lies in better tools that document knowledge as a byproduct, rather than piling it on as an extra task for exhausted volunteers. Perhaps in something else entirely. I’m working on it.
In Closing
The real problem with fawn rescue isn’t that the tasks are too complicated. The problem is that a highly critical, time-bound process in many places still relies on WhatsApp, word of mouth, individual knowledge, and self-exploitation. That so much still works despite this is impressive. But it’s not something you should rely on in the long run. That’s exactly why I’m trying to do my part.