Given your description, it sounds like the deer are simply accustomed to humans. I experienced the same thing at Glacier NP...a couple does hung around the campsite and didn't mind direct, lengthy eye contact and got within 10 feet or less. Here around my place, the same thing happens although they don't approach as closely and are a bit more skittish when they have fawns with them. But the bucks bolt as soon as they see me.

Decades ago I had the ironic experience of hand feeding supposedly wild deer the tobacco stripped from cigarette butts...at a Baptist chruch camp in Texas. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

FB