Keep live stag or deer inside fence

[werepacman]

What if after I catch a stag in a trap pit you build e fence around and release it from the trap?
In a case it has only small injury it can recover and live here.
Or it can jump out from a fence or die from starvation. I wonder what will happen.

Can I catch live wild animal and keep it?

[PALU]

It should be possible to keep animals alive that way, as they don't actually have to eat. However, animals can teleport in (spawn inside complete enclosures and on isolated islands), so they can presumably teleport out as well, eventually.

One case of teleporting in was a squirrel who appeared on a tree inside my "stable". The "stable" has a wall with a closed door and floor/roof over all tiles except two trees. The reason I've left the trees there is that it allows me to tie the cow and the sheep to one tree each, so I don't have to jump through hoops to prevent them from escaping when entering/exiting (a hook on the wall had been better, but the game doesn't support that). I eventually killed the squirrel, so I didn't wait to see if it would disappear.
I've also had elks spawn inside the trap fence protecting my farm plots (finding an elk in a trap in the fence, with tracks only on the inside, and none on the outside).

[Dungeon Smash]

Large animals like elks and reindeer cannot jump fences, so this should be a valid way to keep them alive. 

It would be cool if you could tame your own reindeer this way... capture a forest reindeer alive, wait for it to heal, then throw a rope around its neck, "I name you... Rudolph"

[Frostbit]

I used to trap reindeer/elk in the summer, fence them in and wait for cold weather so I could dry the meat. Now, they've started dying on me for some reason. I don't know if something has changed or if it's because my recent fences are in close proximity to my settlement instead of several world tiles away.

[werepacman]

Indeed, game doesn't think about animals like player does. It may disappear if an area becomes inactive or after some time.

There are two practical reasons to have live animal - to save food and to train stealth.

[werepacman]

I tied this with lightly injured elk, and it died, left perfect skin.
I don't know the reason. It has only bruise and fracture in lag. So had a good chances to recover.

[werepacman]

Trapped reindeer in fence and disassembled traps.
They all died.
Same result with fence which has 4x6 free space.

I guess after animal is caught the trigger of its death is set. So even if you free it and let it go it can die later.

[Sami]

Wild animals do eventually die if fenced.
What they don't do is to teleport out of fences.

Naturally we need to occasionally "spawn" animals somewhere on the world map as the world is populated (during the gameplay as well) as it's impossible to track all of the living being routes turn-by-turn constantly.  But there's no "animal teleport code" where animals are moved/removed here and there after they've been located on restricted areas zoomed-in maps. Maintenance exceptions may occur rarely for example in case of home-heading NPCs, but that's more of a simulation of "what might have happened if x days passed".