why is the name usually with females, at least in the U.S?
Because Bambi is a fawn through most of the picture, with huge cute eyes and a high-pitched voice. Although male, he seems feminine.
It’s the ‘i’…names that end in ‘i’ are taken as girl’s names.
I liked the sequel: Bambi Goes Crazy Ape Bonkers with his Drill and Sex
According to the IMDb trivia section for Disney’s movie, "Austrian writer Felix Salten (real name Siegmund Salzmann) - an insurance clerk who began to write out of boredom - got the inspiration for his novel during a trip to Italy when he became fascinated with the Italian word bambino.
No cite, though.
I’d do him.
So, for various reasons just hearing the name “Bambi” it seems feminine in English. Is that at all the case in German?
For the same reason Sandy Duncan, Mary Martin and Cathy Rigby played Peter Pan.
Though Robin Williams played Peter Pan in one movie he soon reverted to playing a woman in Mrs Doubtfire.
And let’s not even get started with Tinker Bell 
I’m German, and I’d say yes, but that’s my personal opinion. Having never seen the movie or read the book, but being nonetheless kind of familiar with the character, I’ve always thought, up to opening this thread, that Bambi was female. And although the ‘i’ ending in German names isn’t exclusive to female names (see Willi, Toni, Henri), ‘Bambi’ definitely sounds like a girl’s name to me.
Is that true, Bambi? Did you do a Disney nasty?
I thought it was kind of gender neutral leaving it as Bambi rather than Bambino or Bambina. Not sure why females take shortened form more often than men.
It was originally written in German by an Austrian too.
I theorise that it’s short for the masculine Italian “bambino”, child; the docking of its tail by a non-Italian speaker renders it inadvertently feminine.
G’Day, Mate! Throw another shrimp on the barbi for ya?
Heh…the reason I even came into this thread, so of course someone else already did it. 
This is just a hunch, but there is the smallest outside chance you may have misread what I wrote (or the whooshing sound is that of the boomerang division of the Luftwaffe).
Please please be Bambi Meets Gojira!
who will want to name their boy after a hornless deer? deers without antlers are girls, deers with antlers are boys, cats are girls, dogs are boys and all ladybugs are girls.
Heh, last night on Jeopardy! Alex Trebek referred to Bambi as “she.”
Couldn’t Bambi, the woman’s (okay, stripper’s…) name, simply be short for bambina? I don’t know Italian, but I’m guessing that the word also has a feminine form.