Dear deer people,
Thanks to permission from a private landowner this week, we were able to access our final veg plot exclosure via a short hike instead of a couple-mile roundtrip.
We then turned our attention to bear trapping, assisting the bear bio aide with setting & checking traps. Some crew members also assisted with moving & re-luring trail cameras.
We are currently monitoring 16 fawns, several of which decided to show themselves this week while we were tracking them. Interestingly, I saw one collared fawn with a VIT-collared doe. The real kicker is that we didn’t know this was a VIT-related fawn until now! [We can assign this fawn collar to the doe and get messages indicating whether they travel together extensively. Then we’ll know if they’re related – we can also verify via DNA analysis once all tissue samples have been analyzed]
In vehicle news: 1 truck remains in the shop awaiting a new exhaust manifold, while another had a flat tire.
This upcoming week, we will continue to check on all the fawns twice daily & assist with bear trapping in the meantime.
-Hannah
Field Crew Leader
PGC Deer and Elk Section
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From the Southern Crew:
Hi all,
Work activities are somewhat winding down and some of my crew members have already begun to move on. Two crew members – Kara and Sarah – have finished but Levi and Julie are sticking around for hopefully about 3 more weeks of work. Kara is going back to school and the others are in search of jobs for the fall.
We went camping one evening after work to celebrate a great crew and a fun fawn capture season! Kara and I did manage to get a makeover before she left for home (photo right).
We also assisted the bear crew this week. They were skunked everyday in Rothrock until Sunday. They finally caught a young male who they believed was visiting a trapping site, but avoided being trapped multiple times. This same bear was trapped twice during the last trapping round in Rothrock this year.
Emily setting the treadle for the difficult-to-capture bear.
This coming week, we’re going to try to track down a doe to remove her malfunctioning GPS collar by using the electronic drop-off device. The last location her collar sent was June 3rd and I believe that she is currently living in the mountains of Bald Eagle.
Bret and I unsuccessfully tracked her down earlier this year. We transmitted the drop-off signal multiple times in one day when we thought we were close to her, yet she’s still sporting her collar. The mountains can be tricky; we might not have been as close to her as we originally thought. Guess we’ll see how it goes this time around.
Julie and Levi also spotted one of our elusive fawns that we call ‘Pond’ (based off of where we captured her) foraging with the doe.
Field Crew Leader
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