Very cool Fitz! I'd love to put some radio collars on a few bucks I've got pics of so I could know there location every 2 hours!
Figured I'd give a little update: I've been seeing Jane, one of the does, 3-4 times a week. She's looking healthy, but I can't tell if she's carrying any fawns. Patty is a daily sight next door at my dad's house. She's also looking good and has a belly full of moving fawns. I'd guess that she's pretty close to dropping them. Unfortunately, in a dose of reality of what our deer have to go through up here, both fawns that were collared have died. One of starvation a while back and one of predation about 3 weeks ago. The researchers think the kill was possibly from a bobcat due to the way the carcass was found stashed. There were a number of deer in the study that did not make it to spring. It was a long hard winter for sure. Things are just starting to green up around here and fresh browse is becoming available more each day. My dream is to get a trail camera shot of Patty with her fawns. Plans are already being made for additional trapping this coming winter. Sounds like I'll be out there again helping run the trap lines. I can't wait!
Awesome experience for you Fitz. Thanks for sharing! Hopefully, Blade's son is in the belly of one of them does. In the trail cam photos of the doe being caught was there a day between the trap being shut and the researchers arriving onsite? If so, do you think that caused more stress on the deer than being able to acquire the data, collar and release the same day? Just curious.
Traps are checked every morning. That doe (Patty) just happened to walk up right after we had checked it. We we still out checking other traps while she was in that one. I got thousands of photos of her in the trap. She was really only agitated for the first 10 min or so, but then calmed down. She spent her time bedding, eating the remainder of the bait, and gently testing the net with her nose. She was bedded as the researchers came running up to the trap. That's when there's the highest risk of injury/stress, which is why they stress the expediency of the process. In a perfect world they'd have the resources ($$$) for indicators that would alert them to a closed trap. It not only wasn't in the budget, but with nearly 2/3s of the closed traps being tripped by hares, squirrels and birds feeding on the bait, they'd waist a ton of time traveling to empty traps.
