Other grad student projects Part 1: Mule Deer Capture

I was asked Wednesday evening if I wanted to tag along to help another grad student capture Mule Deer as part of his thesis project.  Of course I said yes!  We left at 5:30am the next morning with about 4 other grad students so that we could meet up with the capture crew and get started by around 7:30 that same morning.  Then we captured the deer for the next 3 days (Thurs -Sat)!  The purpose of capturing the deer was to remove radio collars that were being used to track the deer and see how they were utilizing different vegetation types in their habitat.  At least I'm pretty sure that is the reason.  Reagan, the graduate student whose project this was, explained it quickly to me at one point, but I can't remember exactly what it was about - just something with vegetation and habitat.  He is mostly finished with the field work for his project, so there was no need to keep the collars on the deer any longer.  Also, we were only capturing the collared bucks (I'm don't know if there are collars on does or not, but we didn't do anything with them).  We captured (or attempted to capture) deer on 3 different ranches: Boracho, Apache, and Jobe.  These ranches are just a little ways north of the Davis Mountains right along Interstate 10, a little east of Van Horn (in case anyone is familiar with the Trans-Pecos, or is interested in the area).  The Davis Mountains are really beautiful... they remind me more of the mountains in PA (but without trees).  We could also see the Sierra Diablo range off in the distance in some areas.  Anyway, I'll quickly go through and explain the process of capturing them for those who don't know the routine and then get to the fun part... pictures!

A helicopter was used to capture these deer (this was also the way they captured the Pronghorn that I was also helping out with last week... but I'm going to write about that later - it will be out of order since I did that first, but oh well... this is more fresh in my mind!).  The capture crew consisted of 3 people.  A pilot, and two gunners (I don't know if that is the technical name for them, but that's what I call them).  First, I should add that these deer were all located about a week in advance so that when the days came to capture them, we knew where to send the helicopter.  Two people were in the helicopter at a time: the pilot, obviously, and one gunner.  The other gunner was on the ground following the rest of us around (also driving a truck that had a supply of fuel for the helicopter).  The gunner in the helicopter used a radio telemetry unit to pinpoint where the particular deer was we were looking for, and once located, shot it with a net!  A net gun is kind of like a cannon, with an air cartridge or some kind of charge that is used to shoot the net out of the barrel so that the net falls on top of one animal (or more).  Immediately after the net is shot and the animal is tangled the helicopter gets low enough to the ground to let the gunner out, who then had to get to the animal and restrain it (usually by tying its legs together).  Then they latched it onto a hook on the bottom of the helicopter and carried it over to where the rest of us were waiting so that we could do what we needed to with it. In this case, the deer were not sedated since we were going to release them as soon as we gathered the data we needed from them.  They came to us pretty tangled up in the net and not too happy!  Once we had them on the ground we took the collar off and measured their antlers (if they had them - some had already been shed for the year or broken off).

Unfortunately we had some problems with the collars on the Jobe ranch because we could not pick up a signal from any of them (there were 5 deer we needed to capture)!  The collars can be programmed to be on some of the time and off some of the time so that the batteries last longer.  When the collars are off, we can't pick up a signal from them.  So, the collars were not on when they were supposed to be yesterday morning - which meant a lot of sitting around and waiting to find out what the problem was.  We never did really figure it out, and had to give up on 4 deer from that ranch (they got a signal from one this morning and were able to capture it).  Apparently another woman was the one who collared those deer in the first place, so she is going to be the one who needs to figure out the problem.  We gave up early yesterday because of that and decided to try again this morning - with no luck on the remaining 4 deer.  So we changed our plans a little bit and used the capture crew to catch young bucks (1/2 year to 1 year olds) to put ear tags on (which I got to do for all of them!) and take pictures.  We did this on the Apache Ranch since it is also a place where people pay big bucks to shoot big bucks! (Sorry that was corny...)  Anyway, the wildlife managers on this ranch manage for large, trophy size bucks, and catching them when they are young and tagging them helps to keep track of their age and how they are growing.  That way when hunters come to hunt, the ranch managers know where to take them.

OK, I made that all much longer than I meant to - sorry.  But here are a few pictures of what we were up to!

Here is the helicopter on the ground (still on the trailer actually).  This one is a little bigger than the one they used for the pronghorn capture (you'll see pictures of that one later).  Still pretty cool though!  This capture crew is out of south TX I believe.

I tried making these pictures (above and below) a little bigger, but they didn't fit in the width of the blog, and I didn't like the way it looked, haha sorry.  But if you look closely you can see the buck in both of these pictures.  In the top one it is right under the helicopter on the left side of the fence.  In the bottom one the deer is a little bit in front of the copter and hard to see so I tried putting a black box around it - but that is hard to see too... oh well.  Still pretty cool huh?

In this picture you can see the bright orange net in the lower left hand corner.  That is the deer all tangled up.  And it's hard to see because he is the same color as his surroundings, but one of the capture crew guys is down there getting the deer all ready to be brought back to us.  (Not all the captures happened this close to us.  Luckily a couple did so that I could get some good pictures!)

In these 2 pictures, as you can see, the deer is hooked up to the bottom of the helicopter and being brought to where we were all waiting.  It doesn't look like much fun for the deer - and I'm sure it's not.  But it is safe and quick, and these guys are professionals who do this all the time, so they know what they're doing!

Here is a video of them bringing the deer to us!

Hope you're not tired of pictures yet!  There are a bunch more to come (I think I took about 130 pictures of just this weekend! Don't worry, I'm not putting all of them up...)

Here, we finally have the deer where we are!  You can see in the picture that he has a yellow ear tag with a number on it that helps whoever is monitoring them keep track of each individual deer.  If they set out trail cameras at different feeders on the ranches the ear tags can help them identify and individual deer and they can keep track of where it is moving to and from.

Here I am with a picture of our first deer of the day (and handling my first mule deer ever!)  We put a blindfold over their eyes to help keep them a little more calm.  Remember, they weren't sedated, and they can really throw that head around pretty rough at times!

I think this was our third deer of the morning.  This one had the nicest set of antlers so we all took turns having our pictures taken with it.  (And by the way, the kid in the red behind me was one of the capture crew guys.)

Here is a video of the release of the deer I'm with in the picture above.

Sometimes the deer don't always get tangled enough to run in there and tie them up (this buck is only tangled by his antlers)!  On the ranches there were plenty of roads that go through the areas so a lot of times we just followed where the helicopter went so that whenever they had a deer they didn't have to fly far to bring it back to us.  In this case they netted the deer ride next to the road so a couple of our guys were able to get out and assist the capture crew in bringing down this buck.  It was pretty fun to watch!

This is a deer from the Apache Ranch.  We did these a little different because these are deer that the ranch has specifically tagged, collared, and monitored over the course of several years.  So although they were also used for Reagan's project, the ranch managers were keeping track (and will continue to keep track) of them for their own purposes.

Figured I'd put this one in there since it has a couple of non-typical points on it - for all you deer and antler enthusiasts out there...  :)

I though this picture was kind of funny because you see our school trucks all lined up there... with a helicopter bringing up the rear - not something you see every day!

Just a couple more to go!  Hope you're still enjoying what you're seeing/reading!

 

It was really windy yesterday morning and pretty cold, so most of us didn't even expect to catch anything (if it is too windy the helicopter cannot fly).  So we ended up sitting around for a couple hours this morning while the capture crew checked out whether or not they could fly.  Anyway, the sky looked awesome!  The cloud coverage in this part of Texas is usually pretty slim, so to see this many clouds with the sun rising was a really beautiful sight!

The wind ended up slowing down quite a bit and the capture crew decided it would be ok for them to fly.  But, like I said earlier, since we couldn't find the 4 deer whose collars weren't working properly, we changed our plans a bit and captured buck fawns instead to put ear tags on them (in order for the ranch managers to begin monitoring them).  We caught 10 before the wind started picking up again and we called it quits for the weekend.  It was still great though!  And I was in charge of the ear tagging, so that was pretty cool too!  Each deer got an ear tag with the same unique number on both sides.

Here is one of the buck fawns we caught.  This one was less than a year old and you can see he's only got little nubs on his head.  How those capture guys can pick those little nubs out when this deer was probably running around with a bunch of others is a mystery to me!  Although you can't see his whole body you can definitely tell he's a little guy!  Look how huge those ears are (although I think the ears look huge on the bigger bucks too)! 

Ok, final video!  Here is the release of one of the young bucks we caught.

Hope this one was a little more interesting with all the pictures and videos in it!  I had such a great time and really learned a lot.  Seeing other grad students capture animals for their projects really makes me want to catch a bear for mine!  I'll keep trying... if anything, helping out with these other projects just gives me more motivation to work my hardest on my own!

Part 2: Pronghorn Capture will be coming soon!

Until next time, Laura :)