Before I begin blogging about the past few days, I want to correct an error from an earlier post. I mentioned the removal of a rocket net that was left outside near one of our deer traps. This was not a rocket net, but a cannon net. Also, rocket nets are shot out of helicopters, not airplanes. From a discussion last night on my mistake, the field crew and I have concluded that it would be fun to shoot rocket nets from hot air balloons. Getting back to cannon nets, these are on the ground and a trigger shoots them up into the air and then over the unsuspecting deer. Cameras are placed so that the moment a net goes off, the field crew rushes over to attend to the deer. Caitlin explained that these nets are only used if we aren't catching enough deer from the clover traps.
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were spent deer trapping. On Friday we also went to locate a black bear that was trapped last spring and had a radio collar. At first, we attempted to locate this bear using VHF (very high frequency) telemetry. The way-point we used was given from an airplane, during aerial telemetry, and can be off by up to 200 meters. After some time, Tyler, who would like to be referred to as "T-dog", gave us the UTM points to get a better location. Nate was surprised to find this bear awake, which meant a little more effort on his part to inject him with a "sleeping" drug. After the bear was induced, it was a bit of a struggle to get him out of his den. It is amazing some of the hiding spots these bears find for hibernation. It is easy to walk past a den and not know it. Some of them have a very small opening. I learned how to put an ear tag in, which is quite different and more difficult than those for deer. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get the other ear done. This bear was an adult, but below average in size and weighed 220 pounds. Some adult black bears can weigh up to 500 pounds! From the telemetry being done, we've found that more bears are up and about during this winter. Dr. Jerry Balant hypothesized that this could be due to several factors including a warmer winter (as mentioned in my earlier blog), and a fall season with plentiful resources. This means the bears might have been able to eat to the point of satiation, and thus gather more calories than necessary for the winter season.
On Saturday, biologist Mary Martin (who was here last week) from Northern Michigan University came with nine of her students to witness our work in the field. Students watched us work on a pregnant doe. Unfortunately we weren't able to handle another male black bear because he removed his radio collar. We searched in the forest for awhile before finding his ripped collar. I'm glad the students at least got to witness us handle deer and see the procedures done when capturing a pregnant doe.
Today was another day of deer trapping followed by setting up new traps. Setting up traps is not fun at all. It is very hard work trying to get bullets into the ground to hold the traps down. I wasn't good at it. Alec hammered a driver so hard into the ground that it got stuck in the bullet. We eventually had to use the truck to try and pull it out. The steel driver, which is supposed to be designed to avoid getting stuck, ended up u-shaped.
Nate is holding the driver that at one point was straight. I guess Alec got a little over-ambitious as he was hammering the bullet into the ground.
Despite having some rather undesirable tasks, I am still grateful for the amount of time I get to spend in the beautiful forest. It is wonderful driving down narrow dirt roads with endless pines dangling at the sides and laced with soft snow. Sometimes the snow is so light and fluffy that without eyes, you wouldn't know it was falling. I also have witnessed a lot of wildlife from red squirrels, eastern gray squirrels, grouse, short-tailed shrew, and many black-capped chickadees. Josh and I had the pleasure of these wonderful birds flying all around us during our day of setting hair snares. You can go to this web address to hear their bird call:
Black-capped chickadee, which the crew now calls "wacked cat chickadee" in honor of my impaired hearing.
This is a picture of one of the hair snare sites Josh and I set last week. As you can see, that is one amazing fort.
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