What a week this has been, and it's not over yet! Each week we have a quota of trapping five pregnant does. Thus far we have already trapped seven! This is partly due to having 54 traps open for a few days while Jered, another Phd student on the project, was in town. Jered is in Mississippi State taking classes currently. Him and Nate are the only two people certified to give the immobilization and reversal drugs to animals. After Jered left, we closed some of the traps and at present have 38 open.
With Jered we also tried to locate and work up two male black bears after deer trapping, but unfortunately were unsuccessful since the males were not in their dens. Nate and Jered tried to dart one male with a special gun that is loaded with tranquilizer, but weren't able to get a good shot before the bear spotted both of them and took off running. (Originally the bears were located using radio telemetry). Black bears can run in spurts up to 30 miles an hour! Nate, Alec, and I went to the DNR last week to shoot the tranquilizer gun to see how accurate it was. I had a lot of fun shooting. I even hit the very top of the bull's eye on my third try!
Both Thursday and Friday were successful for black bear handling. We had a bunch of people from the DNR (from different regions of Michigan) come up to aide us with black bears as well as see the research we are doing up close. I was a bit nervous being surrounded by so many scientists, but everyone was friendly and down to earth. We went in on female black bears, both of which had yearlings, so they were still in their dens. Black bear cubs will stay with their mother up to two years. Yearlings, as one might guess, indicates the offspring are around one year of age. These females were caught last year with cubs, so we knew what to expect. Yearlings can range from 40 to 90 pounds. We handled a total of five, which varied in size from 45-55 pounds. Since all these bears were female, that could explain for the smaller size. Black bears are sexually dimorphic in size. Females weigh around 200 and can reach 300 pounds, while males can go up to 600 (or even 800 according to Nate in populations outside Michigan). T-dog explained since harvest is big in this state, many males don't get the change to reach full growth.
This is the field crew and myself posing with black bears we just worked up. This photo is courtesy of Jessie, a former technician for the DNR that has assisted with the Predator-Prey project.
Mike Olson came out with us again on Friday. I am as always very excited about getting more pictures from him. As far as protocol goes for black bears, it is very similar to that of deer. I'm not sure if I mentioned this in an earlier post, but to determine body condition, there is a machine used called bioimpedence. (For deer, we do an ultrasound to look at fat layers above their rump). Bioimpedence sends an electrical current through the bear's body, and body condition is determined based on the level of resistance. With yearlings, we don't do this. Instead body condition is determined solely by feeling the hips, ribs, and shoulders. In simplistic terms, the more fat, the better! I wish it was like that for humans.
Side note: I started this post last week, so the good luck I began typing about in this blog has not carried over to the past few days. We got "skunked" two days in a row! "Skunked" is the term used when we don't trap a single deer. This is the first time this whole season, however, that has occurred.
Side note: Last week Nate bought pizza. He was kind enough to get one veggie despite me being the only person in the house who is vegetarian. Nate believes pizza without meat on it shouldn't even exist. As he savagely tore into a slice of veggie pizza the following day, I reminded him of this. His response was: "I'm not happy about it".
Nate (picture courtesy of Mike Olson)
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