Deer Capture

 

On Friday and Saturday Andrew and I helped another grad student capture and radio collar deer.  It was such a great experience!  I loved every minute of it!!  It was so neat being that close to the deer and taking measurements on them.  We got there right when the helicopter took off to find some deer to bring back to us.  Soon we could hear the helicopter and they brought in the first two deer. 

Once they would drop off the deer, the mugger team (this is the animal capture team) would take off and search for more deer.  We’d run over and place the deer on stretchers.  Then we’d take some measurements on them, weigh them, place a radio collar on them, and let them go.  They had a blind fold on the entire time to keep them calm.

Here’s Andrew taking measurements on one of the does. 

The first day I helped untangle the nets and fold up the bags they carried the deer in on the helicopter.  Near the end I was able to go inside the tent and help with some measurements. 

Once we were done taking measurements and putting on the radio collar we would release the deer.  Here is one of my professors releasing a doe. 

Waiting for the helicopter to drop off another doe.

A few times they would bring three deer in at a time!  This was really cool to see!!

A close up of the helicopter!

The second day during the first few captures the helicopter was close to where we were so we were able to watch some of the capturing.  Here the capture team just fired the net gun at a deer (that’s what all the smoke is from in the picture above)

The second day I was a data recorder, so I was in the tent writing down all the data while the others were processing the deer.  It was really neat to be able to be in the tent the whole day and watch everything happening.  A few times I was even able to help out with the measurements and weighing the deer.  Here we just placed the doe on the stretcher and are carrying her to be weighed.  Andrew was insane!  He helped with pretty much almost every deer!  I was very impressed!  I loved watching him work and being his data recorder.  I was really impressed with how everything went and how efficient everyone was who helped out. 

Weighing the deer

Andrew and I working together measuring and collaring a deer.  I really wanted some pictures of us working on the same deer together, so I asked one of Andrew’s friends to take some of us.  Thank you!

Andrew radio collaring the doe. 

DONE! She’s ready to be released!

The pilot was really gentle with the deer.  He’d nicely place them on the ground, and if one had its head cocked funny he’d pick it back up and move it until it was in a good position.  It was great to see everything and how well everyone worked together to make this work.  Awesome two days!