Spring and Summer '11

It is now late summer, I head down to Mississippi next week and won''t return until winter bear den checks. This spring and summer field season have been great. This is the 3rd and final year for this phase of the study, We had 10 technicians work on the project this summer and just hired 2 more for this fall. This spring we captured 5 more coyotes, 3 wolves, 1 bobcat, and 5 bear (including 1 bear recapture that we couldn't get this winter!). We also caught a fisher in a foothold, first one I have seen (Pictured top left). During fawning we captured 49 fawns and collared them currently 20 mortality's have occurred due to predation or abandonment.

Howling surveys are going well and will continue into September. Average response rates for coyotes have been approx. 24% to both the coyote group-yip call and the lone wolf call. I have been going through sonograms (See Below) for analysis and hope to start my modeling for the population estimate shortly. I also have been washing and sorting collected coyote and wolf scat to look for occurrence of white-tailed deer adult and fawn hair as well as cattle hair. This fall camera surveys to estimate deer abundance will start as well as small mammal track tube surveys. I will post again in late fall and give an update on population estimates and fawn predation. If you would like more information please visit our website found in the 'links' section.


- Tyler


Below is an Image of a chorus howl by 4 wolves and you are able to see each individual howling by the dark black lines called fundamental frequencies.

Winter Research '10-'11

This winter I was back up in the U.P. to continue research. My focus was on estimating the 2 wolf pack sizes in our study area via wolf track surveys. I conducted 12 wolf track surveys, traversing 523.5 km. I also recorded wolf and other carnivore tracks opportunistically. I detected wolf tracks on 45 occasions. I also observed 193 sets of coyote tracks and 8 sets of bobcat tracks during track surveys. Low snowfall during late January and February prevented more surveys from being completed. From the surveys I estimated the Hayward Lake pack to contain 6 individuals and the 7-mile Marsh pack to contain 5 individuals.
We were also busy during this time capturing white-tailed deer. We collared and applied a VIT tag to 38 adult pregnant female doe. In total we captured 112 deer including bucks and fawns.
During February we focused on black bear den checks to change out collars with new batteries and also asses number of cubs and last years cubs, now yearlings, survival. Three of the females had yearlings, and two of the females had cubs. One mother had four cubs this year! The most we have seen on the project so far.
Starting in March we began coyote snaring in effort to have some collared before spring. We were able to catch 5 coyotes but lost one to a hunter and another to collar failure. Spring has now started and the beginning of May will bring a new summer crew of technicians. In the next week or so we will begin foot-hold trapping, hopefully we will get our carnivore quota!

- Tyler