Spring Research '10

Now that summer is here I thought I would post some of the events of spring. I graduated from Northern Michigan University on May 1st and although I officially started my graduate research assistantship May 16th, I started working on the project May 2nd. The crew is bigger this year, we have a total of 16 people 5 dogs and a cat. We had to rent a second house to fit everyone, so currently 12 people are in the "Big House" and 4 are in the "Lake House Shack".
Carnivore trapping started off right away with a bang, 2 wolves within the first week, 5 coyotes, and 2 bobcats. Bear trapping started up at the beginning of June as foothold trapping began to tapper off. We already had 7 bear collared from winter and have caught 8 this spring. Currently collared we have 3 wolves, 7 coyotes, 3 bobcats, and 15 bear.
Fawn captures and VIT tag searches went great this spring as well, starting in late May fawns started dropping and the tagged pregnant doe we caught this past winter provided ~60% success in finding their fawns. To date we have caught and collared 46 fawns this spring, we have not caught one for about a week now as they can outrun us on roughly 99% of encounters.
My howl survey research has been going well, currently I am eliciting howling from the collared individuals, the 7-mile marsh wolf pack is proving to be very responsive this year, and I have gotten one response from the Hayward Lake wolf pack as well. Responses have been slow from coyotes compared to last August but with whelping coming to a close things will hopefully be picking up for the July howl survey.
Spring has been great and Summer is looking quite fantastic as well, bear trapping will continue through August as well as Howling surveys through September. If anyone would like to know more feel free to e-mail me a tpetroel@gmail.com

- Tyler