Ever been to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? I had the opportunity to go (first time visiting Michigan, yay!), and to make it even more awesome, I got the chance to touch yearling black bear cubs. Through Purdue’s Student Chapter of The Wildlife Society, some students had the chance to go to Crystal Falls, Michigan, to shadow Mississippi State graduate students with a project they were working on concerning white-tailed deer. So of course I went. What else am I going to do on a random weekend in February?

We arrived in Michigan eight hours later with plenty of snow on the ground and the temperature already near the negatives. We met up with the graduates Sunday, and they explained to us the purpose of their project: looking into the population decline of white-tailed deer. In order to fully analyze the decline, the project needed to look into the role of predators, winter weather, habitat and the condition and reproduction of deer in order to understand the aspects affecting the population.

So what does this entail? Well first, we hiked through the deep snow in the woods to reach bobcat hair snares to collect any fur, feathers or hair found on thin, spiky coils of wire. The sites were baited with a deer rib cage or beaver which attracted a variety of visitors including bobcats, wolves, coyotes, martens, fishers, hawks, owls, chickadees, snowshoe hares and even flying squirrels. By collecting the hair or feathers caught in the snares, the graduates could collect data using the DNA from the samples. It’s amazing how much you can do with just a little bit of fur!

Next we checked deer traps, which are called clover traps. Mainly they wanted to catch pregnant does, so they could radio collar them and track their progress. They also used a temperature measuring device to get data on whether the doe was alive or dead and whether or not she had dropped fawn (the device would fall out upon birth as it was placed in the vagina of the animal). I got the chance to use telemetry to locate a doe and see whether or not she was alive by the frequency of the feedback.

The graduates also wanted us to have the opportunity to see what process they used when they received feedback that a doe was dead. They had a unique case where a radio-collared doe was hunted down by wolves, so we traveled over to the site and saw her remains. We were shown several ways of identifying whether it was a wolf kill or not; this included taking into consideration the space between teeth marks in bite wounds, whether there was hemorrhaging beneath the skin (this only occurs when a deer is alive and bleeding, indicating that it was being hunted) and inspecting the carcass to see if there was blood foam on the nose which indicated a crushed throat where blood from the jugular is mixed with breath. Wolves have a unique way of hunting, as does any predator, and knowing the different marks they leave can help decipher between the different predators.

After seeing the aftermath of a wolf kill, we asked if we could go out at night and try to get one to respond to howls. So with the temperatures just above -30 degrees, we ventured out into the woods and eventually to a frozen lake. We did get a few coyotes to respond, but the wolves were silent, making me wonder if they knew the difference between a recording and a real wolf or if they could smell us nearby. Either way, it was still awesome.

On the final day in Michigan, we had the best opportunity of all: getting up close and helping take measurements on wild black bears. The mother and two cubs were sedated and pulled from their den while we had the chance to touch them and help collect data. It was an incredible experience seeing the cub up close; she was licking her nose (a typical habit of sedated bears) and shivering. We did our best to keep her warm, and the work up took about an hour to complete.

It is projects like these that really give you a glimpse into a day in the field as a wildlife biologist and what can be achieved by completing this research. The data provided by this project will be used for years to come in determining whether predator control is necessary and what the real factors causing deer decline are. It gives people a glimpse into the multiple mechanisms at play when it comes to nature. There is never a simple answer.

Resources
Purdue Student Chapter of The Wildlife Society, Purdue FNR
FNR Majors & Minors, Purdue FNR
Student Life​, Purdue FNR

Morgan Sussman, Freshman
Department of Forestry and Natural Resources​