I figured since I mentioned Blaze (the amelanistic buck) from Bez’s darting story, I would post his picture.  Billy Paugh worked as my technician last summer and had his heart set on darting Blaze for quite a while before he got the opportunity.  Fortunately, when he got the opportunity…he didn’t waste it.  Blaze certainly was an interesting deer!  Double white blaze on his forehead and hundreds of warts from dime size to quarter immediately under his skin.  We believe they disappeared sometime during the fall though, because when he was found dead in January (from who knows what?) all his warts were gone!?!  You’ll notice in the picture that his tongue is pulled way out of his mouth, this is to keep his airways clear while he is under anesthesia.  Billy got another buck just a couple of days later while I was back in North Carolina vacationing at the beach.  That buck was a 2.5 year old 8 point that we nicknamed Billy the Kid.  Billy (the person) was a great help to my master’s project 2007 summer and a pretty good shot with the dart gun if I say so myself.

The next buck from my darting adventures in Maryland we nicknamed ‘Bez’ for very obvious reasons.  The first time I saw this stud buck he was feeding about 400 yards from my parked vehicle.  As soon as I saw him, I knew we had to try and ambush this giant buck.  All I could when he raised his head out of the soybeans were long spears on top of his head…even from that far away, I knew this was the best 6 point I had ever laid eyes on.  A couple nights later, the wind was right for the stand and we set up our ambushes.  I was laying about 4 rows deep in a cornfield that bordered the soybeans, hoping to ambush a big buck if he made it past James in the woods edge where he was watching a trail to snaked its way out along a swamp.  As the evening passed, several does and small bucks came down James’ trail and made it out to my hiding place in the fields.

On cue, the bachelor group showed up with an hour of daylight remaining.  The first buck was a 2.5 year old 8 point (a legal buck to dart, but not the monster 6), next was ‘Blaze’ an interesting melanistic buck that we actually darted this past summer…Blaze was about to get it, when the big 6 showed up.  James made a good shot and the rest was routine.

When we approached the buck though, he was bigger that I had even first thought.  The ‘bez’/’shovel’ NT projection had 5 scoreable points and totaled 16 inches.  Most impressive though was his 6 point typical frame.  Granted he was in velvet, but he taped his typical 6 point frame at 140″ even.  AMAZING!!!!  I would like to know how many 6 points gross a frame as impressive as that.  Sweeping main beams, Roman spears for G2’s, mass to die for, and that character caribou antler equaled a truly spectacular buck.  It was kind of difficult to focus on the mechanics of performing the necessary health monitoring protocol and collar work that we had to do with such a big buck lying there.  Unfortunately, this buck too died of brain abscess and was found during the rut submerged in a flooded ditch.

What a buck!

My third darted buck was dubbed ‘Jethro’, thanks to a tip from Jeff K. who was darting female white-tailed deer during summer 2006 also at the farm.  He had something like 10 bucks invade the clover field he was sitting on and recommended we try it out as soon as the wind allowed.  That very next night, only buck made his way out to the clover field, but we had the right trails covered.  ‘Jethro’ spotted James swinging his dart gun into position for the shot and sauntered in my direction where after a long stare-down (which apparently I won) a short 8 yard shot did the job.  At this point in our summer, we were really hitting our stride, getting a pattern on a number of bachelor groups, and downing bucks on a regular basis.  ‘Jethro’ was probably a 2.5 year old, he sported a wide 17″ 6 point frame and was spotted several more times during the summer toting his GPS collar handsomely.  Unfortunately, the mortality signal came in from the GPS collar during late winter.  We took his carcass to the local animal health laboratory where it was determined he had chronic pneumonia, a debilitating brain abscess, and nasal bots to add insult to injury.  Thankfully, he made it through the critical shotgun season and post-season data collection time period, so his data is appreciated in my master’s study.

My next darting attempt was kind of a fluky chance, but I made good on my opportunity. We had scouted a recent clear-cut and established that a bachelor group of bucks was hitting a soybean field on the other side. After waiting a few days for a good wind, James and I scaled trees within about 60 yards of each other covering as many trails as we could. We weren’t sitting long before I could see a good 8 pt. meandering towards us. Unfortunately, he took the one trail in between us that was beyond our effective ranges (about 20 yards, after that….a crapshoot!) When he hit the soybeans, our scent was carried straight out to the buck, but instead of charging away he wheeled right back into the woods…right under my tree! A quick grunt paused him in mid-stride and the dart hit home. Moments later, I had buck #2 on the ground. He got his name because the usually hasty ‘wake-up’ drug took over 3 hours to rouse him from a deep slumber…hence the name.

I’ll never know what happened to him though. He was an interesting deer that had 2 completely distinct home ranges. His collar was dragged into a local yard by a pet dog and returned to us at the Farm. There was no indication whether the deer had died or the collar had simply fallen off the buck somehow.

James Tomberlin, my predecessor to the graduate project I am now working on, showed me the ropes of darting deer.
#1 Rule - watch out for ‘Murphy’…what can go wrong, probably will! My first darting experience was early July in 2006. In the very first evening in stand, I witnessed ‘Bo Derek’ and was absolutely shocked at the size of some of the bucks roaming around the farm. We guessed him in the 190 class range. Sure enough, I picked up one shed last October and someone had the other. Right under 200″ gross NT. My first opportunity came a couple of nights later, but I centered the hindquarter of a 2.5 year old a little too much and had a dart bounce out (first time I shook hands with ‘Murphy’ during deer darting).

About a week later, after I had helped James process two 2.5 year olds that he had darted, I got my second opportunity. At dawn, deer started pouring into a clover field that I was watching…does and bucks alike. At one point there were 5 or 6 shooter bucks in the field including an old bruiser non-typical. Unfortunately, the field started clearing out around 8:00 a.m. and there was only 2 deer left in the field by 8:30 a.m…both good shooter bucks. Just when it looked like they were going to exit the field 60 yards to my right, I made one last attempt to get a shot by making some deer noises (little fawn ‘mewww’ and a soft grunt) with my mouth. I’m not sure if they heard me or just happened to wander past me, but at 22 yards I let the gas out of the gun and sent a dart on its way.

I darted the buck in the back and as he ran off, I could see the dart lodged securely in his ham. At the edge of the field, he slowed to a walk and then ducked down a trail and out of sight. After radioing the crew, we headed to the trail I saw him enter and turned on the telemetry equipment (the dart has a radio transmitter in the tailpiece that allows us to track the darted deer). BEEP, BEEP, BEEP…man he’s close! Oh crap! There’s the dart….apparently as soon as the deer entered the woods, he reached back and plucked the dart from his rear end (there were some teeth mark on the dart). Blind luck now, we spread and out and started walking trails. About 10 minutes later, I spotted him lying in the woods.

After a some photographs, we got him processed and woke him back up. My first darted buck. Probably just a 2 year old, but real nice buck. 6 on one side and 4 on the other.  Unfortunately, his GPS collar fell off right before we got meaningful data for the study I am conducting during the Maryland firearms season.  But I did title this post, ‘the first go round!’.  We meet again in 2007, but you’ll have to wait for that.

Well, as summer approaches it is dawning on me that this June, July and August aren’t going to be quite as exciting as the last 2 years because I won’t be darting deer at my study site in Maryland.  The bright side to that is my field work is done and I can finish getting my data analyzed and start pumping out my thesis in hopes of being out of grad school in December.  In light of not being able to chase big bucks all summer with my CO2 powered dart rifle, I will do a multi (and I mean alot) part series on my darting experiences over the last 2 summers.  I emailed out updates with pictures to friends during the course of the 2006 and 2007 summer and they enjoyed them…I’m sure you guys will too.  Don’t worry though, I’ll be mixing in plenty of other good stuff over the next couple of weeks if B&C whitetails bore you…:)

I picked up a copy of the 2007 ‘Endangered Species Bulletin’ published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Science and as usual learned about some critters and plants that I didn’t even know existed.  Among those was the Lahontan cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki henshawi).  Usually animals that I don’t know about turn out to be a little meadow mouse or rare songbird; however, this subspecies of cutthroat trout is a true heavyweight.  When living in freshwater lakes, the Lahontan trout have reached a whopping 62 pounds (year 1916).  I’ve certainly heard of cutthroat trout and envision small brook trout sized fish swimming in crystal clear high-elevation streams….I’m not conjuring up images of trout that are 20 lbs. larger than the world record channel catfish!!!

Native to Lake Tahontan, Nevada constitutes virtually all of the fish’s native range, little bit of California and Oregon too.  The trout has extremely dense numbers of gill rakers which suggest a zooplankton diet, but also has a digestive system built to prey on fish - chubs, suckers and even cannibalizing its own kind.  Restocking efforts have and will expand to Pyramid Lake, Fallen Leaf Lake, and maybe Lake Tahoe.  Interestingly, the Lahontan cutthroat can also adapt to stream life, although this lifestyle severely limits their potential adult size.

Hatcheries in the area continue to focus efforts on rearing eggs and hatchlings to restock as many native waters as possible.  Who knows…a couple decades from now, monster cutthroats running rivers through downtown Reno?!?! Stranger things have happened and will happen as spectacular recoveries are made for some little-known species around North America and around the world.

I read a great article titled ‘Too Warm For Trout?’ a couple of weeks ago by Kim Barto in Compass - a publication by the US Forest Service’s southern research station. I’ll do my best to summarize the article in a short paragraph or two.

Trout fishing is a deeply entrenched tradition of the southern Appalachian Mountains. The globe’s current warming trend (notice I did NOT say global warming - that term is way too politically ‘loaded’ to be meaningful anymore) poses a threat to trout populations if it continues, especially in lower elevation rivers and streams throughout the Southeast. Being a coldwater species, trout depend on low stream temperatures to survive. Given the slight temperature increases of past decades and the fact that trout are already at the southern limits of their range, trouble might be brewing in the future. Add in the fact that woolly adelgids are hammering the mountain’s hemlock tree populations (a dominant canopy species along many mountain streams that provides shade and cooler water temperatures), stream temperatures are also the rise. Using 2 different models, researchers found that 53% (conservative model) - 97% (extreme model) of trout habitat could be lost to land cover disturbances, sedimentation, road building, and most importantly water temperature increases.

Now, the likelihood that trout will suffer a 97% decline is certainly not likely, but the research does reveal an inevitable trend that has happened some already and will surely pick up speed if average temperatures increase. Warm weather species that used to be restricted by cold temperatures along their northern range boundaries will extend their distribution to the north, and the southern boundaries of cold temperature species will simultaneously be driven farther north.

The researchers made it clear that small populations of trout in low elevation streams surrounded by dying hemlock trees will be at the highest risk of local extinction.

How many of you have heard the unique song of a whip-poor-will in the early dawn of morning as you are trying to catch those last few precious hours of sleep?  A notoriously incessant singer, many a whip-poor-will has met an early death by those kept awake by their music. 

But to a more serious tone…the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission is beginning a survey for whip-poor-will and chuck will’s widow birds in the state’s mountain region.  The survey will be carried out by wildlife professionals and avid birders who volunteer their time to conduct night listening drives throughout the region.  Results will help identify factors that have lead to the decline in whip-poor-will populations and give researchers a better grasp of their distribution across the landscape. 

The main windows for the survey are May 12-27 and June 11-26.  These fall with the moon’s pattern of being 50% or more illuminated.  Research has shown that calling spikes dramatically during these periods and more birds should be able to be heard and located.  If you think you might be interested in volunteering a few of your summer nights to help out the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission get a firmer grasp on the status of the whip-poor-will in NC’s mountains, visit this site for more information or contact Chris Kelly at kellych@earthlink.net

Now that is a face that only a mother could love.  A whip-poor-will just might have more cryptic camouflage than the American woodcock that I highlighted a month or so back in a bird species profile. 

I was reading in the latest issue of Quality Whitetails and was pleased to see an old buddy Will Ricks from NC State has landed a graduate project at the University of Georgia.  In the feature ‘The Signpost’, the writer explains that Will is going to be researching the impact of perennial food plots on songbird and small mammal populations.  I’m not sure of all his sponsors, but I know Quality Deer Management Association and UGA are backing him.  His research will be stratified between Northern and Southern field study sites and he is looking at food plots 1-5 acres in deciduous hardwood forest landscapes.  Here is where you may come in….if you visit his university-sponsored website and click on Project links, he has 2 .pdf’s soliciting help from citizens in the North, specifically in Pennsylvania/New York region. 

He needs some volunteers with songbird ID (both visual and call) experience preferably with some point count survey experience also to help out with his Northern field sites.  Additionally, he has a form that outlines the requirements for food plots to fit into his study design.  Generally, they must be perennial clover or chicory and exist in a predominantly hardwood forest.  He is looking for landowners to volunteer established food plots to his study.  If you are interested in volunteering or are just interested in his project, check his website out.  Quality Whitetails promises to keep its readers updated on the progress of the research and I’ll do my best to do the same.