From the Northern Crew:
Dear Deer People,
The majority of the week my truck has been in the shop with four-wheel drive problems, so the crew and I have been running the lines in one truck. This has slowed things down and has pushed back our plans for another big move. With some of our traps being set on lines for over 2 weeks now, we have gotten a solid dose of recaps. It did make checking traps quick and easy.
Although we had caught all recaps on Monday, Tuesday brought us three brand new, large, new deer. Tom was restrainer for the day and had a blast, but was pretty worn out by the end of it!
I was hoping to have two trucks for the latter part of the week so that after captures, we could split up and start placing new baits for our next big move. That didn’t happen. Instead the rain gave us that opportunity. We fully baited five new lines.
With rain, freezing rain, and some snow later in the week, I was worried that a lot of our traps were going to be frozen open. We ended up getting one recap, but indeed most of our traps were frozen open. We were very glad to have some new snow anyway.
This week, I am hoping to get my truck back on Monday and start working to get most of our traps moved to new locations with captures occurring by Wednesday. Our other truck is now broken down, so everyone will be in one truck again when I get mine back on Monday.
Field Crew Leader
From the Southern Crew:
Hello all,
We put a long week in between moving traps, Clover trapping and rocket netting. We put in so many hours that we had to take Friday off. This gave the crew a nice, well deserved two-day weekend [you read that correctly, it’s usually only a one-day weekend]. With rain in the forecast Thursday afternoon through Friday, I don’t think we missed much.
Our crew moved traps in the rain. It seems we are always stuck moving traps in the rain. I received a call from Nick early in the week stating that the crew truck broke down for a second time, but this time in Bald Eagle. The truck was towed out of Bald Eagle and taken to the mechanic. The entire crew set out to set/stake Clover traps between Bald Eagle and Rothrock in one truck. Thankfully, Wyatt has a free evening and helped stake Rothrock traps. With his help, we were almost able to cut our trap-setting-time in half.
Captures started off slow at the beginning of the week. We sat at rocket nets both Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Conditions were favorable Tuesday night. There was some rain drizzling for about 45 minutes on Wednesday and the wind switched up slightly. No deer showed up either time, but we had two porcupines come in providing some entertainment. In addition, we heard barred owls calling back and forth, and tundra swans and Canada geese migrating throughout the night.
Between Wednesday and Thursday, we captured four new deer in Clover traps! 2 in Bald Eagle and 2 in Rothrock. We also found a garter snake sunning itself while rambling into one of our Clover trap sites and trees that were already budding?!
After we tied trap doors open and checked Clovers on Thursday, we were finally able to use the remaining time to pull the trap line that was originally to be pulled Monday. And yes, you guessed it—it was raining! We placed four traps at new sites and finished up the day.
The crew set all traps Sunday. We will start the week off with some good old-fashioned Clover trapping and plan to rocket net Tuesday night. We will monitor conditions and determine if we should focus on Clover trapping or rocket netting this week. We will also bait new trap lines with any remaining time.
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Field Crew Leader
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