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Unbelieveable
- Thread starter warbirdlover
- Start date
buck460XVR
New member
They may not be as lean and have more fat (not good - especially with venison). Little to no animal predators and set up feeding stations = less exercise = more fat.
You've lost me Discern. Are you talkin' about the collared deer or the fat guys on the Huntin' shows? Are you talkin' pen raised collared deer behind high fences or wild deer collared for biological study? If you're talkin' about the latter, please explain.
Art Eatman
Staff in Memoriam
Catch the deer. Known location. Weigh it to assess health. Put on tracking gear, and track. If a hunter shoots the deer, the usual deal is to turn in the tags and radio. Probably with data about weight, # of points and location--and the F&W folks then have knowledge of the territory of that buck.
My flight instructor made many and many a flight tracking eagles, falcons and cougars. He never mentioned deer, although that would have been easy enough.
In Texas, the mortality rate of tagged/radioed cougars is rather high. Apparently about half and half from nature and from hunters' incidental take during deer season. Roughly.
My flight instructor made many and many a flight tracking eagles, falcons and cougars. He never mentioned deer, although that would have been easy enough.
In Texas, the mortality rate of tagged/radioed cougars is rather high. Apparently about half and half from nature and from hunters' incidental take during deer season. Roughly.
UtahGrouse
New member
As someone who puts radio collars on game animals, I can assure you that the biologists will be very grateful to have a collar returned. And if it is a legal animal otherwise, it is still legal with a collar on. However, it is a disappointing when a study animal dies for ANY reason. It is a huge amount of work to capture animals alive, without hurting them. Losing the animal can mean the loss of valuable data that is used to better understand and manage populations.
So if you have the choice between a marked animal and an unmarked one I would encourage you to harvest the unmarked one. The type of data gathered from tagging animals is generally not harvest data.
They are generally two types of collars out there - VHF radio and GPS collars. VHF collars just emit a radio signal beep that we can find using a directional antenna, where GPS collars record their location. Some GPS collars upload to a satellite, some have to be recovered to record the data. The collars on big game typically have a batter life rated in years, so of the bigger ones can last close to ten years. Some of the relatively small collars you might find on something like a sage-grouse can last 3 years.
Edited to add: If you do harvest an animal with a collar, someone was and is still going to be out there looking for that animal. Returning the collar can save someone a huge amount of time and PITA looking for a animal that is not there - those VHF collars are not easy to find once the leave the general area they were once in. You don't really even have to return it - just call the Division of Wildlife - someone will be grateful.
So if you have the choice between a marked animal and an unmarked one I would encourage you to harvest the unmarked one. The type of data gathered from tagging animals is generally not harvest data.
They are generally two types of collars out there - VHF radio and GPS collars. VHF collars just emit a radio signal beep that we can find using a directional antenna, where GPS collars record their location. Some GPS collars upload to a satellite, some have to be recovered to record the data. The collars on big game typically have a batter life rated in years, so of the bigger ones can last close to ten years. Some of the relatively small collars you might find on something like a sage-grouse can last 3 years.
Edited to add: If you do harvest an animal with a collar, someone was and is still going to be out there looking for that animal. Returning the collar can save someone a huge amount of time and PITA looking for a animal that is not there - those VHF collars are not easy to find once the leave the general area they were once in. You don't really even have to return it - just call the Division of Wildlife - someone will be grateful.
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