Pennsylvania Game News - September 2018 - 34

It also means changing population
sizes more likely stem from the survival
rates of adults. Hunter harvest is the
main cause of mortality for adult deer
in Pennsylvania, so stable fawn survival
clears the way for continuing to meet deer
population goals through the allocation of
antlerless licenses.
While black bear and coyote populations have increased statewide since the
2000-01 study, within the wildlife management units containing the study areas,
black bears and coyotes were similarly
abundant in 2000-01 and 2015-17.
And, once again, in the northern study
area, black bears accounted for most fawn
predation. But in the southern study area,
coyotes were the top predator.
Overall in the 2015-17 study, 82 fawns
were captured and fitted with radio collars
in the northern study area and 83 in the
southern.
Of the 44 mortalities in the northern
study area, 33 were from predators,
with bears taking 18 fawns; coyotes,
eight; bobcats, two; and five falling to an
unknown predator.
In the southern study, predators were
responsible for 18 of 38 mortalities, with
coyotes taking six fawns; bears, five; bobcats, five; and an unknown predator, two.
While similar predator abundance in
the 2000-01 and 2015-17 studies might
indicate predation pressure was similar,
the distribution of predators in Susquehannock, Bald Eagle and Rothrock state
forests remains unknown.
The Game Commission recently
began a new study that will provide more
information about predators in these state
forests. It will be exciting to see what
ongoing research will turn up!
Tess Gingery is an M.S. graduate student with the Pennsylvania Cooperative
Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.
34

DIFFERIN

PREDATORS, FAWN

RAIL CAMS are great fun in the woods. But
for us, they were a critical tool in researching
the lives and distribution of Pennsylvania's
fawns and their predators.
Starting with a small test-run in 2015, we eventually put out 100 trail cameras at 339 locations in
three study areas: Bald Eagle and Rothrock state
forests in central Pennsylvania, and Susquehannock State Forest in northern Pennsylvania.
If you total the hours the cameras actively
were set to snap pictures of black bears, coyotes,
bobcats and other animals, they ran for about 49
years and took over 200,000 pictures.
We have only begun analyzing these data to
figure out how predator distribution relates to
fawn distribution and how that may affect fawn
survival, but we've already got some pretty interesting results.
When it comes to surviving the summer, does
and their fawns are really thinking outside the box.
By using areas people frequent, does and fawns
create for themselves some relief from predators
that prefer to stay away from human encounters.
We collected photos of 10 wild carnivore species, ranging from black bears - one of the state's
major fawn predators - to red foxes and fishers.
What carnivore topped the list? It might not
be the one you expected, unless you were thinking raccoon. Raccoons showed up more than 900
times on trail cams in the study. Bears, with about
700 photos, were the most-detected major carnivore. About 800 photos of fawns were collected.
One of our goals in the study was to determine
how widespread each of the main fawn predators
- black bears, coyotes and bobcats - were across
our three study areas, and what habitat types
increased our likelihood of seeing them - as well
as fawns - on our cameras.
We got pictures of bears at 64 percent of our
camera locations. Coyotes appeared at 36 percent
of camera locations and bobcats at 33 percent.

Pennsylvania Game News - September 2018

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