Researchers Track Deer with GPS Tracking Devices in GPS Tracking Study
3 Dec 2013GPS technology now being used to track deer and study their behavior patterns during hunting season.
As deer hunting season begins, hunters are starting to track deer’s movements in the Pennsylvania area, but they won’t be alone. Researchers are also beginning a study of the local deer’s behavior patterns by using GPS tracking technology.
The study, called the Deer Forest Study, is being conducted by researchers at Penn State and the local Game Commission. It will include 30 deer, each of which have been outfitted with GPS tracking devices in the form of collars. These collars are going to be controlled with the help of text messages sent to the tracking devices. The devices will record the location and movements of the deer in real-time.
Researchers are hoping to learn more about the location of deer during hunting season and throughout other times of the year, including their behavioral habits and their movements.
This comes in part due to the suspicion that deer are now turning nocturnal and only coming out at night. But it is just a suspicion, which will soon be verified with the help of the GPS tracking study. Researchers also want to know their behavior in hunting season specifically, including how the hunting pressure affects their movements and what areas they relocate to.
The supervisor of the deer and elk section of Game Commission, Christopher Rosenberry, told reporters this wouldn’t be the first time they used radio collars, but are hoping for better results by including GPS technology in the collars. In the past, they captured deer in nets and put on radio collars, but would need to trigger and release the collar remotely. Researchers would have to go out into the forest and find the collars to download the information. But now with the new text-version of the GPS radio collars, they can get the data immediately just by sending a text message to the collar. With a simple text, they receive the current location of the deer.
Rosenberry reported that the researchers want to find out how many of the deer remain in their study area during the hunting season. They began the study in the spring and will continue through the fall and winter hunting season. He told reporters:
“It’s the same as the GPS unit in your car except it records that location. For example, throughout the summer and last spring, it (the frequency) was every five hours. We bumped it up in the fall to every three hours, and we’ll go every 20 minutes during the gun season,” Rosenberry said.
Researchers also want to know how the population of deer affects local impacts of the forest, including the harvest rates and forest vegetation. The study areas are parts of the local forest where hunters have registered that will go hunting. They will also find out the longest distance that deer tend to roam.
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