Perhaps you’ve noticed deer in the vicinity of Fort Indiantown Gap wearing tags and collars. No, it’s not a new fashion trend among local ungulates – it’s part of a study run by naturalists at the sprawling military base.
“We wanted to update our deer management plan,” Nick Hoffman, ecological program specialist and outdoor recreation program manager for FTIG, explained.
The base, he told LebTown, has ample areas where deer can live and not be affected by hunting. “At the end of the day, we are here to train soldiers,” he said. “Managing the habitat for soldier readiness is one of the things we do, and … the deer are a huge driver on the quality of that habitat. Deer can overgraze or overpopulate. Tick-borne illness, vehicle-deer collisions, they all play a role in deer management.”
They also wanted to learn more about the local deer population, Hoffman said.
“How are the deer going to be impacted by fencing in the cantonment area?” he asked. (“Cantonment” is a term for the cluster of buildings on a military base.)
“We also wanted to get a better idea of our population,” Hoffman added. “We wanted to see the movement, we wanted to know where the deer were going. We wanted to identify areas that might be deer sanctuaries. … We wanted to see how our deer traveled off post and moved into other areas, how far they traveled. We wanted to know more about deer mortality – how long the deer live on our installation, and what some of the drivers are that are killing the deer.”
According to information provided to LebTown from the Integrated Natural Resource Management Plan, the primary goal of the base’s conservation office is to “provide for the best interests of the military training environment and the conservation environment and to balance between the two for maximum sustainability.” That includes outdoor recreation opportunities that provide “an effective, safe, and enjoyable environment for recreation in natural and urbanized settings on the installation while improving safety, habitat quality, and operational effectiveness.”
When the base made the decision to enclose at least a portion of the base with a perimeter fence, the plan says, personnel realized that “doing so will create new challenges for managing huntable wildlife in this area, specifically whitetailed deer.” The cantonment area is “considered a high priority management area and is well-known for harboring high deer densities,” the plan adds, noting that “overabundant deer present safety hazards, impact training activities, and adversely affect forest regeneration.”
To date, the deer population on the base has been managed through hunting under a deer management program as much as it is possible under “restrictive conditions” such as the small woodlot size and the military training schedule. “The main concerns are that the perimeter fence may create a significant change in the patterns of deer movement, increase available sanctuary areas, and reduce hunter access to a portion of the deer population,” the plan states.
The study of the base deer population began in 2019 and initially covered just the cantonment area, which is roughly 5,000 acres between Blue Mountain and Route 81, Hoffman said. After the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, researchers expanded the study area to include the training corridor, which is roughly 12,000 acres north of Blue Mountain and south of Second Mountain. Now, Hoffman said, the study covers “the full 17,000 acres of our installation.”
Deer were tagged and collared in 2019 and again in 2021, he noted. They tagged 61 deer on each occasion, Hoffman said, and provided 30 of the deer with GPS collars so they could be tracked in real time.
Already, Hoffman said, “we’ve learned a lot of things” about the local deer. For instance, he said, they learned in the first year of study that the resident deer population travels as far as 8 miles from the base. Later in the study, he added, they recorded deer going even further.
Also in the first year of study, he said, 17 of the tagged deer died, and their tags were returned. Personnel were able to note that, of those 17, two died “more or less of natural causes,” by which he means disease or predation, Hoffman said. Eight were killed by hunters, and seven were killed in vehicle collisions.
It’s fortunate the study continued beyond that first year, Hoffman said. That first year, he said, “We were like, ‘Holy crap, half our deer get hit by cars.’ … That was not what we expected.” Since then, however, the percentage of vehicle fatalities has decreased, accounting for only about 10 percent of deer harvesting.
They’ve also learned that bucks might travel up to 10 miles from their usual stomping grounds, while does are content to hang around a 100-acre area.
The study is winding down, although it technically won’t end until all remaining deer with tags or collars have died and the tags have been collected. The batteries on the collars have died, Hoffman noted, although two collars are still in the field because the automatic release mechanisms have failed. About a third of the tags are still unaccounted for.
Now, he said, researchers are hoping to get a better understanding of how long the local deer population is living and how far they are traveling from the base. One of the most surprising pieces of data so far, he said, is “the few number of deer that actually cross I-81.”
The fence being constructed around roughly 3,500 acres of the cantonment area will be finished after a new access control point is built on the eastern side of the installation, Hoffman said. Work will likely be completed in two to three years.
He doesn’t expect the fence will have much impact on deer movements, he added, noting that the National Cemetery has areas that are designated as wildlife sanctuaries. Deer also are thriving in small woodlots, riparian buffers along the creek, undeveloped slopes and a small pine plantation, he said. Hunting is allowed in some areas – only by people who have business on base, he stressed – if they aren’t too small or too close to buildings.
“For the most part, most of the areas within the base are areas where deer can be safe,” Hoffman said.
Prior to the study, he said, deer populations were identified mostly using infrared and aerial surveys, as well as spotlights at night. In areas inhabited by deer, he said, populations can range from 20 to 150 deer per square mile.
“These are all loose numbers, they change from year to year,” Hoffman said. However, he said, he would estimate that there are “1,000 to 2,000 deer at any one time on post.”
“We harvest roughly 300 deer a year, and we expect that is a fairly small part of the population,” he said.
Hoffman laughed when asked if researchers were naming the deer they are tracking.
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