- [Bret] What's it like to be a deer in Minnesota?

They face a lot of danger from predators like coyotes, wolves, and black bears and they have to be careful crossing roads.

Having the right amount of proper habitat is important to sustaining a healthy population of deer in the state.

Figuring out what that is rests on the shoulders of wildlife biologists with the Minnesota DNR.

(cool music) Today we're south of Sleepy Eye with a group of biologists who are searching for fawns.

They also have a specialist armed with a thermal drone giving them a huge advantage in finding the newborns hidden in the tall grass.

The thermal drone technology has revolutionized the way whitetail research is done.

In the past, you'd get 20 to 30 people to grid search a property looking for fawns.

It might take all day to find one or two animals using that method.

Now a crew of five to six can locate each fawn, take samples and measurements and be done within a couple of hours.

This research is funded by hunting licenses so being more efficient will allow for more research and data to help manage the deer herd in Minnesota.

All right, so the drones in the air.

I want to see what they're looking at and what that drone's doing exactly.

So what's your name?

- Brian Haroldson.

- Brian Haroldson.

What are we looking at right here?

- What we're showing here is some of the thermal properties.

This is just the color palette that displays the colors.

The hotter the temperature, the brighter the color.

So you'll get the bright yellows and the whites when we find a fawn.

And the cooler, the temperature, the darker the color.

So you'll get into the purples and the blues.

- We thought we got here pretty early today.

I mean we left at, well we left at 3:30 this morning and got down here kind of before sunrise.

You guys had already been here for a couple of hours.

- We start at 4:00 AM - 4:00 AM - Yes.

- So how many fawns have you already seen out here today?

- We've had eight thermal signatures.

We can't confirm them prior to enough daylight with the regular camera.

But based on the shape and the size of the image and the brightness, we're pretty confident that they're fawns.

And then once you get enough light, we use the standard camera to also confirm that they are indeed fawns.

So two of them we know are fawns.

- What else have you been seeing on here?

Other sorts of wildlife?

- So here, this is mostly in upland grass field.

So there are gonna be some upland birds perhaps some turkeys, certainly some pheasants.

In some wetter areas you'll see ducks, geese, nests, raccoons, just a variety of wildlife.

- [Researcher] There we go.

- Oh.

There's one walking next to it too.

Looks like something.

- Well this could be a bird, like a pheasant.

- Pretty small.

- Kind of tell the strut.

- Sure.

Love it.

- It looks pretty small.

Well, we'll confirm camera.

- Oh, a skunk.

- That's the first skunk we got.

- That's an amazing camera to be able to pick out and see that well at 200 feet like that.

And it wasn't a fawn, it wasn't a pheasant, it was a first skunk that they've gotten on camera this morning.

We're still looking.

I was gonna make a joke like that stinks but dad jokes.

Thank you very much.

I'll be here all week.

- Like, have you guys ever been skunked and I was meaning, you know, like not finding fawn in the field.

He was like, oh yeah, many times.

And then we run across one, that actual skunk.

- That would've been a way better joke than the one I came up with.

(gentle music) - So the beauty of this time of year is fawns don't really know anything other than just laying down and hiding.

They don't have a lot of scent.

So if they stay still, predators won't see them.

That's what makes it so easy for these guys.

Once they locate the fawns to be able to just go right up and do the collaring.

Now why the heck are they doing this collaring and how are they gonna do it?

Let's go check it out.

So there's two confirmed fawn sightings right out here.

We think they're twin fawns, so we're in a hurry to get out there right now to meet up with the research team that's out there doing the collaring.

And as we got closer here, we saw doe come busting out of the cover and we figured that was probably the mom and she came running and ripping across the road and that's obviously move away from humans but also to draw us away from where her fawns are hiding.

So we know they're up here.

We're gonna go meet the team and try to see these fawns this's gonna be cool.

(gentle music) Tyler Obermoller is with us.

You're kind of the project manager or lead or what would you say here?

- Yeah, yeah.

I work for the DNR as a wildlife biologist but I'm also going back for my PhD and doing this fawn survival research so.

- You've been doing this study for a couple years already?

- Yeah, well we started this study in 2019 where we brought the drone out and really tried to fine tune that method.

And then in 2020 we really started this study where we collared 75 fawns and monitoring for survival, cause of mortality, getting on the field a lot, doing a lot of habitat work and yeah, we're in for our second season now.

- At what point, like how much data do you need before you can start realizing trends or realizing some results?

- I mean ideally you'd have five to seven years of data.

This study, we're gonna do three years where we really should be able to get some nice trends, get some high sample sizes.

You know, 75 fawns per year is actually quite high.

Usually is around 40 to 50, so we're getting some really great sample sizes and we should be able to really figure out what's happening down here.

- And you got another one up here that we're gonna go check out?

- Yep.

Yeah, we'll walk up there.

We have a very accurate location from the drone so we actually use our phones to get in on that.

We'll go in there, the fawn will be laying down there, right there, they hardly ever move so we just put our hand on it.

First thing is we'll do is we'll put a cover over its eyes that tends to calm it down, reduces stress and allows us to better handle the animal and then we will first try to take blood.

So we got, we're done with the blood.

Now we'll start taking some body measurements.

- 98 6 for temp - One of the first worst things we'll take is we'll take the upper and lower body or neck measurements and that's just so we can get a good idea how we're doing with the collar circumference and how that'll fit throughout its age.

31 for chest.

Doing a total body measurement next, that's just a good indicator of survival.

70.

Did you get his sex yet?

- Nope.

- Nope.

- It's a male.

Umbilicus is not present.

- 1.9 for hook.

- Okay.

Get ready for body weight.

- The bag.

- Right hind is 25.

- Do you have the motion?

- Yep, I do.

- Right hind is 25.

- Yep.

- One of the last things we'll do is get a weight and then for that we'll get, we'll put the ear tag on it in the car and we're outta here.

3.74 - 3 not what?

- 3.74.

Ear tag we put in just in case we lose the collar we can potentially find it later whether if it was harvested by someone during the fall or we may just find it for a roadside kill or something like that, a vehicle collision kill.

Slide this expandable collar on.

Let everyone get out.

I'll release it.

These expandable collars are really nice because what they allow is they allow us to monitor this fawn all the way throughout birth until 18 months.

So each one of these has a bunch of folds on it and it expands as it grows so it's really great.

So that's a good capture and we'll ride outta here.

- [Bret] The collars are designed to fall off after two years.

The research team will recover the collars and download additional data.

So that went pretty well.

- Yeah, that went really well.

- How old do you think that fawn was then?

- Maybe three days old.

- Three days?

- Yep.

Yeah, it had a dry umbilicus, it was present.

So yeah, probably three days, less than five for sure.

- And how much did it weigh?

- 3.74 kilograms.

So we do kilograms, so eight pounds roughly.

- That's pretty common for that age.

- Yeah.

Yeah, we range, we caught a big one yesterday that was 7.6 kilograms.

So 15 pounds., a big one.

Probably the biggest one we've ever caught.

But then we're catching some there four pounds as well so.

- That big one, was it a buck?

- I can't remember if that was a male.

- Could you just keep me updated on its GPS?

- Yeah Yeah.

- Location at all times especially in about five years.

- That'd be great.

- How long will you do this for?

- So our goal is to get 80 collars out.

We have 36 plus, I think we have fours we have 40 out so far, so we're half done eight, nine days of total captures.

Yeah, so it's going really well.

- All right, let's go find another one.

- All right.

- [Bret] When the crew is done with a fawn, they'll leave a flag in its place.

That will allow them to come back in one to three days to monitor the habitat that the deer were using.

They also utilize that location to determine how far deer are dispersing.

And while most historical data has indicated that most home ranges are just a few miles, these collars are revealing some long distance travelers.

One of the things we've had happen that just happened recently is, you know, like I said we're monitoring for dispersals and we've just had 'em start going and we've had some really long dispersals.

So one that actually was captured around here, is a little bit north of here is almost all the way up by Laconia.

So it's almost, you know, traveled 70 miles and that's total path length cuz that's, you know that's the total distance from straight line distance.

You know, the entire path that that animal took is maybe 80, 90 miles, maybe more.

You know, it really navigated all the way past the Minnesota River and up all the way up there.

And we're not even sure if it's done moving yet.

So, we've modeled deer at a deer permit area limit.

So each deer permit area gets their allotted number of harvests.

So what we're trying to do there is see how far they're dispersing out of those deer permanent areas and that can help us better manage for a population in the future and set harvest limits.

So biologists will use data from this research to determine how many deer are in a certain area.

Those numbers can then affect the harvest goals for deer hunters.

(gentle music) - There it is.

(gentle music) - All right.

Let's head to the next one.

- So right up there, the drone is that drone just hovering over it right now you think?

Are they looking at it or are they... - [Researcher] Over a new one.

- Might be over a new one.

We got another confirmed fawn sighting and we're gonna head there right now.

Sounds like we're about 50 feet away from one of these fawns and there's two of them out here.

So we should be able to see some little deer babies here pretty soon.

Once again, the team sprung into action and quickly got the data needed for this research project.

The collars that they're putting on cost between 4 and $500 a piece.

They record the animal's location six times per day allowing the research team to track the movements of these fawns.

They'll know what habitat's being used and that will help them make management decisions down the line.

- Once again, we have these collars are on for 18 months.

We're getting that dispersal at 12 months, seeing how far they're moving with their selecting new ranges where they're going.

And also 18 months during that fall dispersal when those larger males are kicking those yielding bucks off to new home ranges.

- A lot of coyotes around here?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So that is the main cause of mortality we've had in the first year and we expect that to continue this year.

And that's one of the things that we're really interested in, in kinda expanding on that, you know we know that coyote mortality is really important in this range, but we want to learn more and that's why we're taking body measurements, blood so we can look at some predisposing factors that may be causing mortality or making them more susceptible to coyotes predation.

And that's including habitat too.

You know, we're taking habitat at each one of these capture sites.

We're taking 'em at the mortality sites and trying to learn more about where they're being predated upon.

- Have you collared some and then found them dead pretty recently?

- Yeah, so we collared one just three days ago and yesterday we had a coyote kill.

You know, one of the reasons why we really started or wanted to conduct a research down here is because we haven't conducted a study like this in 20 years down in this area.

20 years ago there was a lot, you know the landscape is a lot different.

The coyote population was a lot different so we really didn't know a lot.

And so we were really interested in just getting a really better idea of coyotes mortality and exactly how they're moving across the landscape so we can better inform our deer population model going forward.

- And we need better fur prices I think is what we're gonna find out.

- Yeah, there you go.

- [Narrator] In the spring of 2022, the DNR captured 91 fawn over 9 days at the end of May.

43 of those fawns died.

34 of those were killed by coyotes, 3 got hit by cars, 3 were hunter harvests and 3 were health related.

This research will continue into 2023 with a capture goal of 100 fawns.

The more biologists know about wildlife and the habitat they use the better the wildlife's gonna do.

And with a healthier deer herd in Minnesota it will increase opportunities for deer hunters across the state.