Presentation on the "Marlborough Forest Deer Project" - Sept. 20, 2018 - Ottawa area

I received an email from the OFAH last week notifying me of a presentation on the "Marlborough Forest Deer Project" this Thursday, Sept. 20 at the Alfred Taylor Recreation Centre in North Gower (south of Ottawa). Doors open at 6:00 p.m. and the presentation starts at 7:00 p.m.

I remember reading about this study and seeing signs in and around the Marlborough forest. There are a few presentations with partial findings available on the internet.

It should be an interesting presentation for anyone who wants to learn more about deer biology/behavior. I'm going to try to attend - is anybody else from the forum going to be there?

I have it in my calendar to attend but it's also open house night at my sons school. If I get out of there in time I will be going.

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Originally Posted by Ottawa_Rob

I have it in my calendar to attend but it's also open house night at my sons school. If I get out of there in time I will be going.

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That'll make 2 Ottawa Robs in attendance.

Just seen this (off two days for heart testing), did anyone go? My fear is another back door attempt to ban based on this study.

I went. No need to be paranoid about banning of anything. The presenter is a wildlife biologist with the OFAH who presented data collected for his Ph.D work. He collected an incredible amount of data and I got the impression that the data could be further analysed to gain additional insight into the behaviour of whitetail deer and other game animals. It was a very interesting.
I didn't take written notes unfortunately, but some things that I remember are that his research confirmed that deer in heavily hunted areas quickly go almost completely nocturnal as soon as hunting pressure starts. This is in contrast to deer in areas with a lot of human activity but no hunting pressure, where the deer kept appearing at all hours of the day. His study revealed that the deer in the pressured area only ate at his bait stations something like 12% of the time during daylight hours, whereas they did so 40% of the time in the non-pressured area. This was based on a trail camera study in the Marlborough forest compared to an identical study (during the same period) in the Stony Swamp. One thing that I found amusing was that he had major issues with trail camera theft in the Stony Swamp (non-hunters) but not in the Marlborough forest (mostly hunters)!
Some other interesting findings:
- of the 105 deer that they attached collars to, only 3% were killed by vehicle collisions whereas 20% were killed by hunters and another 20% were killed by coyotes. This was presented as preliminary or anecdotal findings rather than statistically significant findings because the study design was not robust enough to conclusively evaluate this.
- deer in the Marlborough forest area migrate on average about 10 km between their winter and summer ranges. One deer migrated 22 km regularly. Some deer went on what he called "excursions" where they traveled a significant distance outside of their home ranges during the summer. One deer went on a 80 km loop in the middle of the summer for an unknown reason. The deer home ranges are roughly 650 acres.
Anyway, it was a worthwhile event to attend. I'll be keeping an eye out for his publications etc. because there is so much useful information coming out of his work.

Thank you rf2 for the great feed back, it was well attended and very informative for sure. Thanx for posting on this page, something I do at times ... old age I guess:whacked:. I probably greeted you coming through the door, (ticket guy) . I added some pic's on the zone face book page and linked them on the Zone web page. https://www.facebook.com/groups/3932...?ref=bookmarks

I attended as well. Great event and well organized - thanks to those who put in the effort to make it happen.