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Luke Resop, a graduate student in the Mississippi state’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture, reassured this white-tailed deer and hooded it so it could put a GPS radio collar on it. This deer is an example of one with a mobile personality. After his capture in Mississippi in December 2020, he traveled 18 miles to Louisiana and crossed the Mississippi River. He came back to Mississippi a few weeks ago. (Photo submitted)
STARKVILLE, Miss. — As the Mississippi Hunters wonder where all the money went, scientists at Mississippi State University’s Deer Lab search for answers.
White-tailed deer hunting is big business in Magnolia State, contributing nearly $ 1 billion to the Mississippi economy annually. This time-honored tradition is why hunters and explorers look out for the elusive, consecrated mammal. In recent years, a significant number of bucks have appeared to be disappearing from their preferred homes, only to return when the hunting season is over.
This migratory behavior raised questions among hunters, researchers at the MSU Deer Lab, and biologists in the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. Steve Demarais, a renowned deer ecology expert and Taylor Chair in Applied Big Game Research and Instruction at MSU Forest and Wildlife Research Center, took up the question to learn about the recent movements of bucks along the Big Black River in Madison and Yazoo Counties.
Demarais and a team of graduate students from MSU’s College of Forest Resources tried to understand the mobile and sedentary habits of various mice. After first catching 92 bucks and equipping them with tracking collars, the researchers obtained significant movement data from 45 deer moving along the Big Black River.
“We documented large movements in the deer, which resulted in fascinating patterns in the deer that we captured with a collar,” said Demarais. “When we analyzed the annual home area, we found two movement patterns, one is a sedentary personality and one is a mobile personality.”
Previous research on adult male white-tailed deer in the south suggests that most inhabit a single territory, generally around 1,000 acres. This makes sense because mild winters in the south do not force the deer to relocate, as is the case in the northern mountain ranges. However, research by Demarais and his team found that up to 30 percent of the bucks like to travel and have at least two home ranges.
The sedentary deer live mostly in a home area, with a few short trips outside of their preferred habitat. The mobile deer move between two or more different territories over time. The team tried to quantify the percentage of deer that are “pets” or “travelers”.
Luke Resop, a master’s student in the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Aquaculture at MSU, stated that his research focuses on analyzing data collected from the GPS-equipped collars to make a mobile personality objectively from a sedentary one Distinguish deer.
“The point of such scientific research is to better understand the behavior of white-tailed deer,” said Resop. “Compared to previous research and the differences our team found, we can see that deer have personalities and are unique in their behavior, life and survival.”
Through his analysis, Resop found that while money falls neatly into one of the two personality categories, there are still many variations. For example, one sedentary buck had an annual hunting ground of 116 acres while another pushed 1,300 acres. Conversely, some seasonal mobile dollar home ranges are only half a mile apart, while the most extreme mobile personality bucks’ seasonal home ranges are 18 miles apart.
“Despite the lack of environmental pressure that would require the deer to be relocated, we found that 30 percent of the adult bucks we examined have multiple territories,” said Resop. “These white-tailed deer show migratory behavior that was historically believed to be isolated from deer in the north. Other studies on white-tailed deer have not documented such movements, so let’s try to find out what is different about these deer in the south. “
As a result of research funded by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, Demarais and Resop have answered some hunters’ questions about the disappearance of bucks, adding to current knowledge about white-tailed deer. The team has just started another project in the South Delta, similar to the research done on the Big Black River, and is already realizing that mobile personalities on the Big Black River are not limited to money. One buck exhibited a very agile personality as it swam the Mississippi, spent spring and early summer in Louisiana, and then returned to the South Delta in August. It appears that these movements are more common than historically believed.
As one of the leading deer research units in the United States, the MSU Deer Lab includes scientists and graduate students from the MSU College of Forest Resources, Forest and Wildlife Research Center and Extension Service. These scientists address management issues of regional and national importance with the aim of better understanding deer ecology in order to make management decisions.
Learn more about the MSU Deer Lab and listen to Deer University podcasts at www.msudeer.msstate.edu. For more information on the College of Forest Resources, visit www.cfr.msstate.edu; Forest and Wildlife Research Center, www.fwrc.msstate.edu.
The MSU is the premier university in Mississippi, available online at www.msstate.edu.
