Bemidji State University study seeks to discover the secrets of urban deer life
Updated: 7:50 a.m.
In the early morning hours as most people prepare for the hustle and bustle of everyday life, wildlife biologist and Bemidji State University professor Jacob Haus sits in his office. He’s waiting for an update from a field crew to see if any of their traps have captured deer overnight.
Soon after joining BSU in 2019, Haus also joined the Bemidji Deer Management Committee. It coordinates the city’s special urban deer bow hunt. The hunt’s goal is to reduce collisions with vehicles, slow the spread of disease and to cut down on troublesome deer getting into gardens and bird feeders.
Haus says while conducting a survey for a fall program he noticed something interesting about deer densities within the city.
“They were at best staying the same, at worst they were slowly increasing over time,” he said.
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“So, I came in right away as a deer biologist, said, ‘I don't know if this hunt is doing what it’s supposed to be doing. But it’s not going to be easy to get at this without a major study looking at survival rates; movement rate; response to the hunt.’ So, I put in for a grant.”
In 2022, the Environment and Natural Resource Trust Fund awarded BSU about $400,000 for the study. Haus got to work.
“The goal was to try to understand the intricacies of how does a deer in an urban setting respond to, you know, a hunter in an area that it is used to seeing people?” he said. “But can it differentiate what’s hunting pressure versus what’s just normal human pressure? How does it respond to that? And is there a way we can maybe change how the hunt is managed to put deer in front of hunters a little bit more frequently?”
To study those questions Haus and his team hope to put GPS collars on 50-70 female deer. It will take two years for the study to be complete.
BSU graduate student Raena Kemna is helping lead the study.
“From January to March, we are hopeful to collar 25 to 35 does this year and again next year as well,” she said.
But why only does?
“They’re the population segment that’s going to control future population growth,” Haus said. “Just as an example if you have 50, adult females and 10 males you’re going to have the same number of fawns born the following year as if you had 50 females and 50 adult males.”
Kemna said they’re using two kinds of traps. The first is a 7-foot drop net suspended from poles above deer trails. Researchers watching from a blind 30-50 yards away can release the net as a deer passes underneath.
“The other type of trap is a Clover,” she said. “It’s your basic box trap, where they go in, they hit a tripwire and then the front end of that trap slides shut.”
Suddenly Haus gets an update from the field crew that there’s a deer in one of the Clover traps. Kemna and Haus grab their gear and head out.
Three technicians join them at the site. As they approach, they hear the doe’s distress call. It sounds like a cross between a sheep’s bleat and a mooing cow.
One technician enters the trap holding a blaze-orange mask.
“We’re going to try to get that mask over their face. And it’s like playing peekaboo with a little kid like that,” Haus said. “So, when they can’t see you, even if they can hear you, smell you, if they can’t see you, they calm down right away.”
Urban deer are more aggressive than their rural cousins, but today’s capture is particularly tough. It takes an extra technician to help put the mask on. The now-masked doe is sedated with xylazine. The researchers then wait a few moments for the drug to take effect.
After the deer calms down, they remove it from the trap and processing begins. They tag its ears, measure it and finally fasten a GPS collar around its neck. Each collar costs around $2,500. If for some reason the collar’s battery is damaged or dies the collar is designed to drop off.
Today’s deer is unusual because not only is it uncharacteristically aggressive, but it also shows signs that it has recovered from a broken leg. Haus said that if any deer’s injury is caused by one of their traps, they treat the animal before releasing it. However, if it looks like the injury was sustained before trapping no treatment is administered.
“It maybe sounds heartless,” Haus said. “But it’s a survival study.”
Haus said hunters encountering tagged deer in the wild shouldn’t be afraid to harvest it. The collar and ear tags are marked with Haus’ contact information and instructions on how to return the collars to him.
After the deer recovers from sedation it’s released. The trap is cleaned out, rebaited with corn and reset.
Haus says 32 other Minnesota municipalities conduct city hunts.
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Big Game Program leader Barbara Keller said BSU’s study will help build understanding of urban deer populations throughout Minnesota because not all cities and towns track them.
“Some towns might be having more problems than others in a given year just depending upon the different factors that affected deer populations and how diverse those are across our state,” she said. “But it’s certainly something that we’re always dealing with, issues with urban deer populations, so it’s always on our radar.”
The study is expected to be completed sometime in 2026.
Correction (Feb. 29, 2024): A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Raena Kemna’s affiliation with Bemidji State and the study. The story has been updated.