Dead Deer

Wandering around in the Big Woods one morning I came upon the carcass of what had been a very nice white-tailed buck with eight points on his antlers. There wasn’t much left of him, just bones with some muscle and tendons attached, a few of the abdominal organs, his head (which was almost intact) and lower legs. It wasn’t an attractive sight, but was full of opportunities nonetheless.

After finding the deer’s remains, I looked through last year’s collection of photos from a camera trap that hadn’t been very far from where the buck spent his final moments. There was a photo taken in mid-September 2015 of a buck that was most likely the same animal –

The buck had probably been shot, and not retrieved, during deer season which ended about six weeks before I found his remains. During that time he had fed scavengers, from bacteria to much larger creatures, perhaps even a black bear.

While regretting that I hadn’t found the buck earlier, this was too good an opportunity to let pass. So it didn’t take long to return with a camera trap and set it overlooking the carcass –

In the first few days four crows repeatedly visited to feast on the remains; they were so active that the camera captured over 300 photographs of them in three days –

They were occasionally replaced by a red-tailed hawk that came to pick at the carcass –

After a light snow and just before dusk a coyote also visited, but apparently found the pickings rather slim as it hasn’t returned –

The next day a doe stopped and smelled the remains; she may be carrying fawns sired by the now dead buck -

On following days other species also came to nibble on the remaining tissue and bones, an opossum came on several days –

And a porcupine –

The smallest species that the camera could detect was the white-footed mouse that often ran over the carcass and was hard to see in the photos –

A raccoon also came several times -

On one visit the raccoon spent quite a while feeding on the dead deer -

Each day the camera captured over 100 photographs of the four crows and it appeared that only four crows were feeding there – were they the same four? Then one day there were five crows –

The camera trap will stay there for a while to see what else visits the carcass. Had I found it earlier the camera would probably have yielded more photos of the coyote, and maybe photos of a raven, fisher, black bear or bobcat and, if I had been really lucky, maybe a golden eagle. Oh well, life is full of “what ifs”.