Thursday, February 4, 2016

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”.
 

6 comments:

  1. This is amazing how many critters that deer is feeding. Great thinking to put the camera overlooking the site.

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  2. Wow, amazing series of images. I lot of critters were fed well. Thank you for linking up and sharing your post. Have a happy weekend!

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  3. You definitely took advantage of a sad situation. Alas, that's the cycle of nature.

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  4. Sad for the deer. But such a great opportunity to capture so many critters on your camera!

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  5. Wow, nothing got wasted,nature supplies all,phyllis

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