UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Preliminary information from the second year of a three-year male deer dispersal study being done by Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences has researchers thinking that some young bucks may be mama's boys.

Approximately 300 young male deer have been radio-collared to date, and this year seven were fitted with GPS (global positioning system) collars that allow researchers to track their movements almost constantly. The collars are programmed to automatically release from the animals on Jan. 31, 2004 so researchers can retrieve them and download data.

The GPS collars communicate with satellites and are programmed to send the deer's location to an onboard computer in the collar. The collars were programmed to download a location every two and a half hours this fall. Recently, two collars were recovered from bucks that didn't survive -- one was legally killed by an archer in Centre County -- and the data retrieved have researchers scratching their heads.

Duane Diefenbach, adjunct assistant professor of wildlife who is overseeing the research, and other experts were aware that male deer must disperse to prevent them from breeding with their sisters and protect the integrity of the herd's gene pool, but beyond that not much was known. The studies have shown that most young bucks leave their mothers and their natal range as yearlings, and most travel five to 15 miles before they establish a new home territory.

"But the two GPS collars we recovered gave us information we didn't expect," says Eric Long, research assistant and graduate student in ecology. "Both were bucks that had not dispersed from their natal ranges, but they had taken three-mile trips and returned. We never expected to see bucks travel six miles in a 24-hour period, and one buck had done it three times." These journeys took place at the same time that other yearling bucks were dispersing from their natal ranges and not returning, notes Long, a Pennsylvania native who earned undergraduate and master's degrees in biology from Wheaton College in Illinois and the University of North Dakota, respectively. "So it looks like they set out to find a new home range, didn't like what they found and came back," he says. "They didn't stay long, so whatever it was they didn't like must have been immediately apparent. One of the things we are thinking is that some bucks go out and explore a little bit before they set up their new home range."

These "exploratory movements" had never before been documented in Pennsylvania deer and apparently were unrelated to breeding activity because they occurred in the spring. "If they were looking for does, it would have occurred in the fall," Long explains. "I'm eager to recover the other collars in January and download the data to see exactly when, where and how they got from point A to point B. We may never know why these two bucks decided to turn around, whether it was just home-sickness or if they encountered a dominant animal that chased them away.

"It is surprising," he continues, "because as hunters we have always been told that Pennsylvania white-tailed deer are born and die in little more than a square-mile area. But that is turning out not to be true."

This research is a collaboration among the Pennsylvania Game Commission, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit housed in the College of Agricultural Sciences. The effort is part of a larger project to evaluate Pennsylvania's new buck harvest regulations. By the conclusion of the study, researchers and deer managers will have a better understanding of the movements of yearling, two-year-old and three-year-old deer.

"As the number of older bucks in the population increases under these new harvest regulations," says Diefenbach, "we will be anxious to share this information with sportsmen, as their hunting strategies likely will need to change in response to changes in buck behavior. We anticipate the behavior of younger males will change in response to the greater number of older bucks in the population.

"After this three-year study we are going to have detailed movement information on yearling, two-year-old, and three-year-old deer," he adds. "These GPS collars are providing information on how and when yearlings arrive at their adult home range. The same techniques are being applied to two- and three-year-old adults to track their movements during the breeding season."

Pennsylvania Game Commission spokesman Jerry Feaser points out that the research has had four objectives from the outset. "We want to determine the survival of bucks from six months to 30 months of age, monitor movements of bucks from six months to 30 months of age, monitor changes in male age structure because of antler restrictions and evaluate hunter satisfaction with antler restrictions," Feaser says. Anyone looking for more information can visit the link to the buck study on the Game Commission's Web site at http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/wildlife/deer/antlered/index.asp.

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EDITORS: Contact Eric Long at 814-865-3972 or by e-mail at esl140@psu.edu.

Contact:

Jeff Mulhollem jjm29@psu.edu 814-863-2719 814-863-9877 fax #284