Running a photo census. I'm counting all of the bucks, does and fawns in pictures to get sex ratio and fawn recruitment. Also identifying all of the unique bucks to get buck age structure an antler growth. So every image has to be gone through twice: once to count the deer and a second time to identify each buck in each photo.
On my census for my own property, all video. For clients doing baited censuses, just still images.
You can't. That's why identifying the unique bucks is so important. Although you're making the assumption that each doe or fawn is being repeat photographed about the same number of times as the bucks are (which may or may not be true), at least you are using the same methodology each year, so the trends in data should be statistically valid. But you take the total number of buck photographs, divide that by the number of unique bucks, and you get an average repeat photograph rate. You can then the divide the total number of doe and fawn pictures by the average repeat photograph rate to get an estimated number of unique does and unique fawns. For example, if you have 200 bucks in photographs, but all of those buck photographs actually only contain 10 unique bucks, then on average, each buck is being repeat photographed 20 times. You can then divide the total number of does in photographs and fawns in photographs by that repeat photograph rate (20) to get a calculated number of unique does and unique fawns.
The spikes aren't the problem. It's the 48 8-pointers that are the problem!You must use some data base program or spreadsheet to keep up. That's real work. Good luck figuring out those spike bucks.
The data is used for assessing herd dynamics and tracking them over time. This can highlight management adjustments that are needed. What is the adult sex ratio over time versus the doe harvest? If sex ratio is skewed too far towards does, then a higher doe harvest is needed. However, these days, it's often the opposite. The adult sex ratio is well withing acceptable limits, so perhaps it's finally time to back off the doe kill a bit.
Ames had a young researcher who gathered buck data from 125 cameras placed over scrapes attempting to identify individual bucks and their travel patterns. I wonder if he was able to make any sense of the data. I never saw his results but I could empathize with the amount of work required. Best of luck!
For my own property, while running a season-long census, I keep very meticulus records. I'm using these to conduct two research projects. The first is looking at the time bucks are moving and getting their pictures taken. My data set for this project is now 3,492 camera triggers by bucks at all types of camera locations. I'm looking at the hour of the day/night these occur, based on the buck's age. The second research project is looking at times and especially behavior of bucks at scrapes. I'm recording whether the buck worked the overhanging limb, worked the scrape (pawed it out), and whether the buck urinated in the scrape. And again, I'm looking at this data by age. Turns out Miss State did this exact study as well, and my data matches theirs. Because the scrape behavior study requires video to catch specific behaviors, and I've only been using video for three years, my data set for this study is smaller, yet still includes 667 unique scrape visits.
Absolutely correct. First cut was about 30 acres. Second cut 20. Hurricane damage and third cut was 110 acres.
That's my personal property - 500 acres. The numbers can get so high because we're concentrating all of the deer during the fall from thousands of acres of surrounding ag land that is wiped clean of cover after harvest.
