Caught on camera
Hunters are being asked by the province to report what they see on trail cams to help keep tabs on deer and bears
The Department of Natural Resources is four years into a project to use trail camera information to help determine the size and health of the province’s deer and bear populations, but says it needs more public input.
The department wants hunters and other people who have trail cameras to report what they see on their cameras between Sept. 1 and Dec. 10.
Hunters use the motion-activated cameras to track game movement, but some people also use them for monitoring their properties.
Natural Resources already uses things like deer pellet surveys, harvest information provided by deer hunters and examinations of deer jawbones, but wants to get more data.
Emma Vost, a large-mammal specialist with the department, said trail camera information can help show such things as how many fawns and bear cubs there are, how fast the deer population is growing and in what part of the province bears and deer are thriving.
She said the information can be particularly helpful with bears.
With deer, biologists monitor droppings and do surveys in the winter when the deer are active and making trails. But with bears hibernating in the winter, the same methods don’t work.
“Bears are also more elusive,” she said. “So all we can really go on is hunter data and nuisance wildlife complaints.”
She said the department doesn’t have much information on how many cubs are born to sows, or how many survive to their second year, when they’re kicked out of the den.
She said the deer herd is currently estimated at between 35,000 and 45,000, “but we just don’t have an estimate for bears at this point.”
She said that’s why the trail camera survey is so important.
The first year of the program was a pilot year, and in the second year 250 surveys were filled out. But that number dropped to 125 in 2016. She said because the provinces are divided into 12 management zones, 125 surveys “is just not enough data to make conclusions.”
Everyone who submits a completed trail camera survey form before Dec. 10 will have a chance to win a high-quality trail camera, and can submit one photo that could also win them a camera.
Survey information must be from trail camera photographs taken before Dec. 10. More information is available at www.novascotia.ca/natr/hunt/trailsurvey.