EDI Staging Environment
From 1962-2008, White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) were studied at the SUNY ESF Huntington Wildlife Forest (HWF) and adjacent private and public lands in Essex and Hamilton Counties, New York, USA. Social group membership, migration and dispersal, reproductive biology, and many other objectives were studied over the course of the study period. Deer were captured, individually marked with ear tags or streamers, fitted with radio collars (later, GPS collars), and released to be tracked for a variety of research objectives. Deer were located by visual observation, recapture, and/or their location was estimated with ground, air or tower-based radio telemetry. Physical condition of deer was recorded at capture and at subsequent recapture or visual observation select variables were documented (e.g., deer group size; presence of fawns with does). Physiological, demographic, social organization, home range and behavior data were collected. HWF is a no-hunting area but deer could be harvested if they moved to huntable parts of the study area; there was a managed hunt on HWF in 1966-1970 and in 1984 to meet deer density and forest management objectives at that time. Unmarked deer were incorporated into the dataset if they were roadkilled, harvested or otherwise encountered during field activity; these deer did not receive individual identifications but may have been incorporated into select projects.
