Richard A. Lancia

Hunting pressure can lead to drastic changes in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) behavior, though previous studies have focused mainly on females and juvenile males. Adult male white-tailed deer have not been studied in the context of hunting pressure since the advent of GPS technology. During 2006-2007, we deployed GPS collars on nine adult (≥2.5 years old) male white-tailed deer to examine changes in home range (95% fixed kernel) and core area (50% fixed kernel) size, shifts in home range and core area, movement, activity, and vulnerability to harvest during Maryland's two-week...

Catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) is a useful index of population density that is often applied to harvested populations. Because CPUE is an economical index and data collection is simple, we wanted to enhance the user-friendliness and accessibility of a tool for tracking deer population abundance by recoding an existing FORTRAN estimator to JMP scripting language (JSL). Using the revised CPUE-JMP method, we estimated an antlered white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) population on Chesapeake Farms, Maryland, from 1981-2006 to compare the performance of CPUE techniques in a short (one-...

To effectively manage a white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) population in an agricultural area, information regarding habitat use and selection is needed to aid in reducing crop damage. We gathered data on deer use of clover (Trifolium repens) and soybean (Glycine max [L.]) fields at Chesapeake Farms, Maryland. We surveyed soybean and clover fields to test the hypothesis that deer distribute themselves proportionally to availability of soybeans and clover fields. Clover patch height and mass were also measured to quantify the amount of use by deer. Deer density in clover fields was...

Population estimates of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) based on marking individuals and resighting them at later times require assumptions about observability that are rarely verified. Yet the accuracy of estimates depends on meeting the assumptions. At Remington Farms on the eastern shore of Maryland, we tested accuracy of mark-resight population estimates from the heterogeneity model (Mh) of the CAPTURE program against a known abundance of a marked subpopulation of the herd. We also tested the assumption of heterogeneous capture probabilities. We conducted evening road counts...

We investigated telemetry error using a dual yagi null-peak antenna system mounted on a pick-up truck. One-hundred transmitters were placed in known locations in forest and field habitats on the Remington Farms study area. Most (755 of 830) pairs of azimuths gave useable estimates of the transmitter location. The median error distance (distance from the estimated to known transmitter location) was 133m (N = 746, range = 2 - 1559 m). Error distance (ED) was closely related to 2 independent variables: the deviation of the intersection angle from 90° (DEY) and the mean distance from the...

Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) models for 5 bird species were tested with spatially-referenced habitat and frequency of use data using a computerized grid-cell mapping system (SYMAP) and the Statistical Analysis System (SAS). According to our spatial approach for testing, pine (Dendroica pinus) and prairie warbler (D. discolor) models performed well-better than those for eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) or red-cockaded (Picoides borealis) and pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus); however, the poor performance of the latter models was probably due more to the testing paradigm and/or...