Journal of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies

A study designed to determine the vegetative composition and production of that portion of Apalachee Bay, Florida, ,included within the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge was carried out in 1964. Gizzards and gullets of fourteen diving ducks were subsequently collected in order to correlate feeding activities with available foods. Greater scaup consumed large quantities of animal foods. Redheads consumed considerably more vegetative material than animal, and showed a predilection for shoalgrass. Shoalgrass contribituted 67.9 per cent of the total volume of all foods consumed by diving ducks. Turtlegrass and manateegrass, two other species which occur commonly in the bay, apparently are of little value as waterfowl foods in this area.

Five deer census methods are compared on the Central Peninsula deer herd in Eastern Tennessee. This insular herd is intensively managed and has several characteristics which make it worthy of population analysis. All census methods indicated similar population trends and differed only in magnitude. The Lincoln Index and Percent Kill Methods provided the most reliable estimates. The latter is the easiest to calculate. The Sex-age Kill Method will apparently give good herd estimates, if the percent of non-hunting losses can be approximated and allowance made for other problems. It shows promise of greater accuracy when existing biases and unknowns can be omitted. For the present time the Percent Kill Method seems to be the most practical for use on the typical management area in Tennessee. Identification of accurate and practical deer census methods continues to challenge herd managers in most of North America.

Preliminary data suggest that the fat content of the soft tissue in the cavity under the grinding teeth of the mandible might be a useful indicator of condition in deer. Seven physical characteristics were measured on 85 deer. Statistical treatment of these data suggest a strong relationship between the fat content of the mandibular cavity tissue and the condition of the deer. Three of the five best correlations were between mandibular cavity tissue fat and other characteristics related to condition. Simple means of mandibular cavity tissue fat separated out three condition classes of deer effectively. Further research on the subject is suggested.

Movements and homing instinct of transplanted European wild boar were studied on adjacent wildlife management areas in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee over a six-year period (1960-1965). Ninety-one wild boars were live-trapped within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, transferred to the game department representing the state within which they were captured, ear-tagged for subsequent identification, and released at distances ranging from 13 to 27 airline miles from the point of capture. Movements information was derived by (1) recovering tags and pertinent kill data from hunters, (2) retrapping, and (3) locating dead animals. Hunters reported tags from 26 (28.5 percent) of the transplanted wild boars during the study period. Hunter-killed boars had traveled airline distances of from one-half mile to approximately 14 miles from the release site and were killed at time intervals ranging from one day to over three years following the release date.

Wild sows are physiologically capable of farrowing during any season of the year. However, there are two main farrowing periods; mid-winter (January and February) and early summer (May and June). To determine the importance of the different farrowing periods and the most appropriate time to subject the species to hunting pressure, the year was divided into three periods: December-March, April-July, and August-November. Based on the percentage of sows killed on managed hunts which were pregnant, the December-March period has the highest natality and litters are larger during this same period. The April-July period is when hunting would be most damaging to herd productivity because most of the adult sows are either pregnant or suckling, and death of the sows means death to the fetuses or dependent pigs. Most of the hogs killed during the managed hunts were born in the April-July period, indicating higher mortality among winter born hogs.

During the past four winters an effort has been made to devise a satisfactory method of estimating the percent of young among the whistling swan population wintering in the Chesapeake Bay. Work to date indicates that this can be done by use of well distributed 35-mm. aerial color slides. Combining photography with direct visual appraisal was tried in the winter of 1965. The tentative conclusion from this was that use of aerial photos for large, densely packed flocks and visual appraisal for widely dispersed flocks would give accurate results at somewhat less expense than using the photographic method exclusively. In addition to percent young, average brood and family size can also be determined by these methods. It was also noted that the percent of "gray" birds observed decreases steadily throughout the winter. Data from the 1964 breeding season indicate that cygnets from the western areas have a higher mortality rate than those from eastern areas.

Twenty-eight deer were instrumented with radio transmitters in four Florida and Alabama habitats. Telemetric contact varied from a few hours to more than four months. Minimum home ranges of seven of these deer in their natural habitats ranged from 147 to 243 acres. This relative uniformity occurred despite considerable variation in habitat characteristics. Similarities among the habitats that might account for this uniformity were noted. Minimum home range major axes ranged from 0.76 to 2.23 miles in length with most being just less than one mile. Two semi-wild deer, when released in strange habitats, wandered over much larger areas (up to 10 times greater), but eventually established relatively small home ranges. Although major shifts in home range were not known to occur, in some instances the center of activity or "core area" changed in relation to seasonal food supply.