From the Field: Elk Check Station

good afternoon everybody thank you for joining us today connecting with the pennsylvania game commission my name is lori and i will be managing this session today i just want to make sure that everyone can hear us so on the right of your screen you should see a go to webinar panel and down towards the bottom there's a questions tab if you could just drop me a note that you are able to hear that would be fabulous good looks like some of you are able to hear awesome so we're fortunate to be joined today by game commission wildlife education specialist mandy marconi and elk biologist jeremy banfield they will be sharing with us the details of what happens at the elk check station during pennsylvania's annual elk hunt we're shooting to keep the session within your lunch break we expect it to last about 30 minutes if you have to step out that's okay the session is being recorded and everyone will be emailed a link to the recording the recording will also get uploaded to the game commission's youtube channel later this week and let's see so i think that's all of the housekeeping out of the way and mandy jeremy i think i'm going to turn it over to you would you like to share a little bit about your work with the agency before we get started yup hey lori this is jeremy banfield so lori already said it but i'm the elk biologist for the game commission which a good question that always follows that up is what do you actually do in a nutshell i am responsible for the population management the habitat and kind of the people elk interaction as well i've been with the agency since 2013 just over eight years now and i probably have the best job in the game commission in my opinion it's not without challenges but i certainly do enjoy my job and uh i'm happy to be here you know to talk about all this stuff for the check station today [Music] all right thank you jeremy hi lori thank you for having us and hello to everyone watching we are very excited to have you on here as laurie mentioned i serve as the north central environmental education specialist and i conduct outreach throughout our north central region this presentation is the fourth episode of our from the field series which aims to give you a feel for being in the field with people from the game commission as wildlife professionals and it's brought to you by wildlife on wi-fi the game commission's platform for remote learning and virtual lessons before we begin i want to provide a warning that this webinar will contain graphic content viewer discretion is advised while the check station provides important information to enhance elk management it may be difficult for some viewers to watch the viewer is likely to see all aspects of the check station including but not limited to harvested or deceased elk and biological blood and tissue samples taken so with all that being said lori we can begin playing the video when you're ready all right here we go we're here at the elk check station on day number two it's one of the busiest days of the elk track station and it's not quite open yet so i'm just going to give us a look around while everyone's getting organized and getting set up [Music] this is just the crane that they use to weigh the elk it looks like some successful elk hunters are arriving so again i'll just give us a peek around the station until jeremy has a moment to tell us what he's got going on here and what the elf check station is all about all right the elk are starting to get checked in [Music] they're talking with the hunters and they're taking some samples as you can see we have several uh successful elk hunters in line and jeremy's going to be speaking with us in just a moment hey folks uh welcome back to another episode of from the field we're here at the elk country visitor center today this is where we're doing the uh the annual elk check station for the general hunting season um how this works is every hunter that takes an elk has to come through the check station within 24 hours so it's a similar regulation to like the bear season for example and what they're doing when they're coming through here is it gives us a really good opportunity to collect a whole bunch of biological samples in a really short time frame so as the animals are coming through we're pulling first and one of our biggest priorities is a chronic wasting disease sample so a cwd sample on the cows most of them are not going to be mounted with a shoulder mount so we're able to take the sample right here for the bulls a lot of times the the hunters want to shoulder mount those and how we we get around that uh where we can still get our sample and they can still get their mount is we'll give them a cooler and uh in the cooler there's a prepaid mailer and how it works is the taxidermist will cape that animal out take the antlers off and then plop the remainder of the head back in the cooler and then it gets shipped directly back to us so that way we still get our sample they still get their mount and we get about 99 of the samples every year there might be one that gets lost somewhere in translation but for the most part we get a lot of those samples that way i should throw out there right now that all of our animals all of our elk have been cwd negative or not detected up to this point some of the other samples that we take is a blood sample so we ask the hunters to bring in a blood sample that they collect while they're field dressing the animals they just scoop that blood sample out of the body cavity it comes in here we actually transfer it over to a blood tube and we spin it down and then it gets sent off for testing on cows it's tested for pregnancy on bulls bulls and cows actually it's tested for uh brucellosis as well so in addition to the the blood sample uh we're also taking on the cows we're asking the hunters to bring in a uterus sample that's also used for pregnancy it's kind of the gold standard and that's being compared to the blood sample later on for the bulls we're asking the hunters to bring in the scrotum and then here at the check station we're actually removing the testes from the scrotum those are then being overnight shipped to texas a m university where the the sperm quality is being tested and when i say quality i mean different measures of motility and viability but quality overall for the sperm sample so some of the other samples that we pull is we take a tooth and we take one of the central incisors from the bottom jaw and uh that's actually sliced microscopic thin stained and put on a slide and then under a microscope it looks like almost like the rings in a tree so with every layer of i'm sorry with every year of age a layer of cementum is added to the tooth and you can kind of just count those up the same way that you would count rings in a tree it's just it's done under a microscope and that gives us the age of the animals and then we do a weight as well as an index of health one of the last samples that we're taking specifically on the cows is also a measure of rump fat so if you've ever harvested a whitetail deer you might notice that there's that thick layer of fat across the rump same thing on elk and then when they're coming through the check station we're able to measure that while we're here so we're making an incision across the rump and then measuring that fat thickness from the top of the muscle to the bottom of the skin so the check station for the general season first part of november here is done here at the elk country visitor center that season has a lot more tags in it and so it's much more efficient for us to do it here for the early season the early archery season in the last part of september we still do a check station it's just much smaller scale because there's a fewer number of tags in those seasons and we do that on one of our at one of our buildings close by to here and then the same thing for the the late cow season as well means we're still doing a check station we're still pulling all the same samples we're just doing it at a different location again because it's a smaller pool of hunters so when the hunters come in here for the general um general season check station uh they have to bring in um the head and that acts as proof of sex and then we can also get our cwd sample from it but the animals don't have to come in whole so they can come in cut up as long as they have the head um they're also bringing in a um a blood sample and then for the cows they're bringing in the uterus for the bulls they're bringing in the scrotum as well uh you know that's really all we need uh if they do cut them up we can't get a weight off of it obviously so 90 of the hunters still bring them in hole because they're interested in getting the weight so who we've got here with us today it's mostly game commission employees um we do have a couple of our partners here with us today so we have a one person from the keystone hill country alliance helping out and then we also have somebody from pen pen vet who is a she's actually employed by the university of pennsylvania but they are also one of our partners in a wildlife futures program yeah you know earlier i said that we you know we're able to get a large number of samples in a short time frame and really what i'm getting at there is that um this is a six day season it's relatively short and all the animals have to come through here in that six day season so we're able to process them in a relatively short time frame and and the important part about that is they're coming from all parts of the elk range so when we divvy out tags each hunter is assigned a specific sex so either a bowler or cow and then they're also assigned to a specific hunt zone and the tags are spread out across all the hunt zones across the whole elk management area and so all of those samples are coming from the entire population so it ends up being a representative sample from the population so when they're when the hunters are coming through here uh it takes maybe 10 to 15 minutes to do one animal uh that's a lot longer than the bear check station bear check stations it's typically just a tooth and then some quick questions because we're taking so many samples because we've got some additional questions for the hunters as well it can take about 10 to 15 minutes so we tend to get a line on mondays and tuesdays of the season the early part of the season and then it trickles off later on in the week it takes time to get the results back obviously you know when we're doing the cwd samples for example um the the the tissues that we're testing for cwd are collected here at the check station we're not actually looking at the the tissues here they're collected here they're then sent off to a laboratory and they're the ones that are actually doing the testing that can take anywhere from four to six weeks it depends on the volume that that lab is currently experiencing but once those results are received we actually sent a letter to all the hunters as well so they know whether their animal was was negative or positive again all of our elk uh to date have been negative or not detected for chronic wasting disease the check station is open to the public um we tend to kind of fence our area off a little bit just because we've got to you know we've got to work so we we close off a little bit of the area where we're actually working but people can come in they can see the animals wade um they can observe the kind of the testing procedures uh they can interact with the hunters things like that and then it's the check station is open every day of the season from 10 to 6. okay so i talked a little bit earlier about the different samples that we're collecting um you know everything kind of has it's a little bit like an assembly line everybody has their their role and everything has a certain um storage container so uh we're taking a small piece of tongue that's actually used for dna sampling that goes into ethanol where it can be frozen later on the tooth sample gets put into a paper envelope that way it can dry properly later on cwd samples end up going into a vial of formalin and that basically is the preservative for the the cwd sample the hunters are given a seal so a legal seal goes on to the animal that basically says they've been through the check station they also get a certificate as well um the blood let's do the blood quick oh i don't have any here we go okay okay so the blood samples are put into a centrifuge basically that spins them down and this is what we call a serum separator tube the platelets in the blood sample will cycle to the bottom and then all of this piece is the the serum itself and that's what's used for testing and this can then be refrigerated and stored long term and that's really about it i mean we've got some cleaning supplies water for cleaning um you know that's kind of everything now we're going to look at how the weight is calculated as the elk is lifted on the crane the scale on the meter reads the weight in kilograms so this particular bull elk is weighing in at 267.5 kilograms dressed and now he's going to convert kilograms to pounds so the weight of this bull is 588.5 pounds dressed and now he's going to calculate the live weight by multiplying by 1.3 and the live weight on this bull elk is 765 pounds here's a quick look at that 765 pound bull elk we're just looking at some more of the behind the scenes as the hunters bring their elk through the check station [Applause] i drop off which is the way it's supposed to work but it's great when it actually works that way all right thank you thank you samples are being collected from the elk while the hunter is providing information to the game commission about his harvest how do you feel about being drawn for a blue okay in pennsylvania well i know how many people put in and uh i know how many tags there are so super lucky i want to thank jeremy for providing us a behind-the-scenes look at the elk check station and i want to thank all of you for tuning in to another episode of from the field all right let's see here just want to make sure everybody can hear us again and you guys can type your questions into that question panel on the right or the question tab tab on the right and um i do have one question here from raymond jeremy mandy can you guys hear me yep awesome okay so raymond has a question did the warm weather uh adversely impact the elf harvest we saw you guys in t-shirts yeah yeah so monday was like bitterly cold crazy wind um you know and and a taste of winter to come and then every day after that tuesday through saturday was really pretty nice and the temperature got warmer as the week went on um i don't think so so uh overall success rate on the the bulls was a hundred percent doesn't get any better than that obviously um cows was about 70 that's a little bit lower than years past so the long-term average would be like 74 but it's ranged anywhere from 65 up to 85. so um you know a few more people were unsuccessful on cows than what i expected you know given that um that average success rate but i'm not sure how much the weather actually played into that um obviously elk are i shouldn't say obviously just for everybody listening elk are crepuscular so they're active during dawn and dusk and um in the heat of the day you know 2 p.m things like that 12 p.m 2 p.m when it's the warmest part of the day they're generally bedded down and not visible but most of the hunters know that they're going to be out there at the same periods that the elk are active in in the early morning and evening hours as well so i guess the the best answer i can say that is i don't think it had a huge effect on the hunting success but it could have all right thanks next question comes from david and he is asking about the ivories in a cow as opposed to a bull um anything specific there or i can i see the chat maybe i can um specifically is there a difference between the the two is that what the question is or is it not say oh he says is that ivory worthwhile in a cow so i think yes that he's asking if there's a difference between the ivories and a cow and a bowl yeah um yeah so um hardly any difference whatsoever bulls are obviously going to be slightly larger but not by much um but no they are virtually the same and um yes every hunter that comes through the check station we we have to pull a tooth for the age and nobody cares as long as it's not the ivory so yeah they're highly coveted a lot of people make them into jewelry and they're basically the same between the bulls and the cows again slight difference in size uh but that's a little more controlled by age than anything else so a yearling cow is going to have a much smaller ivory than like an adult cow and same thing for bowls yearling bowls going to be a lot smaller than an adult bowl but in general they're the same excellent uh here we go with another one is the late season goal to harvest the oldest cows um no not necessarily the the late season is um it is designed obviously to reduce populations in certain areas of what i would call uh high conflict so areas that elk tend to get into trouble with people more um that's really the goal of that season it's it's not age specific most hunters will pass up a calf right so they recognize a calf and they're going to target probably what i would say is an adult it's very difficult to tell the difference between a yearling and an adult cow but in general the the distribution of ages ranges from about three to about 10 and uh once you get past age 10 the you know the number of animals in that age class is is markedly lower so again the the distribution of ages across you know cow harvest is generally between three and ten thanks so i know we have um a couple different elk seasons there's an archery season and the check station isn't open for all of that so what happens to the elk that are harvested outside of the main firearm season yep so we we do actually have check stations for the other seasons they're just not as publicized and um i guess technically they'd be open to the public uh we don't necessarily close them but we just do them in a different way like we do them at our one of our um maintenance buildings which is uh just up the road from the visitor center on gamelan's 311 which is on winslow hill and it's just a smaller number of tags right so the the early archery season uh and the late cow season both have a much lower number of tags compared to the the general season so um the biggest draw is obviously the general season when the most elk are coming through but we do have a check station for the other seasons it's just you know not as publicized and um it has a there's fewer tags in those seasons gotcha that makes sense so do the hunters receive the test results you guys take a lot of samples do the hunters get to find out the age of the elk that they harvested and um results from the other samples that you take yep um so we generally send letters to for cwd yes of course um the cwd chronic wasting disease results will take anywhere from about six to eight weeks depending on the volume that the lab has currently but as soon as we get those back we send a certified letter to everybody letting them know um uh the results of that again all of our results to date have been negative or not detected for cwd in elk uh so the hunters obviously get that the age information they also get that one takes a long time um there is like one laboratory in the entire united states that does aging and so they just get inundated um i always tell the hunters that just forget about it and then poof one day in the mail it'll show up but it's usually like you know april or may by the time that the results for that actually come back but we do let them know about that as well and um the only thing that we don't generally let them know about unless they reached out to us and asked is like the brucellosis testing is a standard one it's always been negative so far we would let somebody know if it was positive obviously there's no no evidence that that affects the meat at all but we would definitely let them know but some of the kind of standardized tests that are more routine no news is good news if that makes sense makes sense uh how about the oldest elk that has been harvested do you know do you know that one i do um just because that's a common question so uh it was not i assume you mean throughout all of our our records i'm gonna go with yes yeah i'll take that as a yes too um it was would have been 2007 and it was a cow elk that was 32 years old and that is unbelievably bold for a w for a wild elk um generally speaking they are no longer reproductive like they're not they're not able to carry a calf and conceive and carry a calf um after about 15 to 18. so you know in the upper teens calf production really really declines and um we don't really want a whole bunch of animals in those upper age cohorts for that reason right so we want all the cows to be contributing to the population and putting a calf back on the ground so when they get older than that you don't really want to see a large number of animals in that upper age chord point being the oldest one we've seen so far is 32 years old she was very very old that's never happened again it probably won't ever happen again but i one interesting tidbit to throw out there is um the lab that does all the aging i said earlier that's like there's only there's like one lab in the whole united states that does almost all the aging for different states um that is their record as well so um you know at least for that lab we would hold the record of the oldest elk nationwide that's pretty impressive we have a question about cwd how worried are you about cwd getting into the elk herd do do you handle deer seasons differently because of cwd in the elk zone yeah okay so there's two parts that um yeah i i to say am i worried um i guess yes would be the short answer you know it's it's maybe not worry but um it's you know a patient waiting like eventually the elk population is going to become cwd positive that's that's pretty much inevitable when that is going to happen is very difficult to predict we do have a standardized procedure that's been published in our our chronic wasting disease response plan so like we have a plan of of what's going to happen when that that takes place in terms of the deer seasons overlapping the elk population no there's no change there's no specific differences between uh deer seasons that are um in the wmu's that that overlapped the elk area versus the ones that do not um at least not currently if cwd popped up in this area that that would probably be reevaluated at that point right so both species can carry the disease and transmit the disease um and at that time we would have to talk about population reductions excellent i don't have any more questions showing up at the moment i'm going to give well there we go okay we have one here have you seen any positive results from the elk smart program or is it too early to tell yet yeah um i think it's helped it covid kind of messed up like this was supposed to be the kickoff year and we were hoping to use the elk expo as the springboard for that and really get that message out there um cove it kind of ruined that a little bit because we had to cancel the expo and um it's been somewhat challenging to get the message out there i think it's early and things like this take definitely take time to get people um on board and excited about i still think it's a positive thing overall it's it's going to take some additional time um but that said i i it it it definitely helped it didn't hurt anything in the process i agree it does take a couple of a couple years for that kind of stuff to get off the ground but i'm anxious to see to see how it continues it's a lot of good content there uh anthony is asking how or is the elk range expanding each year um so it depends on what you mean by elk range uh we have an elk management area that has pretty clearly defined boundaries it would be all of 2h most of 2g um if you if that is synonymous to the elk range then that specific uh you know bounded area is not increasing we're not expanding that but within that area the elk population is definitely expanding so the current elk management area is only about maybe a half to two-thirds occupied with elk um so there's there's tremendous room for expansion on the eastern and northern and the elk are slowly expanding um into those areas it's really habitat dependent so as you know new preferred habitats are created or um manipulated to the point where they are beneficial to elk the elk are going to slowly move and occupy those areas and that's kind of one of our long-term goals is we want to move the elk but we just want to do it in a slow manner throughout the next i'll say 10 years and one last question we have and then we will um have to call it quits but we'll give you guys a way to ask questions if you still um have some unanswered ones so last question for the 30 of regular season hunters who were not successful what percent didn't have a guide oh man that i would have to look that up so you're saying of the unsuccessful hunters what percent were on their own um i would have to look it up and i could get back to that individual the two things that i can throw out there is that 60 of the cow hunters go guided on an annual basis so almost 100 it's like 95 of the bull hunters are guided um and then it's about 60 percent of the cow hunters are guided i don't know the breakdown between success and unsuccessful uh related to that 60 but i could look that up and get back to that individual if they want to email how would you go about doing that lori so i just uh switched the screen there's an email address there p g c comments at pa.gov and if you have a question that is unanswered go ahead and send it there and we will get back to you over email we do appreciate everybody for joining us today taking time out of your busy day to hang out with us and learn about the elk check station i want to thank mandy and jeremy for sharing their expertise and their time with us today and the session has been recorded so everybody will get an email later today that has a link to the recording it will also be uploaded to our youtube channel and we just like to encourage you to let us know what programs you'd like to see in the future you can send them to that email address so that we can help address your interests in future webinars and future from the field sessions for the wildlife on wi-fi folks so until then we hope you're able to get outside and enjoy some of pennsylvania's great outdoors it's a pretty day here in harrisburg this morning and i hope it is where you are as well thanks again everybody and we will see you in the next webinar be well stay safe out there you

Channel: PA Game Commission

Views: 1,787

Rating: 4.8400002 out of 5

Keywords: Pennsylvania Game Commission, PGC, PA Game Commission, Game Commission, wildlife, conservation, nature, habitat

Id: 288RfkQ1xzk

Length: 32min 51sec (1971 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020