Life Sciences Commons^™

Characterizing Nontarget Species Use At Bait Sites For White-Tailed Deer, Brent Bowman, Jerrold L. Belant, Dean E. Beyer Jr., Deborah Martel

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Baiting white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) has evolved into a controversial issue of wildlife management. During August–September 2012, we established a grid of 64 cameras in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at sites baited with corn that simulated legal bait sites for white-tailed deer to characterize presence, diversity, and frequency of species use. We detected >20 species of wildlife that visited bait sites. We categorized 3,177 of 11,194 images as independent detections (i.e., species detected >1 hour apart). White-tailed deer had the greatest detection rate (47%), but overall detections of nontarget species was slightly greater (53%). Most frequent nontarget …