We have maintained trail cameras at the same sites for 6 rut cycles. We have had to change out cameras as some have died usually to moisture. We have slightly changed the orientation of the cameras to better capture deer movement. Battery maintenance fluctuates with camera function and temperature. This started as a research project monitoring deer movement in leave strips between pre-commercially thinned harvest units. We now maintain these cameras because we really hope to understand more about the seasonal movements of Sitka black-tailed deer. We measure "deer past the cameras", some days the same deer pass the cameras several times.

Beginning this study, we had a working hypothesis that there were deer living dispersed on the landscape, some number per square km. That vertical movement was primarily seasonal, with a percentage of the population moving up in elevation with melting snow and green up and moving down with the pressures of winter. We also know that bucks ranged wide and far during the rut from other camera trap efforts we have been doing for years.

What we believe we have demonstrated is the daily movements of deer vertically on the landscape is much greater than thought. Daily, does with fawns move vertically from bedding to feeding areas. We have also documented the greatly increased movements of bucks during the rut, first the younger bucks during the pre-rut phase followed by more mature bucks and finally during the last week of breeding the most mature bucks. Then the bucks all but disappear from detection.

Here are the graphs from the last 6 years. Just for 2024-2025 rut, we have gone through nearly 23,000 images and movies from our 26 game cameras from the end of September, 2024 to the last day of January, 2025. It is alot of work that takes days to compile but the outcome is worth it in our opinion.