Wanna know what I did this weekend?

My Biology 100 class is online. This means that I do not have a lab each week. Instead, we are assigned to find our own lab. The requirements are: we have to contact a local Biologist and make arrangements to spend 15 hours in volunteer work collecting data alongside the biologist. Then we write a 10 page paper about the research we collected. Ken suggested I contact the local Fish and Game Department.

Sure, why not?

They were very kind and willing to help me out in my research. My choices were: working a big game check station that weekend, pulling fish nets in Oakley reservoir the end of October, or hiking about 20 miles in the mountains around Thanksgiving to help pull test tubes. So, should I choose cold, colder, or coldest? And notice they are all so....fish and game-ish.

So I chose....



Saturday was opening day of deer hunting season and so we set up a check station where all the hunters, successful or unsuccessful, had to stop and let us gather information from them. Since I have NEVER hunted before in my life and know NOTHING about big game, this was a real educational experience.



They checked their teeth to determine their age. Most were yearlings.



Then they removed the lymph nodes from their necks in order to send off to be tested for Chronic Wasting Disease, an illness not currently found in Idaho but a fun excuse to slice all their necks open and dig around.



Then they measured their zyphoid fat by slicing into their breast area. This tells how fat and happy they were before death. Because of the wet spring, the deer this year were VERY fat. Average is about 18 mm. This particular deer measured 31 mm.



If they were yearlings, they hung them up and weighed them. They looked pretty roughed up at this point due to all the cutting that had just happened to them.



This is Regan, the official Biologist in charge, matching the tag with the license. I'm doing what I did best the entire weekend....FREEZE! and watch! I did very little actual touching of the dead animals.

Other data they also collected included measuring the antlers and taking a tooth sample if the animal was older than 2 years old.



This is what I did most of the time.... I asked hunters to fill out a survey! Easy and CLEAN!
(Though when Ken picked me up Saturday night he said, "Wow, you Stink!")


This is me and the biologist I worked with all weekend. She was great! Do you like my official Fish and Game uniform? (Honestly, the worst part of the whole experience was having to wear the button-front uniformed shirt...blech, ucky!)

Now, I just have to write the paper!

I wonder if a campus class with a lab would have been as much fun.... ;)