Oh, Deer

1
Oh, Deer!

• Shiloh High School
• Debbie Akers, Kendra Carroll,
• Terry Sullivan

2
Oh, Deer! Main Topics

• White-Tailed Deer Basics
• Food Habits
• Harvest Data

3
In the beginning

• Students studied basic WTD ecology including
  habitat, feeding, and reproduction.
• The history of WTD in Illinois over the last 200
  years was investigated including the history of
  hunting regulations.

4
What else they did

• Students learned to determine the age of deer by
  noting the wear and number of teeth
  on the lower jaw.

5
Food Habits Analysis

• Local hunters were contacted prior to gun season
  in order to obtain stomach contents. Although
  only the stomach contents were needed,
• hunters donated
• the entire gut pile,
• which gave an
• opportunity to
• introduce internal
• anatomy.

6
Food Habits Analysis

• Each pair of students was given a scoop of
  stomach contents.
• Samples were rinsed and sorted.

7
Food Habits Analysis

• The volume of each component was measured using
  the displacement method.

8
Food Habits Analysis

• The volumes of each component for each group
  were combined and percentages for each sample
  were calculated.

9
Food Habits Analysis

• Students composed final reports including
  information about the feeding habits of WTD,
  project procedures and results.
• Reports also included students hypotheses
  concerning individual deer donating the sample.

10
Harvest Data

• We are looking at two sources of data.
• 1.County Data
• Age and sex data from the harvested deer brought
  to the county check station
• This data is only available for 1 year.

11
Harvest Data

• 2. State data
• Total numbers of animals harvested by county for
  all counties in the state.
• We have this data for the past four years.

12
Harvest Data

• What to do with this data?????
• We have had difficulty using anything other than
  Excel to visualize the data, which leads to the
  question.

13
Was this the right project?

• Since this is a good real life project which
  gave students a chance to conduct original
  research, it will probably be continued.
• We will, however, look for ways to incorporate
  the visualization tools into other
  projects/topics in our curriculum.

14
Possible Future Uses for the Tools

• International Boiling Point Project
• Quantitative Analysis (Chemistry II)
• Project B.L.U.E.S.T.E.M (comparisons of various
  local habitats)
• Forensics Activities (perhaps borrowed from
  Roxana)
• Visualize data collected with probes.