Volunteers for Minnesota/Finland whitetail study

[Fedster]

Hi All,

my name is Federico Calboli and I am a geneticist working at the University of Helsinki, Finland. I am collaborating with a colleague who is studying the genetics of the Finnish whitetail population.

As you might know Finnish immigrants in Minnesota sent two groups of whitetail deer to Finland (3 bucks and 4 does in 1934 — only one buck survived, and six bucks in 1948, unknown survivorship). We are now studying the population structure and amount of genetic diversity of the current whitetail population but at some point we would like to compare the Finnish deer with the original Minnesota population to have a better idea of how much genetic variation has been lost and whether this is going to be a problem for the long term management of the population.

Thus, I would like to ask, how many people would be willing to donate a bit of meat (something like 15 grams -- half an ounce) for the study? We would be interested in Minnesota deer (either buck or doe) samples only. At this stage we still need to get (1) funding and (2) figure out the logistics of getting the samples from Minnesota to Finland, so anybody responding is basically just saying 'yup, I'd be happy to give you half an ounce of meet if you can come and collect it'. Please note that anybody who expresses interested in participating can change their minds and drop out at any point -- we do appreciate you are doing us a favour. Obviously in the unfortunate event that we cannot find the funding or if it turns out we cannot collect the samples in a reasonably practical way we would have to thank you for you interest in helping but everything would have to be called off (all volunteers would be informed of these circumstances). It goes without saying that if we get a good response from hunters the case for getting the funding is stronger and the project would have a much higher chances of success.

Once more, please let me repeat that nobody is under any obligation whatsoever and any person expressing interest now can always withdraw from the study at any point.

Because this is a scientific study the most people will get out is not much, most likely a direct acknowledgement of the forum and/or Randy ('we thank Randy Newberg and the Hunt Talk Forum for helping us collect the samples') and probably not much more than a polite ‘and we thank all the hunters who generously provided us with samples’. Obviously anybody interested in any paper coming out of the study can just ask us for a copy.

If you are interested please contact me at

federico DOT calboli AT helsinki DOT fi (please remove all spaces and substitute DOT and AT with . and @ respectively).

I'd like to thank Randy for giving us this opportunity to reach out to the hunting community and to all of you for taking time to read about the project.

Best wishes from a surprisingly warm and sunny Finland

Federico

 

[Big Fin]

I know many Minnesota guys who would probably be willing to participate. If my family will not participate, I will rescind my tab down at the local pub and they will have to pay for their own drinks on Thursday nights.

Thanks for posting here. I hope you have great success in your study.

If you need someone to help control the population of whitetails in Finland, my services are available.

 

[NoWiser]

Count me in. I'll send you an email tomorrow. Is there any particular region in MN you are more interested in than others?

 

[Schaaf]

I have also started a study. I will be studying the differences between elk meat and moose meat. I will need volunteers to send moose backstraps and ribs, along with elk meat of all kinds.

All kidding aside, sounds like an awesome study. Be sure to post when the study is released. We have quite a few biology geeks on the site.

 

[VAspeedgoat]

Thats very interesting stuff. I hope you get your funding and post some observations on here as a follow up. I'm sure there are some on here that will help.

One question though, wouldn't it be best to have samples from the area the deer were captured from? I would think the farther away the deer get from the original area, it would lead to greater genetic variance. Maybe it is insignificant.

 

[MinnesotaHunter]

Is there any particular region in MN you are more interested in than others?

I was going to ask the same thing. Also, I am happy to help.

 

[Fedster]

Thanks! we are happy to get any deer from Minnesota

[Apologies for the goofiness I failed to quote the text I was replying to, but as a general rule we are planning to sample statewide]

 

[Fedster]

Thats very interesting stuff. I hope you get your funding and post some observations on here as a follow up. I'm sure there are some on here that will help.

One question though, wouldn't it be best to have samples from the area the deer were captured from? I would think the farther away the deer get from the original area, it would lead to greater genetic variance. Maybe it is insignificant.

That's a good question! In practice the sampling will have to be done based on where we find volunteers, especially because we are better off with many samples from across the state rather than just a handful of samples from a few selected spots (having few carefully selected samples would also bias our estimation of genetic variability). In addition, sampling Minnesota-wide, rather than a few selected locations, might affect the overall variability only *if* the Minnesota deer population in the 1930' - 1940' was very strongly structured, with many local populations with little genetic flow between them (which I presume is unlikely). The reason why we choose to look at Minnesota only is for practical reasons: we need to set clearly defined limits to our sampling or we will never get this thing started.

Also, thanks for your interest.

 

[Fedster]

I know many Minnesota guys who would probably be willing to participate. If my family will not participate, I will rescind my tab down at the local pub and they will have to pay for their own drinks on Thursday nights.

Thanks for posting here. I hope you have great success in your study.

If you need someone to help control the population of whitetails in Finland, my services are available.

Thanks Randy! Hopefully we can get this off the ground -- we will keep people posted on the forum regardless.

 

[LukeDuke]

Sounds interesting. Count me in.

 

[Muskeez]

As a Midwest whitetail guy close to MN I am just curious, what is the population like in Finland? Average population per acre? What is considered to be a "good" buck or a "Big" buck over there. Here in the states it definitely depends on the region because food supplies and habitat vary so much and because each state has different timing for their seasons.

 

[MNElkNut]

Count me in too. We shoot 3-4 deer per year in west central Minnesota.

 

[Z Barebow]

Muskeez- I bowhunted for bear in the Finland area. My take on deer is that this is big woods environment. No agriculture to speak of. The deer would very much be an edge animal. Whether it be the edge of an old timber cut or the edge of town. This area is very susceptible to bad winters/heavy snow as it isn't too far from the lake.

When I hunted there (~1990), I did not see much for deer sign. (In fact I don't think I saw a deer but keep in mind the baits had daily human activity). But I seem to remember the outfitter and guide talking about tons of deer. But within a few years the winters whacked them very hard.

Unrelated, I saw my first and only T wolf on my bear hunt. Came into the bait at 12 yards. Never forget it.

 

[Vik]

Muskeez- I bowhunted for bear in the Finland area. My take on deer is that this is big woods environment. No agriculture to speak of. The deer would very much be an edge animal. Whether it be the edge of an old timber cut or the edge of town. This area is very susceptible to bad winters/heavy snow as it isn't too far from the lake.

When I hunted there (~1990), I did not see much for deer sign. (In fact I don't think I saw a deer but keep in mind the baits had daily human activity). But I seem to remember the outfitter and guide talking about tons of deer. But within a few years the winters whacked them very hard.

Unrelated, I saw my first and only T wolf on my bear hunt. Came into the bait at 12 yards. Never forget it.

I grew up a few miles from Finland, MN and still have a bunch of family that lives in Finland, MN. But, this study is comparing the statewide Minnesota deer genetics to the genetics of the population of whitetails that live in the Scandinavian country of Finland since that population was started with deer from MN. I had no idea that there were MN whitetails in Finland until today, very fascinating stuff!!

Back to Finland, MN, yes, there are a ton of deer up there but they definitely tend to stick to the woods and the population numbers are all over the place based upon severity of winters, as you noted. But drive along Hwy 61 in the winter, especially right before a storm, and you'll see A LOT of deer.

Not surprised to hear you saw a wolf up there, they are pretty thick in those parts. My senior year of high school there was a female that reared a litter of pups at the end of our local municipal golf course's driving range. Could see them running around back there almost every time we went to hit balls.

 

[Tjay]

I would be happy to help. We hunt the woods in the Isabella area, not a lot of deer in the area but we do well.

 

[Fedster]

A quick update: we are checking the legality of exporting meat out of the USA into Finland, and also (after MNElkNut' suggestion) the possibility of using hair instead of meat. This last option might be very practical, but we need to test what kind of pelt the hair comes from (a tanned pelt might, or not, work, because of the chemicals used in the tanning). A mounted whitetail at the entrance of the Biology building will 'donate' a hair sample to see if hair from mounts is ok.

In case anybody is wondering, DNA is routinely extracted from hair roots, but these are normally collected from live animals. Pulling some hair from a live animal guarantees that the DNA is preserved immediately from a live cell. Despite what TV shows suggest, getting high quality DNA is actually tricky, and the best DNA comes from cells that have just been collected or have been frozen quite quickly. A forensic team might try and get DNA out of the few cells attached to a cigarette butt, but that might just fail, and even if it works it requires a lot of labour, making the whole enterprise very expensive (far too expensive for a biology study in deer population genetics).

 

[Fedster]

Hi All, first off apologies for the long silence, but we were doing some tests with the help of our 'friend' Valko (a not so impressive buck that the Natural History Museum has parked at the entrance of our building). Basically we have decided to take a slightly simpler route to sampling, using hairs rather than meat. Our tests with Valko showed we can extract DNA from hairs collected from a mount (i.e. a pelt that has been tanned) -- we knew that we can get DNA from hair collected 'fresh'. Using this approach we can also use a simpler data collection approach: anybody interested can send hairs from white-tailed deer harvested in Minnesota. All we need is 10 hairs (including their root/follicle) from each deer.

Basically, if you are interested you will receive a letter containing a self addressed (and stamped!) envelope you can send back. The self addressed letter will contain: (1) a small plastic bag where you can put the hairs and (2) a questionnaire about the deer. The questionnaire is very simple and will ask these questions only:

Sex of the deer
Location of harvest
Year of harvest
Age of the deer (your best guess)
Slaughter weight or live weight
If the deer is male, the antler score

These last two questions are there because we want to know whether the low genetic diversity is affecting how much meat people can harvest here in Finland and whether trophy size is also suffering.

So, if you are going to harvest deer in Minnesota this fall and you do not mind pulling off some hairs, or you have some mounts and you do not mind plucking 10 hairs from each we would be delighted to hear from you. All you need to do is to PM me or email me at [email protected] with your address and the number of samples you can share (in case you have a large trophy record or you can have access to multiple deer) -- we will make sure you receive as many self addressed envelopes to send back as the number of deer samples you can send.

We will send out the letters later this year (around November presumably) and the study will be conducted next year.

We felt using hairs to extract DNA and using self addressed return letters is going to make the logistics of this study substantially simpler and thus increase the chances of success -- it is also much less trouble for the hunters who do not need to wait at home for someone to visit and collect some scraps of meat. In addition, a colleague Jana Kekkonen, has some money that has been earmarked for travelling, so we would be delighted to hear if there are any hunting fairs/shows etc that she could attend to do more outreach in person (obviously this event should allow us to reach out to people who hunt in Minnesota!). If anybody knows of such event please let me know.

Finally, please note that if you decide to participate the record of your address will be kept confidential *at all times* and *never* shared with anybody. Once the sampling has been concluded we will erase your name and address from the records permanently to protect your privacy.

Many thanks to all

PS this is our not so impressive buck which has helped our study so far

 

[walking buffalo]

Fedtser,

With the limited explanation of the project and lack of researcher background offered, I can't help but be sceptically curious as to the reasoning of such research.
There is very good reason for hunters to be cautious in helping many of the current "Genetic" research projects.

A few questions if you don't mind.

What is the working hypothesis? What working variables are being considered?

How would you determine that genes have been "lost"? You received all the genes you were going to get in those living bags of meat and bones.....
If so, How were they lost?
If you can find such a thing an lost genes, Maybe they never existed within the transplanted herd, or ?
You'll never be able to know.... that ship has sailed and sunk.

Have you spoken with the Minnesota authorities to determine the source and population dynamics of the donor animals?
Seems like a lot of conjecture would be cleared up with a few answers in this area. Deer populations in the 30-40's was Very low in some areas.

"These last two questions are there because we want to know whether the low genetic diversity is affecting how much meat people can harvest here in Finland and whether trophy size is also suffering."

How could you possibly attribute differences in muscle mass and "trophy size" between Norwegian deer and Minnesota deer to be based on "Lost" genetics?
How can you eliminate environmental conditions from this equation?


To be blunt, I am concerned that this is yet another "Hunter induced genetic selection" research project.
It is hard to conceive that this research project will be able to produce anything with confidence due to all the potential unaccountable variables.

One of the wildlife game boards I work on just refused funding to a somewhat similar project due to the ambiguous proposed research method and hidden personal agenda to "prove" a hypothesis. I sure hope that is not what is going on here.

 

[walking buffalo]

Fedster,

I've noticed you have visited the site since my post above.

Will you please answer the questions?

Your lack of response deepens my suspicion as to the intent of this study....