Antler Points

To weigh captive deer, put radios on them, remove antlers, or study all aspects of them, they are often drugged. Many drugs have been used, some of which have been studied by Virginia wildlife professor, Dr. P.F. Scanlon. Researchers at Louisiana's School of Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries, Baton Rouge, found that Telazol and Rompun used together were very effective. They worked quickly and produced deep sedation, better than either used alone. Ratios of 2 to 1 are recommended to protect both the deer and handlers. Deer are darted with powder dart guns or blow-gun darts.

Some of the reasons for including this fairly narrow, quite technical note about tranquilizing drugs are:

• Animal control officers in cities need to be aware that studies are underway on these drugs.
• It's fun to have a little trivia ready for "can you top this?" over coffee.
• This is an example of an area of study that will consume every dollar of research funds that people will wave near it. To gain confidence in doses to be used to avoid animal deaths, thousands of healthy deer of various ages and both sexes and various weights must be tested with many combinations of these drugs.

Recall from high school math that the equation for "combinations" is

c = n!/(r!(n-r)!

This equation means that if there are 10 prime-candidate drugs and we want to use them in combinations of 3, then there are

c = (10 . 9 . 8 . 7 . 6 . 5 . 4 . 3 . 2 . 1)/(3 . 2 . 1 (7 . 6 . 5 . 4 . 3 . 2 . 1))

c = 120

or 120 such combinations.

If a test group of deer is (at minimum) 30 (that is, male and female; 3 each in five ages or weight classes), then we need to study at least 3600 deer under similar conditions to feel confident about conclusions about which are the best drugs to use. Feeding 3600 hounds, or sheep, chickens or even white mice is not cheap! This is the lowest number because it is well known that these drugs are affected by (1) time since mixing; (2) pregnancy; (3) parasite load; (4) time of day; (5) location of the injection; (6) season of the year; (7) behavior of the deer (whether generally calm or "hyper"); and (8) recent disturbances (such as slamming truck doors or aircraft fly-overs).

It is the view of R* Deer staff that society may never allocate the funds necessary to gain the desired levels of confidence about the best deer tranquilizers. Even where the topic is very limited (3 ways, given only 10 drugs) classical research is exorbitantly expensive ... probably infeasible. This means that alternative pathways to develop a knowledge base are needed. It means we must deduce more often than we want to. It means that deer will die in some situations when we use the drug,s because we must use them even though we do not have complete, even adequate, knowledge because the funds needed are not there ... and never will be. Limited funds that are available for building a knowledge base need to be allocated strategically among the pressing needs within the deer resource system. Within the picture of the total deer system, deer drugs are not likely to get the allocation the users of these drugs feel is needed. How to allocate skillfully the precious, few knowledge-base building funds ("research money") is a first-order question.

This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision January 17, 2000.