Tuesday 23 November 2010

Roe deer carcase (extra)




It,s been pointed out to me(thanks Steve from Crawley!)as to why i,m pretty sure whether a bigcat has killed a deer(roe deer carcase blog)Unfortunately i couldn,t examine any of the 3 carcases straight after the fact so to speak so can,t be 100% sure,however i,d better explain how i came to my conclusions on at least 1 for now.In the 1st picture of the carcases (yesterdays blog)it has a very neat appearance,there is no surrounding mess ie.fur,blood or entrails etc.The skin has been neatly pulled back,the ribs neatly sheared off and the skeleton whole.All the intestines and offal are gone with no trace.This is highly typical of bigcat kills and i refer as reference material to the link on this blog put there for this purpose"Michigan Cougar.com"where scrolling down the page to "how to collect evidence"can be found an excellent description of how American Cougars deal with their large prey.The similarities are strikingly similar however there are very obvious differences as well so i know it wasn,t a cougar in any of these cases.In contrast is the picture above of a deer carcase that has been got at by scavengers in this case badgers and foxes,they usually leave a right old mess,limbs are seperated,there,s fur everywhere,the appearance is a world away from the way bigcats eat theirs.There other differences but i won,t go into that now.In my experience a bigcat will kill a deer then consume usually only some of it in this neat fashion and when (i assume)they have left it,the local scavengers move in virtually always within 24 hours,if they haven,t then it,s likely they have been targeted at some point as well i kid you not.Bigcats dominate their surroundings,they are apex predators.If i have been lucky enough to get to a kill quickly enough then i could open up the neck area and look for massive haemorrhaging in the front of the throat where a cat has throttled it to death and rarely,there are 2 screwdriver(canine teeth) marks on the back of the neck sometimes accomponied by smaller indents in the flesh(by the other smaller teeth)Not in these cases though so i can,t be 100% sure how the beasts actually died.But the small amount of fur on the grass by the path in the other picture shows where the deer had been got hold of by the neck and faint disturbance in the leaves showed where it had been dragged ,while being throttled,15ft away to where it had been consumed and was photoed.This is highly typical of bigcats.There are no other probable causes of death,the property is fenced in by this i mean it,s doubtful that the deer had been injured by a car and arrived and died there to be scavenged as a;there are no buzy roads and b;it would of had to jump a big fence to get in,besides injured deer usually head for some sort of cover and can head for a stream,go downhill and seek an easy route.I have a certain amount of experience and get called out to with my dogs to track deer injured in car accidents and so am pretty familiar with this sort of thing if you get my drift.Also,it,s typical for a cat to kill by a barrier like a fence this is because it has driven it,s prey there or has used the hedge or fenceline as cover and as there was a light easterly wind,a near full moon and little cloud cover on this occasion i presume the latter in this case(a video has been posted on you tube of the kill site titled "roe deer carcase after badgers have eaten it by bigcatdetective")........

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