Rampaging deer on internet

By Ed Stoddard

DUBLIN: Smashing antlers coming right at you and deer on the trot are among the sights you'll see, though much of the time the action is limited.

Welcome to deerchannel.com -- the world from a white-tailed deer's point of view, streamed to you live on the Internet via a camera attached to the head or side of the animal.

"We are seeing and hearing things that no one has seen or heard before," said Doug Morrell, deerchannel.com's chief marketing officer.

For the non-specialist it is probably not the most riveting kind of "reality TV" -- no steamy love scenes in the Big Brother house or "survivors" voted off at tribal council.

But its backers see a niche market among zoologists or avid hunters who want to glean clues to the behaviour of white-tailed deer: what they eat, when they sleep, how they react to perceived threats or interact with one another.

"University professors are subscribing to the service and using it in their classrooms," said deerchannel.com CEO and president Tom Brooks as he pointed out wild turkeys and deer while driving his big pick-up truck.

The multi-billion dollar deer hunting industry is another target audience.

Morrell said about a thousand subscribers have signed on since the channel's launch late last year but it is early days with "prime-time" viewing expected in the autumn when the bucks start to knock heads during the mating rut.

The whole affair takes place on Brooks' 1,500 acre ranch in the deer-rich Texas hill country about two hours' drive south-west of Dallas.

It expands on concepts pioneered in South Africa and elsewhere of placing webcams at watering holes to stream live images of wildlife.

A deer is tranquilised with a dart gun and the camera is then fitted between its antlers or on its side, offering its unique take on its environment.

Several other remote cameras have been set up around the ranch to catch other views.

Surprises have included footage of deer wading into the water to eat aquatic plants -- an item that many scientists did not realise was on the whitetail's diet.

"It is the first time that folks have video of deer eating aquatic vegetation that I know of. They are adept at satisfying their needs in innovative ways," said Dr. James Kroll, director of the Institute for White-tailed Deer Management and Research at Stephen F. Austin State University.

"I've been studying deer for 35 years and most of the time I was putting radios on them to track them, but I could only guess at what they were doing most of the time. Now we know for sure what they are doing," Kroll, a scientific consultant to the channel, told Reuters.

Government departments have also approached Brooks' team to study if deer will cross cattle guards -- a grid of tubes in the ground which livestock won't step on -- in a bid to reduce deer/car mishaps on highways.

Other ventures in the pipeline include "moose TV" and "duck TV" as part of a broader wildlife network.

Mainstream viewers may prefer to watch contestants race around the world for a million dollars. But deerchannel.com reckons there are enthusiasts out there who want a duck's eye view of things.

© Reuters