Hailey Larson a Utah Department of Wildlife Resources specialist loads another dead dear in her pickup in Millville on Monday March 20, 2023.
LOGAN – Hailey Larson enjoys her job as a Utah Department of Wildlife Resources specialist.
Working with animals was her selected profession.
“My job is removing nuisance animals,” she said. “I work in Cache, Weber, Davis, Morgan, Box Elder, Morgan, Rich and Summit counties.”
Monday, in Millville throughout from Little Wonders Learning Center, she brought up in front of a dead deer and utilized protective gloves and boots to drag the carcass to the back of her truck. Then she hooked the deer legs to a hoist cable television and turned the crank to bring up the deer high enough to press into the back of the truck.
Larson is very little larger than the animal she’s putting in the pickup bed, however she handles to fill it into the back of the pickup.
The Ridgeline High School graduate went to Utah State University and made a degree in Wildlife Ecology Management then took a job with DWR when she completed.
“I went to USU to become a veterinarian,” she said. “Being a vet took more schooling, so I decided to study wildlife management.”
This season she invests her days obtaining deer and other animals that have actually been struck and killed by cars and trucks utilizing the DWR Utah Roadkill Reporter app by cars in Cache Valley.
“We have different lifts on trucks that pick up bigger animals like elk or moose,” she said. “It usually takes two people to load the bigger animals.”
DWR is seeing more animals moving down low this year due to the fact that the absence of feed and snow depth that has actually required the animals into more inhabited locations.
“I picked up a total of 31 deer on Monday; that is a record for me in one day,” she said. “I also pick up deer from people’s yards or sick dear, when they are stuck in fences or injured.”
She is notified where the deer are when individuals utilize the DWR Utah Roadkill Reporter app. People can utilize the app and to inform them where the deer want being struck by a car.
“It’s not only deer, we are seeing and removing an incredible amount of other animals from yards. It has been overwhelming, it’s been crazy.”
Jim Christensen the Wildlife Manger for the Northern Utah Region said he has actually not evaluated the numbers for Cache Valley alone this winter season, however as far as he variety of Northern Region goes, the numbers the variety of problem calls have actually doubled.
“Nuisance calls for mainly dead and injured deer have doubled this year compared to last year,” he said. “I’m sure that the numbers of calls for Cache Valley mirror what we are seeing in other counties in Northern Utah.”
DWR works carefully with the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) to minimize highway vehicle crashes.
It was approximated 4,900 deer were killed in vehicle accidents and eliminated from highways in 2022. The variety of deer killed is most likely substantially greater due to the fact that lots of events go unreported.
If not for the crossing structures throughout the state, those numbers might be much greater.
Since 2005, UDOT has actually invested over $47 million on fencing, highway-bypass structures and other activities to help both mule deer and elk.
DWR likewise funds Utah State University research studies to recognize the most efficient kinds of highway-bypass structures to keep wildlife safe in addition to trying to figure out the number of deer are killed on Utah highways each year.
The Insurance Information Institute said information from State Farm shows U.S. drivers had 1.9 million animal accident insurance coverage declares in the U.S. in between July 2021 and June 2022. The most animal-auto accidents include deer (67 percent in the latest duration).
