YWTMP needs your moose and caribou samples!

Calling all moose and caribou hunters - Yukon Winter Tick Monitoring Project needs your help!

In addition to keeping us up to date with your photos here on iNaturalist, this season, we are asking hunters to bring us a smaller sample of hide so we can carry out a winter tick check. Just a 20cm x 40cm sample, taken from the neck and shoulder region of the animal's right side is needed for us to look for winter ticks.

Pick up your free hide sample kit at Environment Yukon (10 Burns Rd, Whitehorse) which contains instructions and a hide sample template to cut around (or download from our Hide Submissions photos on Facebook 😊). If you want to keep a hide whole, then we can still carry out a winter tick check and return it to you completely undamaged.

Note it's unlikely you'll be able to see winter tick larvae on your kill, as they are super tiny at this time of year (the size of a grain of sand, or a poppyseed)! But we have ways of looking for them in the lab - every sample helps.

And to say thank-you for helping with this research, for every moose or caribou hide or sample submitted you will receive your choice of a top quality thermos or 2 deluxe game bags.

Posted on August 22, 2019 04:58 PM by emilychenery