Abstract: Carrion has been shown to shape local plant communities, impact species interactions, and alter movement behavior. In the absence of humans, carrion occurs primarily as a result of disease, starvation, and predation. However, humans produce carrion through car collisions, farming, and modern hunting. These added sources of mortality not only differentially impact the species that are killed, but also the scavenger community that benefits from carrion. The widescale consolidation of recreational hunting into narrow seasons and the resulting pulse of unused offal from field dressing carcasses has created a predictable source of food for scavenger species at a time of year when species are typically healthy and less likely to die and become available to scavengers. This shift in carrion availability is likely to impact the scavengers that use it, but the extent of the effect is unknown. Hunter provided carrion ( >2 million kg/yr in Minnesota) might alter scavengers behavior, encourage prey switching, and possibly increase the survival of certain species that may otherwise experience low survival rates in the fall season. Such questions cannot be addressed without knowing the species that use offal. Through the Offal Wildlife Watching project, we aim to document and better understand the scavenger community that is provisioned by hunters. This work compares differences in scavenger assemblages across biomes (boreal, deciduous, prairie, and aspen parkland) and across a gradient of human use (i.e. farmland and metropolitan areas). We have engaged hunters statewide to deploy remote cameras on gut piles from recently field dressed deer. Community science is employed to analyze the resulting image data through a Zooniverse project. To date, we have collected > 200,000 images from >170 hunters’ gut piles over five hunting seasons. We have identified more than 50 species visiting and consuming offal remains. We will present results of scavenger community biodiversity at hunter provided carrion, and visit/use dynamics across biomes and human use areas. This project creates collaborations across sectors such as citizen hunting groups, the public, and researchers. The results from this research will not only inform policy makers regarding protection and preservation of scavengers, but also contribute to the growing field of carrion ecology. In particular, this research will establish data needed to clarify the impact that an anthropogenic, consolidated, and large pulse of carrion has on scavenger species. These data are important to understanding disease ecology (e.g., chronic wasting disease) and scavenger lead exposure.
