The National Bison Range near Moiese, MTIt's springtime. That means Stacey has headed back over to the Bison Range to catch Pronghorn fawns. She does this every year in order to tag them and take a tissue sample. By tagging them, she can visually identify every individual on the range. This makes behavioral observations much easier. By taking a tissue sample, she can genetically identify them and construct pedigrees. This is important since she's looking at problems associated with inbreeding in a small population.
Here's a picture of Stacey just after catching one of the fawns. This one gave her a pretty good downhill run, but she managed to nab it.
Whenever possible, I like to go out on the range and help her out. Here I am holding a fawn's mouth closed. This keeps it from crying out and attracting the attention of predators. They're super sweet little critters. I love getting the chance to hold them, but my heart goes out to them too. They don't know that I'm not going to eat them.
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