Weather conditions during hunting season affect the number of harvested roe deer (Capreolus capreolus)

Sophie Baur, Wibke Peters, Tobias Oettenheym, Annette Menzel

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Due to human-induced climate and landscape changes, distribution and abundance of many ungulate species have increased worldwide. Especially in areas where natural predators are absent, hunting is the essential management tool for regulating ungulate populations. Therefore, understanding the factors associated with harvest rates is the first step toward an adaptive management approach. Weather influences hunter and ungulate behavior and thus presumably harvest, but how and which meteorological parameters are linked to harvest numbers have rarely been evaluated. We used nearly 65,000 “sit and wait” and driven hunt harvests of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) in Bavaria, Germany, and weather data from 2008 to 2017 to test for factors affecting roe deer harvests (i.e., temperature, rain hours, wind speed, sunshine duration, snow depth, workdays vs. weekends, month) using zero-inflated negative binomial mixed-effect models. Our results reveal that, besides workdays, high temperatures and prolonged rain resulted in fewer harvested animals, whereas sunshine duration in summer and snow height in snow-rich areas partially favored harvests during sitting hunts in summer and winter, respectively. The influence of wind speed varied over the course of the year. In summer and autumn, wind speed commonly had a negative effect, positively affecting harvests in winter in some regions. Daily harvest numbers decreased during the summer and autumn hunting periods (May till mid-October), while they increased during the winter period (mid-October till mid-January). Interestingly, harvest success during driven hunts, which are planned well in advance and therefore take place largely independent of weather conditions, was similarly affected by the weather. This result suggests that the inferred weather influence is not only due to the hunters' decisions but also due to deer behavior. Since many ungulate populations may further benefit from climate change, building an understanding of the relationship between hunting success and weather will aid adaptive ungulate management.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)10178-10191
Number of pages14
JournalEcology and Evolution
Volume11
Issue number15
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2021

Keywords

  • behavior
  • climate change
  • game management
  • harvest success
  • ungulate

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Weather conditions during hunting season affect the number of harvested roe deer (Capreolus capreolus)'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this