Abstract
Understanding the habitat use of wildlife species is important for effective management. Nebraska has a variety of habitat types, with the majority being covered by rangeland and cropland. These habitat types likely influence the harvest of mule deer (MD; Odocoileus hemionus) in Nebraska, but their specific effects are unknown, and moreover, harvest may also be influenced by the accessibility of deer habitats for hunters. We modeled which environmental and anthropogenic landscape features influenced harvest densities. Spatial analysis in a Geographic Information System was used to determine the mean values of environmental and anthropogenic landscape features at the county level. We then used a generalized linear model to determine which of those factors influenced MD harvest from 2014–2016. We found that NDVI amplitude, hunter effort, road density, terrain roughness, and canopy cover influence MD harvest in Nebraska. According to our model, MD harvest densities are significantly greater areas with NDVI amplitude ∼38, increasing hunter effort, road densities near 1,750 m/km2, increasing terrain roughness, and decreasing canopy cover. Understanding increased harvest densities of MD can be beneficial for wildlife managers, allowing for more efficient allocation of efforts and expenses by managers for population management.
Highlights
Hunting is an important component of the North American model of wildlife management (Geist, Mahoney & Organ, 2001), and deer hunting has been a tradition in Nebraska since the mid-1900s
The top model produced during the second tier of our analysis consisted of the covariates, in order of relative importance: mean Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) amplitude, hunter effort, mean road density, mean roughness, and mean percent canopy cover (Table 2)
Our results suggest that resources for mule deer (MD) management should be focused on areas of decreasing canopy cover, increasing terrain roughness, road densities less than 2,000 m/km2, increasing hunter effort, and NDVI amplitude values around 38 (Fig. 3), if the management goal is higher hunter harvest
Summary
Hunting is an important component of the North American model of wildlife management (Geist, Mahoney & Organ, 2001), and deer hunting has been a tradition in Nebraska since the mid-1900s. The first official deer hunting season was held in 1945 where 275 mule deer (MD; Odocoileus hemionus) bucks and 2 white-tail deer (Odocoileus virginianus) bucks were harvested (Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, 2016a). Along with the growing tradition of hunting, deer populations have grown. During the 2015 hunting season 8,876 MD bucks and 28,505 white-tail bucks were harvested (Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, 2016a). The use of hunting allows for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission (NGPC) to manage the deer population to help prevent disease, depredation issues, improve public safety, and sustain the population for future generations.
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