The Effects of Landscape Components, Wildlife Behavior and Hunting Methods on Hunter Effort and Hunting Efficiency of Sika Deer

Hayato Iijima

doi:10.2981/wlb.00329

Abstract

Population management of overabundant deer is essential in many countries. Hunting is one of the ways to manage such deer so it is important to understand how hunting affects deer and numbers caught. The number caught is the product of hunter effort and hunting efficiency. However, factors affecting effort and efficiency have rarely been properly investigated. I used a Bayesian state—space model to examine the effects of landscape components and deer behavior on the effort and efficiency of two hunting methods in hunting sika deer Cervus nippon. With shooting by gun, effort increased as the deer abundance of previous year increased and the percentages of wildlife protection areas and city areas decreased. With trapping, effort increased as the percentage of wildlife protection areas decreased. Efficiency of shooting decreased as the effort of the previous year increased. With trapping, efficiency was not affected by the effort of the previous year. Efficiency of trapping plateaued with the increase of deer abundance and the decrease of efficiency in relation to deer abundance was stronger with trapping than with shooting. In conclusion, effort and efficiency were affected by landscape components, deer behavior, and hunting methods. I recommend intensive shooting in the initial phase, and after deer abundance decreases and deer vigilance increases, trapping should be adopted for a sustainable hunting efficiency.

Highlights

BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research
Effort increased as the deer abundance of previous year increased and the percentages of wildlife protection areas and city areas decreased
We failed to detect any significant difference in Effortt,c for shooting with the differences in evergreen forest within cell c (ERc), deciduous forest within cell c (DRc), slope within cell c (SLc), grassland area within cell c (GRc) and road density within cell c (RDc) (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research. The effects of landscape components, wildlife behavior and hunting methods on hunter effort and hunting efficiency of sika deer. I used a Bayesian state–space model to examine the effects of landscape components and deer behavior on the effort and efficiency of two hunting methods in hunting sika deer Cervus nippon. Efficiency of shooting decreased as the effort of the previous year increased. Effort and efficiency were affected by landscape components, deer behavior, and hunting methods. I recommend intensive shooting in the initial phase, and after deer abundance decreases and deer vigilance increases, trapping should be adopted for a sustainable hunting efficiency. To conduct effective population control of deer by hunting, factors affecting effort and efficiency should be clarified. Harden et al (2005) showed that deer hunters avoided urban areas Each of these studies has two major problems. The license permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion