We evaluated the precision of age estimates produced by cementum annuli analysis (CAA) of blind‐duplicate specimens taken from 994 southern mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) collected over 15 years. We found that the mean annual proportion of unreliably aged incisor pairs was greater for females (0.48, SD = 0.13) than for males (0.22, SD = 0.07). Most of the 308 unreliably aged tooth pairs disagreed by only 1 year. Sex, precipitation, and certainty codes assigned by Matson's Lab to the age estimates were the best predictors for agreement of estimated ages within incisor pairs. Our estimated overall age error rate of CAA (17%) was >2 times as large as estimated error rates from Montana and South Dakota, but less than half of error rates estimated for Mississippi and south Texas. Knowing the error rate of age estimates from a specific deer population allows wildlife managers to perform tasks requiring specific age class information such as monitoring the harvest rate of older female deer in a hunted population or performing population reconstruction. © 2011 The Wildlife Society.
Cohort effects on body mass of deer species are caused by both density-dependent and -independent factors. Cohort effects occur in the year of birth and affect body size throughout life. We hypothesized that deer in low latitudes should be able to overcome cohort effects through compensatory or catch-up growth because mild and wet winter conditions are more amenable for animal growth. We analyzed 27 years of mule deer harvest data from Camp Pendleton, California. Using generalized least-squares regression with restricted maximum likelihood estimation to estimate parameters, we determined that eviscerated body mass of southern mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus fuliginatus) was affected by precipitation and relative abundance. We also found that deer were able to recover from periods of poor nutrition and overcome cohort effects by 2.5 years of age, which has not been demonstrated in other ungulate populations. This study demonstrates that body mass can be used as a tool to assess the nutritional state of a population in an environment with high inter-annual variation in biotic and abiotic factors. Further, managers in environments where mild and wet winters extend growing seasons should consider the possibility that deer may be able to recover from periods of missed growth when making harvest recommendations. Ó 2014 The Wildlife Society.
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