Can roe deer hunting be selective? A case study from the Pyrenees

Abstract

Trophy Hunting (TH) is thought to be the reason for the reduction in length and thickness of trophies as well as body size in several Bovidae species. In deer populations, changes have occurred in allele frequencies and in number of antler tips, possibly the result of the removal of males that showed the best trophies. To evaluate whether TH selection occurred in a roe deer population, we compared the antlers and body biometrics of bucks harvested (n=278, 2006-2014) through stalking with a ranger within Game Reserves in the Aragonese Pyrenees (Spain) and those of non-hunted bucks found dead in the same and surrounding areas (n=28, 2004-2014); the latter were necropsied. For the analyses, hunters were assigned to one of three categories: local, regional, or national, depending on the origin and access to the hunting permissions. The study assessed the selection perception and hunt difficulty among rangers (n=18) and hunters (n=209). Statistical analyses used non-parametric Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests. The results indicated that (i), in all biometrics except brow tines, hunted bucks were larger than the non-hunted ones, (ii) hunter typologies did not differ, and (iii) rangers and hunters did not differ in their perceptions of selection and difficulty. Our results suggest that, the roe deer hunt through stalking in the Game Reserves selected the best trophies, and the rangers were essential in that process. Furthermore, if the main objective of roe deer TH is to harvest the animals with larger antlers, this selection could have a long-term negative impact.

Genomic architecture of artificially and sexually selected traits in a wild cervid

“…Efforts to compare harvested to non-harvested (i.e. naturally shed) antlers suggest the potential for artificial selection with those harvested by hunters being larger in size (Schoenebeck & Petersen 2014 but see Ditchkoff et al 2000), which is similar to what has been documented in other cervids (Ramanzin & Sturaro, 2014;Pozo et al, 2016;Balčiauskas et al, 2017;García-Ferrer et al, 2019). Our objective was to identify genomic windows associated with variation in antler and body size phenotypes in WTD, under the hypothesis that many genes of small to moderate effect underly these phenotypes, but core pathways should be related to these phenotypes.…”