Effort and the Functional Response of Deer Hunters

Abstract

Managers of overabundant deer have failed to incorporate relevant predatorprey theory into management research. In particular, understanding the functional response of deer hunters (deer encountered/time) to declining deer density is important because functional responses determine relative effort (time/deer encountered) required to harvest a deer and may, in turn, influence hunter perceptions of deer density and costs associated with deer removal. We used information-theoretic techniques and nonlinear regression to reanalyze data from controlled hunts in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ontario. Alternate models include killing rates or sighting rates as Type 1 (linear), Type 2 (hyperbolic), or Type 3 (sigmoidal) functions of deer density. Akaike's information criteria suggested that optimal models for most data sets were Type 1, although this may have been a artifact of small sample sizes. Nonetheless, effort curves derived from fitted functional responses indicated that relative effort accelerates as deer density declines. Accelerating effort requirements on the part of deer hunters likely hinders agency efforts to reduce overabundant deer populations and may be a source of hunter perceptions of unrealistically reduced deer herds. If general, this relationship (1) may determine what levels of harvest/removal are realistic, (2) is a potential source of bias in population estimation, and (3) may contribute to hunter distrust of agency efforts to reduce population size.

Deer, predators, and the emergence of Lyme disease

“…S8). Analysis of the hunter functional response from 10 datasets supports a type I functional response (41), which suggests that hunter success rates are expected to increase linearly, rather than simply monotonically, with deer density. Additionally, hunter success rates ( Fig.…”

The Effects of Harvest Regulations on Behaviors of Duck Hunters

“…To meet constituency demands and improve harvest management, managers need to better understand how regulations influence hunter participation and behavior. Knowledge of hunter experience, persistence and dedication, and conservation concern may inform hunter recruitment and retention strategies (Enck et al, 1993;Miller & Vaske, 2003;Stedman et al, 2004;Van Deelen & Etter, 2003), addressing the current decline in waterfowl hunter numbers (Vrtiska, Gammonley, Naylor, & Raedeke, 2013).…”

Los seres humanos como depredadores: una visión general de las estrategias de depredación seguidas por cazadores con distintas motivaciones

“…Although meat or other products, such as pelts, usually are derived from the hunting activities, the hunters are neither relying on these products for their subsistence (as subsistence hunters described above), nor are their chief interest to decimate game numbers (as persecution hunters). Because the motivation of these hunters is related to the expected positive experience of the hunt, which usually is related to the likelihood of seeing or killing game (Gigliotti, 2000;Dickson, Hutton and Adams, 2009), we would expect these hunters to exhibit a threshold in game abundances below which the expected likelihood of killing game would be too low to warrant the financial or time investment of the hunt (Van Deelen and Etter, 2003). Because of this motivational characteristic, we would predict that recreational hunters would behave like generalist predators, and not hunt game when they fall below a certain threshold in abundance.…”

“…These predation strategies have direct ramifications for hunting, since they are predicted to have different potential to influence prey populations (e.g., Anderson and Erlinge, 1977). However, while the predation strategies exhibited by non-human predators have evolved to maximize fitness, human hunting strategies are also determined by financial, emotional, social, and cultural factors (Van Deelen and Etter, 2003). Therefore, the relationship between human hunting and game abundance may be more complex than what predator-prey models would predict (Heberlein and Kuentzel, 2002).…”