Direction de la Recherche et de l'Appui Scientifique-Unité Ongulés Sauvages, Office Français de la Biodiversité, Birieux, France.
Direction de la Recherche et de l'Appui Scientifique-Unité Flore et Végétation, Office Français de la Biodiversité, Birieux, France.
PLoS One. 2020 Mar 9;15(3):e0228865. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0228865. eCollection 2020.
Hunting can be used as a tool for wildlife management, through limitation of population densities and dissuading game from using sensitive areas. The success of these approaches requires in depth knowledge of prey movement. Indeed, movement decisions of game during hunting may affect the killing success of hunters as well as the subsequent location of surviving animals. We thus investigated red deer movement responses to drive hunts and their causal factors. We studied 34 hunting events in the National Estate of Chambord (France) and thereby provided a fine-scale characterization of the immediate and delayed movement responses of red deer to drive hunts. Red deer responded to drive hunts either by immediately fleeing the hunted area, or by initially remaining before ultimately fleeing after the hunters had departed. A few hours after the hunt, all individuals were located in distant areas (> 2 kilometres) from the hunted area. Immediate flight responses were less common when drive hunts occurred in areas with dense understorey. However, neither beater/dog densities nor site familiarity influenced the immediate flight decision. Following a drive hunt, red deer remained outside the hunted areas for periods twice as long compared to periods when no hunting occurred (34 hours vs. 17 hours). Such knowledge of game movement rates in response to drive hunts may help the development of informed management policy for hunted red deer populations.
狩猎可以作为野生动物管理的一种工具，通过限制种群密度和阻止猎物进入敏感区域。这些方法的成功需要深入了解猎物的移动情况。事实上，猎物在狩猎过程中的移动决策可能会影响猎人的捕杀成功率以及幸存动物的后续位置。因此，我们研究了红鹿对驱赶狩猎的移动反应及其因果因素。我们在法国香波堡国家庄园研究了 34 次狩猎事件，从而对红鹿对驱赶狩猎的即时和延迟移动反应进行了精细的描述。红鹿对驱赶狩猎的反应要么是立即逃离狩猎区，要么是在猎人离开后才最初停留然后最终逃离。狩猎后几个小时，所有个体都位于远离狩猎区的远处（>2 公里）。当驱赶狩猎发生在林下植被密集的地区时，立即飞行的反应不太常见。然而，打猎人/狗的密度或地点熟悉度都不会影响立即飞行的决定。与没有狩猎时相比，在驱赶狩猎后，红鹿在狩猎区外停留的时间延长了一倍（34 小时对 17 小时）。这种了解猎物对驱赶狩猎的移动速度的知识可能有助于制定有关狩猎红鹿种群的明智管理政策。
