Hi Guys,

I'd love to hear some of your opinions and thoughts on this article:


It's Survival of the Weak and Scrawny
Researchers see 'evolution in reverse' as hunters kill off prized animals with the biggest antlers and pelts.

By Lily Huang | NEWSWEEK
Published Jan 3, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jan 12, 2009

Some of the most iconic photographs of Teddy Roosevelt, one of the first conservationists in American politics, show the president posing companionably with the prizes of his trophy hunts. An elephant felled in Africa in 1909 points its tusks skyward; a Cape buffalo, crowned with horns in the shape of a handlebar mustache, slumps in a Kenyan swamp. In North America, he stalked deer, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep and elk, which he called "lordly game" for their majestic antlers. What's remarkable about these photographs is not that they depict a hunter who was also naturalist John Muir's staunchest political ally. It's that just 100 years after his expeditions, many of the kind of magnificent trophies he routinely captured are becoming rare.

Elk still range across parts of North America, but every hunting season brings a greater challenge to find the sought-after bull with a towering spread of antlers. Africa and Asia still have elephants, but Roosevelt would have regarded most of them as freaks, because they don't have tusks. Researchers describe what's happening as none other than the selection process that Darwin made famous: the fittest of a species survive to reproduce and pass along their traits to succeeding generations, while the traits of the unfit gradually disappear. Selective hunting—picking out individuals with the best horns or antlers, or the largest piece of hide—works in reverse: the evolutionary loser is not the small and defenseless, but the biggest and best-equipped to win mates or fend off attackers.

When hunting is severe enough to outstrip other threats to survival, the unsought, middling individuals make out better than the alpha animals, and the species changes. "Survival of the fittest" is still the rule, but the "fit" begin to look unlike what you might expect. And looks aren't the only things changing: behavior adapts too, from how hunted animals act to how they reproduce. There's nothing wrong with a species getting molded over time by new kinds of risk. But some experts believe problems arise when these changes make no evolutionary sense.

Ram Mountain in Alberta, Canada, is home to a population of bighorn sheep, whose most vulnerable individuals are males with thick, curving horns that give them a regal, Princess Leia look. In the course of 30 years of study, biologist Marco Festa-Bianchet of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec found a roughly 25 percent decline in the size of these horns, and both male and female sheep getting smaller. There's no mystery on Ram Mountain: male sheep with big horns tend to be larger and produce larger offspring. During the fall rut, or breeding season, these alpha rams mate more than any other males, by winning fights or thwarting other males' access to their ewes. Their success, however, is contingent upon their surviving the two-month hunting season just before the rut, and in a strange way, they're competing against their horns. Around the age of 4, their horn size makes them legal game—several years before their reproductive peak. That means smaller-horned males get far more opportunity to mate.

Other species are shrinking, too. Australia's red kangaroo has become noticeably smaller as poachers target the largest animals for leather. The phenomenon has been most apparent in harvested fish: since fishing nets began capturing only fish of sufficient size in the 1980s, the Atlantic cod and salmon, several flounders and the northern pike have all propagated in miniature.

So what if fish or kangaroos are smaller? If being smaller is safer, this might be a successful adaptation for a hunted species. After all, " 'fitness' is relative and transitory," says Columbia University biologist Don Melnick, meaning that Darwinian natural selection has nothing to do with what's good or bad, or the way things should be. Tusks used to make elephants fitter, as a weapon or a tool in foraging—until ivory became a precious commodity and having tusks got you killed. Then tuskless elephants, products of a genetic fluke, became the more consistent breeders and grew from around 2 percent among African elephants to more than 38 percent in one Zambian population, and 98 percent in a South African one. In Asia, where female elephants don't have tusks to begin with, the proportion of tuskless elephants has more than doubled, to more than 90 percent in Sri Lanka. But there's a cost to not having tusks. Tusked elephants, like the old dominant males on Ram Mountain, were "genetically 'better' individuals," says Festa-Bianchet. "When you take them systematically out of the population for several years, you end up leaving essentially a bunch of losers doing the breeding."

"Losers" tend not to be very good breeders, meaning that this demographic shift ultimately threatens the viability of a species. Researchers also worry that the surviving animals are left with a narrower gene pool. In highly controlled environments, a species with frighteningly little genetic diversity can persist—think of the extremes of domesticated animals like thoroughbred horses or commercial chickens—but in real ecosystems changes are unpredictable. Artificially selecting animals in the wild—in effect, breeding them—is "a very risky game," says Columbia's Melnick. "It's highly likely to result in the end of a species."

At present, researchers' alarm about these trends are based on theories that are hard to prove. To make scientific claims about the effects of hunting on the evolution of a species, researchers like Melnick would need thorough data from animal populations that lived at least several decades ago, which rarely exist. Evolution, it turns out, is a difficult beast to study in real time because it is the product of so many factors—changes in climate, habitat and food supply, as well as gene frequencies—and because it occurs so slowly. Researchers began tracking sheep on Ram Mountain in the early 1970s, corralling the entire population every year to make measurements and trace genealogies. "You cannot really just go out and take data and look for a trend," says Festa-Bianchet. "Even if you find a trend it can be due to environmental changes, to changes in density. You're really trying to tease out the genetic part of the change."

The time scale is one reason that most wildlife departments managing hunting harvests simply count the heads each year and decide how many to let hunters bag without thinking about genes. The most popular method of regulating hunting—restricting legal game to males with a minimum antler size—results in populations overrun with females and inferior males, which is ultimately no service to hunters. "The hunters wish for animals with large antlers and large horns, and yet their actions are making that harder to achieve," says Richard Harris, a conservation biologist in Montana. As a hunter, Harris knows that the outcome of this trend will satisfy no one, the Teddy Roosevelts of the next generation least of all.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/177709

Well, there are two solutions to the problem: the Texas high-fenced ranch and slot limits a la large mouth bass management.

Take your pick.

I would love to correspond with the author since she is off the mark, no make that waaaay off the mark in most of her article.

Anyone know how to reach her?

Someone should tell that dim wit that the vast majority of those trophy animals have been taken after they have bred and passed the genetics on to the next generation. There are exceptions, but not many. Pennsylvania instituted a law about whitetails needing three points on one side to be taken and the last two hunts I did out there, the herd had improved greatly. Maybe she should go do some hunting before writing.

i've seen several skulls and sheds from bucks that make your mouth water, but no one in the area had ever seen them. nocturnal or really smart (same thing?) let them reach old age and superior size. she doesnt know what she's talking about.

It seems like every year a bigger animal of some species is being shot.

She may be all wet, but I seem to recall either the State of Tennessee or Kentucky has done a study in something called "High Ending'. In a nutshell it is placing a minimum antler point and people take them. An example being a 4x4 or 3x3 basket racked yearling buck. He is legal and is harvested, while letting a spikehorn walk. Go do that to your herd for 10 years and take a look. Oops we removed the genetically superior animals while they were yearlings and before they learned things like hide and seek for life and lets only come out at night.

high grading is a real concern with animals like deer where you're looking at a wide variety of antler configurations, where you want to be able to harvest the least genetically capable animals ONE day, and you thus end up allowing the largest of the immature animals to be shot as well. A case in point is the 3 point rule on mule deer done in colorado back in the 90s. There were tons of huge fork horns out there, and much fewer 4x4s. Now with the tag system in place, and no antler restrictions, big mulies are back all over the state. With animals like sheep, I bet the reason the large animals aren't there is because there aren't animals reaching the super old age classes that produce the largest trophies... so reduce the number of tags and wait a few years. the author is way off the mark with the severity and scope of the problem.

quote:

Originally posted by youp50:
She may be all wet, but I seem to recall either the State of Tennessee or Kentucky has done a study in something called "High Ending'. In a nutshell it is placing a minimum antler point and people take them. An example being a 4x4 or 3x3 basket racked yearling buck. He is legal and is harvested, while letting a spikehorn walk. Go do that to your herd for 10 years and take a look. Oops we removed the genetically superior animals while they were yearlings and before they learned things like hide and seek for life and lets only come out at night.

oh, i don't know. we've had 3 point minimum for 15 or 20 years (longer than i've been hunting, anyway) and every year we see some DANDY bucks, usually running like hell or spooked after dark. every once in a while we connect with one. happened 3 times, so far. and there are the sheds and skulls we find and see. they had to come from SOMEWHERE!

It may also have something to do with the terrain and number of hunters. I know that where I hunt there is generally a couple of hunters per 40 acre parcel. I am relatively certain that there are higher hunter densities in other portions of the state.

State of Michigan is having pains from mismanagement of the deer herd. It started 15 years ago when some bean counter decided 4 buck tags per individual was a profitable situation. Now in the U.P. some QDM people have pushed through a 3 point for the first and 4 point for the second (eye guards included) rule. A point to ponder; at my camp there is a strain of bucks that are forkhorns as two year olds. It would seem to follow that targeting these bucks for removal would improve the herd. Now the Natural Resources Board has acted to protect that strain and become the dominant breeder. In the U.P., when a buck reaches that third year he has become much wiser and harder to take. I beleive a young buck with small horns will tend to pass that trait to his offspring.

I have been to the Gunnison area in Colorado hunting elk. The area around Crested Butte certainly has some whopper Muleys. It appears that Colorado has done a good thing by limiting tags. I have given up applying. I have a hard time plannning for a tag in nine or ten years. I will leave that for the younger guys.

The state of Washington has two management plans when it comes to their elk herds in different sections of the state. In Blue Mts of S.E. Washington. They allowed the only the harvest of spike elk only for several years. With this in mind, they knew there was between approximately 15 percent escapement of bulls for breeding purposes. This allowed bulls to mature. After many years limited permits were allowed for these branched antered bulls. Many of these Bulls were living beyond 6 to 7 years of age and some to 10 or 11 age year group. Many record booked bulls were now being taken on these limited permits. Several above 375 B & C. were being recorded. And I believe a couple around 420 were even recorded. Herd numbers improved very slowly. It was found there was predation problem later discovered do to high number of black bear in the area. Calf survival was low. The verdict is still out on this one. On the other side of the state in the Mt. St. Helens area, they used another management tool where you could only harvest 5 point or better bulls with litte or no permit restrictions. Herd numbers improved with a high number of branched antlered bulls taken ever year. These bulls rarely lived beyound 4 to 5 years of age. So, the quality of bulls were improved in both cases. But, higher age group in the one case with more B&C Bulls and another group more branched animals bulls with a larger herd numbers with with no B&C Bulls. But, still in most people minds trophy quality bulls. Different management tools but both worked.
I believe the state of Washington is also doing this with areas concerning both whitetails and mule deer. They still have doe permits, cow permits and areas open for taken of any antlered deer or elk but they have also establishe trophy quality areas.

It is an issue not easily solved. If you protect spikes from all hunting pressure, regardless of age, they WILL breed more over time, thus passing on that trait. It is why I was opposed to the Missouri antler restrictions. In the course of three years, we have gone from seeing nice deer to seeing one shooter in the last 2 years. There are plenty of really huge 6 points running around, but they are not legal. The check station said the same thing...fewer deer checked, smaller bucks overall. Sure you still see the occaisional big deer, just not as often where there is heavy hunting pressure.

I would rather see the herd managed for buck to doe ratio than antler size.