Interesting predator-prey dynamics

[BrentD]

Deer may be suffering because of lion hunt Older cats hunt elk, researchers find, and those are the felines hunters tend to kill.



There is a missing link or two in this cover story, but it is interesting nonetheless.

 

[Sask hunter]

Makes sense the older more experienced hunters hunt the biggest game that gives them the most bang for their buck

 

[Irrelevant]

Interesting that it must be knowledge based and not risk based.

 

[BrentD]

neffa3, I don't quite follow you. What is "it"?

I need to go back and look at this again but I don't see why killing old cougars should be bad for mule deer. Might not help them, but how can it be bad? Because they compete too heavily with elk? Is that the logic?

The graph that I posted is also pretty suspicious just because of the way it was laid out. I think it might be quite misleading, but that is hard to say w/o looking at the real data.

Matthew Kaufman (U. Wyoming Coop Unit Leader) was on campus today talking about mule deer migration. He is a very interesting guy to talk with. I understand he was on Meateater's pod cast last week.

 

[375H&H]

One issue I see is that in 2015 60% of the cat harvest were sub adults...so following the logic that younger cats feed more on deer wouldn’t that help deer? Wouldn’t the hound hunting that eventually killed mostly a younger age class be what you wanted (if their theory is correct)?

Hound hunting has been going on for decades so why all of a sudden would the age class trend down? A similar study to this was done in Washington by Robert Wielgus and claimed that a younger age structure resulted in more human conflicts and hunting amplified the problem for the same reason.

Just seems fishy though that in the Washington study after hound hunting was banned the conflicts went up.

 

[Deleted member 20812]

A couple of things. A lower age structure in the harvest data typically means you are on the upper end of your harvest, similar to what you would expect if most deer hunters were harvesting forkies. It’s not necessarily bad, it just means you’re killing a lot of cats.

Also, be careful in how you’re applying Weilgus’ research. If you’re in a closed system that is at its carrying capacity for cougars, I think the age structure science is valid. However, you also have to factor in total numbers of cats within the system and how that relates to number of conflicts. Regardless of social structure, if you increase numbers of cats you’re also going to increase probability of more conflict.

 

[Irrelevant]

neffa3, I don't quite follow you. What is "it"?

I need to go back and look at this again but I don't see why killing old cougars should be bad for mule deer. Might not help them, but how can it be bad? Because they compete too heavily with elk? Is that the logic?

I was just observing which cougars kill the biggest prey, my assumption is that there is more apparent risk to the cougar in trying to take down larger, stronger prey. If there's more risk in taking an elk over a rabbit or deer, and if cougars are similar to people where the individuals most likely to take risks are adolescents (I know completely bs...but still), you would expect younger cats to try elk there most. But this study eludes to cats becoming better and better hunters and this tackling bigger and bigger game. I suppose that makes sense too and that I'm probably over estimating the risks.

 

[Gerald Martin]

By no means do older cats stop killing deer just because they are experienced enough to kill larger game. Even though lions are incredibly efficient predators, they are also susceptible to injury. They will take the easiest game available whenever possible. Trying to make a link between killing older cats is harmful to deer because they can eat elk doesn’t make any sense to me. A more realistic link could be that killing older toms allows for a higher density of cats which would affect deer numbers. A significant amount of lion mortality is from toms killing other cats.

 

[Khunter]

By no means do older cats stop killing deer just because they are experienced enough to kill larger game. Even though lions are incredibly efficient predators, they are also susceptible to injury. They will take the easiest game available whenever possible. Trying to make a link between killing older cats is harmful to deer because they can eat elk doesn’t make any sense to me. A more realistic link could be that killing older toms allows for a higher density of cats which would affect deer numbers. A significant amount of lion mortality is from toms killing other cats.

very interesting research.

the study seemed to clearly track that the kill sites of older cats were predominantly elk....so not sure why dubious of statement older cats kill a lot more elk than deer.

Have no doubt older cats kill cats. Interested to see some research on that as