While any seasoned hunter is bound to tell you that big animals get big by not being shot, recent research has confirmed that notion, at least within the female elk population. A study conducted by University of Alberta researchers Mark Boyce, Henrik Thurfjell and Simone Ciuti found that female elk certainly do adjust their behavior, typically around hunting seasons as they age.
Examining elk in a 46,000 km2 in southwestern Alberta and southeastern British Columbia, the team patterned elk using radio collars across seven hunting seasons between 2007 to 2012.
“Elk learn to become shy as they get older,” said biologist Mark Boyce. “The magic number is 10. After this age threshold, female elk become almost bulletproof, virtually invulnerable to hunting.”
Their research is unique in that it displays the role social learning in female elk plays in their survival as opposed to pure natural selection or selection from hunting. Studying the data from the GPS collars, researchers noticed that as each subsequent hunting season passed, those that survived got progressively more effective at avoiding hunting pressure.
The data showed that the collared animals would instead alter their movements by moving less and remaining in less-desirable terrain such as dense forest cover and steep rocky terrain.
“Learning plays a large part in the adaptation of elk to hunting, and those elk that survive hunting seasons get even better at avoiding hunters in subsequent seasons,” explained Boyce.
As far as wildlife management and conservation goes, their findings point to hunting as one of the most effective forms of management here in North America. While some circles tend to regard this behavior as purely genetic, the research instead suggests the opposite. Hunting pressure is successfully altering the age and sex composition of the elk population, but is extremely unlikely to be having any substantial long-term effects on the animals.
“This means that our wildlife management and conservation strategies are working,” said Boyce.