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3 February 2020 Constraints to hunting and harvesting elk in a landscape dominated by private land
Matthew P. Gruntorad, Christopher J. Chizinski
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Abstract

While the harvest success rate of bull elk in Nebraska has been relatively high in recent years, antlerless harvest success is substantially lower inhibiting the ability of wildlife managers to effectively manage population numbers. We sought to explore differences in hunter behaviour based on the type of elk being hunted as well as how specific constraints affected each type of hunter's ability to hunt and harvest elk. Decreased antlerless-elk harvest rates were likely a product of the reduced frequency in which an antlerless-elk hunter would pay for the opportunity to hunt on property containing a comparatively higher probability of harvest. Antlerless-elk hunters reported being more constrained by time, and felt more strongly that the quantity of elk on the land that they hunted affected their ability to harvest. Our results reinforce the need for wildlife managers to work closely with private landowners and focus hunting pressure on land currently restricted to elk hunting.

© 2019 University of Nebraska – Lincoln. This is an Open Acces article This work is licensed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY). The license permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Matthew P. Gruntorad and Christopher J. Chizinski "Constraints to hunting and harvesting elk in a landscape dominated by private land," Wildlife Biology 2020(1), (3 February 2020). https://doi.org/10.2981/wlb.00596
Accepted: 17 November 2019; Published: 3 February 2020
KEYWORDS
constraint negotiation
human–wildlife conflict
hunter attitudes
hunter surveys
recreational hunting constraints
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