Studies utilizing radio tags to examine animal space use are widespread and often require the survival of marked animals over the entirety of a specified study period to answer movement-related questions. When studying the space use of game species, tactics such as applying visible markings to research animals and communicating with hunters may be needed to mitigate unwanted losses due to hunter harvest. Information regarding the effectiveness of visible markings and communication efforts in reducing harvest, as well as examples of hunter cooperation with requests to avoid harvesting marked animals, are lacking but could be quite useful when designing movement studies and planning capture efforts. Across 3 studies conducted during 2009-2015 on public and private land in the southeastern United States, adult white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) were captured and marked in 1 of 3 ways: via conspicuous (Global Positioning System [GPS]) radiocollar; conspicuous radiocollar combined with visible ear tags; or cryptic (very-high-frequency [VHF]) radiocollar. Hunters were asked not to harvest visibly marked deer (GPS radiocollars, with or without ear tags) and survival was compared with that of cryptically marked (VHF) animals. Visibly marked deer were less likely to be harvested than were cryptically marked individuals on private land, but collar types were treated similarly on public land. Additionally, visibly marked males were more likely to be harvested than visibly marked females and the likelihood of harvest increased with male deer age. Our findings suggest that hunter cooperation decreases with the opportunity to harvest a "trophy" and that cooperation is lower on public land compared with private land. Insight into hunter treatment of visibly marked deer can inform researchers and managers about expected losses when conducting long-term spatial monitoring of ungulates and other game species. Ó 2017 The Wildlife Society.

Animals move to maximize fitness via resource acquisition, predator avoidance, thermoregulation, or mate access. Variations in movement strategies among and within populations often reflect habitat- or demographic-specific variations in fitness trade-offs. To examine these conditional movement strategies, we modeled seasonal and diel movement patterns of radio-collared adult male Columbia black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus (Richardson, 1829)) on a temperate, predator-free island. Linear 10 h displacement and home-range areas reached annual maxima during autumn and minima during late winter, corresponding with known dates for breeding season and lowest quality forage, respectively. For all males in all years, initiation of increased movements began during spring and again, abruptly, in late September, immediately prior to peak breeding season. Larger antlered males continued increased movements longer into December, suggesting increased breeding effort relative to smaller antlered males. Time of day predicted movements during all seasons; however, we observed no strong evidence of the crepuscular or nocturnal movement bias typically noted in deer, likely relating to the lack of predators in our study area. In this way, male black-tailed deer adopted conditional, seasonally specific movement strategies to balance fitness trade-offs in resource acquisition, thermoregulation, and mate access.

Infrequent, long-distance animal movements outside of typical home range areas provide useful insights into resource acquisition, gene flow, and disease transmission within the fields of conservation and wildlife management, yet understanding of these movements is still limited across taxa. To detect these extra-home range movements (EHRMs) in spatial relocation datasets, most previous studies compare relocation points against fixed spatial and temporal bounds, typified by seasonal home ranges (referred to here as the “Fixed-Period” method). However, utilizing home ranges modelled over fixed time periods to detect EHRMs within those periods likely results in many EHRMs going undocumented, particularly when an animal’s space use changes within that period of time. To address this, we propose a novel, “Moving-Window” method of detecting EHRMs through an iterative process, comparing each day’s relocation data to the preceding period of space use only. We compared the number and characteristics of EHRM detections by both the Moving-Window and Fixed-Period methods using GPS relocations from 33 white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in Alabama, USA. The Moving-Window method detected 1.5 times as many EHRMs as the Fixed-Period method and identified 120 unique movements that were undetected by the Fixed-Period method, including some movements that extended nearly 5 km outside of home range boundaries. Additionally, we utilized our EHRM dataset to highlight and evaluate potential sources of variation in EHRM summary statistics stemming from differences in definition criteria among previous EHRM literature. We found that this spectrum of criteria identified between 15.6% and 100.0% of the EHRMs within our dataset. We conclude that variability in terminology and definition criteria previously used for EHRM detection hinders useful comparisons between studies. The Moving-Window approach to EHRM detection introduced here, along with proposed methodology guidelines for future EHRM studies, should allow researchers to better investigate and understand these behaviors across a variety of taxa.

Context. Many prey species exhibit antipredator behaviours when threatened, yet prey response to temporal variation in predation risk is not well-understood, despite being foundational to predator-prey dynamics and an important consideration among game population managers and recreationalists. Aims. To examine white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) behaviour in response to temporal variation in predation risk imposed by recreational hunters and to assess the effect of deer sex and age on antipredator response. Methods. Global positioning system (GPS) collars were used to monitor behaviour of female and male deer in response to diel and weekly patterns of recreational hunting in Alabama, USA. Key results. Deer behaviour on weekends (i.e. Friday-Sunday), corresponding to periods of elevated risk, was similar to behaviour on weekdays (i.e. Monday-Thursday). However, when behaviour was examined by individual day of the week, movement rate decreased by 17%, net displacement decreased by 31%, and the probability of activity decreased by 24% during daylight hours on Sundays compared with Fridays. Behavioural changes among days were not detected at night. Daytime behavioural shifts persisted until Wednesdays, despite lower weekday hunting activity. Behavioural variation by deer sex and age was also observed. Conclusions. Deer perceive temporal variation in predation risk and modify their behaviour to reduce the likelihood of predation. Variation in response across sex and age classes may be driven by previous experience with hunters and/or survival-and fitness-related trade-offs that affect prey decisions at the individual level. Antipredator response was not initially detectable when examined at a broad temporal scale (i.e. weekend vs weekday); however, a behavioural response was shown with a finer-scale analysis (i.e. individual day of the week), which more closely reflected the pattern of risk fluctuation. Implications. Our findings demonstrated the acute awareness of a large ungulate to temporal changes in predation risk and provided insight into ways in which these prey behaviourally respond to reduce the likelihood of predatory encounters. Future studies should consider the temporal scale of risk fluctuation when examining antipredator response to avoid false conclusions. Ungulate hunters and managers can use this information to more efficiently achieve their goals.