How female elk adjust behaviour with age to avoid hunters | Hacker News Reader

How female elk adjust behaviour with age to avoid hunters

journals.plos.org

71 pointsTomte54 comments

I hunt elk and this is not surprising at all. They are quite aware of the hunting seasons and the boundaries of hunting areas and they have completely different behaviors around those transitions. They will graze openly on hillsides in abundance right up to the open of the season, at which point they "go to ground" and disappear deep into the creek bottoms and wallows. There are some old and absolutely huge ones running around (from fresh sign we spot) but you never see them because they are very cautious.

Particularly with the older and wiser males, the only time we catch one is at extremely close range while stalking through bedding areas off-trail.

I'm totally perplexed at how you can appreciate something and still want to kill it.

I know, right? Personally I prefer to get all my meat from my employer's cafeteria where no animals had to be harmed.

But still, nobody really claims to appreciate the pork the schnitzel he enjoys in the cafeteria used to be. It is much easier to get emotionally engaged with a living being when you see it and interact with it in its natural environment and you are the one who kills it and watches it die, than getting emotionally engaged with the beef where the frozen meatloaf you bought from the supermarket comes from.

"Pork" and "beef" are only used to describe the food items. I don't think being unwilling to acknowledge that the food you eat once came from living pigs and cows makes you morally superior to someone actually involved with the process.

I don't personally hunt but have family and friends that do. They all understand licenses, seasons, and that the rules exist to ensure sustainable populations. None are trophy hunters - they have a butcher prepare the meat and a tanner make objects from the skins.

It is possible to respect an animal and engage in conservation efforts while being a hunter. Many human societies have had forms of this, even having thankfulness rituals where they praise the spirit of the animal.

I write this as a vegetarian (and former vegan). Do you appreciate plants? I know I sure do. Do I still kill them? Of course.

The difference being that with plants, you really don't have much of a choice. You have to eat something. Stalking deer, on the other hand, is definitely optional.

Yeah I am with you here. Except that I cannot stand the thought of killing plants. Unfortunately I have to eat something so I do not have much of a choice but to kill an animal to do so.

I try to not waste plant life. It's why I won't buy a live Christmas tree. Someone was just telling me how they kill their succulents and just buy new ones. That was about as offensive to me as if someone joked about how they kill their pet dogs all the time but buy new ones.

That runs both ways. Some people live on a meat-centered diet and hardly eat plants.

Plants give off a pulse when harmed and communicate with each other chemically to inform other plants in the area of insect infestations so they can try to chemically protect themselves. Just because your senses fail to detect the ways in which they express their suffering doesn't mean they are any less able to feel and express themselves than the creatures whose self expression is more readily understood by humans.

Let's apply that argument to killing humans now. Original post is getting at appreciation of this learning behavior. One may say the elk isn't doing this intelligently, drawing on examples such as dandelions which learn to not grow so tall after being mowed

I don't understand the application. Is it your stance that murderers are incapable of any appreciation for other humans? What about those who have killed others "justly", e.g. soldiers or executioners?

Are you suggesting that if he had claimed that he generally appreciates elks but not the ones he kills, would make more sense?

Nah, I'm suggesting that a decision to kill something is not necessarily the same as a decision to destroy something and may be motivated by more factors than simply how much one appreciates that thing. I appreciate the intricate webs that spiders weave and their impact on the other insect population around me but I will totally squish one if she happens upon me in the wrong situation. I imagine for hunters the appreciation of their prey's complex behaviours may even be part of the appeal.

Obviously then, you appreciate "having a clean, web-free house" more compared to the contribution of the webs in your home to the environment. Same same way, the hunter appreciates his hunting activity more compared to how much he appreciates his pray. Which makes the statement "I appreciate my pray" meaningless in the context of hunting. If you only hunt in a life threatening hunger situation, then obviously appreciate your own life more than the pray's. If you hunt for sports, then you appreciate your hobby more than your pray's life, and so on...

(I am a meat-eater, just pointing out something I find funny in such statements)

I'm afraid you've misunderstood me again--I usually leave the webs in and around my house, I appreciate their beauty and their utility. I am not a hunter of spiders, for sport or otherwise. I offered the example only to show how in some contexts I might destroy something even though I appreciate it.

I believe we may each be using the word "appreciate" with subtly different definitions. I believe it's possible to appreciate aspects of a thing without necessarily collapsing them all into some sort of comparison of perceived total value. I think it's possible that someone who hunts for sustenance might also come to treat the activity as somewhat of a sport, or an art, and so come to appreciate aspects of the activity including the intelligent behaviours of the prey.

No I have not misunderstood you, maybe I haven't made myself clear enough(not a native English speaker here...). As you also say, the context itself is what matters. For example, today I would guess most e.g. Canadians do not hunt for survival. Having a Canadian hunter saying "I hunt elks for sports, but I appreciate them", is kind of funny and meaningless. In the context of hunting for sports, it is pointless to say "but I appreciate them". If you beat up your neighbor cause he attacked you with an axe, and you needed to save your life, it is pointless to say that you appreciate him. It is clear you did what you did, cause you appreciate your own existence more than him. It is equally pointless to say "but I appreciate him" after making clear that you beat him up, cause you din't like his face. In both cases, the context is clear and thus the level of appreciation to the other party. Stating "but..." is meaningless. That for, my understanding of what the level of appreciation of someone hunting for sports towards his pray, is that it is very low by my standards.

It's pretty common, reading memoirs of very proficient soldiers, who have killed dozens or hundreds in battle, that they are respectful and even admiring of their foes.

One example: Andy McNab. I actually really admire that about his writing. I've read some war stories where there's a lot of negative attitudes - he always calls out what his enemies did well and how it was nothing personal that he held against them.

OP was arguing that you can easily appreciate something and still kill it. The nature of the appreciation is secondary to the original argument.

I wish I had those dandelions in my yard when I was growing up.

Any average day 16 elks collide with cars carrying humans in Sweden. These animals have no natural predators any longer - without these annual culls (100k out of a population of about 350k - these numbers are relatively stable from year to year) they would reach very large numbers very quickly.

(There are not that many human deaths from this any longer; about five annually. It used to be a lot worse before e.g. Volvo focused on fixing this safety problem. Someone I knew died from an elk collision about 25 years ago.)

BTW, the original paper is about Cervus Elpaphus, which in the US we call Red Deer. This is different from American Elk, and also from Scandanavian Elk (which we Americans call Moose).

Moose are terrifying, since they are often upwards of 1000 pounds, and are tall enough that when you hit them with anything smaller than a full-size pickup or tractor trailer, they tend to fall on the roof and windscreen of the vehicle, crushing them and killing the passengers.

I agree that confusion exists, but I don't think you have the details quite correct. In North America, I think the term "Red Deer" is only used to describe non-native animals. The paper says its about Cervus elaphus, but the study was done in Alberta, Canada. The native animals that are hunted in Alberta are locally called Elk and the provincial government says they are synonymous with Wapiti: http://aep.alberta.ca/fish-wildlife/wild-species/mammals/dee....

I think the missing pieces of information is that Wapiti (Cervus canadensis) was until recently classified as a subspecies of Cervus elaphus. I'm guessing that the authors of the paper (and the provincial government) either don't agree with this reclassification, or have some legal reason for continuing to refer to the native North American animals by the older Latin name.

Hmm. I'm in Norway this week, but I live in Montana. We have Moose in our yard at home. There are stuffed Moose in the museums here (labeled "Moose"). They're the same animal.

I grew up in Scotland where we have Red Deer. Those animals are roughy the same thing as a North American Elk.

Ah..

Anyway, I think Volvo addressed this problem by

a) reinforcing particularly the A pillars using some very strong Boron steel alloy:

http://135jik1bbhst1159ri1ax2pj.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c...

b) angling the A pillars/front screen more in order to deflect some of the forces caused by a direct collision with a Moose.

It's easy. It's called "appreciating the natural order of things". Humans and their ancestors have hunted animals for millions of years.

Beyond that, which animal do you think has a higher quality of life: an elk, roaming free in the woods, or a cow, living life as a rancher sees fit and then slaughtered when the meat is considered optimum?

You should also reflect that the death of a wild animal is rarely serene or enjoyable. Death from old age is usually death from starvation. Death before old age might either be an agonizing one after an injury, or being eaten alive by predators. You should watch a video of wolves eating an elk sometime...

The death a hunter offers is generally one of the more painless ways an animal can go. Even "trophy hunters", who take a lot of grief, are very often harvesting animals who aren't far from dying of old age as described above.

Personally, though, I prefer hunting animals that provide lots of delicious, healthy meat. :-)

The lion ought to admire the gazelle.

The lion is not hunting the gazelle, he is stealing it from cheetahs. Cheetahs are not admiring gazelles- they are busy not overheating, and not getting speared with sabrelike horns on the head of the gazelle. Nobody is admiring the gazelle, except the gazelle.

There's a quote from James Audubon that was basically how he wished he could kill more birds. Humans are weird.

Look into what would happen to the populations if they were not hunted with permits.

What would happen is we would desperately need many more wolves again.

Not at all.

Wolves don't need any help adjusting to an increase in their food supply. What you will end up with is, "What are we going to do about this wolf problem?" That's not a problem you want to have.

What you will more realistically end up with is an increase in auto insurance premiums in rural and outer suburban areas. Deer/vehicle collisions will become more common and they are expensive claims to pay.

I thought it would be obvious that I'm referring to the fact that prior to overpopulation of people, there developed a sustainable balance between wolves, elk, etc. We eliminated the wolves, and that is what led to the overpopulation of deer etc. So, the point is that we either fill the role of the wolves we eliminated or we bring back the wolves. The overpopulation of deer doesn't work.

I'm not sure about elk, but deer tend to have an alpha male that mates with multiple females, so shooting a buck doesn't damage the population as much. I think that's why antelope hunting is gender-agnostic and you need to win a lottery to do it: They're monogamous, so killing a male has the same impact on the population as killing a female.

It seems a lot more likely that killing males would discourage them from being monogamous than that killing males would have the same population impact as killing females.

If you assume that they adapt the way human cultures do to such influences, which isn't necessarily true of animal populations.

The only things you need to assume are that they're alive and their mode of reproduction is obligately sexual. As far as the prediction is concerned, humans are totally irrelevant.

Evolutionary pressure is a harsh mistress.

I am not sure how well Heinlein's polyandrous Loonies[1] would match real-life scenarios. This did not happen in New South Wales where male convicts outnumbered the female convicts six to one[2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convict_women_in_Australia

Males and females are not symmetrical. A female who never reproduces because she wants to be faithful to a mate who doesn't exist is giving up 100% of her reproduction. A female who stays faithful to a mate who does exist is giving up 0%, in terms of quantity -- one mate can provide all the children a female is capable of having.

I'd suspect it's because he wants to eat it and that's a lot harder to do while it's still alive.

The proper way to overcome your lack of understanding would be to try hunting...

I hunted a mosquito in my bathroom last night. It's dead now — a successful hunt — but I did not enjoy it one bit.

I've seen the exact same behavior with white-tail deer. All summer, they will be in the field and gardens back of the house, morning, noon and night, but as soon as November rolls around, they ghost during daylight hours, and retreat into the thickest softwood or hardwood whips or swamp, where the hunters can't push them out. Until you get to the first snow, and can actually stay on their tail and track them down, it's hard hunting.

The food that is there in summer tends not to be there by November.

The hunting got worse at a swampy cabin I know when feeding/baiting got more legal. The deer stay with the food.

I won't argue that when feeding is legal/winked at, the deer show up. My finance's mother has them eating out of her hand when she goes out with the bucket of corn.

Documenting and quantifying the obvious might not be glamorous but someone's gotta do it.

Many species have similar learned adaptations to the dangers in their environment. Anyone who's fished saltwater and a range of freshwater environments will be able to vouch for this being readily observable.

I don't have an English-speaking article handy, but female deer in the Bohemian Forest are still walking up to where barbed wire was during the Cold War, and turn around.

They have learned that they couldn't get further and have imprinted that "knowledge" to their offspring.

This is fascinating. Here's an article that mentions it: http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/1.572417

This shouldn't really surprise outdoorsmen overly much. The big game (for me, fish) are almost always more wily, because they've had to be to reach their advanced age and size.

My parent's have a cabin along the white river up near mt. rainier. There is no hunting on our side of the river and it's super clear that the elk know it.

Do you see large groups of them? Photos?

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