Hunting and Mountain Sheep: Do Current Harvest Practices Affect Horn Growth?

Tayler N. LaSharr, Ryan A. Long, James R. Heffelfinger, et. al.

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Hunting and Mountain Sheep: Do Current Harvest Practices Affect Horn Growth?

Tayler N. LaSharr, Ryan A. Long, James R. Heffelfinger, et. al.

Abstract

Horn size in a population of bighorn sheep in Canada declined due to intense hunting pressure. This raised the question of how current hunting practices might be affecting horns more broadly. Hunting can reduce mountain sheep horn size by removing older animals from a population and skewing the herd toward younger animals with smaller horns or by removing animals with genetic material for large horns from the herd. Researchers at the Haub School examined tens of thousands of harvest records of bighorn sheep from the western US and Canada to determine whether hunting pressure was causing genetic change in bighorn sheep herds.