Hunting Washington Forum
Big Game Hunting => Wolves => Topic started by: Fowlweather25 on January 31, 2012, 01:28:12 PM
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Just curious here could just be me, but we lose a TON of big game animals to wolves and cougars. Has anyone ever put any thought into the fact that just a wolf or a cats presence stresses the big game animals tremendously? So in the fall and winter months when breeding is at it's yearly peak and deer and elk are at their most vulnerable, wouldn't it make sense that just the stress of these two apex predators alone could be enough to stress out the does and cows to the point that their heat cycles are interrupted, thus causing them to go unbred?
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Yep, and even if they get bred they can abort at anytime from to much stress.
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Montana State just did a study 2 years ago I think. The elk in the study were being bred as normal, but what had changed drastically was the quality of the feed they were able to consume had gone down since they spent alot more time in the dark timber instead of the meadows and the added stress in winter caused them to abort more often. Both of those issues caused a striking decrease in calf recruitment. So it was not X number of wolves eat X number of elk, it was that plus drastically lower calf to cow ratios.
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http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/mar/27/elk-reproduction-woes-tied-to-wolves/ we were thinking the same thing machias
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That's the one, thanks!!
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Wow so I wasn't full of crap?! Huh!
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:chuckle: nope your good
