dominant breeding male is likely to be in poorer condition 

 entering winter than a yearling male. All males usually enter 

 winter in poorer condition than females. Adult males are 

 harvested at a higher rate than yearling males and all 

 antlerless deer, adult females are harvested at higher rates 

 than fawns, and different age classes of adult females are 

 harvested disproportionately. 



Because adult females have a lower natural winter 

 mortality rate than fawns, the potential level of compensatory 

 mortality between age classes is further reduced. Although 

 fawns have a higher natural mortality rate than adult females, 

 most of their annual mortality takes place between birth and 

 the hunting season. Thus, hunting mortality can only 

 potentially substitute for the fraction of fawn mortality that 

 occurs over winter. Hunting tags valid only for fawns could 

 potentially increase the operative level of compensatory 

 mortality (substitution) in populations. The actual level 

 would, of course, vary among populations and years, but would 

 be somewhat higher if more fawns were harvested. 



Deer were not harvested equally across our study area 

 even though there was reasonably good access to all parts of 

 the area. Deer in more marginal, open habitat, close to 

 roads, and on ridge tops were harvested more heavily than 

 those whose home ranges were in rugged, diverse core areas. 

 This also, at least partially, explains why hunters on this 

 area don't perceive many deer until the marginal habitat 

 begins to be filled. That typically occurred when the area- 

 wide density exceeded about 3.9 deer/km 2 Thus, maintenance 

 of deer in marginal habitat was important to maintaining 

 hunter satisfaction, but it reduced the degree of 

 "substitution" that could occur. 



All of these variations among sex and age classes, among 

 individual deer, and in hunter response to them, when combined 

 with the unpredictability and annual variation in weather 

 patterns and predation levels, made yield models impractical. 

 Instead, improvements in harvest efficiency can be made only 

 by directing kill to certain sex and age classes and to 

 certain areas or habitats . Changes in harvest strategies must 

 be made quickly and as near the opening of the season as 

 possible to be most efficient. If such changes are 

 impractical or if we desire consistency and continuity of 

 regulations, then we must resign ourselves to either a greater 

 degree of fluctuation in deer populations or more conservative 

 hunting seasons than might otherwise be possible. 



Because generalized density-dependent compensatory 

 mortality and reproduction did not operate effectively in the 

 MRBMD population, we must not allow ourselves to be deceived 

 by the implied precision of existing models that incorporate 



340 



