interesting read on trophy bighorns

[Oak]

The author of the paper referenced in the OP has also worked on the "genetic selection" aspect of trophy hunting, which I'm guessing is the source of the acrimony in this thread.

 

[Deleted member 16014]

The author is also a B&C scorer and seemingly regular guy. Who knows, he might even be willing to talk hunting/conservation with an over confident old person who starts arguments on the internet (starts with a "w" and ends in "alking buffalo). He's got an e-mail address.

 

[walking buffalo]

I read the OP's linked article and I did not see any bragging by the UW researcher like what some of the comments here seem to infer. The only statements I saw were very matter-of-fact; "I did this research, here are the results" kind of language.

Maybe some people think the results are obvious, but I can understand the desire to prove it scientifically. The opposite(?) idea, that maximizing the herd size could result in a few really large specimens is not intuitively wrong, at least to me. So the research showing that having fewer sheep actually increases the number of large-horned rams was worthwhile, in my opinion.

Past research on sheep revealed something else of note. Not only are rams bigger in body and horn size when born in a below carrying capacity population, ewes have a higher fecundity. High harvest of rams and ewes keeping populations low and young actually results in an ability to harvest MORE larger, healthier sheep than harvest regimes from "older" herds at carrying capacity.

 

[walking buffalo]

The author is also a B&C scorer and seemingly regular guy. Who knows, he might even be willing to talk hunting/conservation with an over confident old person who starts arguments on the internet (starts with a "w" and ends in "alking buffalo). He's got an e-mail address.

Have you seen rams constantly prodding and butting each other?
It is what sheep do and must be done to get attention.

Sheep hunters are no different.


Thanks for the compliment.