How to translate text using browser tools
1 October 2004 VALIDITY OF PRAIRIE GROUSE HARVEST-AGE RATIOS AS PRODUCTION INDICES
BRIDGETTE L. FLANDERS-WANNER, GARY C. WHITE, LEONARD L. McDANIEL
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

The ratio of juveniles to adults in the fall harvest is a common index of production for Galliformes. The percentage of juvenile birds in the harvest has been shown to decline as the hunting season progressed for many galliforms, resulting in a biased index of production. Therefore, we used wing samples of plains sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus jamesi) and greater prairie-chickens (T. cupido pinnatus) from 4 public land areas in the Nebraska Sandhills, Nebraska, USA, to assess the potential for bias in harvest-age ratios across time. We hypothesized that the ratio of juveniles to adults in the harvest could change over time if susceptibility to harvest and/or fall survival were different between the juvenile and adult prairie grouse (Tympanuchus spp.) in the Nebraska populations. We found no change in the harvest-age ratio over time in either the sharp-tailed grouse or greater prairie-chicken data. Our findings were consistent with the published literature on harvest-age rates for sharp-tailed grouse but inconsistent with the greater prairie-chicken literature. Therefore, we maintain that analysis of the harvest data for bias due to a changing harvest-age ratio as the hunting season progresses is an essential adjunct to subsequent analysis or comparisons of production indices based on harvest-age ratios. In addition, limitations of harvest-age ratios must be known and care must be taken to minimize other potential biases before using harvest-age ratios as an index to production.

BRIDGETTE L. FLANDERS-WANNER, GARY C. WHITE, and LEONARD L. McDANIEL "VALIDITY OF PRAIRIE GROUSE HARVEST-AGE RATIOS AS PRODUCTION INDICES," Journal of Wildlife Management 68(4), 1088-1094, (1 October 2004). https://doi.org/10.2193/0022-541X(2004)068[1088:VOPGHR]2.0.CO;2
Received: 10 October 2003; Accepted: 11 August 2004; Published: 1 October 2004
JOURNAL ARTICLE
7 PAGES

This article is only available to subscribers.
It is not available for individual sale.
+ SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

KEYWORDS
age ratios
greater prairie-chicken
harvest ratios
harvest susceptibility
Nebraska
prairie grouse
production
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission
Back to Top