State-funded BYU study finds elk move when hunting season starts — and it's causing problems
news.byu.edu
Research from BYU wildlife sciences professors finds that when hunting season starts, elk in Utah move off of public lands — where they can be hunted — and onto private lands — where they cannot be hunted. And then, when hunting season is over, they shift right back to public lands.
    • Ziege_Bock [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      This isn't survivorship bias at all. They studied the elk by tagging a number of the before the hunting season and monitored them from before hunting season, during bow season, open season, and then after.

      For it to be survivorship bias, they'd need to retroactively study the behavior of elk that had already lived through hunting season. Unless what you mean is that elk cannot learn behavior to adapt to human behavior.

      • fed [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        there are multiple hunting seasons year after year

        i assume the elk that coincidently moved to private land lived, their offspring did the same and so on

        • ZZ_SloppyTop [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          You are describing learning. That’s not survivorship bias of the study, that’s the species adapting

        • Ziege_Bock [any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          So you don't have a problem with the study, you only think this is selective pressure eliciting an evolutionary response rather than a behavioral response to repeated human behavior. Either way, the study shows that a significant number of elk are likely to be somewhere other than public lands during hunting season.