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Hunting, including drive hunts, can be considered as a predation process. Although drive hunts are spatially and temporally well defined, the scale at which the hunting risk triggers anti-predator responses of prey remains poorly documented. The present study aims at 1) characterizing the delayed movement responses of female red deer Cervus elaphus to hunters and 2) understanding the main environmental determinants modulating these post-disturbance responses at the individual level. We hypothesized that red deer alter their movement behaviour for several days after a drive hunt by increasing their speed and exploring more space. Then, we predicted that individuals close to the hunting area would exhibit stronger responses (i.e. higher speed and larger home range size) than individuals located further away. We also expected topographic obstacles and vegetation cover to reduce the magnitude of the post-disturbance responses. We used GPS data from a large dataset collected on 91 female red deer in the National Hunting and Wildlife Reserve of La Petite Pierre (France), between 2004 and 2018. Each year, drive hunts are conducted by about 43 hunters and 6 dogs, once a week from October to February. Our results suggest that, over a 72-h period after a drive hunt, female red deer could show two contrasting strategies: 1) flight-type movements (i.e. higher maximum speed) associated with more space explored due to a temporary avoidance of the disturbed area and 2) lower movements to avoid detection and contacts with hunters. These two delayed responses are situation-specific, depending on risk proximity, landscape features, hunting conditions and individual characteristics. This study highlights that ungulate management using a 'hunting for fear' approach may be adjusted considering spatial and temporal scales of the effects of drive hunts on red deer movement patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oak reproduction is characterized by mast seeding with high inter-annual fluctuations in fruit production. Such resource pulses can greatly affect ecosystem functioning and may cause seed consumers to alter their mobility, demography, or diet. Consequences of mast seeding for seed consumers remain poorly understood as their long timescale makes them difficult to study. We investigated impacts of oak mast seeding on the feeding behavior of two sympatric European deer species: red deer (Cervus elaphus) and roe deer (Capreolus capreolus). We analyzed their rumen content over a 31-year period in tandem with 10 years of data on oak fructification (i.e. 8 years of field monitoring and two modelled years). Acorn production is strongly correlated with consumption by both deer species. In years of high fructification, acorns represent more than 50% and 35% of red and roe deer diet, respectively, confirming assumptions that deer favor acorns when these are available. Red deer eat more acorns than roe deer both between and within years. High acorn production in mast years appears to saturate the capacity of deer to consume acorns. As the proportion of acorns increase in their diet, red deer eat more grasses and less conifer browse. No dietary shift was found for roe deer. By inducing dietary shifts in consumers, oak mast seeding can have cascading effects on ecosystem processes, notably on the damages on conifers caused by red deer and the consequences for forest dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hunting can be used as a tool for wildlife management, through limitation of population densities and dissuading game from using sensitive areas. The success of these approaches requires in depth knowledge of prey movement. Indeed, movement decisions of game during hunting may affect the killing success of hunters as well as the subsequent location of surviving animals. We thus investigated red deer movement responses to drive hunts and their causal factors. We studied 34 hunting events in the National Estate of Chambord (France) and thereby provided a fine-scale characterization of the immediate and delayed movement responses of red deer to drive hunts. Red deer responded to drive hunts either by immediately fleeing the hunted area, or by initially remaining before ultimately fleeing after the hunters had departed. A few hours after the hunt, all individuals were located in distant areas (> 2 kilometres) from the hunted area. Immediate flight responses were less common when drive hunts occurred in areas with dense understorey. However, neither beater/dog densities nor site familiarity influenced the immediate flight decision. Following a drive hunt, red deer remained outside the hunted areas for periods twice as long compared to periods when no hunting occurred (34 hours vs. 17 hours). Such knowledge of game movement rates in response to drive hunts may help the development of informed management policy for hunted red deer populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hunting, including drive hunts, can be considered as a predation process. Although drive hunts are spatially and temporally well defined, the scale at which the hunting risk triggers anti-predator responses of prey remains poorly documented. The present study aims at 1) characterizing the delayed movement responses of female red deer Cervus elaphus to hunters and 2) understanding the main environmental determinants modulating these post-disturbance responses at the individual level. We hypothesized that red deer alter their movement behaviour for several days after a drive hunt by increasing their speed and exploring more space. Then, we predicted that individuals close to the hunting area would exhibit stronger responses (i.e. higher speed and larger home range size) than individuals located further away. We also expected topographic obstacles and vegetation cover to reduce the magnitude of the post-disturbance responses. We used GPS data from a large dataset collected on 91 female red deer in the National Hunting and Wildlife Reserve of La Petite Pierre (France), between 2004 and 2018. Each year, drive hunts are conducted by about 43 hunters and 6 dogs, once a week from October to February. Our results suggest that, over a 72-h period after a drive hunt, female red deer could show two contrasting strategies: 1) flight-type movements (i.e. higher maximum speed) associated with more space explored due to a temporary avoidance of the disturbed area and 2) lower movements to avoid detection and contacts with hunters. These two delayed responses are situation-specific, depending on risk proximity, landscape features, hunting conditions and individual characteristics. This study highlights that ungulate management using a 'hunting for fear' approach may be adjusted considering spatial and temporal scales of the effects of drive hunts on red deer movement patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioural tactics of animals are determined by both environmental and social factors. Among nonmigratory ungulates, most home-range studies focused either on the effect of environmental variables on home-range size or on the overlap between home ranges of different individuals. Here, as rarely in previous studies, we aim to identify the dynamics of the home range of a given individual, involving variation in home-range size and home-range overlap between periods, for two resident populations of contrasting species: red deer ( Cervus elaphus L., 1758) and roe deer ( Capreolus capreolus (L., 1758)). In both species, yearly and seasonal home-range fidelity was high and constant (mean of 64% in red deer and mean of 66% in roe deer), possibly because of benefits accruing from knowledge of spatial distribution of food resources and refugia. Home range in winter, when food availability was low, was larger than other seasonal home ranges for both species. Differences in body size between red deer and roe deer accounted for observed between-species differences in space use, especially when the species were active at night. Our study clearly demonstrates that patterns of variation in home-range size are similar; however, between-species differences in body size lead to differential patterns of home-range size and fidelity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many previous studies have pointed out that, when resources are limited, the potential for competition should be high among sympatric species that display overlaps in habitat and nutritional niches. However, reliable evidence of competition between red deer ( Cervus elaphus) and roe deer ( Capreolus capreolus) has not been yet reported for life history traits directly measuring performance such as body mass, reproduction, or survival. From long-term monitoring of deer populations in the reserve of La Petite Pierre (France), we measured the sex-specific responses of roe deer fawn body mass to changes in red deer density after accounting for possible confounding effects of date of shooting, climatic conditions, and roe deer density. As expected under the hypothesis of competition, red deer density in a given year had a marked negative influence on body mass of roe deer fawns born the same year and the following year. Fawn mass of roe deer males and females responded in similar ways to changes in red deer density. Our study provides the first evidence of a negative response of roe deer performance to high red deer density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Browsing reduces oak seedling growth rate independently of canopy openness. • Seedlings growing under open canopies are more likely to be browsed. • Fencing only increases oak seedling growth and survival under open canopies. • The effect of fencing on growth and survival do not correlate with cervid density. The recruitment of forest trees is driven by both bottom-up processes (the acquisition of resources) and top-down processes (herbivory). To initiate stand regeneration, foresters commonly reduce tree density to increase light levels for seedlings and enhance primary productivity. These changes in vegetation dynamics, however, could also influence effects of ungulate browsing, resulting in unintended consequences for forest management. Here, we assessed how effects of ungulate exclusion and canopy opening interacted to affect the regeneration of two oak species: Quercus robur and Quercus petraea. We monitored the growth and survival of oak seedlings for two to three growth seasons in paired fenced and unfenced plots under contrasting conditions of canopy openness (8% to 52%) at five sites in southern Sweden and three sites in northeastern France. We scored browsing in the unfenced plots by the four cervids occurring in these areas (Alces alces , Capreolus capreolus , Cervus elaphus and Dama dama). Fencing increased the growth of (mostly taller) seedlings occurring in Sweden and the survival of (mostly smaller) seedlings in France. Both effects increased as canopies became more open. Browsing reduced oak seedling growth in both countries, independently of canopy openness. Canopy openness increased browsing levels in Sweden. Cervid densities did not appear to modify how fencing affected oak seedling growth and survival. In both contrasting forest environments, creating gaps tended to enhance ungulate damage on young forest stands as browsing frequency increased. We conclude that net forest regeneration reflects a subtle equilibrium between enhancing resource availability, boosting seedling growth, and limiting herbivory, which curtails seedling growth and survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]