Quote:
Originally Posted by Jamie
SOOOOO
If Vins quote is acurate.. Then why do we want OLDER sheep on the mountains?
Seems to me Mother nature would take her tole on them before we could harvest.
Must be becouse people want BIGGER sheep.
This argument keeps going round and round.
Why did some zones go to a full curl when others have remaind the same?
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Seems to me that the point of natural mortality was made many, many pages ago. One study even showed that if harvest rates were below natural mortality rates that harvest was compensatory and not additive. Certainly if the "normal" harvest of 6 year old rams in a population was 10 and the harvest was suspended, there would not be all 10 of them available in the population as 7 year olds. Most material seems to indicate a natural mortality of 10% per year in rams age 5+. If hunting of 5 year old rams were suspended till they were 8 years old, 30% of that age class of the ram population would be lost to hunting opportunity in the ensuing 3 years.
It is my understanding that the purpose of a full curl zone is to reduce hunter harvest without severely restricting hunter access.