@article{Whitten_2001, title={EFFECTS OF HORN-CURL REGULATIONS ON DEMOGRAPHY OF DALL’S SHEEP: A CRITICAL REVIEW}, volume={37}, url={https://www.alcesjournal.org/index.php/alces/article/view/609}, abstractNote={<p>Researchers studying Dall’s sheep (<em>Ovis dalli dalli</em>) associated with a large mineral lick on Dry Creek in the central Alaska Range south of Fairbanks, Alaska, USA, claimed that removal of nearly all mature males by intensive harvest of three-quarter curl or larger males by hunters during the 1970s resulted in accelerated mortality of young males and low productivity in female sheep. Changing to a more conservative harvest of seven-eighths and then full-curl males purportedly reversed these trends and resulted in higher overall sustained harvest of males. Review of Dry Creek study reports and of original data records revealed questionable assumptions and errors in data analysis and study design. Conclusions about accelerated mortality of young males were based primarily on resighting data from marked males at the mineral lick, but data from aerial surveys of the larger study area around the lick indicated much higher abundance of males than was apparent at the lick. Reanalysis of data showed that males had low fidelity to the lick, and in many years the lick was not observed frequently enough to detect all sheep that may have used it. Harvest only reduced abundance of mature males by about one-half and had no discernable effect on survival of younger males. Low ovarian activity and high rates of parturition in 2-year-old females (thought to be associated with alternate year reproduction in later life, and therefore undesirable) were attributed to low abundance of mature males from 1972 to 1979, but most data were actually collected wither before or after those dates, when male abundance supposedly was high. Harvest of mature males increased through the 1980s, but an apparent correlation with more restrictive horn-curl regulations disappeared through the 1990s. Harvests of mature males under full-curl management in recent years have been far lower than ever occurred under three-quarter curl regulations, but by long-term weather patterns that affected sheep productivity, survival, and abundance. </p>}, number={2}, journal={Alces: A Journal Devoted to the Biology and Management of Moose}, author={Whitten, Kenneth R.}, year={2001}, month={Jan.}, pages={483–495} }