Relationship Between Hunting Time Schedule and Sika Deer Spatial Displacement in Hunting with and Without Driving

The indirect effects (risk effects) of hunting (e.g., lowered frequency of hunting site use by deer due to human predation risk) have received increasing attention in deer management programs. However, our understanding of the relationship between hunting time schedule and risk-effect level remains limited. We investigated the relationships between hunting time schedule (the duration of the hunting operation and its execution interval) and the extent of sika deer (Cervus nippon) spatial displacement from hunting sites in hunting with and without driving (drive and stalk hunting, respectively) in the Tanzawa Mountains, Japan, 2016–2018. Driving in deer hunting means the action of making deer move by using dogs and/or hunters. We considered the probability of photographing deer with a camera trap after hunting operation per day (hazard) as an indicator of the extent of deer spatial displacement. Hazard was negatively associated with the duration of hunting operation in both drive and stalk hunting. In stalk hunting, hazard was also negatively associated with the number of days elapsed since the previous hunting operation in the same hunting site, whereas such an association was not observed in drive hunting. For drive hunting, in order to divert deer from hunting sites for a long time, hunting operations should be conducted throughout the day even if these operations are expected to end in a poor harvest. Conversely, for stalk hunting, short hunting-operation time and short execution interval days between each operation are required to reduce deer spatial displacement.