Download or read book Matching Management Objectives to the Fast-paced Life of Pronghorn written by Lee E. Tafelmeyer and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The horns, antlers, and pronghorns of male ungulates have garnered human interest through time. Males of most ungulate species require many years before producing their largest weapons. Given the life-history constraints of wild ungulates, wildlife managers have increasingly been faced with a tradeoff between hunter opportunity and the production of large-weaponed males as they set management objectives and harvest limits of big-game populations. Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) however; possess a suite of life-history traits resulting in a precocious, faster pace-of-life relative to other ungulates. If the precocious nature of pronghorn extends to their horn growth characteristics, there may be greater flexibility to balance hunter opportunity and production of large-horned males for pronghorn as compared with other ungulates. We tested the hypothesis that the precocious nature of pronghorn would extend to their horn growth characteristics and lessen or eliminate the hunter opportunity and horn size tradeoff as compared with other ungulate species. We collected horn size, age, and remotely sensed climate data from 1,805 harvested male pronghorn from 2019-2022 in southern and central Wyoming, USA. We also simulated harvested populations of pronghorn and two other ungulate species to evaluate our predictions across species. Pronghorn attained 95% of their peak horn size by 3.5 years old. The remarkable fast pace of horn growth in pronghorn creates a framework that greatly reduces the tradeoff between hunter opportunity and horn size found in other ungulate species, leading to a unique opportunity for managers to balance both hunter opportunity and large horns in pronghorn management regimes.