2017-11-8 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – November 8, 2017 TL: So in Puuanahulu during the hunting season – what happens to the game when the hunting starts? KS: Haven’t analyzed movements by dates yet, we can – but in general they – Puuanahulu they move already no matter the season they have higher movement rates or larger – you know, they move larger distances in Puuanahulu than they do in Puuwaawaa... TL: Is that because there’s no food? KS: I don’t know why it is I would guess it’s probably something like that. But their home range sizes are actually similar so I would think probably they’ve got to move around within their small home range to find more forage. That’s what I would guess, yes, but I don’t know that. TL: Probably it’s a reasonable assumption. KS: I’ll give you a quick update on that – we actually – in October – we put out 23 more GPS collars – so we have 40 GPS collars between the two areas. Now this is just on sheep, right, thank you to Willie-Joe who helped us and taught us how to draw blood much quicker on the animals. The guys from Utah were pretty impressed and they took it back, so, we’ll see it – I mean, they picked it up and we’ll see if that works out for them up there. So we have 40 collared animals now in the area – we plan on probably doing another 20 next year and so far from the new collars that we put out they have similar movements to the other collar, I mean, they don’t move that much – there are two that are kinda moving crossing the flow quite a bit but mostly they don’t move that much, so, and the survival rates so far are similar – we’re in the mid 90s survival rate. TL: John Giffin I believe in one his studies suggested that when animals are hunted that they have a tendency to scatter and I think he said that sheep in particular – he may have been talking about feral sheep – I don’t know about mouflon but he may have been talking about feral sheep – that it can take them several weeks to get back together into a band once they’re hunted. So why I’m interested in what happened during your hunting is that, you know, if we’re concerned about animals in an area and they’re impacting that area, you know, hunting might be a way to keep them moving and keep the impacts down rather than fence. But we’re not going to be able to try that for five or six years till the HCP – is that correct? KS: To use hunting to move animals? TL: The HCP – under that you couldn’t – you cannot bring animals into the area you’re saying for at least five to eight years if I read that correctly. 18