Horn size and nutrition in mountain sheep: Can ewe handle the truth?

Horns, antlers, and other horn-like structures are products of sexual selection, confer reproductive advantages, and are heritable and honest indicators of individual quality. In addition to serving key biological functions, horns and antlers garner societal interest that, when combined with the powerful motivation to acquire trophy animals, likely has spawned a growing hornographic culture fixated on males with exceptional horn-like structures. The concern that harvest of large, fast-growing males may cause evolutionary change to the very trait being sought has been the source of controversy in the popular and scientific literature over the past 2 decades. Mountain sheep (i.e., bighorn and thinhorn; Ovis spp.), possibly the only large ungulates in North America managed almost exclusively as trophy species throughout their ranges, embody this controversy, which has led to polarizing views among scientists and stakeholders as to how mountain sheep should be managed. Our goal in this commentary was to discuss the relative contributions of the key ecological and intrinsic factors that influence horn growth, how those factors might interact with harvest strategies, and identify what determinants of horn size are most amenable to management and most effective in achieving desired outcomes. Despite repeated results demonstrating that age or nutrition frequently override genetic contributions to size of horns, attention has been given to the role of genetics and its relationship to harvest of mountain sheep. Given the hyperbole surrounding trophy management and big horns, we suggest the importance of females in the management of mountain sheep has been largely forgotten. Maternal condition can instigate life-long effects on size and growth of males (via maternal effects), and abundance of females, in turn, affects nutritional limitation within populations through density-dependent feedbacks. If production of males with large horns is an objective, we contend that management programs should, integrate monitoring of nutritional status of populations, and where evidence indicates nutritional limitation through density dependence, seek to regulate abundance and per capita nutrition via harvest of females. We propose that extrinsic regulation (i.e., removal by harvest or translocation) is the most effective way to manage per capita availability of forage resources and, thus, nutritional limitation on growth of males. Not only can female harvest improve growth in body size and horns of males through enhanced nutrition of growing males and their mothers, such management also 1) may yield a nutritional buffer against environmental stochasticity and erratic population fluctuations, 2) be employed in areas where other management alternatives such as habitat manipulation may not be feasible, 3) may reduce frequency or magnitude of epizootic die-offs, and 4) will increase hunter opportunity and involvement in management. Ultimately, we call for greater recognition of the pervasive role of the ewe, and other female ungulates, in the production of trophy males, and that accordingly, females be better integrated into harvest and management programs. © 2017 The Wildlife Society.