Stag Elaphe

The stag Elaphe ( Cervus elaphus ) is large a Cervidé moderate forests of Eurasia and North America. It is one of the most known representatives of this family of Mammifère S.

Systematic Nomenclature and

The Stag Elaphe is divided into several Sous-espèce S:
  • the Stag of North Africa ( Cervus elaphus barbarus ), which does not exist any more but in one very limited surface of the Atlas;
  • the Stag Elaphe of Corsica and Sardinia ( Cervus elaphus corsicanus );
  • Hangul ( Cervus elaphus hanglu ) of the Cashmere;
  • the Stag of Bactriane ( Cervus elaphus bactrianus ) of Central Asia;
  • Cervus elaphus yarkandensis of the Xinjiang;
  • Cervus elaphus roosevelti .

This classification is currently called into question by certain taxonomists. After genetic analysis, the Wapiti (in the past Cervus elaphus wapiti ) is regarded as a species with whole share under the name of Cervus canadiensis . The number of subspecies would tend to be simplified not to preserve only two subspecies.

Description and characteristics

Biometric data

The Stag Elaphe reaches an overall length of 1.6-2.6 meters, for 0.75-1.50 meters with the garrot and a weight of 75-340 kilograms, variable according to the subspecies. The weight of the animals is variable according to the age, the sex and the area. The weight of the stags increases West towards the East of Europe: of 120  kg in Scotland with 250  kg in Eastern Europe. The weight of the animals is stabilized towards the age of 3-4 years in the female and 6-7 years in the male. In France, the male weighs between 150 and 200  kg, the female between 80 and 110  kg. This weight varies according to the quality of the medium of life (abundance of food) but also according to the season. One hard winter can involve a weight loss of 10 with 15  % at the two sexes, the male can lose until 20  % of its weight during slab and the female until 15  % of its weight for the period of breast feeding.

The tail measures from 10 to 27 centimetres length. The North-American subspecies and of north east of Asia are generally larger than the European ones. The males are also increasingly more massive than the females. The stag Elaphe slim, but is strongly made up, with a massive breast piece, and a rather slim neck. The eyes are of intermediate size, the frayed ears as long as half of the head and the very fine legs adapted to the fast race and the jumps. The legs consist of four fingers (fingers 2,3,4,5, the “inch” being atrophied), fingers 2 and the 5, smaller than two others and brought back towards the sides of the leg, do not mark normally the ground during displacements, except displacements in snow or mud.

Peeling

The coloring of peeling strongly varies according to the seasons, the age and the sex: of a color brown-russet-red in summer and gray-brown in winter; the male generally has a peeling darker than the female. The moult intervenes twice a year, in April - May then in September - October.

A yellow spot clearly, called cimier flowering ash the croup of the two sexes.

The young person, called fawn , has, until approximately the four months age, a clearly mottled brown peeling of white which one calls delivered.

Wood

As from nine months, wood start to push on the head of the male in the form of pivots. At one year, they are visible and the male is then called “daguet”. Wood then will fall each year (end of the winter in the old stags, beginning of spring in the young people) to push back during the summer. Dimensions and the shape of wood varies individually but also according to the age and the subspecies (). Contrary to a spread belief, the number of horns does not have a direct relationship with the age ().

Distribution and habitat

He lives the large main forests. It is retained that the vital territory of the stag is of 3000   ha on average, however, these animals move sometimes on long distances (several tens of kilometers).

The stag Elaphe is widespread in North America, in Europe, and in the north of Asia. In France, it is common today in several areas. Among the large solid masses with stag, let us quote :

The stag was sometimes driven out too much, and the populations threatened of certain solid masses had to be reconstituted, the solid mass of Brocéliande in Brittany is an good example.

Lifestyle and behavior

Manners

The stag is a twilight and night species.

The females ( hinds ) gather in herds . The males ( stags ) live alone or in small groups.

Rut

The Rut intervenes at the end of the summer or at the beginning of the autumn and lasts approximately 1 month but one can still hear bramer stags until mid-November. The period of rut is marked by the raucous and resounding cry male, the slab (Video amateur). This cry which holds of howling and the mooing is also the term indicating the rut at this species. By this cry which gets along several away kilometers, the male informs the receptive females of its presence, intimidates its potential competitors and defies the other males which would venture on its Territoire. It becomes particularly aggressive at this time.

The growth of the wood being completed, the male rubs in a repetitive way its wood on the trunk S of the trees, in order to remove them from the velvet which recovers them. In the event of meeting with another male, after a phase of intimidation, the two adversaries will carry out a very violent combat during which it projects the head ahead one against the other with an aim of unbalancing the adversary. These engagements can lead to the abandonment or rather serious wounds even death by exhaustion of the two stags if they remain wedged by their wood gotten mixed up: only males of comparable power and foliage clash kind. The male reigning on a Harde of females will supervise in an intensive way the various individuals of the troop for the coupling, because the females remain sexually receptive only one day lasting the year. The " Master of harde" eliminated its competitors and progressively covers the 10 to 30 hinds of its harem of their heats.

Food

The stag Elaphe is Herbivore. Within the class of the herbivores, the stag is known as intermediate feeder i.e. it is very selective in its food and always adapts to the vegetation that it has at disposal.

Let us retain that within the resinous solid masses of mountain, the stag prefers the Fir tree ( Abies alba ) with the Spruce ( Picea abies ). Within the leafy solid masses of plain, its food behavior varies with the season:

  • of the exit of the winter until the autumn: it nourishes of wood (it eats the buds and the starts-up of the trees and shrubs, except the thorn-bushes which it avoids), of graminaceous, ivy, bramble and other plants herbaceous of which it consumes sometimes the flowers. However, the forests of plain being frequently surrounded of cultures, it often will nourish corn or colza. At the end of the season, it also consumes fruits (apples, pears).
  • in winter: it is nourished of wood, dead sheets and of what remains at its disposal. Its mode varies according to the presence of snow and the Glandée or Fainée which occurs on the forest.

Follow-up and dynamics of the populations

Following an intensive hunting, the populations of large deer tribe had strongly regressed in Western Europe and China as of the end of the Middle Ages. At the end of the 19th century the stag Elaphe had disappeared from the majority of the main forests of Western Europe.
Avec the organization of hunting and the hunt plans, several populations were locally reconstituted starting from reintroduced individuals, but with a presumedly important genetic impoverishment compared to the genetic inheritance of the prehistoric populations.

The stag is one of the first European terrestrial animals considered not threatened to have been the subject of studies DNA (for example on the solid mass of Saint-Hubert in Belgium), making it possible to assign with certainty of the moults to a series or a trophy, to pair the parts of animal which would have made the object of traffic or poaching. One also could show the existence of three Walloon subpopulations genetically isolated because of the highway barriers. A hair or a piece of raw meat seized in a restaurant or a vehicle is enough to determine the species, the sex, and where former studies exist (in Wallonia for example), source of the animal…

In many countries, populations of stags which were reconstituted are isolated more and more by the fragmentation from the landscape by the infrastructures (and sometimes they were maintained in surfaces enclose), on sometimes restricted territories where they survive thanks to the Agrainage and sometimes by overexploiting the underwoods.

Eighteen stags among fifty resulting from a population of the North of Germany were the subject of an genetic analysis. This population is supposed ecologically isolated from the other populations by road infrastructures since 30 to 40 years, and of many stags in this group are affected of a genetic malformation returning their jaw lower shorter of approximately 5 cm compared to the higher. The genetic analysis confirmed the genetic loss of diversity of the group, with a loss of hétérozygotie from approximately 7% with each generation. They is seven times more than in the close population from where it is originating, and that makes this type of population all the more vulnerable to the genetic anomalies that in the absence of large Prédateur S, the animals are less mobile, more sensitive to the parasite S and escape the processes of Natural selection.

Problems involved in overpopulation

The reintroductions, the Agrainage, the salt contributions and the shot-firing patterns gave results which exceeded the hopes of the actors who launched the dynamic ones of management restauratoire of population the large ones and small deer tribe. Like wild boars and the roe-deers profiting moreover from soft winters, the populations of stag tend to reach records populationnels in several countries of the EU. In addition to forestry damage one can fear problems ecoepidemiologic with diffusion of diseases supported by the promiscuity and the absence of selective pressure by natural predation, even of the impacts on the man with for example the diffusion of the Maladie of lyme and the pullulations of Tique S.

As example, in Wallonia, from July 1st, 2006 to June 30th, 2007, these are 4.732 stags which were cut down or found died (1 401 stags “carrying wood” “not-wooded” , 3.328 stags dont1 571 hinds and bichettes and 1.757 fawns (842 males, and 770 females, 145 unspecified according to the declarations) and 3 not identified), it in spite of an increase in the number of shooting. These tables are new records and worry the Walloon foresters whereas the distribution of the shootings and mortalities between hinds, bichettes and fawns seems to correspond to the objectives (45 to 50% of hinds and bichettes for 55 to 50% of fawns). The statistics show that since 1996, the hunters still privilege the survival of the females (except for 1999, the male fawns (killed with hunting, or found dead) was always higher than that of the fawns females. The rates of nonwooded drawn with the approach and the mounting (that is to say 20% of the killed nonwooded stags) varied from 0 to 81 according to the councils huntings considered (there is 23 in Wallonia of them, including 17 practitioner this mode of hunting). There remains difficult to judge from when one can speak about " surpopulation" , the more so as the stag is an important source of forest income via the hiring of the hunting rightses and that countings always underestimate manpower.

Certain sources estimate that the stag could cause serious damage with the forests in which it is in overpopulation. In the National park of the Cevennes, the forest such as it exists in would be threatened. Approximately 15.000 ha are classified in area closed with hunting, which would have involved a proliferation of the deer tribe. Such damage could be avoided by reintroducing or accepting the wolf in the park of the Cevennes. An identical problem had been identified in the American park of Yellowstone: an overpopulation of dashes eating the growths of trees involved a deforestation. The reintroduction of the wolf, predator of the dash, made it possible to control the population of it and thus to stop the threat on the forest. The reintroduction of the wolf also made it possible to restore the natural balance of the ecosystem of the park, disturbed since its extermination by the man in the years 1950.

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