Revisiting Effects of Hunting on Mourning Dove Nest Survival

We reconstructed a historical dataset from a national mourning dove Zenaida macroura nesting study evaluating the impacts of hunting on nesting birds during the September portion of the hunting season using Bayesian hierarchical models; the reconstructed dataset contained 707 nests. The original nest survival estimate of 96.3% (nonhunted zones) fell within the range of our average daily nest survival rates and credible intervals (CI) of 97.2% (95% CI 96.2% - 98.0%) for nonhunted, but the original nest survival estimate of 95.5% (hunting zones) was lower than our average daily nest survival rates of 96.9% (95% CI 96.1% - 97.7%) for hunting zones. Similarly, overall nest survival for areas and years combined for hunted zones was 44.3% (95% CI 35.3%, 53.9%) and 48.1% (95% CI 36.9%, 59.8%) for nonhunted zones. The most parsimonious model contained the primary covariates of hunted/nonhunted status (Hunt) or paired hunted/nonhunted nest searching plot (Zone), and Year. We observed lower nest survival for the hu...