Heterogeneity in Observability of White-tailed Deer on Remington Farms
Population estimates of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) based on marking individuals and resighting them at later times require assumptions about observability that are rarely verified. Yet the accuracy of estimates depends on meeting the assumptions. At Remington Farms on the eastern shore of Maryland, we tested accuracy of mark-resight population estimates from the heterogeneity model (Mh) of the CAPTURE program against a known abundance of a marked subpopulation of the herd. We also tested the assumption of heterogeneous capture probabilities. We conducted evening road counts...
