TERRITORIAL FIDELITY AND TENURE IN ROE DEER BUCKS

We present data on fidelity to territory, and length of tenure (multi- year) for bucks of European roe deer Capreolus capreolus (Linnaeus, 17 58) based on 26 radio-collared individuals that were followed for up t o 5 years. Individual bucks showed a high degree of fidelity to summer territory, with consecutive year's activity centres being less than 2 00 m apart on average. An average 70% of one year's territory was with in the borders of the previous year's territory. No buck occupied a te rritory which did not overlap with the previous year's territory. Acti vity centres of consecutive winter home ranges were on average 502 m a part, although this difference was not significant. Several cases of s witching between non-overlapping winter ranges between years were obse rved. Annual survival was high (97%) and we observed only a single cas e of an old buck losing dominance on his former territory after a very hard winter. All other surviving bucks regained their dominance on th eir territories. It is suggested that the roe deer bucks were demonstr ating an ''always stay'' strategy in order to gain the benefits of sit e familiarity. This is in keeping with the concept of roe deer territo riality being a relatively ''low-risk low-gain'' strategy where emphas is is placed on survival and multi-year tenure of a territory.