Beyond Immediate Individual Care: Monitoring Captured Free-Ranging European Wild Ungulates to Refine Protocols

European wild ungulates are captured for different purposes, requiring the assessment of animal welfare and health. Specific guidelines to assess stress and pathophysiological compromise in captured wild ungulates are lacking. This review aims to set the bases for establishing standardised protocols allowing the evaluation of capture and handling stress in wild European ungulates. Physical and chemical capture and handling elicit stress, a physiological response activating sympathetic-adrenal medulla and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal cortex axes, releasing catecholamines and corticosteroids, respectively. While being an adaptive response, if prolonged over time, the effects become harmful and life-threatening, increasing body temperature and heart rate, and provoking muscular and renal ischemia. This clinical outcome is known as capture myopathy, which encompasses four sequential syndromes: Hyper acute or capture shock, Acute or ataxic-myoglobinuric, Sub-acute or ruptured muscle, and Chronic debility or delayed per-acute. Monitoring temperature, heart rate, serum muscular enzyme (CK, AST, ALT, and LDH) activities and lactate, creatinine, urea, and potassium concentrations characterises pathophysiological compromise. Wild ungulate capture and handling protocols should include not only methodology but also monitoring, data recording, sample collection, and analyses. This information should serve to improve protocols and eventually develop specific guidelines for stress and welfare assessment when capturing and handling wild ungulates.