Weather and hunting efficiency: Unraveling the factors impacting wild boar drive hunting - Archive ouverte HAL
Article Dans Une Revue European Journal of Wildlife Research Année : 2024

Weather and hunting efficiency: Unraveling the factors impacting wild boar drive hunting

Résumé

Wild ungulate population management in Europe and North America is mainly based on hunting. However, populations continue to grow despite hunting pressure, particularly wild boar (Sus scrofa) populations, with significant economic and environmental consequences. Meanwhile, hunters' number is declining. In order to understand the hunting effectiveness and to improve management strategies, the cullability conceptual framework, derived from fisheries science, can be applied to the harvesting of terrestrial species. Cullability refers to the probability of culling an individual under specific hunting conditions and can vary in space and time depending on the behavior of the animals and the conditions affecting hunters. While cullability represents a probability of cull, combined with hunting effort, the result is the hunting success, i.e. number of harvested individuals, corresponding to hunting bag result. Using a unique hunting bag dataset including 330,000 hunting trips collected over more than 10 years in Southern France based on daily hunting and weather data, we seek to understand the impact of weather conditions on hunting success and hunting effort using a Bayesian model selection approach. We found that weather conditions significantly affect both hunting success and effort and reveal a reduction in hunting success under rainy and cold conditions, in contrast to a significant increase in success under frost and snowfall. Interestingly, all weather conditions outside the comfort zone of hunters lead to a decrease in hunting effort. This raises interesting questions about the hunters' perception of hunting success, as weather can negatively impact the allocation of hunting effort in situations of potentially greater hunting success. The cullability framework provides a clear understanding of the hunting process by separating all its components, proposing a clear glossary, and identifying the factors that enable hunting success to be interpreted. In a context where hunting is a management tool, each component can represent one of these tools, which can either be controlled or accounted for better in space and time.
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Dates et versions

hal-04717665 , version 1 (02-10-2024)

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Pablo Vajas, Julien Fattebert, Marlène Gamelon. Weather and hunting efficiency: Unraveling the factors impacting wild boar drive hunting. European Journal of Wildlife Research, 2024, 70, pp.104. ⟨10.1007/s10344-024-01858-4⟩. ⟨hal-04717665⟩
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