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Wild boars shot during collective hunts, where there are no limitations pertaining to sex and age of the harvested animals, may properly represent the sex and age structure of the population. Thus, the objective of the presented study was to compare sex and age structures evaluated via the results of collective hunts, with those based on direct observations between December 2009 and January 2010, in the large complex of the Bory Dolnośląskie forest (BD) and in the farmland-forest mosaic of the Lasy Śląskie forest (LS). There were no significant differences between the sex and age structures of the population determined via observations and those based on harvests collected in both the BD forest and the LS forest. It was shown that the age and sex structure in the wild boar population assessed purely on the basis of observation was significantly different between the BD forest and the LS forest. The calculated differences in the age and sex structures for the wild boar harvested in the study areas were also significant. It is suggested that the age and sex structure of wild boars harvested in collective hunts should be certified by using data from direct observations of free-rooming wild boar populations.

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The spread of the African swine fever through wild boar population has caused major losses in the pig industry. Therefore, to decrease the population density of wild boar in Poland, the culling of these animals has been dramatically increased. However, the effect of depopulation is unknown because there are no methods that could be used throughout the country to estimate the number of wild boar. Thus, during two hunting seasons an attempt was made to estimate the number of wild boar using data from collective hunts. The forested area of 21 hunting districts (351.5 km2) was divided into five sampling inventory blocks (SIBs), which were used for the statistical analysis of the population density, the harvest rate and results of collective hunts. The average population density obtained by a driving census amounted to 8.19 ± 1.12 and 10.09 ± 1.06 (x̅ ± SE), animals/km2, which indicates that 2879 and 3547 wild boar were living in the study area in 2012/2013 and 2013/2014 seasons respectively. The number of wild boars bagged per one hunting plot was adopted as the harvest success index (HBI). In SIBs the HBI value fluctuated in the range of 0.55 to 1.87 individuals/hunting plot and the population density ranged from 6.46 to 12.18 wild boars/km2. The non-linear regression showed a positive relationship between the HBI index and the population density. The discussion covers the possibility of using collective hunts to estimate the number of wild boar in Poland and in the European Union.