“…A variety of methods have been used: counts of reproductive dens (Insley 1977, Page 1981, Harris and Rayner 1986a, b, Hewson 1986, Coman et al 1991, Meia and Weber 1992, Allen and Sargeant 1993, hunting or questionnaire statistics (Lloyd 1968, Kolb and Hewson 1980, Harris 1981, Hatcher and Shaw 1981, Hewson 1984, Lindström 1991, scent stations (Hatcher andShaw 1981, Rau et al 1985), spotlighting (Stahl 1990, Stahl and Migot 1990, Weber et al 1991, Marlow 1992, track counts on snow (Pulliainen 1981, Goszczyński 1989) and on sand (Rau et al 1985, Servin et al 1987, or faeces counts along transects (Kolb andHewson 1980, Rau et al 1985). Of these methods, only exhaustive den counts allow the estimation of absolute density, when applied in limited areas that can be easily searched (i.e.…”