Test of Precipitation, Compensation and Monday Effect Hypotheses on Group Hare Trapping Effort

Abstract

Live trapping in combination with translocation of wild animals is an important tool in wildlife management, but drivers of human trapping activity are poorly understood. Here we test three hypotheses that have been proposed to describe and explain temporal variation in group hunting‐trapping effort. Namely, we test the precipitation effect, effort compensation and Monday effect hypotheses on live trapping effort of brown hares for restocking. Analysis of 26 047 hares trapped in 460 trapping days during the period 1966–1995 in western Poland showed that seasonal onset of trapping was later during rainy autumns supporting avoidance of rainy weather by the trapping group. The hunting group increased the number of animals caught the day following a day with low off‐take providing evidence for the ability to respond quickly and compensate for short term variation in the trapping effort. Group trapping effort as reflected by number of hares caught was lower on Monday than on any other working day. This is in line with observations on weekly variation in working effort of employees across various contexts. We conclude that even seemingly standardized and rigid trapping schemes may be responsive to factors such as weather, experienced effort and subtle seasonal effects.

Demographic examination of Brown hare (Lepus europaeus) stocks with special reference during birth and survival in Eastern Hungary

“…Survival of young females over 3 kg was weaker (Φ = 0.31-0.52) compared to young males (Φ = 0.22-0.40). Hušek et al (2015) suggest that the annual survival rate of males is weaker than that of females and predation risk may be the cause of habitat-specific sex ratio in monometric species than in hares. In the studies of Marboutin and Peroux (1995), the survival rate of young males was higher (Φ = 0,471) than that of young females (Φ = 0,237).…”