Duck hunting bag estimates for the 2013/14 season in France

Abstract

A national survey of duck bags was carried out during the 2013/14 hunting season in France, for the first time in 15 years. An estimated total of over 2 million dabbling and diving ducks were shot in the country, half of which were Mallard Anas platyrhynchos. Proper statistical comparisons with earlier French surveys or with similar data from other countries were not possible because of the different (and sometimes unknown) sampling protocols, but the general trends suggest a relatively stable hunting bag compared to 15 years ago. France remains the European country reporting the greatest number of ducks harvested annually as a result of a long tradition of wildfowling, a dense human population and a central geographic position within the duck flyways. The only major change was a massive decline in the estimated harvest of Common Pochard Aythya ferina, reflecting a similar pattern in other countries and the poor conservation status of the species in Western Europe. Waterfowl hunting bag survey methods should be harmonised in the future, if coordinated adaptive management of populations is to be set in place at the flyway scale.

Full text

126
©Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust Wildfowl (2016) 66: 126–141
Duck hunting bag estimates for the 2013/14
season in France
MATTHIEU GUILLEMAIN1*, PHILIPPE AUBRY2,
BENJAMIN FOLLIOT3& ALAIN CAIZERGUES3
1Office National de la Chasse et de la Faune Sauvage, Unité Avifaune Migratrice,
La Tour du Valat, Le Sambuc, F-13200 Arles, France.
2Office National de la Chasse et de la Faune Sauvage, Direction de la Recherche
et de l’Expertise, Saint-Benoît, F-78612 Le Perray en Yvelines cedex, France.
3Office National de la Chasse et de la Faune Sauvage, Unité Avifaune Migratrice,
Parc d’Affaires La Rivière, 8 Boulevard Albert Einstein, Bâtiment B,
CS F-42355–44323 Nantes, France.
*Correspondence author. E-mail: Matthieu.Guillemain@oncfs.gouv.fr
Abstract
A national survey of duck bags was carried out during the 2013/14 hunting season in
France, for the first time in 15 years. An estimated total of over 2 million dabbling and
diving ducks were shot in the country, half of which were Mallard Anas platyrhynchos.
Proper statistical comparisons with earlier French surveys or with similar data from
other countries were not possible because of the different (and sometimes unknown)
sampling protocols, but the general trends suggest a relatively stable hunting bag
compared to 15 years ago. France remains the European country reporting the
greatest number of ducks harvested annually as a result of a long tradition of
wildfowling, a dense human population and a central geographic position within the
duck flyways. The only major change was a massive decline in the estimated harvest of
Common Pochard Aythya ferina, reflecting a similar pattern in other countries and the
poor conservation status of the species in Western Europe. Waterfowl hunting bag
survey methods should be harmonised in the future, if coordinated adaptive
management of populations is to be set in place at the flyway scale.
Key words: Anatidae, ducks, hunter survey, hunting bag estimate.
Precise simultaneous estimations of
population size and bag size (including
crippling loss) are necessary for proper
management of hunting activity and of
quarry species (Madsen et al. 2015). For
this reason European duck (Anatidae)
researchers have long called for coordinated
collection of standardised hunting bag data
at the continental scale (Lampio 1974;
Nowak 1975; Elmberg et al. 2006). As far as

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possible, such data should be collected on a
regular basis; for instance, bag statistics are
collected routinely on an annual basis in
North America, where an adaptive harvest
management scheme for waterfowl has been
in place for the last 20 years (Nichols et al.
2007; Raftovich et al. 2015). The situation is
improving in Europe, with most countries
now collecting bag statistics and there are
mechanisms in place to enable these to be
publicly available (e.g. through the Artemis
portal of FACE, the European Federation
of Associations for Hunting and
Conservation: www.artemis-face.eu, which
provides direct links to published data or
national contacts to obtain these from > 20
European countries). However, data are still
neither collected in a standardised way nor
necessarily at the same frequency in the
different countries.
France is an important country for
waterfowl in Europe because of its
extensive coastline, relatively abundant
wetlands and central geographic position
within flyways providing winter quarters,
migration stopovers and/or breeding
grounds to numerous species (Issa & Muller
2015). The most recent published survey
reports that there were c. 650,000 ducks and
148,000 geese (including 126,000 Brent
Geese Branta bernicla) in France during
mid-January 2015, reflecting a long-term
increasing trend in the numbers wintering in
the country (Deceuninck et al. 2016). France
also has a long tradition of wildfowling and
a dense human population which, combined
with large numbers of wintering birds, often
leads to waterfowl hunting bags being
among the largest in Europe, especially for
duck species (Hirschfield & Heyd 2005;
Mooij 2005). Unfortunately, however,
France has not been very good at producing
regular general national duck hunting bag
statistics. The results of some hunting bag
surveys have been produced annually and
over a long period, for instance those made
at a local scale or involving particular
hunting practices (e.g. for nocturnal hunting;
Anstett et al. 2015), but only three national
surveys have been published since the mid-
1970s, for the hunting seasons of winters
1974/75 (ONC 1976), 1983/84 (Trolliet
1986) and 1998/99 (Mondain-Monval &
Girard 2000; Schricke 2000). National
hunting bag estimates for the 2013/14
hunting season have just been released
(Aubry et al. 2016). These cover all species of
birds and mammals hunted in France, but
the aim of the present note is to provide
estimates of the duck bags available to non-
French readers, and to make a rough
comparison of the estimated numbers taken
with records from other European countries
during the same season or from France
during previous surveys.
Methods
A detailed description of the survey
methods used to estimate French hunting
bags during the 2013/14 season will be
published elsewhere, but in brief, it
consisted of sampling 60,000 hunters from
the c. 1,200,000 individuals who validated
their licence for the previous season (i.e.
winter 2012/13). Hunters were not selected
randomly at the national scale; instead, a
stratified design was used to take into
account the distribution of hunters among
administrative units (départements, of which
there are 96 in continental France, average

area = 5,700km²), and to put a greater
emphasis on coastal areas where earlier
surveys found that greater waterfowl hunting
activity occurs (Mondain-Monval & Girard
2000). Hunters selected for the survey were
informed by post at the beginning of the
2013/14 hunting season. Before the deadline
for responding to the questionnaire, 30,000
hunters selected at random among those
who had not yet responded received a postal
reminder. After the deadline, 30,000 other
randomly selected non-respondents received
a second postal questionnaire. Among those
who had still not responded to the second
questionnaire, 8,000 hunters were randomly
selected and surveyed by phone, of which
3,700 could be reached. This three-phase
sampling design – a special case of three-
phase sampling for stratification – was used
to attenuate the non-response bias in the
estimation of total hunting bags (Barker
1991; Pendleton 1992; Aubry et al. 2016).
It should be noted that the 2013/14
survey relied on a (pure) probability
sampling design, putting a great emphasis
on the non-response problem, and thus
used a different protocol than the earlier
ones carried out in France, and also differed
from surveys in other European countries
(whose protocols are still insufficiently
known). It was therefore impossible to
conduct proper statistical comparisons
between periods or between countries, and
numbers are simply considered in relation to
each other here to describe general patterns.
We first provide the hunting bag
estimates for France during the 2013/14
season, together with their 95% confidence
interval calculated using the normal
distribution, for each duck species except
Red-crested Pochard Netta rufina, Scaup
Aythya marila, Goldeneye Bucephala clangula
and seaducks (i.e. Common Eider Somateria
mollissima, Long-tailed duck Clangula hyemalis
and scoters Melanitta sp.), for which bag sizes
were small and the confidence intervals
around the estimates considered too wide
and too unreliable for publication. We then
considered these hunting bag estimates in
relation to those of the three earlier surveys
in France, with Mallard Anas platyrhynchos
and “all other ducks” being treated
separately, because this was the only
distinction made between species during
the 1974/75 survey (it was also the
most obvious distinction given the
preponderance of Mallard in the hunting
bag estimates; see below). These figures
were then compared with published
estimates of the number of ducks (dabbling
and diving ducks) wintering in the country
each year over the same period (e.g.
Deceuninck et al. 1997, noting that only
mean values were provided for the periods
1967–1976, 1977–1986 and 1987–1996).
These mean values per species should also
be considered with caution, but they were
the only data available and were hence
summed to obtain a proxy for the total
number of ducks other than Mallard present
between 1967 and 1996. For Common
Teal Anas crecca (hereafter Teal) and
Common Pochard (hereafter Pochard)
direct comparisons were made between the
1998/99 and the 2013/14 hunting bag and
waterbird count surveys, because these
species were already being distinguished
from the other ducks in both surveys by
1998/99 (Mondain-Monval & Girard 2000;
Schricke 2000). A correlation trend test
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was used to assess the trends in numbers
of counted birds over years. Statistical
significance for the correlation trend tests
was evaluated by using a randomization test
(see Manly 1997; Edgington 2007). In order
to obtain accurate results, we estimated the
P-value of the test statistic by randomizing
106times the values of the count data
among the years, and the minimum
attainable P-value is thus P = 0.000001. We
therefore do not rely on an arbitrary α-level
of statistical significance and strictly
interpret the P-value as the strength of the
evidence against H0, conditionally to the
data at hand (Edgington 2007, p .4).
Finally, we provide for comparison the
2013/14 (or nearest season) duck hunting
bag data recorded in other European
countries, but again because of the
differences in survey methods between
countries these cannot be compared
statistically. Numbers were provided by the
national body in charge of hunting in each
country, with most compiled and accessible
via the Artemis platform of FACE
described above. The dataset was completed
wherever possible through direct contact
with the people in charge of these national
organisations, or via colleagues contacted
through the Wetlands International/IUCN-
SSC Duck Specialist Group network.
Results
Among the three sampling phases, the
average response rate was 14% for the first
phase, 12% for the second phase, and 93%
for the third phase. National hunting bag
estimates for the nine duck species surveyed
in France during the 2013/14 season
indicated that Mallard was the most
commonly harvested duck, followed by
Common Teal then Eurasian Wigeon Anas
penelope and Northern Shoveler A. clypeata
(Table 1). Bag size estimates for diving
ducks were smaller and associated with a
wider confidence interval than for any of
the dabbling duck species.
The current hunting bag estimate for
Mallard in France (CI: 1,059,768–1,331,939
individuals) was relatively similar to those
made during the former three surveys and did
not appear to follow the long-term increase
in mid-January Mallard numbers recorded in
the country since the 1970s (Fig. 1).
Estimates for the other duck species
yielded a total of 847,105 ducks (CI:
712,593–981,617) shot in France during the
2013/14 season. This again was similar to
those from the earlier surveys, and in any
case did not follow the 85% increase in the
estimated number of wintering ducks
(Mallard excluded) between 1970–74 and
2010–2014 (Fig. 2).
Between the 1998/99 and 2013/14
hunting seasons, the number of wintering
Teal recorded in France gradually increased
(Pearson correlation: r = 0.57, n= 16 count
years, P= 0.021), and the recent hunting
bag estimates similarly exceeded the earlier
one by 11.25% (Fig. 3a). The estimated
number of Teal shot per season was 3.4–3.7
times greater than the estimated number of
individuals counted in mid-January the same
year.
The situation for Pochard was very
different, with winter counts showing no
significant trend in France over the same
period (Pearson correlation: r= –0.28,
n= 16 count years, P= 0.30, n.s.), yet the
hunting bag estimate in 2013/14 was 42%

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Table 1. Number of ducks (and other waterbirds) harvested in France (95% confidence interval in parentheses) and in the other
European countries during the 2013/14 hunting season (except otherwise stated). Countries with no bag data or which did not answer
our survey are not included. The exact list of species covered was not always known when only a total for all ducks was provided.
Mallard Teal Wigeon Pintail Gadwall Shoveler Garganey Pochard Tufted Pochard Waterbirds Total Ref.
Anas Anas Anas Anas Anas Anas Anas Aythya duck + except ducks
platyrhynchos crecca penelope acuta strepera clypeata querquedula ferina Aythya T. duck Lapwing
fuligula Vanellus vanellus
France 1
1,195,853 368,126 159,265 41,349 57,047 113,213 38,977 25,199 14,285 41,717 2,377,087 2,047,180
(1,059,768– (310,910– (124,198– (27,355– (43,211– (86,437– (21,955– (14,222– (6,347– (23,782– (2,121,913– (1,823,709–
1,331,939) 425,342) 194,332) 55,344) 70,883) 139,989) 55,999) 36,176) 22,224) 59,651) 2,632,262) 2,270,650)
Austria 67,952 2
Bulgaria 54,048 2,031 224 742 177 16 20 3
Czech Republic 256,375 824 4
Denmark 445,000 96,200 40,700 5,000 2,700 2,800 683 653 5,200 5
Estonia 5,614 1,883 967 372 75 360 168 1 11 6
Finland 282,400 119,000 35,500 4,800 3,600 5,000 600 3,400 7
Germany 363,959 8
Hungary 46,724 9
Iceland 13,430 1,661 1,130 112 10
Italy 48,651 10,474 4,092 1,100 1,238 1,547 848 499 656 11
Latvia 20,085 949 431 69 207 201 79 87 25 12
Lithuania 13,269 13
Luxemburg c. 850 14
Malta 11 86 16 9 19 14 11 3 1 15
Netherlands 160,000 4,783 16
Norway 13,600 2,150 1,900 370 17

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Poland 100,627 18
Portugal 27,164 2,326 38 50 421 216 190 69 19
Slovakia 15,856 20
Slovenia 3,634 21
Spain 338,668 22
Switzerland 5,537 104 1 0 30 0 1 91 214 23
United Kingdom 1,000,000 24
1Aubry et al. (2016).
2www.statistik.at/web_en/statistics/Economy/agriculture_and_forestry/livestock_animal_production/hunting/index.html
3Union of hunters and anglers in Bulgaria, pers. comm. Note these data are for the full 2013 calendar year.
4Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic, unpub. data.
5Asferg (2015).
6www.keskkonnaagentuur.ee/et/kuttimine
7Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute (2014).
8www.jagdverband.de/node/3304
9Csányi (2014).
10Beck (2016).
11www.federcaccia.org. Note these data are for the 2012–13 hunting season and only cover Lombardia + Friuli Venezia Giulia regions.
12Latvian State Forests, unpub. data.
13http://lmzd.lt
14Schley et al. (2014).
15Parliamentary Secretariat for agriculture, fisheries and animal rights (2013, 2014).
16Royal Hunting Association of the Netherlands, pers. comm.
17http://www.ssb.no/statistikkbanken
18Domaszewicz et al. (2012) Note these data are for the 2011–12 hunting season.
19www.icnf.pt Note these data are for the 2010–11 hunting season and only cover 1,680 hunting states.
20www.mpsr.sk/en/index.php?start&lang=en&navID=30 Note these data are for the 2003 hunting season.
21www.stat.si/StatWeb/doc/letopis/2013/17_13/17-12-13.html Note these data are for the 2012 hunting season.
22www.magrama.gob.es/es/desarrollo-rural/estadisticas/Est_Anual_Caza.aspx Note these data are for year 2013.
23www.wild.uzh.ch/jagdst/index.php
24www.shootingfacts.co.uk/pdf/consultancyreport.PDF Note these data are for the 2012–13 hunting season.

132 Duck hunting bags in France
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900,000
800,000
700,000
600,000
500,000
400,000
300,000
200,000
100,000
0
500,000
450,000
400,000
350,000
300,000
250,000
200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
0
1967/68
1971/72
1975/76
1979/80
1983/84
1987/88
1991/92
1995/96
1999/00
2003/04
2007/08
2011/12
2015/16
Number of ducks in bag (dots)
Number of ducks in mid-January (circles)
Figure 2. Estimated annual hunting bag for ducks except Mallard in France (filled circles) and
estimation of winter population size based on mid-winter surveys (empty circles). See text for sources
of the data.
1,800,000
1,600,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
600,000
400,000
200,000
0
400,000
350,000
300,000
250,000
200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
0
1967/68
1971/72
1975/76
1979/80
1983/84
1987/88
1991/92
1995/96
1999/00
2003/04
2007/08
2011/12
2015/16
Number of Mallards in bag (dots)
Number of Mallards in mid-January
(circles)
Figure 1. Estimated annual hunting bag for Mallard in France (filled circles) and estimation of winter
population size based on mid-winter surveys (empty circles). See text for sources of the data.

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Figure 3. Number of individuals shot (black columns) and counted in mid-January (circles) between
winter 1998/99 and winter 2013/14 in France for: (a) Common Teal, and (b) Common Pochard.
Vertical bars show upper limit of 95% CI (national hunting bag).
450,000
400,000
350,000
300,000
250,000
200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
0
Number of Teal
1998/99 2003/04 2008/09 2013/14
100,000
90,000
80,000
70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
Number of Pochard
1998/99 2003/04 2008/09 2013/14
(a)
(b)

lower than the estimate during the 1998/99
hunting season (Fig. 3b). As opposed to the
situation regarding Teal, the estimated
hunting bag represented only 39–53% of
the number of Pochard counted in January
of the same year.
The total estimated number of ducks
harvested in France during the 2013/14
hunting season was 2,047,180 individuals
(CI: 1,823,709–2,270,650), which was far
greater than the estimates in any other
European country for which data were
available (Fig. 4).
Discussion
The new national hunting bag survey for
France during the 2013/14 season yielded
results generally in accordance with earlier
similar surveys in the country: an estimated
c. 2 million ducks are harvested per year,
approximately half of which are Mallard,
and with dabbling ducks being harvested in
much greater numbers than diving ducks
(equivalent to a 50-fold difference in
estimated bag size).
Before continuing the discussion, it
should be highlighted again that the
probability sampling design used to obtain
the present estimates relied on multiphase
sampling of the hunter population and put a
great emphasis on attenuating the non-
respondent bias in the estimation of the
total hunting bag (if non-respondents are
hunters with limited or no effective hunting
activity, or with a bag judged too low by
them to deserve reporting, then such a bias
would strongly overestimate total hunting
bag). It therefore differed from the methods
134 Duck hunting bags in France
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Figure 4. Annual duck hunting bag in the 24 European countries for which data were available. Data
generally refer to the 2013/14 hunting season and entire countries except where specified in the
footnotes of Table 1.
2,500,000
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
France
Total annual duck hunting bag
UK
Denmark
Finland
Germany
Spain
Czech Republic
Netherlands
Poland
Italy
Austria
Bulgaria
Hungary
Portugal
Latvia
Norway
Iceland
Slovakia
Lithuania
Estonia
Switzerland
Slovenia
Luxemburg
Malta

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used in France during earlier surveys,
and such methods were not harmonised
between European countries either. This is
of course a major limitation, and all
comparisons between surveys should hence
be considered with caution.
The numbers of Mallards and total
numbers of other ducks reported wintering
in France have clearly increased from the
early 1970s to the mid-2010s (Deceuninck &
Fouque 2010; Deceuninck et al. 2016), yet
their respective estimated national hunting
bags have not showed the same pattern, and
indeed remained rather stable. It is true that
in both cases the estimated annual bag is
several times greater than the number of
birds counted in mid-January. This is likely
to be due to both the fact that: (i) duck
counts are carried out at the end of the
hunting season, and (ii) throughout the
hunting season, hunters harvest from a
much larger number of ducks on the
move, including a pool of mobile birds
continuously crossing the country during
migration, as well as those that winter per se
(Trolliet 1986; see also Caizergues et al.
2011). The apparent stability in the
estimated numbers shot (assuming the
methods were still comparable to some
extent) may therefore indicate that fewer
birds were present or crossed the country,
and could therefore be harvested, before the
January counts. It is also possible that
hunting pressure decreased in France. Some
recent analyses do suggest a decline of the
North-western European populations of
some ducks (i.e. Pintail Anas acuta or
Wigeon), but this is over the short term
(2003–2012). The trends in population size
have conversely been generally positive for
all species if one considers the last 40 years,
apart maybe for Mallard, whose trend from
1974–2002 was considered declining or
stable, and Pochard which have been
considered to be in decline but contributed
only a minor part to the estimated bags
(Scott & Rose 1996; Wetlands International
2016). It is possible that the hunting
pressure per hunter has decreased since the
1974/75 survey in France, but we have no
study to ascertain the precise changes
involved. Seasons have been reduced
(République Française 2015) and the total
number of French hunters fell from around
2,200,000 hunters during the 1974–75
hunting season (ONC 1976, pp. 3,5) to
fewer than 1,200,000 hunters during the
2013/14 season (see also Lecocq & Meine
1998). Although no specific licence is
necessary for waterfowl hunting in France,
which prevents any estimation of the
number of wildfowlers, there is no reason to
believe that their number has not also
decreased. Moreover, according to the
FNC (Fédération Nationale des Chasseurs –
the French National Hunters’ Federation)
the average age of French hunters is
gradually increasing (with the median age
of French hunters currently around 55
years; http://www.chasseurdefrance.com/
decouvrir-la-chasse-en-france/qui-sont-les-
chasseurs/les-chasseurs-qui-sont-ils/). These
two facts are consistent with the hypothesis
that hunting pressure has gradually reduced
in France over the last 40 years. This could
explain why the estimated duck hunting bag
in France has remained fairly stable despite
globally increasing duck populations (which
could also be due to saturation effects on
hunters; e.g. Kahlert et al. 2015). A closer

look at Figure 2, however, shows that changes
in duck hunting bags (Mallard excluded)
between 1998/99 and 2013/14 were very
consistent with the trend in wintering bird
numbers. It is therfore also possible that the
earlier surveys in 1974/75 and 1983/84
simply over-estimated the hunting bags,
perhaps by underestimating the number of
hunters coming home having shot no birds,
who are unlikely to respond to hunting bag
surveys to a similar extent as successful
hunters (Barker 1991; Pendleton 1992).
Concerning Mallard, it should also be
kept in mind that, independent of trends
in the wild population, released farmed
birds form the bulk of the harvest in this
species, with releases in Europe and in
France being counted in millions of
individuals (Mondain-Monval & Girard
2000; Champagnon 2011). It is therefore
most likely that the Mallard harvest in
France is driven more closely by fluctuations
in the number of birds released annually
than by any trend in the natural population.
Changes in estimated Teal hunting bags
since the 1998–99 survey were consistent
with the recorded increase in their wintering
numbers in France, as well as in Europe
(Wetlands International 2016). As discussed
above, the fact that the French hunting bag
amounted to c. 3.5 times the wintering
population size indicates that most of the
harvest is of birds crossing the country
during autumn and winter or at least that
these birds, once harvested, are replaced by
new immigrants (Trolliet 1986; Caizergues et
al. 2011; see also Guillemain et al. 2010). The
situation was somewhat different for
Pochard: here the estimated numbers
wintering in France have been fairly stable,
but have declined markedly in Europe, to
the point that the population is now
considered “Vulnerable” by IUCN (Birdlife
international 2015). Such broad-scale
decline is mirrored in the massive decrease
of the estimated French hunting bag which
has become c. 40% lower in 15 years, a
pattern also reported e.g. in Denmark
(Christensen et al. 2013) and in Switzerland
(www.wild.uzh.ch/jagdst). Such a decline in
European Pochard numbers (and thus the
estimated hunting bag) could partly be due
to the re-distribution of birds to areas
outside their previous geographic range
where they are counted in western Europe,
but is also likely linked to falling
reproductive success attributed to a large
extent to degradation in breeding conditions
(Fox et al. 2016). The sustainability of the
harvest of this species is currently subject to
study and requires further review.
On a European scale, France had the
largest estimated duck hunting bag of all the
countries for which data were available
during the 2013/14 season, with estimates
twice that from the United Kingdom with
the second highest take. It should not be
forgotten that half of the French bag was
composed of Mallard, of which the vast
majority is likely of reared and released
origins (see above). However, this leaves c.
one million wild dabbling and diving ducks
which are harvested annually in France,
highlighting again the importance of this
activity, the density of human population
(and hence, hunters) and the unusual hunting
opportunities provided by the extent of
French wetlands and the central geographic
position of France in the flyways. France
already had the largest estimated duck bag in
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earlier pan-European analyses, which like
here also included the UK, Denmark,
Finland and Germany within the top five
countries with the largest bags in Europe
(Mooij 2005; Hirschfeld & Heyd 2005).
Fifteen years after the last hunting bag
survey in France, the present analysis
provides results which are very consistent
with earlier ones, apart from the substantial
decrease in the estimated Pochard harvest.
The observation that over 2 million ducks
are shot annually in France may constitute a
very large number of birds, and cause
concern to an outside observer. It should
however be emphasised that a very large
proportion of these are Mallard of captive
reared origin (in Camargue, southern
France, genetic analyses confirmed a wild
origin for only 9% of sampled hunted
Mallard; Champagnon et al. 2013), and that
most of the other species have been
increasing over the long-term, despite such
an apparently large harvest (Wetlands
International 2016). Given their specific life-
history traits of relatively limited lifespan
but especially high fecundity (e.g. Gaillard et
al. 1989), ducks are naturally well equipped
to compensate for the mortality due to
hunting, and hence sustain relatively high
harvest rates compared to other species (e.g.
Cooch et al. 2014). This could be one of the
reasons why Pöysä et al. (2013) could actually
not demonstrate any correlation between
breeding duck population trends in Finland
and hunting pressure at the European scale.
This is not to say that the hunting activity
plays no part in the population dynamics of
duck species, nor that it should not be
adequately monitored. It was important
for the general understanding of duck
population dynamics that a bag survey was
conducted for a country where duck
hunting is so extensive as in France.
However, fifteen years have passed since the
previous survey in France, while other
countries could readily provide (although
not necessary always with a precise survey
protocol) annual hunting bag data on
demand for a specific year (see Table 1 and
footnotes). Such infrequent assessments
in France may prevent us from detecting
short-term changes in harvest trends, and
hence compromise our ability to implement
conservation actions effectively for the
harvested species. Furthermore, with a
survey every 15 years it is not possible to
assess inter-annual fluctuations in the
harvest, which may be great in species such
as ducks that are differentially prone to
distribute themselves across Europe in
response to adverse (Ridgill & Fox 1990) or
mild weather (Lehikoinen et al. 2013; Pavon-
Jordan et al. 2015). Bag surveys at a smaller
scale (i.e. only nocturnal hunting, for which
annual bag reporting is mandatory) suggest
the 2013/14 hunting season in France was
comparable to the former surveys, with
333,588 individuals shot at night during that
season, compared to between 280,908 and
393,317 individuals during the three earlier
assessments (Anstett et al. 2012; 2013; 2014;
2015). It is, however, difficult to provide any
robust analysis of the causes of potential
differences between national bag sizes when
these are estimated as infrequently as at
15-year intervals.
Conclusion
The main limitation of the present analysis
was the heterogeneity in the methods

employed to survey hunters and estimate
hunting bags through time in France, and
between the different European countries.
There are regular calls for harmonised
collection of waterfowl hunting statistics in
Europe (Lampio 1974; Nowak 1975;
Elmberg et al. 2006), and a general move
towards coordinated adaptive management
schemes for these species at the European
scale or under the auspices of AEWA
(Madsen et al. 2015). Such schemes will
require both reliable and coordinated
assessments of hunting kill as well as greater
frequency of hunting bag assessment in the
near future, but the fact that hunting
statistics were so easily accessible to us from
so many European countries during the
present analysis shows that the community
is now considering seriously the issue of
hunting statistics. This gives some basis for
optimism that such statistics will become
increasingly available from more countries
in the future. The next step should be that
someone, or some European organisation,
takes the initiative and leads on developing
a harmonised, systematic and integrated
system of hunting bag assessment at the
flyway scale.
Acknowledgements
We would first like to thank the millions of
European hunters who reported their duck
bag statistics in France and across Europe,
and hence made this study possible. We also
acknowledge FACE and the Duck Specialist
Group of Wetlands International/IUCN for
support in finding the national hunting bag
data. We warmly thank Jochen Bellebaum,
Sjoerd Dirksen, Matt Ellis, Johan Elmberg,
Andy Green, Richard Hearn, Mara Janaus,
Wim Knol, Dúi J. Landmark, Nele
Markones, Rafael Mateo, Petr Musil, Zuzana
Musilová, Szabolcs Nagy, Aevar Petersen,
David Rodrigues, David Scallan, Alexandra
Topouzanska, Willem Van Den Bossche and
Marc van Roomen for their help with
translation of some national documents or
for finding more cryptic information. Jean-
Pierre Arnauduc, Mathieu Sarasa, Eileen
Rees, Tony Fox and an anonymous referee
provided valuable comments on former
versions of the manuscript. The French
national hunting bag survey (season
2013/14) was supported by the FNC
(Fédération Nationale des Chasseurs – the
French National Hunters’ Federation) and
ONFCS (Office National de la Chasse et de
la Faune Sauvage – the National Hunting
and Wildlife Agency). B.F. was supported by
an ONCFS PhD grant.
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