Total Wild Boar numbers

ianthegun

Member
Has anyone any idea of the number of wild boar we have in the UK?

One of my customers told me they had shot 500 last year on one farm in Gloucestershire.

I remember seeing a Forestry Commission projection of the numbers, if there where 25 breading pairs of wild boar, with the cull rate as it is at present the number could be as high 65,000 within 6 years.

With these figures if there where 250 couples breading, that's times 10, that would give us 650,000 wild boar in 6 years.

If one farm has shot 500 in one year how many are really out there?
 
'official' numbers and reality will be greatly different although they are 'increasing' in number and distribution without question. 3-5k may be a moderate estimate but even if it was an over estimate, they will be there soon
 
Nobody has a clue how many wild boar there are in the UK. Up to a few years ago we would get estimates in the shooting press and elsewhere on how many boar we had in Sweden. If you then looked at the numbers reported shot to the powers that be it was clear to see that boar numbers were well under estimated.
One clued up person worked out that by 2011 we would shoot as many boar as moose (90-1000000) . Apart from 2 very hard winters in a row that knocked back the boar population a bit, he was spot on the number of boar shot yearly. The number of boar shot has over taken the number of moose shot now.
I never thought in my life time that i would see boar on my ground. Suddenly there were boar heading this way from all sides and they have been here for nearly 5 years.
To my mind part of the increase and spread of boar is down to the massive over feeding of boar by hunters.
 
If even half the claims are true about the numbers being shot in or around the Forest of Dean (e.g. 500 on one farm last year) there must be more boar in the forest than they have trees to hide behind. :lol:
 
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In one of the Scandinavian countries they did their usual estimate of an animal (I can't remember which, but a big mammal), then got a shed load of soldiers to walk the wood just about hand in hand. This gave them a nearly perfect count.

I think the real count was 10x that of the estimate.

So does anyone really know how many of anything we have?
 
In one of the Scandinavian countries they did their usual estimate of an animal (I can't remember which, but a big mammal), then got a shed load of soldiers to walk the wood just about hand in hand. This gave them a nearly perfect count.

I think the real count was 10x that of the estimate.

So does anyone really know how many of anything we have?

I seem to recall reading about that in the BDS journal some years ago Eddie. Didn't that walk through take place on an island?

I've come to the personal conclusion after reading and hearing a lot about several methodologies of carrying out a count including thermal imaging from the air and on the ground that at best it can only be a guestimate and that the real figures are probably well in excess of previous estimates.
 
I seem to recall reading about that in the BDS journal some years ago Eddie. Didn't that walk through take place on an island?

I've come to the personal conclusion after reading and hearing a lot about several methodologies of carrying out a count including thermal imaging from the air and on the ground that at best it can only be a guestimate and that the real figures are probably well in excess of previous estimates.
Roe deer Kalo in Denmark?
 
I remember Richard Prior telling us one time that he reckoned he knew every deer on his patch. He then had the opportunity to go up in a helicopter - this was a long time ago - and he was amazed at the number of deer he saw and where they were. He informed us that "basically, you will have no idea how many deer you have, but it's likely to be at least three times as many as you think."
 
A vet friend was telling me yesterday that one of his farm clients in Gloucestershire shot 600 boar last year on several farms within the Dean

With numbers like that I wonder how quick they would spread if boar had a season or night shooting reduced.
 
Is anyone who is "shooting 600 boar" per year keeping their data? I would expect that the various regulatory authorities would be wanting to pay for this data set wanting to put them on the advisory commissions & payroll?
 
The Forestry Commission, who have access to most of the ground with boar on, managed to get about 500 last year with 4 full time rangers plus extra rangers drafted in. Anybody who claims to be shooting the numbers quoted here needs to take more water with their bull **** juice.
 
F.C only shoot during daylight hours as they are not allowed to shoot after dark in the Dean as far as I am aware.

The guy who told me about the farmer shooting 600 last year is a vet working in Gloucestershire and he was inquiring about a large chiller the farmer has to see if he would have any room for us to use it but was told that he shoots over 9 farms every night and had no room left after a couple of nights.

The vet is a very educated man and I would believe what he tells me as he is not into lying so that just leaves the farmer and I can't vouch for him not knowing him. He only needs to shoot 1.6 every night or 11.5 per week to get his 600 and if he is out every night then its achievable, pest control, no close season.
 
Hardly respectful to the Boar as a quarry animal and deeply questionable on animal welfare grounds, particularly in respect of suckling sows.

The same attitude towards deer led to the passing of the Deer Act.


but where agriculture is concerned they are a pest, do you stop shooting rabbits or pigeons when they have young? every coin has two sides.....
 
but where agriculture is concerned they are a pest, do you stop shooting rabbits or pigeons when they have young? every coin has two sides.....

I'm not suggesting that Boar do not need pro-active management, but the unregulated indiscriminate shooting of Boar is not something that the general public may have sympathy with. Not only is this not good from the animal welfare perspective it is a potential PR disaster for both the shooting and agricultural communities alike.
 
The Forestry Commission, who have access to most of the ground with boar on, managed to get about 500 last year with 4 full time rangers plus extra rangers drafted in. Anybody who claims to be shooting the numbers quoted here needs to take more water with their bull **** juice.

Penyard the figure that I was told last week was 534 or thereabouts. I say thereabouts because I'm pretty sure that was the exact figure given but I've slept a few nights since then so may have the number slightly wrong but only by one or two. This came from one of the rangers in the Dean.
 
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Hardly respectful to the Boar as a quarry animal and deeply questionable on animal welfare grounds, particularly in respect of suckling sows.

The same attitude towards deer led to the passing of the Deer Act.

Nothing to do with respect when they are ripping farmers fields and crops up, I do not stop shooting but select only boars whilst the sows are suckling their young and know of many others who do the same.

The other fact is that if you stop shooting and the farmers still getting the damage then you will lose that permission to someone who won't be fussy in what they shoot, sows included.

I picked up two pieces of land because the shooter had not been and the farmers were fed up with the damage and the reason the person hadn't been was because he had been in hospital for an operation. A simple phone call from the shooter to the landowners would have at least let them know what the problem was.

I have since spoke with the shooter and advised him that I am not about taking other peoples land, even when landowners contact me and he needs to speak with the landowners to clarify what had happened and I have no problem with him continuing to shoot the land. Nice bit of land and he told me he had taken over 30 pigs in a month.
 
A friend of mine wrote a book a few years back called "Wild Boar in the UK the story so far". This covered the area on the Kent, East Sussex border. I remember going to view the boar in the local FC woodland near his home. We saw several Boar in broad daylight, and there was evidence everywhere.

Since this time the shooting has been let to the KWA, pigeon/birds only .........however the deer and Boar belonged to another two people who had contacts inside the FC. Needless to say the amount of Boar now is much reduced. Plus I was told a few years back that there are some 13 high seats around the FC wood edge and everyone is shooting pigs.

It appears to me that a season should be applied with care being taken to reduce the issues of lactating sows being shot. Boar are resilient creatures and will not tolerate a lot of shooting and disturbance and therefore will move on. My friends opinion is that there are Boar in every southern county of England now, but not quite in numbers where you will notice them, but given time they will turn up...........................I am really hoping this is the case in my area of West Sussex.
 
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