Code of practise

teal

Active Member
Well we seem to have one for snaring, deer, lamping etc. So what would you think as an appropriate voluntary code of practise for wild boar?

(So that there are less orphans, wounded boar and safeguard their existance as well as reduce their impact on the farming fraternities lively hood.)

I reckon there must be a few others here who have been involved with wild boar in europe either through management or sport shooting who could give ideas. Just as there are people here who have been shooting them for a fair few years and found suitable management ideas that work for them in Britian.

regards Teal.
 
Teal,

I think it is a good idea.
I have been involved in wild boar management in Poland for 10 years and am willing to help.

Regards,
Greg
 
Hi glogin
Thank you for your reply. With your experience of boar in Poland what would your recommendations be, for the type of boar shooting done here under our current restriction with dogs etc?

teal
 
Teal,

In my opinion, you dont need driven hunts to keep wild boar population in check. Driven hunts with dogs are more of a traditional thing than a proper boar management.
Individual stalks and shooting from high seats should be enough.
I would also like to see closed season for sows introduced. I think 1st February-31st August would be ok.
I think wild boar should not be lamped as well as deer.
I would like to see British wild boar population to grow, which might not be other people's (farmers) ponit of view...
:rolleyes:

Regards,
Greg
 
Glogin is right in what he says about hunting boar with dogs. Whilst it is great fun hunting them with dogs it cannot be considered as a way of controlling a boar population. Loosing a dog on problem boar will scare them away for a short time but they will come back.
Sows with piglets should never be shot. Yearlings can be shot all year. Adult males?
 
Jagare said:
Sows with piglets should never be shot. Yearlings can be shot all year. Adult males?

In Poland adult males are not shot in March, but I guess they could be shot all year.

I think it is important though to have good population structure. I mean, enough adult males and sows. Otherwise, young females might take part in the rut ( :confused: is this the correct term for that :confused: ) and give birth when they are yearlings later than the adult sows. Newborn piglets mature later than other and are generally in poorer condition and again give birth later, and so on, and so on...
However, in Britain with milder climate, good eating, plenty of maize crops etc they might already breed all year round..

Greg
 
We have a closed season on adult male boar 15th Feb-16th April. Glogin wrote i think in a earlier post that shooting sows with dependant young makes the other sows have young at any time of the year instead of the early part of the year. This is a problem we have in Sweden in that you can now see stripy,s at any time of the year. Its taken a while for the "Swedish model" of manageing boar to take root so hopefully in the future the breeding cycle of boar will return to normal.
The same as in England it will take a time to put in place the "English model" . The idea that you can shoot any boar at any time leads to big problems in the future. The boar are there to stay in England and a getting the culling right leads to less problems in the future.

Trapping works well in the short term but being the clever animals that they are they soon learn and trapping becomes less effective.
 
i am very lucky to have access to a very small population of boar, but i have also seen the destruction they cause. althou on a very small scale compared to photos i've seen from elsewhere and abroad. i personally have a split opinion on boar 1 side is like the majority on here and want to manage them sustaiably. the other (tin hat and flak jacket on) i feel boar are almost an alien species (i do realise they were hewre and now extinct) asnd shouldn't really be welcomed or encouraged. we make a big deal about reintroduction of beavers and the damage they would cause to salmon fishing ££ yet we are keen to encourage 300lb+ boar to run about the countryside to give a lucky few of us a bit of sport, destroying farmers crops and crashing into cars for fun.i think as stalkers (and mainly recreational at that) we have to make important decisions with boar. while it is great to go out and shoot the odd one, this is just a hobby for us and concern should be given to the farmer. do we really want boar roaming wild over the whole of uk. i know i may upset stalkers by saying this but the bottom line is they are very hard to control the population due to there life style. would it be possible to cull enough boar if you took away the lamping/night shooting.

there is an article in the shooting times this week about the french management and saying it basically doesnt work very well they are now averageing522,000 boar a year up from 415,000 betweem 04/06. 22m euro for crop compensation and between 115m-180m euro in rta. they are  now trying rationing the food in the hoppers in one area; 100kg food for 100 hectares. thats a hell of a lot of money to subsidise a few peoples hobby. also some stated recently on another thread (i think) the majority of swediosh boar escap;ed from farms in the 70's and now have to shoot 2 000 000 (i think) just to keep population stable. with the better cliumate and more intesive agriculture your possibly only talking 15+ years to get some very high populations possibly throughout much of england.apologies for length of post, and also apologies for the content i'm not saying we should go on an all out eradication policy (and realise in m,any bigger poipulations is pretty much impossible) or trying to start any arguments or be confrontational or wot ever.   i'm a total novice with boar and wondering wot do the experienced rifles out there think if you could turn the clock back 10-15 years or longer for you europeans would you manage them the same or hit them harder to try and keep the population either localised or in control. like i said i've took the stalking hat of for much of this post and took a step back to look at the bigger picture and wonder wot everyone else thinks.
 
countrryboy said:
there is an article in the shooting times this week about the french management and saying it basically doesnt work very well they are now averageing522,000 boar a year up from 415,000 betweem 04/06. 22m euro for crop compensation and between 115m-180m euro in rta. they are  now trying rationing the food in the hoppers in one area; 100kg food for 100 hectares. thats a hell of a lot of money to subsidise a few peoples hobby.

I do not know how it works in that muslim country across the channel. :eek: I have this weeks shooting times but have no time to read it yet.

Boar obviously do some damage. This is the part I can see some problems - because of the difference between continental and British model. On continent, clubs manage deer and boar usually over bigger areas than here - 10-30 000 acres or more, but they also pay money to farmers for the damages wild boar do to the crops. They will balance their costs with selling venison to game dealers and from members fees. There is no government subsidising involved (at least not in Poland). In Britain a wild boar is WILD and no one is responsible for the damage they do to the crops. ;)

Greg
 
As i said earlier boar are a new species here in Sweden. back on the game list after 250? years. At the start they were considered vermin to be shot on site. How did that work :rolleyes: . So they were put on the list of huntable quarry and we are still working on ways of controling them.

We can now shoot them at night over illuminated feed areas. It will be interesting to see how and how long that works.

You now have boar in the UK. Believe me they are there to stay and the quicker you get good shooting , control practice in place the better.

I heard on the radio that Boar are the third most intelligent animal after apes and Dolfins. Remember they live in the arid parts of north Africa to the deep snow covered places in Russia

As the population grows it will be up to "stalker" to get out there and keep them under control. Lets hope they do a better job than controlling the deer population ;)
 
Jagare

Are there currently models for the population growth of boar based on what's happens in countries like sweden for example?

I can't find anything??
 
Roe steak, i seem to recall that the growth rate is 17% per year.
A year or so ago the powers that be said there were 60-80 thousand boar in Sweden. At the same time they said that 20000 had been shot. This number had been based on the number of Trikiner tests carried out so the number shot must have been a fair bit higher. Plus there were over 1000 RTA's involving boar. this number increased by 50% last year.
So if 25-30 thousand boar were shot that year then there estimations of 60-80000 boar doe's not make scense in my mind.
I think they have no idea how many boar there are.
The spread of boar in Sweden has in part been down to transplanting boar by hunters and other interested parties. Boar have been turning up along way from established populations and they didn't get there by bus or train ;)
Its said that by 2011 we will be shooting more boar than moose about 90000 moose shot last year.
I'm sure England will be like here and dither about ,under estimate, and deny the the boar problem until it is to late.
 
In Poland you plan your annual wild boar cull based on 100-150% growth.
It means that you need to know the number of animals you have on your permission in Spring. If you have 100 boar in Spring (before sows give birth) you should cull at least 100 during the next season to keep the current numbers following year. It basically means that the population doubles every year :rolleyes:
In milder British climate it might be more than that...

Greg
 
Female season should close mid January rather than beginning of February as suggested in ealrier post. Increasing risk they are very heavily pregnant after mid Jan.
 
I have seen sows with (rough guess) week old piglets running around at christmas and in the summer so makes putting seasons on them quite difficult realy, as it`s worse to shoot females with dependant young on them than shoot pregnant females
Boar do adapt to food availabilty, cover and pressure, (which did increase when I got round them )
Also litter sizes vary with these things as well, I`ve seen litters of 4 up to 8/10
I`m not sure of maths, but if 10 sows have litters of 4 each, and 3 of each litter survive, that 300% increase isn`t it? and porcine gestation period is 3 mnths, 3 weeks and 3 days, so they can rattle them out fairish.
So easiest way I found was shoot juveniles, and try to pick out males, but did make sure they had no young at foot, or if the farmer had been moaning, shoot anything without dependants with them, sounds cruel, but I did have a job to do.
Leave the big old sows, (though the farmer didn`t like me leaving anything,
But when you do see 37 Boar trotting up across the farmers crops, you to tend to think, "well I`d better give them a bit of a hammering" to keep farmer happy, so when trying to fix a season, alot of things come into play;such as,
1.are you managing a pest for someone
2 are you hunting for sport?
3, are you trying to please clients.
When I was dealing with them alot in the U.K, I had to put the farmers wishes first (most of the time :) ) the my own after.
I think whoever comes up with a season, has got alot of things to deal with and alot of people to please, so good luck to them.
Just thought I`d add my thoughts as I had nothing to do after sitting on the deck watching the moon come up over the Ruahines, and no Wayne, thats not near Ross mate :lol: :lol:
 
John has put his finger on the problem which is that UK boar have not dropped into a seasonal breeding pattern yet and this means that close seasons are meaningless.

This may be to do with the fact that there is some domestic blood in some UK boar populations and this leads to a lack of seasonality and larger litters which is of course primarily why domestic blood was introduced. however the boar that John knows so well are not thought to have domestic blood in them and are of pure Eastern European stock so domestic blood is not responsible.

Having said this there is no reason why a code of practice can't recommend shooting only barren sows, pregnant sows and those with independent young irrespective of season and leaving sows with dependent young at foot.
 
so i take it with the high breeding/survival rate the best practice is really to shoot them as hard as possible with the exception of sows with dependents and the bigger sows/boars so that there is the obvious alpha male type boar and matraich? sow.

i also realise that the boar are wild and so we can have no real responsibility for the damage they cause, but we must bear some if we're feeding or encourageing them to breed and spread.

as for close seasons, there seems to be a great deal of variation when the young are born according to all the info i've read and seen on here so dont really see how it would work. would an open season all year similar to how muntjac works not be best and leave it up to the individual stalker. if there was a close season there probaly would end up being a farmers damage type clause anyway for out of season shooting; and any close seasons would probaly be ignored by the few cowboys who would shoot them anyway no doubt. there may also be the occasional misidentification at nite, it should'nt happen but these things do occasionally.
i think the type of people on here and stalkers in general are to concerned about animal welfare, safety and a humane kill to ever shoot a sow or any other animal with dependent young so i dont really think the close seasonb would affect the vast majoity of stalkers as we wouldnt be shooting them anyway. and if u seen a sow which u suspected was heavily pregnant or suckling u would'nt shoot it in season or not. i think most would self regulate by there own morals and try to educate (or chase off)the cowboys who give everyonr a bad name.
jist my thoughts on the close seasons anyway.
 
me again. i always seem to think of something better to say as turning computer off.
i see pual k above me agrees that a defined close season probaly would'nt really help them or us and better being a volantry code of practice.
main question i came on to ask is whats the best way to estimate the population, i realise even the best most time consuming is still a guesstimate but at least would hopefully show u wot the population is doing. is it jist out with the lamp leaving rifle at home although this would seem a shame if u seen a cull beast and never took advantage of this, .

or can you wander round the woods in daylight measuring/counting rooting or vegetation damage, track use or something like that to get a ruff idea of population density. i know a local stalker who asseses the vegetation in his massive area of woods every spring and gives them a score to try to see if his deer management is working or needs to up his cull and records this along with his cull records.
apologies for the sort of sciencey questions but i'm quite an*l with all this management type stuff and always like to ask why and understand it. also like looking at cull records with maps , how sad. need to get a life i think
 
I believe if the population is managed properly wild boar should not breed in any month but in February-May. Hence, close season for sows makes sense.
In wild boar sex is much harder to identify (especially at night) than in a deer...
Books usually say that to establish number of the population you select small drives on your permission and drive wild boar and count them, and then you have estimated number for the whole area.. Not very practical..
The other way is observation during the whole year.

Greg
 
Thanks Paul, glad someone undersood my ramblings and what I was trying to say.

Hiya Glogin, how do you mean "managed properly"?
From my dealings with them and the area I managed, I found that they had very very good cover( I think about 1500 acres of deepest darkest woodland) and some of the highest quality cropping in the area,possibly in the country all around the wood,so they had good cover to hide, and great food to eat at night.
Oh and the forestry commision fed them too.!
I agree sexing boar at night isn`t easy, but I didn`t find it impossible, shape,size manner of the animal, then look for the nuts :D

As for the number of boar, the Forestry Commision had a good idea, they gueessed ! :rolleyes:
When I was asked to go to a DEFRA meeting and they told everyone there were about 30 breeding animals around my area and 50 (from bad memory ) in the Forest of Dean, I asked them if the went on holidays? as I`d counted 38 in one bumch and 1/2 hour later counted 12 in another area. DEFRA couldn`t answer that one.
 
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