The hunting of the woodcock and its future.
Parameters of woodcock management.
Here are some essential elements to understand on what, we can lean to manage the woodcock.
Many management decisions are based on the hunting index of abundance (ICA), the result of studies within the CNB. This ICA is also used by hunting authorities, which is why today it hardly reflects the situation on the ground. Indeed the ICA is based on a lot of subjectivities and on the very different interpretation of the participating hunters.
Do these hunters have enough experience with woodcock behavior and tricks to properly analyze the number of woodcock seen, given that in many areas, unlike in the past, it is hunted? in groups of 3 or 4 hunters, see more. Another consequence is that it is mostly taken from very young woodcock (6 months), the most vulnerable.
Too many reviews indicate woodcock reproduction reports, which are actually meteorological reports, nothing concrete about reproduction, such as; the success of the broods, the number of woodcock observed, do not speak of livestock, a taboo subject! This year is going to be a great year in the woods , this sentence is only based on the weather.
Reproduction is not good that if the herd is successful, if the latter is declining, so is reproduction, Boidot 2011, joins this to analyse . The missing parameter, the estimate of the herd! Excluding currently in Aquitaine, like Brittany, these are only estimates, the analysis of all the notebooks does not exist, in these large regions, in terms of samples.
Average age of a young woodcock : 6 month
Age ratio according to my method : 69.2%
source F. Ricaud
Ring wearing Game reserve area: 261 days
source oncfs
Hunting zone ring wearing: 99 days
source oncfs
table determining the age ratio of 69% for the 2013/2014 season
Survival rate for year-old woodcock 0.34 Survival rate for adult woodcock 0.44
source oncfs
Concretely, an essential data to quantify the success of the reproduction of a species of bird, it is the success of the broods. Today scientists have only fragmentary data about the woodcock.
During ten years of research in Russia in the heart of the woodcock's nesting area, only a hundred nests have been discovered (oncfs). Indeed, some scientists recognize that to find a woodcock's nest, it is comparable to a player being able to win a million euros in a slot machine.
Woodcock nest, discovered in Finland
