Accounting for game animals. Methods of quantitative accounting of animals. Accounting for game animals with a dog

Methods of relative accounting. It should be borne in mind that this method cannot obtain absolute indicators of the density or number of animals. This method includes the route counting of animals on the track in the snow, in which the number of tracks of a certain animal species that cross the counting route per unit length of the route (usually 10 km) is counted. Traces no more than a day old are taken into account.

When accounting, current observations are recorded: natural landmarks on the route, species of animals. The outline (plan, scheme) of the route is drawn up directly on the route. The following is applied to the outline: the route line, the necessary landmarks with the numbers of forest blocks, the intersection of roads, power lines, clearings, streams and other objects. The main content of the outline is the crossing of the route by traces of animals; type of animal and direction of movement.

Accounting of hunting birds on the routes is carried out with their visual observation.

When laying routes, the following recommendations must be observed:

1. arrange routes evenly;

2. strive to maintain straightness;

3. do not deviate from predetermined directions;

4. do not lay routes along roads, rivers, streams, swamp borders, but only perpendicularly.

Among the methods of relative accounting, a special place is occupied by a group of methods based on counting animals from one observation point. The most widespread example of such methods may be the counting of waterfowl on dawns (on flights). The counter, being in a place with a good overview of the territory, counts the flying ducks he sees. Accounting can be kept according to different indicators: the number of ducks seen at dawn; the number of ducks flying at a shot distance (50-60 m); the number of all visible and audible ducks.

A similar method of counting woodcock on draft comes down to counting birds audible by characteristic sounds (crowing, croaking) and visible.

The accounting of large animals in places of their concentration (at watering places, salt licks, feeding grounds, etc.) is close to these methods in terms of the technique of use. Animals usually visit such places at night, so it is desirable to equip the meter with optical night vision devices.

All the above methods are united by the fact that in all cases it is impossible to establish the area of ​​land from which data are collected on the number of birds or animals seen or heard. Therefore, these methods are not suitable for absolute accounting and cannot be used in combined accounting. The indicators of relative counts can be used to identify the relative integrity of a particular hunting place on flights, draft, on a particular solonetz or watering place.

Methods of absolute accounting. Continuous or head counts are called counts when a certain territory is surveyed entirely and all animals are counted without exception.

The specificity of the head count is that it mainly takes into account herd animals (saiga, reindeer) in clusters and solitary.

Continuous counts are carried out mainly by ground methods, but in some cases they can be carried out using aviation and aerial photography (counting deer, saiga, ground squirrel, marmot).

Accounting for trial plots It is used in cases where several species of animals or their groups can be counted on each sample. The norm is 4-5 accounting units for a trial plot.

Accounting for the number of upland game by the method of running on test plots, is one of the most accurate methods for counting forest grouse birds. In order to exclude the passage of birds as much as possible, the distance between the beaters should not be more than 15-20 m.

Much more often than a run on trial plots, multiple surveys of lands are used with registration of encounters of single birds and broods of upland game. Such a method is called mapping of individual plots based on encounters on trial plots(100-140 ha).

Accounting for capercaillie and black grouse on currents, is considered one of the most accessible methods for counting these bird species. It is desirable to count birds on all known leks. Direct accounting on capercaillie currents is carried out during the period of maximum intensity of the current, when capercaillie arrive at the current.

Accounting of hunting birds by votes from one point is carried out to determine the number of quail, white partridge, etc. The accountant at the evening and morning dawn from one place registers all the singing male birds and puts their presumed place on the plan. The boundaries and area of ​​the trial plot are determined by the average radius from the point of observation to the hearing limit of males. It is better if the accounting area has natural boundaries, then the area of ​​the surveyed unit is taken as the size of the site.

Ungulate counting by roar. Roaring bulls during the rut count. During this period, they usually stick to certain places. The roar is timed to the evening and morning dawns. The census taker chooses an elevated place on flat land or on a slope in mountainous conditions. To determine the total number of animals, it is necessary to know the percentage of roaring bulls in the entire population.

Accounting for animals by noise run can be done at any time of the year. During snowless periods, the animals running out of the area are recorded by observers, the distance between them should not be more than 300 m when counting ungulates and 50 m when counting hares, foxes, etc.

In winter, the detection of animals is carried out by footprints in the snow. After the run, the number of animals on the site is set, it is equal to the difference between the number of fresh output and input tracks.

Ungulate animals, wolves, foxes, lynxes, hares, etc. are taken into account by the run method. For accounting, areas ranging in size from 50 to 1000 hectares are laid, they must reflect the whole variety of hunting ground types. The total sample area should cover at least 25% of the total land area.

The results of accounting for all sample plots, obtained by the noise run method, are extrapolated to the entire total area, the error of this method does not exceed 10%.

Habitat mapping method by footprints, is applied in the case when animals adhere to the same habitat for several days. The distance between routes should not be more than the minimum diameter of the daily area of ​​the animal. This method takes into account sable, small mustelid animals and even a brown bear.

Accounting for animals by burrows. This method takes into account the fox, arctic fox, raccoon dog, badger and other animals that live in holes. Accounting for holes must be carried out during the upbringing of young animals (May - June). To obtain absolute numbers, the number of residential burrows is multiplied by the average family size.

Accounting for defecation on trial plots is also gaining wide acceptance, especially in relation to ungulates. The number of heaps of defecation is on average quite constant and amounts to 13-14 pieces for an elk. per day, for roe deer 15-16 pcs. etc. Such counts are best done in the snow. Defecation within a certain area is taken into account in the process of a three-meter wide route, evenly covering the entire area. When covering 80-100% of the total area, the accuracy is 15-20%.

Methods of tape accounting. All counts on trial route lanes (tapes), with a predetermined bandwidth, are called tape counts or counts on tape samples.

Tape counts are ground and airborne. Visual aerial surveillance is carried out with the condition that the width of the accounting tape is predetermined according to ground reference points. In ground censuses, both constant and variable width of the census tape is used (Appendix 5, 6).

In the practice of ground accounting, the following is used:

1. Tape accounting with several meters and a constant tape width. The method is applicable to the entire bird population;

2. Tape metering with one meter and constant tape width. The method is used to account for upland game;

3. Tape metering with one meter and variable tape width. The method is used to account for upland game in various conditions;

4. Tape accounting of hazel grouse with decoy In the process of accounting, they beckon with a stop after 50-100 m);

5. Tape count of ptarmigan. Males guarding nesting sites are registered;

6. Tape accounting of upland game with a dog.

Tape aerial surveys of large animals are widely used in the survey of large areas.

Deciduous forests, low shrubs, open hunting grounds in winter are clearly visible from above within the registration strip of 250 m on both sides of the route. The optimal observation height is 150 m, with a minimum speed of 100-150 km/h. The total recording time is no more than 5-6 hours. Accounting from each side is carried out independently by several accountants.

The results of the accounting are recorded on the outline or dictated to the voice recorder. Accountants record: the time of passing over the landmarks available on the map, the time of crossing the edges of the forest, if the count is carried out separately by categories of land, the time of detection of animals, their number in a group, gender and age, if possible.

Combined accounting methods, are used to reduce the complexity of accounting work while maintaining high accuracy. They usually consist of one absolute and one relative accounting method.

Accounting on trial plots (absolute accounting) can be carried out by any method: run, salary with tracking, etc. It is important that, in parallel with the registration on the sample, where the density of the population of animals is determined, a route accounting is carried out.

Comparison of the materials of two counts makes it possible to obtain a conversion factor for other route counts.

The conversion factor (K) is equal to the population density of animals in the area, divided by the accounting indicator - the number of traces crossed per 10 km of route relative accounting:

where: To- conversion factor;

P is the population density of animals;

Pu - an indicator of accounting for the number of traces crossed per 10 km.

The conversion factor calculated at the site is used to determine the population density in other places with similar natural conditions according to the formula:

Combined accounting methods are widely used in the hunting industry, since they do not require large expenditures.

First of all, it is important to establish the abundance of the studied species, the population density, since it is closely connected with the entire ecology of animals and is of versatile theoretical and applied interest.

Without data on the number of species included in the biocenosis, it is impossible to judge their significance, it is impossible to imagine the structure of the biocenosis and its dynamics in space and time, it is impossible to study the dynamics of populations of individual species.

Knowledge of the number of animals is necessary for the correct organization of pest control, in particular, for making forecasts of the mass appearance of rodents; population density has a direct impact on the distribution of a number of epizootics; quantitative accounting of game animals is the basis of hunting management planning.

The main objective of quantitative accounting is to obtain data on the number of individuals in a known area, or at least on the relative abundance of species. In accordance with this, two types of quantitative accounting are usually distinguished - absolute and relative. However, it is impossible to draw a sharp line between them, since only in relatively rare cases is it possible to get a really complete picture of the abundance of any species in a given area, but usually the so-called absolute counts give only more or less accurate results. This is not surprising, given the enormous difficulties involved in counting terrestrial vertebrates, which are distinguished by great mobility, caution and secrecy. Even a relative quantitative account of mammals, birds, and reptiles is incomparably more complicated than an account of invertebrates, and even more so of plant objects. This implies the main requirement for any method of quantitative accounting of vertebrates - it must be based primarily on the characteristics of the ecology of the animals taken into account in a given specific situation.

Therefore, quantitative accounting should be preceded by a preliminary acquaintance with the main features of animal ecology and with the biotopes of the study area. The following points are of the greatest importance, as I. V. Zharkov (1939) showed:

1) The nature of distribution by habitat;

2) The tendency to form more or less permanent groupings: herds, flocks, broods, etc.;

3) The presence of more or less clearly defined hunting areas, overlapping one another or isolated;

4) Tendency to form more or less regular seasonal clusters;

5) Daily and seasonal changes in activity;

6) Daily and seasonal migrations and wanderings.

Therefore, the methodology must be very flexible and different for different life forms of animals in different landscape and geographical conditions and in different seasons of the year. Attempts to excessively unify the methodology are doomed to failure in advance. However, for any particular group of animals, it is necessary to strive for standardization of accounting methods in order to obtain completely comparable results. Along with the specified requirements, the method of quantitative accounting should provide sufficiently accurate (in relation to the objectives of the study) results and, moreover, be idle.

Thus, in summary, we can say that the method of quantitative accounting should be based on the ecology of the considered species, landscape and geographical conditions, season, specific research tasks or economic activities and give, with minimal effort and cost, the most reliable results. Failure to comply with any of the above conditions will adversely affect the work.

There are two types of quantitative accounting of terrestrial vertebrates: linear and areal. In the first case, individuals are counted along a more or less long line, on both sides of it, and the duration of counting is determined either by time (an hour, two, etc.) or by a known distance. As for the width of the registration band, some authors do not precisely fix it, but determine it exclusively by the distance at which it is possible to reliably recognize animals by ear, with the naked eye and with binoculars, so that somewhere in the steppe this band is for some species (for example, meadow chasings or skates) will be equal to a few meters or tens of meters, and for others (large raptors) - hundreds of meters, which is acceptable only when studying and accounting for one species. But more often, the calculation is made at a certain distance from the main line, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the nature of the area and species composition. In this last case, we, in fact, get the same areal accounting with the only difference that the accounting area has the form of a strongly elongated quadrangle. Linear accounting, in which the terrain intersects at a more or less significant distance, is often called an ecological section, or, in the terminology of American ecologists, a transect.

When taking into account the areas, a square or other shape and size area is previously allocated on the ground, determined by the species characteristics of animals.

Both transects and plots should be laid out in sufficiently typical and uniform terrain to facilitate the subsequent recalculation of the obtained data for the entire area of ​​the biotope under study. Summarizing the results of counting on heterogeneous sites (including several biotopes simultaneously, which is quite possible in a mosaic landscape) will require some special techniques, which we will discuss below in the section devoted to rodents.

When establishing registration sites, one also has to take into account the fact that even in relatively monotonous biotopes, animals are distributed unevenly. The nature of the dispersion is the more complex, the more complex and heterogeneous the living conditions.

Depending on the ecology of animals, census can be carried out by direct observation (by ear, with the naked eye or with the help of binoculars), by indirect signs (traces, burrows, excrement, pellets, etc.) or, finally, by trapping.

Accounting can cover both permanent groups of animals and their seasonal accumulations, as well as be carried out during seasonal movements.

Data obtained from animal counts, for ease of comparison, are usually recalculated per kilometer (when counting linearly), per hectare or square kilometer (when counting on trial plots). For game animals, it is advisable to take larger areas - 1000 hectares, i.e. 10 square meters. km. The numbers related to this area are called indicators. In the event that accounting data or figures characterizing the number of animals and birds caught are related to the total area of ​​the entire study area or hunting area, then general area indicators are obtained (for brevity, they are denoted by the corresponding letter symbol; see below). When determining the relative number of animals for individual biotopes or habitats (lands) characteristic of them, indicators are obtained for lands (denoted by the same letters, but with an additional sign).

The indicator obtained by dividing the number of animals by a particular area is called the reserve indicator (z and z1). When using the data on the relative accounting of animals by footprints, they are recalculated either per 1000 ha or per 10 km of the way and an accounting indicator is obtained (y and y1). Production indicators are denoted by d and d1 output indicators (i.e. harvesting) - v and v1.

When organizing quantitative accounting and processing the results obtained, one has to operate with quantitative indicators that need not only a biological, but also a mathematical explanation. In connection with the latter, the following considerations of Prof. P. V. Terentyeva (in litt.): “Unfortunately, the mathematical theory of quantitative accounting has not only not yet been developed, but most researchers do not even realize what exactly the figures they have received are. From a statistical point of view, any quantitative account (with the exception of rare cases of a continuous, absolute account of all individuals throughout the territory) is a “selective study”: from the “general population” (the entire area, biotope or population), one or more “samples” of that or other size. You can mathematically prove the following statements:

1. The more samples are taken from the total population, the more reliable the result.

2. The larger the area or size of each sample, the more revealing the data obtained.

3. The distribution of sampling sites within a homogeneous biotope should not be biased, otherwise the data obtained will lose their indicativeness (“representativeness”). In many cases, a staggered order can be recommended.

4. The more variable the phenomenon and, accordingly, the indicators obtained, the greater should be the repetition of observations and the number of samples.

5. Mass phenomena and rough dependencies are captured already with a small number of samples and repetitions, and vice versa.

6. The final accuracy of a statistical result depends more on the number of replicates than on the sensitivity of an individual observation. Of course, it is necessary, however, to strictly observe the standard methods.

7. The reliability of transferring the results of sample studies to the general population (“extrapolation”) is the higher, the larger the area or part of the total population was covered by the samples and the greater the repetition.

The exact expression of these dependencies can be derived from the formulas of any course of mathematical statistics.

Relative censuses are those in which it is impossible to obtain absolute indicators: the density of the population of animals and their number in a particular territory.

This category may include route registration of animals in the footprints in the snow. Previously, it was used only as a method of relative counting, then it began to be used in combination with track tracking as part of winter route counts.

The method is based on the assumption that if the daily activity of animals is not taken into account, then the more traces are found on the route, the more animals should be. Accounting indicator - the number of traces of a certain type of animal encountered, crossed by the route per unit length of the route (most often the calculation is done for 10 km of the route).

Several questions may immediately arise here. The first of them: traces of how old should be counted on the route? It is customary to count the daily tracks left by the animals during the last day preceding the count. Why exactly daily traces, and not two-day or three-day ones? One day is a common unit of time in track records. It would be possible for the accountants to agree among themselves and accept a conventional unit of two or more days, however, the accountants settled on one day as the most convenient unit, and this condition must be met by all accountants: only then will the accounting materials be comparable, relative.

How to fulfill this condition? If, after the end of the weak powder, a whole day has passed and the fresh tracks are well distinguished from the old ones, sprinkled with fallen snow, the count can be carried out accurately without confusing fresh tracks with old ones. Experienced trackers can in many cases distinguish fresh daily tracks from older ones even without powder falling out. It is possible, in principle, to count all the traces left for 2 or 3 days after the fall of the powder, then divide the entire number of traces by the number of days to which they refer.

However, the best way to count only daily footprints is to retraverse the route. On the first day, they pass the route and wipe out all the traces of animals they meet, that is, they notice which traces will be old tomorrow. The next day, the same route is repeated and only fresh daily tracks of animals are counted.

This method has many advantages over one-time accounting and is recommended by the instructions for winter route accounting. The requirement to repeat the route must be met by all participants in the work.

The second important question in the accounting of animals in the tracks: what should be counted? Is it every intersection of traces, regardless of whether neighboring traces belong to one or different individuals, or the number of animals (individuals that left traces crossed by the route in the past day)? It must be remembered that these are two completely different quantities: the number of traces and the number of individuals.

An accountant submitting his field materials for processing is obliged to indicate what value he used when counting: the number of all crossings of tracks or the number of individuals whose tracks were crossed by the route. This must be done even if the accounting instruction recommends using only one of these two values.

In the route registration of animals on tracks in the snow, there can be no specific recommendation on the length of the route. It may depend on many factors: the length of daylight, the condition of the snow cover, the physical fitness of the accountant, the terrain and other conditions of movement, including the means of transportation used (walking, skiing, snowmobiles, etc.), on the frequency of occurrence traces, which affects the time of field recordings and the speed of movement. Under average conditions, a path of 10-12 km is considered a normal route. In a number of cases, it is possible to lay a day route on skis, and 30 km, and sometimes even 5 km, turn out to be an unreasonably long accounting route.

Speaking about the use of vehicles in winter route counts, it can be noted that skis, motor sledges (snowmobiles, snowmobiles), dog and reindeer teams are suitable here, on which you can walk or drive through virgin snow or an inconspicuous path. In dense snow, tracked all-terrain vehicles can be used for accounting purposes. The use of cars is very limited. In some cases, you can use a horse team. Crossings of traces of some ungulates under certain conditions can be taken from an airplane or helicopter; for counting rare species, this is a promising method of counting, since it allows laying very long routes, and rare intersections of traces prevent the census takers from taking notes and other incidental observations.

In those cases when the recorder himself drives a vehicle or moves on skis and is forced to stop to record the traces he encounters, it is advisable to use portable tape recorders with microphones or laryngophones and remote control for starting and stopping recording. All observations are recorded on the film: passable landmarks, the time of their passage, or the speedometer of the snowmobile, traces encountered, the type of animals, to whom they belong, if necessary, the nature of the land where the traces are encountered. According to such entries, immediately after passing the route, it is easy to draw up an outline of the route, which, with a pencil entry, is usually drawn up directly on the route.

The outline (plan, diagram) of the route is the best document of the accountant, the best form of presentation of the primary accounting material. The outline is drawn up directly on the route or according to the records immediately after the completion of the route accounting. It is applied: the route line, the necessary landmarks (numbers of forest quarters, intersections of roads, power lines, clearings, streams, etc.). It is desirable to mark the nature of the land through which the route ran. The main content of the outline is the crossing of animal tracks by the route. Each type of animal is indicated either by a specific icon or an abbreviated letter symbol.

The outline indicates the direction of movement of the beast; if a group of animals passed in one direction, the number of animals in the group is indicated.

If the route accounting outline is drawn up on a large-scale cartographic basis or on a copy from it, then the length of the route can be accurately determined from the outline. This is the best way to determine the length of a route. This value can also be determined from the quarter network, if the network is uniform and the clearings are separated from each other at a known distance.

When hiking on the plains, pedometers can be used to count steps, then by multiplying this value by the average step length of the counter, you can get the length of the route traveled. The accountant must be able to use the pedometer, know the place of its best location, repeatedly test and check it in the field, in the same places where the account is taken, compare the pedometer readings with the true length of the known segment of the path (part of the clearing, the distance between kilometer posts, etc.). P.). It should be remembered that changes in the soil, vegetation and soil litter, surface roughness, its softness and hardness can greatly change the readings of the pedometer, so the meter must test the device in various conditions before recording, to be sure that the pedometer will not let him down.

You cannot use a regular pedometer on ski routes. It will not count different glide lengths for the smallest changes in surface slope and snow conditions, nor will it show how many times a skier has trodden in one place, overcoming a small obstacle: a fallen tree, a stone, or a tangled bush. The accountant cannot always determine how much the length of his step changes during climbs of various steepness.

On ski routes, it is advisable to use a ski distance meter, consisting of a wheel with spikes, which is attached to the end of one of the skis. Inside the wheel is a counter (bicycle or similar). The wheel, which rotates when the skis move, rotates the counter mechanism, which indicates a certain distance in numbers. By a special calculation of the gears, it is possible to achieve that the counter numbers indicate the distance in meters. In another case, it is necessary to compare the meter readings with the known distance traveled and, based on the comparison, calculate the price of one meter reading in meters.

Using vehicles with a speedometer installed on them simply solves the problem of determining the length of the route. It is taken from the speedometer readings.

On hiking and skiing routes, you can finally use a rope of a certain length or thread as a measuring tape. In the latter case, the length of the route can be easily calculated from the number of unwound coils with a known thread length. When using a rope, measurements must be carried out together: one accountant pulls the rope forward, the other monitors the passage of the end of the rope past the mark. At this moment, he gives a signal to the first recorder and he makes another mark at the beginning of the rope and again stretches it forward.

The length of the route can be determined by eye.

Everything related to determining the length of the route applies to any method of route accounting, be it relative or absolute. To the same extent, all route records are related to recommendations on laying record routes.

Accounting and averaging of data by types of land will not be necessary if land types and associated differences in animal population densities are covered by an accounting sample in proportion to the ratio of their areas in nature. This greatly simplifies the processing of accounts. But for this, it is necessary to lay accounting routes in the field, observing the following recommendations: try to lay routes as evenly as possible; strive for straight lines; do not deviate from pre-planned routes; do not lay routes along tort roads, rivers, streams, forest edges, borders of different types of forests, along cliff edges, edges of crests, ravines, gullies, i.e. along any linear elements of the terrain. All of them must intersect with routes perpendicular or at an angle. If it is impossible to avoid laying routes along linear elements somewhere, then you need to strive to keep such route segments as short as possible.

One of the best options can be considered the use of a forest block network for laying routes along it. However, it must be borne in mind that clearings affect the placement of animals, the daily movement of animals, and therefore the occurrence of tracks near the clearings. In this regard, one should either lay routes not along the clearings themselves, but near them, or use sight lines for routes - uncut boundaries of quarters and their parts.

Hunting animals on the routes are taken into account mainly in the footsteps. Counting the animals themselves is rarely practiced. Sometimes they take into account in open landscapes, for example, a fox "to the uzerka" from walking or car routes, but this method is rather an exception. Accounting for hunting birds, on the contrary, is based on meetings with the animals themselves, and not with their traces. Visual detection of game birds is also the basis of relative bird counting methods.

It is easy to assume that the more birds are found in the lands, the higher their number should be. This is the basis for methods of relative accounting, for example, upland game, of which the most commonly used counting of birds by sightings on the routes. This accounting method in the summer-autumn period was used by V. P. Teplov (1952), mentioned by O. I. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky (1959, 1963), tested in comparison with other methods by Yu. N. Kiselev (1973a, 19736), etc. .

There is a special table in the cards of the winter route recording of animals along the tracks, developed by the biological survey group of the Oksky State Reserve, in which the accountant, along with the registration of traces of animals, puts down the number of capercaillie, black grouse, hazel grouse, gray and white partridges, encountered on the day of filling the tracks and on the day of recording . When processing cards, you can get the average number of birds of each species encountered per 10 km of the route.

In addition to the number of birds encountered per 10 km of the route, other indicators can be used: the number of sightings per unit of walking time or the number of sightings per day of an excursion, hunting. However, to compare the results of counting, it is better to reduce them to the most commonly used indicator: the number of individuals encountered per 10 km of the route, which is easier to convert into absolute indicators when combining methods.

Among the relative accounting methods, a special place is occupied by a group of methods based on counting animals from one observation point. The most common example of such methods would be account of waterfowl dawns(on flights). The counter, being in one place during the entire period of morning or evening activity of waterfowl, counts the migrating ducks he sees. Accounting indicators in this case can be different: the number of visible ducks (by species or by groups) at dawn; the number of ducks flying from the observer at a distance of a shot, up to 50-60 m; the number of ducks, seen and heard, flying by with a cry outside the line of sight or in the dark, etc.

Similar method draft woodcock accounting. The counter also stays in one place for the entire period of the evening or morning woodcock draft and counts the birds: heard, seen, flying by the shot.

Close to these two methods registration of large animals in places of their concentration: at watering places, salt licks, feeding grounds, etc. As a rule, animals visit such places at night. The counter is located near a watering hole or salt lick, taking into account the direction of the wind, as well as the opportunity to see the animal in thick twilight against the background of a still bright sky. In such counts, a night vision device can be of great help, which makes it possible to determine the type of animals, and in a number of cases to determine the sex and age of the animals.

All three of these accounting methods have one thing in common: in all cases, it is impossible to establish the area of ​​land from which the seen, heard birds or animals are collected. This means that these methods are unsuitable for absolute accounting, they cannot be used in combined accounting and, therefore, these methods are purely relative. To be more precise, in the practice of hunting, these are rather not methods of accounting, but methods of inventorying places of concentration, places of hunting for the corresponding birds and animals.

Relative indicators are used here to identify the comparative value of a particular hunting place on flights, on draft, on a particular salt lick, watering place, etc.

In order for the data of such an inventory to be comparable, it is necessary to collect material according to one method. The main point of these methods is that the accountant is obliged to cover the entire period of animal activity with observation. This means that for the flight of ducks, for the draft of the woodcock or for the salt lick, he must arrive in advance: at evening dawn - with sunset, at morning - an hour or half an hour before dawn.

Another group of methods of counting by voices is close to counting at dawn: deer and elk on a roar, swamp and field game from one point. These methods are more often used as methods of absolute accounting and differ from other methods in that here it is possible to determine the area on which male deer or birds cast their vote, i.e., the possibility of obtaining an indicator of population density.

Of the methods of relative accounting, which are more often used in combination with other methods, we can mention the counts of squirrels and hares. according to the time spent by one animal by a dog: husky or hound, respectively.

Counting animals according to their incidence in fishing gear serve as purely relative methods. So, for medical, zoological, zoogeographic purposes, it is widely used accounting of small animals by the trap-day method. This method is also suitable for accounting for the water rat, chipmunk, squirrel, ground squirrel, hamster, and small mustelid animals. Traps (trappers, tree traps or other fishing gear) are placed in lines at equal distances from each other. To account for small animals, crushers are placed every 5 or 10 m with a standard bait - a crust of bread soaked in sunflower oil. Traps can also be set with or without appropriate bait. The accounting indicator is the number of animals caught per 100 trap-days. Fishing gear is checked daily, but it is impossible to keep them in one place for a long time: there is a gradual catch of animals and a decrease in hitting.

Small animals are also caught by trapping grooves, which are long and narrow grooves with a leveled bottom. At the ends of the grooves, or at an equal distance, for example, after 20 or 50 m, trapping cylinders made of sheet iron burst into the ground. The method of trapping grooves can be used for the relative accounting of the water rat and other small commercial rodents. Accounting indicators - hit rate (number of animals) per 1 or 10 cylinder-days.

All methods of relative accounting of the number of animals by prey are based on a directly proportional relationship between the volume of prey and the level of the number of animals: the more animals, the more their prey should be, other things being equal. The trap-day method can be considered a pilot sample, a sample, a selective mining for accounting purposes. At the same time, the abundance of animals can also be judged from the entire prey of this species. If all the prey goes to the blanks, the state of the population of the species can be indirectly judged from the data of the blanks. The analysis can cover the territory from one administrative region to the country as a whole.

Harvesting of waterfowl and upland game is almost not practiced now, so the method under consideration has become completely unsuitable for indirect accounting of these groups of game according to harvesting data. Even when analyzing the extraction of licensed species, for example, ungulates, it is necessary to take some correction for the illegal shooting of part of the livestock. Despite the rough approximation of the official harvest figures, these materials are still valuable, for example, for the most approximate analysis of field records.

Another close method of indirect counting is mining survey. For those species that are not recorded in official preparations, it is possible to conduct a survey of hunters about their prey. As a rule, a selective questionnaire survey is conducted: some part of the hunters is interviewed. Based on the collected questionnaires, the average number of hunted individuals per hunter is determined, then multiplied by the number of all hunters living in a given territory (regions, territories, republics). This results in an approximate volume of production of a number of species in this area.

This method has a number of objective difficulties. Here there is a problem of the reliability of the information of correspondents and the problem of the representativeness of the sample. The first of them is how true the information contained in the questionnaires. Some hunters deliberately underestimate the amount of their prey, mainly in cases where it exceeds the established norms or average volumes. Other hunters, on the contrary, overestimate their prey, apparently for prestige reasons. This difficulty can be overcome by compiling tactful questionnaires (without the name of the hunter, his address, etc., with polite requests for true figures), by explaining to the correspondents the goals of the questionnaire when distributing the forms.

The second problem concerning the representativeness of the sample is that the questionnaire survey should proportionally cover the most diverse categories of hunters in terms of their prey. Since there is no ranking of hunters by prey, it is necessary to cover different categories of hunters distinguished by other criteria: age, place of residence, hunting experience, profession and place of work (the availability and amount of free time depend on this), etc. If it is possible to choose hunters-correspondents on various grounds, then you can send out personal questionnaires, which can exacerbate the first problem. A more correct way is a random sample of the correspondent: every fifth, or tenth, or every twentieth hunter in a row is interviewed. In this case, all categories of hunters will be covered proportionally and the sample will be representative. For random sampling, numbers of hunting tickets can be used. For example, when interviewing every tenth hunter, it is necessary to fill out a form for everyone whose ticket number ends, say, in the number 1 or 2, etc. It is possible to organize the distribution of questionnaire forms when re-registering hunting tickets.

The questionnaire method is also used for direct relative accounting of animals. The frequency of encounters of animals or their traces gives a person the impression of the abundance of a particular species: he can say whether there are many or few animals in a given place, whether there are more or less of them compared to other years. This is based on the method of relative questionnaire-questionnaire accounting of the number of animals.

Accounting indicator - numbers of numbers (many, medium, few, none) or points of the trend of changes in numbers (more, the same, less). For calculations, averaging data, scores are expressed in numbers.

So, the "harvest service" VNIIOZ them. B. M. Zhitkova uses indicators: more and more - 5; medium and the same - 3; less and less - 1.

When using this method, it should be borne in mind that the correspondent forms his opinion about the abundance of game in a certain place where he hunts or works in forestry. This opinion does not reflect a comparison with other places: a rating of "little" can also mean "a lot" compared to the number in other territories. For this reason, it is necessary to carefully conduct a territorial comparative analysis based on questionnaire data in large areas. This method is more suitable for comparison over time, and in this aspect it is more often used.

Thus, the questionnaires used by the “harvest service” of VNIIOZ contain only comparative time estimates: less, the same, more game this year compared to the previous one.

To use the survey material for territorial comparisons, it is necessary to objectify it. N. N. Danilov (1963) used for this scale the abundance of upland game, consisting of descriptions and quantitative estimates of the occurrence of birds, the number of birds on leks and in flocks. For example, the indicator “few” means that only solitary males are found on leks in spring; up to 5 males lek at 50 km 2 or there are 5 pairs; in summer, broods are not found every day, up to 5 broods per 50 km 2; in autumn and winter, no more than 5 birds can be seen per day, etc.

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4.2.1. Relative accounting methods

Relative counts are called those as a result of which it is impossible to obtain absolute indicators (density, number). This category may include route registration of animals in the footprints in the snow, an indicator of which is the number of traces of a certain species of animals encountered, crossed by the route per unit length of the route (usually 10 km). Only traces of a day's prescription are taken into account. It is possible, in principle, to count all traces for 2-3 days after the powder has fallen, and then divide their total number by the corresponding number of days. The best way to count only daily tracks is to re-route the route after erasing all the old tracks the day before. The length of the route depends on the size and other features of the surveyed area, the weather and a number of other factors. The passage of the route can be on foot, on skis, snowmobile, dog, reindeer, horse teams, etc. The situation during the passage of the route is recorded with the help of records, voice recorders and other possible means. All observations are recorded: passing landmarks, the time of their passage, the indicator of the speedometer or pedometer, the traces encountered, the type of animals, the observed features of animal behavior, etc. The outline (plan, scheme) of the route with a pencil record is drawn up directly on the route, and when fixing the results of observation in other ways - after the completion of the route accounting (Fig. 2).

Figure 2. An approximate form of the outline of the route accounting of animals in the tracks (according to Kuzyakin, 1979)

It is applied: the route line, the necessary landmarks (numbers of forest quarters, intersections of roads, power lines, clearings, streams, etc.). It is desirable to mark the nature of the land through which the route ran. The main content of the outline is the crossing of animal tracks by the route; the type of beast is usually denoted by an abbreviated letter symbol. The outline also indicates the direction of movement of the animal, and if a group of animals passed in one direction, their number in the group is indicated.

Hunting animals on the route are taken into account mainly by tracks. Accounting for hunting birds, on the contrary, is based on the meeting of themselves.

Accounting and averaging of data by types of land will not be necessary if land types and associated differences in animal population densities are covered by an accounting sample in proportion to the ratio of their areas in nature. This greatly simplifies the processing of accounts. Therefore, when laying accounting routes, the following recommendations should be observed:

Try to lay routes as evenly as possible;

Strive for straight lines;

Do not deviate from predetermined directions;

Do not lay routes along tort roads, rivers, streams, forest edges, borders of different types of forest, along cliff edges, edges of crests, ravines, gullies, i.e. along any linear terrain elements. All of them must intersect with routes perpendicular or at an angle.

One of the best options can be considered the use of a forest block network for laying routes along it. However, it must be borne in mind that the clearings affect the placement of animals, their daily course, and therefore the occurrence of tracks near the clearings. In this regard, it is necessary either to lay routes not along the clearings themselves, but near them, or use sight lines for routes - not cut through the boundaries of quarters and their parts.

Among the relative methods of accounting, a special place is occupied by a group of methods based on counting animals. from one point of view. The most common example of such methods would be accounting of waterfowl at dawn(on bindings). The accountant, being in a certain place with a good overview, counts the flying ducks he sees. In this case, the accounting indicators may be different: the number of ducks relocated (by species or groups) at dawn; the number of flying ducks at a shot distance (up to 50-60 m); the number of all visible and audible at dusk, etc.

Similar accounting method woodcock on traction, which boils down to counting birds: audible (cow, croak), visible, flying at a shot.

It is close to these two methods in terms of execution technique. accounting for large animals in places of their concentration (at watering places, salt licks, feeding grounds, etc.). Animals usually visit such places at night, so the optical equipment of the counter is desirable.

All three of the above methods are united by the fact that in all cases it is impossible to establish the area of ​​land from which the seen, heard birds or animals gather. Consequently, these methods are unsuitable for absolute accounting, they cannot be used in combined accounting, which means that they are purely relative. Such relative indicators can be used to identify the comparative value of a particular hunting place on flights, on draft, on a certain salt lick, watering place, etc.

Another group of methods of accounting is close to the counts at dawn: by the voices of deer and elks on the roar, or marsh and field game from one point. Here it is already possible to determine the area on which males of animals or birds cast their vote, which means to obtain an indicator of population density.

Of the methods of relative accounting, which are more often used in combination with other methods, one can name censuses of squirrels and hares according to the time spent by one animal with a dog (husky or hound, respectively). Purely relative methods are also counts of animals according to their incidence in fishing gear (trap-days). In this case, traps, crushers or other fishing gear are placed in lines at equal distances from each other. The accounting indicator is the number of animals caught per 100 trap-days. If all the prey of game animals goes to receiving points, then the state of the population of the species can be indirectly judged from the data of harvesting. A prey questionnaire can also serve as a method of indirect game counting.

Quantitative accounting, or accounting for the number of animals, is one of the methodological methods for studying their population ecology. The study of ecosystems and populations of individual species in biogeocenosis is based on the results of quantitative accounting.

Quantitative accounting allows us to characterize the following

1) the quantitative ratio of animal species inhabiting individual biotopes, lands or the entire study area as a whole;

2) the structure of zoocenoses, highlighting groups of dominant, common and rare forms from them;

3) the relative abundance (number) of individuals of each species in different areas and biotopes of the study area;

4) change in the number of animals over time, seasonal or long-term;

5) the number of individuals living on a unit area at a time

Methods of counting the number are divided into two large groups: relative and absolute.

Relative accounting methods give an idea of ​​the relative abundance (number) of animals.

Absolute accounting makes it possible to determine the number of animals per unit area.

Relative accounting methods, in turn, are divided into two groups: the first group of relative indirect accounting methods and the second group of relative direct accounting methods.

group of methods of relative indirect accounting

Estimation of the number of animals by biological indicators.

Analysis of the pellets of birds of prey.

group of methods regarding direct accounting

Trap-line accounting method.

Accounting method by trapping grooves and (or) fences.

Absolute census

1. Accounting for the number of animals by marking animals and identifying

their individual areas.

2. Full catch of animals on isolated sites.

Methods for studying the spatial distribution of vertebrates

The spatial structure of populations of organisms depends: on the ecological characteristics of the species and on the structure of the habitat.

Theoretically, the distribution of organisms in space can be random, uniform and non-random, or group. The random distribution of organisms is observed if the habitat is homogeneous over a large area, and individuals do not tend to unite in groups. Uniform distribution is also characteristic of organisms inhabiting a homogeneous environment, but these are, as a rule, strictly territorial species with developed competitive abilities. group (non-random) distribution is characteristic of species adapted to colonize the environment in groups of various sizes (families, herds, colonies, etc.) or living in a highly mosaic environment.

Any type of spatial structure of a species is adaptive in nature and is its important characteristic.

Understanding the basic patterns that form the spatial distribution of the inhabitants of a given environment makes it possible to predict changes in the composition, abundance, and distribution of animal populations.

According to the nature of the use of space, sedentary animals with a pronounced habitat, and nomadic animals are distinguished.

The study of the spatial distribution of vertebrates is based on the mapping of animal habitats.

Ecological and zoogeographic research requires the study of large areas.

Mapping the placement of terrestrial vertebrates carried out with the help of route or site accounting.

Habitat mapping. In secretive animals (amphibians, reptiles, mammals), the habitat area is determined by the method of repeated captures of marked animals in a certain area.

Animal tagging . There are various ways of marking animals: dyeing with dyes, cutting out wool or horn shields with it, various rings, radio transmitters, isotopes, etc. The simplest and most reliable method is the method of amputation of fingers in various combinations in small animals.

Another method can be used for marking reptiles. On the head, with tweezers, the shields are carefully pulled out in a predetermined combination.

Small mammals are caught in live traps or trapping cones, placed on the site in a checkerboard pattern, at a distance of 20 m from each other.

In order to reduce the habituation of animals to traps, it is necessary to practice their frequent rearrangement.

In caught animals, the species, sex, age group, and participation in reproduction are determined.

The study of bird habitats is based on direct observation of them. The location of the found nest, perches, flight routes, places of rest and food, current territories, etc. are put on a pre-prepared map.