The Gauntlet Effect
In some circumstances a duck flies along a row of hunters, each firing at it in turn. In such a situation, our model will only estimate the number of woundings per bagged bird, not the number of birds actually wounded. This is because the same bird may be wounded multiple times before eventually being bagged. Similarly, when large groups of hunters surround a wetland, they may keep the ducks circling the swamp and wound a single duck more than once during a morning or evening's shooting.
I don't regard the difference between "woundings" and "number of wounded" as terribly significant. Its a little like discussing whether 100 women have been raped or only 50 women but twice each.
We have no idea how to quantify the effects of these situations, but we do know that X-Ray studies show that plenty of wounded birds are left in the wetlands -- gauntlet or no gauntlet.
Hunters have never provided any data on this effect, merely claiming that it massively effects wounding rates. With adequate data one could correct my wounding estimates to allow for such phenomena.
Without adequate data we can only trade annecdotes. I have a few here.
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I've seen a duck fly past 5 shooters who each fired 5 shots
at it. Nobody bagged the duck.
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I stood for 3 hours in a densely weeded
area of Bool Lagoon on one shoot and watched numerous birds fall from
the sky --- I never saw one retrieved. The shooters couldn't find
them, the dogs couldn't find them and I couldn't find them. Why anybody
was shooting there was beyond me - but they were.
- Typically, hunters don't watch a duck for very long after they shoot at it. I remember a hunter in 1993 in Victoria who bagged 5 birds with 5 attempts, the 6th he crippled, but the bird flew quite some distance before falling. By which time the hunter was taking aim at another duck. Some time later I spoke to the hunter, we discussed cripples and he adamantly denighed he had crippled any birds that morning. Half an hour later he cripple another, this one almost landed on top of me - I was about 400 meters from the hunter at this stage. When I turned to look at him, he was facing the opposite direction and probably quite unaware of this second cripple.





