The wild boar (Sus scrofa) is one of the most successful wild mammals and has one of the largest distribution areas. In Slovenia, the wild boar population has also increased and expanded over several decades. In recent years, however, the risk of the emergence and spread of African swine fever has added to the challenges of population management, as damage to farmland has also increased. Culling, or the intensity of culling, is, therefore, an increasingly important measure in the management of the wild boar population. The aim of this work was to examine the characteristics of the structure and dynamics of wild boar culling in Slovenia and to verify whether there are differences in the culling/demographic structure - i.e. the selectivity of hunting - of wild boar or the pecificity of individual forms of hunting for wild boar, and to examine their significance. Between 2016 and 2023, the index of increase in wild boar culling in Slovenia was 180. Despite the differences between the LUOs, the majority hunting method for wild boar culling was individual hunting on stands in the evening- night time, which, thanks to financial incentives and facilitated night hunting with artificial light sources, increased from 68 percent to 79 percent of the total hunting bag in the period 2020-2023. Individual hunting under such conditions allows a higher degree of selectivity in the hunting of individual structural classes compared to group hunting, where the speed and impulsiveness of hunting are likely to make hunting less selective or more random. This is also indicated by the differences in the structure of culling between the two forms of hunting, with individual hunting favouring the culling of younger categories (piglets) over older categories and, particularly in the case of hunting yearlings, the culling of males and vice versa, with less intervention in the sow class.
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