Hunting dogs are exposed to the risk of injury in driven hunts, an often-used method for managing growing wild boar numbers. This study investigated the impact of increased hunting pressure-both across the hunting season and within individual hunting events-on the risk of wild boar attacks on hunting dogs, i.e., the length of the hunting season (2.68 ± 0.76 months, mean ± standard deviation), the number of driven hunts per season (3.99 ± 0.43), the intervals between hunts (17.85 ± 4.83 days), the number of wild boars harvested per season (14.46 ± 13.10), and the number of participants (23.8 ± 10.69) and dogs (4.56 ± 2.66) involved per hunt. The data were collected via a retrospective questionnaire survey. The information-theoretic approach (IT-AIC) and GLMM were employed to estimate the factors' effects on the number of wild boar attacks on dogs reported in 40 hunting grounds in five consecutive hunting seasons (2.60 ± 5.07 attacks per hunting season in a hunting ground). The number of attacks only increased with the length of the hunting season. The best model did not include other factors, such as shorter intervals between hunts, a higher number of driven hunts, wild boars harvested, or participants. The respondents reported 150 injuries by wild boars during 797 driven hunts. Most injuries were mild (73.8%), with fewer severe (18.8%) and fatal (7.4%) cases. Further investigation into wild boar and hunting dog interactions is necessary for constructing strategies to improve hunting practices and reduce dog injury risks.

Department of Ethology Institute of Animal Science 104 00 Praha Czech Republic

Department of Game Management and Wildlife Biology Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences Czech University of Life Sciences Prague 165 21 Praha Czech Republic

Department of Game Management Forestry and Game Management Research Institute 252 02 Jíloviště Czech Republic

Department of Silviculture Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences Czech University of Life Sciences Prague 165 21 Praha Czech Republic

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