Roughly translated by TWIN Observer
Researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences have examined the methods that really protects hunting dogs against being attacked by wolves. It’s about reporting trees and armor, among other things.
Every year 30-40 dogs are injured or killed in Sweden by wolves. The risk is relatively small, on average, for a dog hunting thousands of days before it is attacked, but in the wolf territories it still poses the same risk for a hunting dog to become attacked by a wolf as being getting hit in traffic.
So far there has been no research on the protection methods that are effective. Is it, for example effective to pee on the dog so that it smells like humans as some hunters do? There are no answers yet from researchers at Viltskadecenter of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
The researchers have called up 55 hunters with their dogs wolf having been attacked in the last five years. They are then matched with other hunters with the same conditions, but who have not had their dogs injured. The new study will be published in December.
1. Most effective protection afforded is observing tracks, (15 percent of the hunters with wolf dogs killed by wolves against 70 percent of hunters with non-injured dogs, p-value 0.001), thus driving around a hunting area where there are wolf tracks in the snow and check if wolves entered into the woods and if so, do not let the dogs go there.
2. Report trees ware almost as good , (38 percent against 63 percent, p-value 0.019) where neighbors and hunters texting and calling each other or reports on the web all the wolf tracks seen.
3. A protective vest or releasing multiple dogs at the same time was third best (0 percent vs. 8 percent and 11% vs 28%, p-value 0.037 for both). Kevlar vest with sharp spikes on their backs cost a few thousand crowns to buy and make the dog a little clumsier.
“It actually seems like these spike vests are effective, so I think they deserve to be tested on a larger scale,” says Jens Frank at the Viltskadecenter of the SLU which is behind the new study.
More on how to protect themselves from wolves, including in Germany, where no hunting dogs have been attacked in the country of 150-200 wolves, will be on the Klot today 13:35 on station P1.
Johan Bergendorff