Small game and roe deer hunting

Small game

The species included in the statistics on small game hunting.

The hunting year

One hunting year lasts as from 1 April as to 31 March the following year.

Hunting licence fee

Persons intending to hunt in Norway must pay a hunting license fee to the Wildlife found. The fee covers the full hunting year. Payment of the fee is a prerequisite for hunting, but does not confer the right to hunt in any specific area.

The register of hunters

The Register of Hunters registers those who are licensed to hunt game in Norway. The register also provides an overview of the payment of the hunting licence fee, an annual fee for those who wish to engage in hunting. For more information, see the homepage of The Norwegian Register of Hunters .

Classification of small game.

Name: Small game and roe deer hunting
Topic: Agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing

Division for Housing, Property, Spatial and Agricultural Statistics

Municipality.

Annually, the statistics are published five months after the hunting year has ended.

Collected and revised data are stored securely by Statistics Norway in compliance with applicable legislation on data processing.

Statistics Norway can grant access to the source data (de-identified or anonymised microdata) on which the statistics are based, for researchers and public authorities for the purposes of preparing statistical results and analyses. Access can be granted upon application and subject to conditions. Refer to the details about this at Access to data from Statistics Norway.

The purpose of the statistics is to obtain an overview of a number of small game species and roe deer felled during ordinary hunting. The statistics on small game hunting date back to the hunting year 1971/1972. For the period 1971/1972 - 1992/1993 the statistics refer to a random sample among persons who have paid game conservation tax, later hunting license fee, for the hunting year. As from the hunting year 1993/1994 all hunters who paid the hunting tax were requested to report yield of small game hunting. Due to low return of reports, comprehensive calculations have been necessary to give total estimates. An amendment of section 50 in The Wildlife Act from the 30th of June 2000 gave the Directorate for Nature Management legal authority to fine hunters not reporting. From 2000/2001 the hunter's duty to report has thus become more real and from the hunting year 2001/2002 the response rate has been higher than 90 per cent.

From 1927 to 1984 the roe deer statistics were initially based on reports from the police, and later on from the municipal wildlife boards. For the period 1984/1985 - 2022/2023 the roe deer statistics are based on data obtained in the survey for small game hunting. The estimated figures will always have an element of uncertainty. Starting from the hunting year 2023/2024, roe deer harvest data is being collected by the Naturdata. This has resulted in some underreporting in certain municipalities, meaning the figures are not directly comparable with previous years.

The statistics are commissioned by The Norwegian Environment Agency, and are an important tool in national management of small game. Major users are central and local wildlife management, research and educational institutions, media and interest groups and interested hunters.

No external users have access to statistics before they are released at 8 a.m. on ssb.no after at least three months’ advance notice in the release calendar. This is one of the most important principles in Statistics Norway for ensuring the equal treatment of users.

There are publised statistics over numbers of persons who have paid the hunting licence fee and active hunters

The statistics are developed, produced and disseminated pursuant to Act no. 32 of 21 June 2019 relating to official statistics and Statistics Norway (the Statistics Act).

The population is defined by the Register of Hunters, and includes all hunters who have paid the hunting tax. The analysis unit is felled small game and the collection unit are the hunters.

Everyone who has paid the hunting tax for the relevant hunting year must report for the same year.

Every single hunter must submit a report to Statistics Norway by 1 May on the report form provided or by the Internet.

Regular control and revision steps are carried out on the incoming material. During optical scanning all forms are tested against the Register of hunters. The forms are checked for absolute and possible errors, and errors are correct during the revision of the forms. Examples of possible errors include abnormally high felling numbers and data on species outside their normal range.

Number of felled small game and roe deer are summarized and distributed by county and municipality.

Interviewers and everyone who works at Statistics Norway have a duty of confidentiality. Statistics Norway has its own data protection officer.

Statistics Norway does not publish figures where there is a risk of identifying individual data about persons or households [enter the correct unit here, where applicable].

The ‘uppression and rounding up/down method is used in these statistics to ensure this.

More information can be found on Statistics Norway’s website under Methods in official statistics, in the ‘Confidentiality’ section.

In consequence of the changed calculation routine, there are breaks in the time series in 1993/1994, 1999/2000, 2001/2002 and 2023/2024. It is assumed that the breaks in 1999/2000 and 2001/2002 have had marginal impact on the results.

From 1927 to 1984 the roe deer statistics were initially based on reports from the police, and later on from the municipal wildlife boards. As of the 2023/2024 hunting season, the reporting system for roe deer has been changed. The figures have been reported to the national deer game register Hjorteviltregisteret, and there has likely been under-reporting from some municipalities. These figures are not comparable to those from previous years, and we have decided not to publish data for the hunting season 2023/2024. However, the numbers are available on the register's website. Efforts will be made to improve reporting for the 2024/2025 season.

The data are checked for absolute and possible errors, but in some cases data on species outside their normal range are not detected. Some reports lack the county of hunting. In these cases the hunter's county of residense are chosen, provided that the species is normally widespread in this county.

In some cases will species be reported in wrong hunting county. Other sources of errors include missing or incorrectly filled out information from the respondent and errors occurring during the optical reading of the report form.

As from the hunting year 2001/2002 the response rate has been higher than 90 per cent, and corrections because of non-response have not been carried out. It is reason to believe that the numbers of hunters without yield, or with very limited yield, is considerably larger among that hunters not reporting than among these reporting. Consequently, the effect of non-response for the number of animals felled should be less than for non-reporting hunters.

As to the hunting year 2000/2001 the yield was estimated by different methods. For some species at the county or municipality level there will be variations that can in part be due the calculation routines employed. This applies particularly to species with limited ranges.

Up to and including the hunting year 2022/2023, the municipality's statistics are estimated based on what is reported via the internet, and these reports serve as the sample survey. Therefore, only the numbers for these municipalities are estimated. It is also possible to report felled species in municipalities that are not included in the statistics because they are reported on paper forms. In such cases, the municipality numbers for that county will be overestimated.

In addition, the figures may be affected by errors because of incorrect and missing data.