Game management and harvest reporting vary among countries. Harvest estimates are based on voluntary reporting from hunting teams within each hunting management precinct (HMP), and all voluntary reporting is performed through a standardized form or directly in the database "Viltdata" owned by The Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management (SAHWM). However, the number of voluntary reports can vary between hunting teams, HMP, and counties, and it is not possible to verify if hunting teams report their harvest of all species or just some species. The Swedish Association of Hunting and wildlife management continuously informs and encourages hunting teams to report their full harvest, regardless of size, species abundance, or hunters' game preferences. However, low reporting still remains a problem.

During 2019-2020, Lindström and Bergqvist (2020) introduced a new model for estimating hunting harvest, using a Hierarchical Bayesian framework. Their framework revealed that analysis for hunting harvest estimations should account for inherent uncertainties (such as low reporting). In addition, they suggested that there could be random variability among hunting teams and that there could be an effect of hunting area per hunting team on harvest rate. Further, their results showed that hunting teams that hunt in larger areas harvest less per unit area, suggesting that harvest rate does not scale linearly with hunting areas (which the former harvest estimation model did).

Since the new, improved harvest estimation model only considers HMP the finest spatial resolution, I questioned, “ what do we know about each HMP?”. Therefore, additional variables were considered as the model does not take into account [1] landcover among HMPs, [2] the impact of climate, [3] wildlife accidents, and [4] geographical distribution.

So, to create a more robust harvest estimation model and reduce the large uncertainties, I added covariates at the precinct level and questioned, “Can the covariate model improve the null model, and therefore improve hunting estimates?”