A dog makes a difference: Exploration of potential biases in moose-hunting associated citizen science

The collection of citizen data is often employed to generate insights regarding species distribution, population sizes, and population structure; however, biases inherent in citizen science are seldom addressed. In this study, we examined the factors influencing hunters' observations of moose, Alces alces, during the moose hunting season in Finland. By analyzing approximately 0.5 million moose observations collected between 2017 and 2021, we discovered that, in addition to the population size from the previous year, the progression of the hunting season due to culling had a significant impact on the observations. The effects of hunting effort, including the time spent hunting and the number of hunters, were notably influenced by the use of dogs in the hunting. However, different classes of moose exhibited varied responses to the presence of dogs, suggesting a potential for biases in sex ratio and population size estimation. Additionally, landscape characteristics also affected observati..., , # Data from: A dog makes a difference: Exploration of potential biases in moose-hunting associated citizen science

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.g1jwstr6f](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.g1jwstr6f)

## Description of the data and file structure

The data used is hunting data summarized by day and the game management association. The owner of the raw data, Suomen Riistakeskus, has agreed to publish this aggregated data. Data also contains other freely available data, such as weather and landscape data. These are also summarized by game management area and by day (if applicable). These data were used in the analyses presented in the manuscript. 

This data was compiled from various sources. The main data was the daily hunting team data, including the numbers of observations of different classes of moose and snow conditions. This data was aggregated such that it represents the total number of daily observations of moose classes within game management associations. Since aggregation, the hunt..., ,