195,000 Finns engage in hunting in 2022

A total of 195,000 hunters remained active in hunting in 2022, of whom 160,000 hunted small game, according to the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke).

The numbers of hunters have declined slightly in recent years, said Luke in a press release on Friday.

In 2022, about 306,000 hunters paid the game management fee.

“The number of hunters has been slowly declining since 2011, when the number of hunters was the highest in the statistical period, at 234,000,” said senior statistician of Luke Miikka Husa.

In 2022, more than half the hunters went hunting for grouse. The abundance of grouse stocks is reflected in the harvest volumes, as well as in the amount of active hunting. In the poor year of 2017, only 41 per cent of hunters went grouse hunting.

“In 2022, grouse stocks were at a good level for the second year in a row, and the hunting season was long in a large part of the country. The capercaillie bag grew slightly to 35,000. At the same time, the black grouse bag was somewhat smaller than in the previous year, at 129,000 birds. The hazel grouse bag was 32,000 and willow grouse bag was 40,900. The willow grouse harvest estimate involves more uncertainty than that of the other grouse due to the large bag of some hunters,” Husa said.

The popularity of waterfowl hunting has been declining during the last decade. In 2022, only a third of hunters went waterfowl hunting, while in the early 2010s, their share was nearly half of active hunters. Mallard is by far the most hunted waterfowl species. In 2022, the mallard bag was 165,000 birds. The bag of the second most hunted waterfowl species, teal, was 44,000 birds. Overall, the waterfowl bag slightly decreased in 2022 from the previous year.

Wood pigeon has been Finland’s most abundant game species in terms of harvest volume since 2014. Bag per hunter is typically also larger for wood pigeon compared to other small game species. In 2022, a total of 250,000 wood pigeons were hunted, an average of ten birds per successful hunter. The mountain hare and brown hare bags were close to the previous year’s level, 96,000 for mountain hare and 72,000 for brown hare.

The harvest volumes of raccoon dog and mink were higher than in the previous year. The hunters bagged 121,000 raccoon dogs and 38,000 minks. Since 2019, a hunting license has no longer been required for hunting these species, so the total harvest may be larger than is indicated here, especially for mink. Hunting mink is allowed with instantly killing traps, and a gun is not required.

The moose, white-tailed deer and roe deer bags were smaller in the hunting season 2022–2023 compared to previous season. 37,055 elks, 67,183 white-tailed deer and 19,988 roe deer were bagged.

The number of hunters who participated in deer hunting remained at the same level as in 2021, at 116,000. They accumulated more than 1.7 million hunting days of deer hunting.

The game harvest resulted in around 9 million kilos of carcass meat, of which more than half was moose. The nominal value of the game was around EUR 70 million.