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 in 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 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 observations, which may suggest variations in the potential for visual observation or differences in moose behavior. We discuss the implications of our findings for biases in population parameter estimation and outline several areas for future research.