Ballistics and wound ballistics of CO2‐powered dart guns in relation to ungulate dart injury and animal welfare

Large mammals are darted with dart guns to inject drugs or to collect biopsy tissue for capture, research, or veterinary purposes, especially for procedures involving wild and zoo animals. Darting is invasive and associated with risks of trauma, and severe and fatal dart injuries have been reported. Darts fired from CO 2 ‐powered dart guns (CPDG) have a lower risk of injury than those fired from gunpowder‐powered dart guns (GPDG). To avoid serious injuries and other negative effects that might be associated with darting, ballistic data, such as dart velocity and impact energy, and information on the skin characteristics of different target species, are needed. Therefore, we 1) investigated the ballistics of three different CPDG and 2) used wound ballistic methods to test the impact of darts on animal dummies made from ballistic gelatine and fresh hides of the red deer Cervus elaphus , fallow deer Dama dama , roe deer Capreolus capreolus, and wild boar Sus scrofa according to replacement of animal trials within the principle of the 3Rs. We investigated the effects of species, age, body part, and sex on injury severity. Results revealed variations in dart mass within one manufacturer and across all manufacturers were small. For all dart guns, the dart velocity and impact energy increased constantly with increasing distance. The results of the wound ballistic tests showed that each species had a different risk of dart penetration. In addition, there were species‐level variations across age groups and individual‐level variations between shoulder and thigh. In general, the thigh was less sensitive to dart penetration than the shoulder. Based on our observations, we recommend that manufacturers should provide ballistic data for their products. In addition, scientists should publish detailed information on the equipment used for darting to analyse possible dart trauma and avoid further injuries.