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Quota-Free Hunting Raised Roe Deer Harvests Only in State Forests

Close-up portrait of a roe deer in Recker Moor, Germany
Conservation · Management

An impact evaluation of quota-free hunting in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, found that removing harvest quotas for roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) produced different outcomes at different management levels. Researchers analysed 49,050 harvest records across 14 consecutive hunting years, comparing seven years with quotas from 2009–2015 with seven years after quotas were abolished in 2016.

The researchers used a model-based counterfactual analysis rather than relying only on a simple before–after comparison. The pre-2016 harvest pattern was used to estimate how harvest might have developed if quotas had remained in place; observed harvest after 2016 could then be compared with that no-policy-change scenario.

Across Schleswig-Holstein as a whole, annual harvest density after 2016 did not increase significantly beyond the level expected if quotas had continued. The state forests showed a different pattern: quota-free hunting was associated with an average increase of 1.06 harvested roe deer per 100 hectares.

The increase was strongest in state-forest districts where the forest manager changed during the study period. A manager change was associated with 1.19 additional harvested deer per 100 hectares, while the combination of a manager change and quota removal produced the largest estimated increase, about 3.6 additional harvested deer per 100 hectares.

The composition of the hunting bag also shifted from female-dominated to male-dominated both across the state and in state forests. In state forests, the absolute number of harvested females still increased because total harvest rose; across the whole state, fewer females were harvested after quotas were removed.

The study evaluated harvest records, not roe deer abundance or browsing damage, so it cannot show whether the regulation reduced deer densities or forest impacts. The authors conclude that quota removal can have contrasting effects under different ownership and management conditions and that hunting-bag totals alone are not sufficient to evaluate population-level outcomes.

Sources and image credit

  1. Hasenfuß, M., Signer, J., & Balkenhol, N. (2026). Impact evaluation shows that hunting without quotas has contrasting effects on deer harvest across management levels. Journal of Applied Ecology, 63(5), e70418. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.70418Primary open-access impact evaluation based on 49,050 roe deer harvest records from Schleswig-Holstein, comparing seven years with quotas and seven years after quota removal at the state and state-forest levels.

Image: Valuer Hardy / Wikimedia Commons — close-up of a roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) in Recker Moor, Germany, 24 May 2025. Illustrative photograph, not an animal from the Schleswig-Holstein hunting study. · CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ · Source

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