Reporting and statistics

The obligation to report harvests and how hunting statistics are used in wildlife management.

Anyone who harvests deer species is obligated to report the kill. The report must include information about species, sex, age (calf/yearling/adult), and weight.

Reporting is usually done to the vald's hunt leader or directly in the municipality's system. Many municipalities use the Deer Registry (hjortevilt.no) as a digital platform.

The statistics are actively used in wildlife management. Harvest numbers, sex ratios, and age composition provide good information about the condition of the population. Declining harvest rates may indicate a population decline.

Statistics Norway (SSB) publishes annual hunting statistics for the entire country. The data is available by municipality and county.

For small game, reporting is voluntary in most places, but some landowners require it as part of the hunting agreement. Small game reporting provides useful information about population trends.

"Sett elg" (moose observed) and "sett hjort" (deer observed) are forms that hunting teams fill out daily during the hunt. They record all observations of animals, regardless of whether they were harvested. This gives wildlife managers a picture of the population that is independent of harvest numbers.