Big hunting problems of hunting farms. Hunting out of nothing

CURRENT PROBLEMS OF HUNTING MANAGEMENT IN THE SIBERIAN FEDERAL DISTRICT AND THE ROLE OF HUNTERS' PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS IN THEIR SOLUTION

SOME TOPICAL PROBLEMS OF HUNTING MANAGEMENT IN THE SIBERIAN FEDERAL DISTRICT AND THE ROLE OF PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS
HUNTERS IN THEIR SOLUTION (ON THE DISCUSSION ABOUT THE NEED TO CREATE MOOOIR SIBERIA)

© 2009 G. Yu.E. VASHUKEVICH, A.P. GANZEVICH

FGOU VPO IRKUTSK STATE AGRICULTURAL ACADEMY, IRKUTSK

The Siberian Federal District, of course, is the most important district of Russia in terms of hunting. Having on its territory 31% of the all-Russian hunting grounds, it ranks first in the country in terms of production and harvesting of wild furs and meat of wild ungulates, which form the basis of the commercial production of the domestic hunting economy. The hunting grounds of the district are home to 150,000 elk, half a million northern, more than 100,000 red deer and 20,000 bighorn sheep. The Okrug's taiga is home to 40,000 bears and 600,000 sables. The number of small fur animals and game birds is in the millions. Only according to official data, up to 40 thousand deer are hunted annually in this territory different types, more than 100 thousand sables, about a thousand bears. Export earnings from the sale of sable skins in some years reached one billion rubles. The army of registered hunters has almost 500 thousand people in its ranks (20% of all hunters in Russia).

Historically, the hunting economy of Siberia developed as a trade and commodity economy. A network of commercial state, cooperative and collective farms, where thousands of professional (full-time) and tens of thousands of seasonal hunters successfully worked, provided the state with valuable export furs, a variety of meat and game products, wild berries, mushrooms and nuts. Amateur hunting, which played a secondary role, was carried out mainly in low-productive lands adjacent to settlements. Traditionally, amateur hunters were members of public organizations: Rosokhotrybolovsoyuz, Dynamo, All-Army Military Hunting Society.
Modernity has made tough adjustments to the system of hunting in the country as a whole and in Siberia in particular. What has been happening over the past twenty years can be safely described as the collapse of the hunting industry. Without going into a discussion about the reasons for what happened (much has already been said about this) and remembering that the purpose of creating and functioning of a public organization of hunters is to satisfy the needs of its members in hunting, some problems that require a prompt solution should be clearly identified.

1. IMPERFECTION OF THE LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK FOR REGULATING HUNTING.
The law on hunting (or on hunting and game management) has not yet been adopted. This is perhaps the longest drafted bill in recent history. Thanks to the titanic efforts of the Department of Hunting of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Roso-hotrybolovsoyuz and the entire hunting community, the next draft law passed the first reading in the State Duma. After a flurry of criticism, proposals and adjustments, it should be submitted to the second reading in the State Duma, and our the main task- bring this process, which has been going on for more than 16 years, to its logical conclusion in 2009. Otherwise, the inconsistency of the current forest, water and environmental legislation will not allow Russian citizens to fully exercise their legal right to hunt.
In this regard, special attention should be paid to the protection of hunting grounds. As is known from world practice, a highly organized hunting economy exists where three main tasks are systematically solved:
- effective protection of game animals and their habitats;
- reliable accounting of the number and determination on its basis of the standards for the removal of wild animals in accordance with the structure of the population and the tasks facing the hunting user;
- organization of hunting in strict accordance with the established production standards.
If these tasks are solved in a complex, it is reasonable to further develop a system of measures aimed at creating favorable fodder and protective conditions for game animals.
An analysis of the situation with the protection of land that has developed in Siberia allows us to speak of its actual inefficiency. Strange as it may seem, the hunting grounds that make up the so-called state hunting reserve, that is, the grounds not assigned to specific hunting users, are the most affected in this case. In some subjects of the Siberian Federal District, such lands make up more than half of the territories suitable for hunting. In conditions when full-time employees of hunting farms are deprived of the right to draw up a report on violators of hunting, the institute of public inspectors has been disbanded, and the area controlled by a hunting inspector, endowed with appropriate powers, amounts to hundreds of thousands, and often millions of hectares of hunting grounds - there is simply no one to punish the poacher. For this reason, hunting “from under the headlights”, year-round hunting of animals, mass shooting of ungulates, etc. has become a mass phenomenon. AXIOM SAYS - GAME SHOULD BE PROTECTED BY A HUNTER (HUNTER USER). Only those who are interested in having game in the ground for a long period will really care about it. At the same time, it is very important that, in addition to the state, there is also public control over the hunter. In other words, the hunter must be morally accountable to his comrades in the hunting organization (club), his activities must comply with the collective norms and rules adopted in the organization. Based on the foregoing, it follows without fail bestow public organizations, and through them their members, with additional powers to curb poaching.
2. INSUFFICIENT VOLUME OF FINANCIAL AND LABOR RESOURCES ALLOWED TO INCREASE THE PRODUCTIVITY OF HUNTING GROUNDS FOR MASS OBJECTS OF AMATEUR HUNTING.
Running a modern hunting economy requires significant investments. These are funds for the protection of lands, carrying out accounting and hunting management measures, the formation of a material and technical base, the organization of a complex of biotechnical measures, the equipment of lands and the organization of the territory, game breeding, semi-free keeping, and so on. Targeted investments make it possible to significantly increase the population density of game animals, maintain their numbers at an optimal level, improve the trophy qualities of hunting objects, concentrate animals at the right time and in the right place, in other words, guarantee the hunter the desired result. Currently, this is especially true for the species most in demand by amateur hunters. In Siberia, these are, first of all, wild ungulates, the state of the populations of which causes the greatest concern.
The study of domestic and world experience allows us to say that public organizations have everything necessary for the intensification of hunting management. If we assume that each of the 400 thousand Siberian hunters, even in the form of labor participation, will work for three days on their native hunting ground, then, according to the most conservative estimates (200 rubles per day), this labor participation will “pour out” 240 million rubles of additional funds. And that's just one source of income. Add here membership fees, income from specialized trade, gratuitous donations, opportunities to attract administrative resources, income from the provision of services in hunting farms - and we will get a figure ten times higher than the current level of investment.
3. LOW LEVEL OF PROFILE TRAINING OF A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF AMATEUR HUNTERS, LACK OF SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE FIELD OF NATURE PROTECTION AND HUNTING.
A formal attitude to the preparation and passing of the hunting minimum leads to the lack of elementary knowledge of the biology of game animals, the rules of hunting, dog breeding, hunting ethics and the rules for handling hunting weapons among many newly-minted amateur hunters. Often one has to be a witness to the fact that such ignorance leads to unintentional poaching. Only after the animal or bird has been shot does the determination of its species, sex and age begin. Unfortunate hunters are surprised to learn that the capercaillie cannot be shot from the "small things", but to put loops on the musk deer. There are very few "specialists" who, at a distance of 50 meters in November, will distinguish a male roe deer from a female. Everything would be fine if the principle “if you are not sure - do not shoot” worked, but the point is that in the vast majority of cases they shoot. It is also a matter of culture, the hunter's civilization. And it does not exist without knowledge. The role of public organizations in this matter is decisive. In addition to the fact that the issues of taking exams on the hunting minimum should be approached responsibly, they have in their hands such an important mechanism as a collective example and (or) public censure. Creating an atmosphere of true hunting values ​​in the primary organization, regular seminars and round tables on the exchange of experience between hunters, studying world trends in the development of hunting will solve the problem of educating amateur hunters. To this, of course, we should add our own mass media, and the formation of a system of propaganda for nature conservation and civilized hunting.

4. SUBSTITUTION OF GOALS AND MAIN TASKS FACING THE PUBLIC ORGANIZATION OF HUNTERS.
We repeat: the goal of any public organization of hunters and fishermen should be to satisfy the needs of its members in hunting. In other words, the organization should assist the amateur hunter to the maximum in exercising his legal right to hunt. Everything else is secondary. When the leader of a society sets a goal to maximize the income of the organization through the extraction of marketable products, trade or hunting tourism, it is likely that this will eventually develop into the goal of its activities. Ordinary hunters are obliged to constantly feel the usefulness of the association to which they belong. They should be regularly informed about how the leadership of the company defends their legitimate interests and what has been achieved in this direction. Income growth is justified if they (these incomes) are directed to the implementation of the organization's statutory goals.
In addition to the main problems mentioned above, there are a number of issues that a public organization of hunters should deal with. This is the development of dog breeding, the fight against predators, the organization of trophy hunting and services for hunters, shooting and specific sports, the introduction of innovative developments in hunting, fishing and much more.
The main thing is not to forget that public organizations of hunters are created for the sake of the hunters themselves, and it is they (and not hunting grounds or animals) that are the main object of collective efforts.

“Hunting is an expensive and problematic hobby,” says a source close to Rossiya Bank co-owner Nikolai Shamalov, whose fortune Forbes estimates at $500 million. The businessman and his three partners annually invest in their hunting grounds in the Priozersky district Leningrad region several million rubles. The President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin with partners and the children of the Governor of the Leningrad Region Valery Serdyukov, banker Petr Aven, owner of NLMK Vladimir Lisin spend the same amount on the maintenance of their lands in the neighborhood. As well as officials, deputies and businessmen who directly or through structures close to them rent hunting grounds in five regions located not far from Moscow and St. Petersburg.

How to share

Even 10 years ago, almost all hunting grounds were public - in the sense they were listed as hunting societies. But then everything changed. “Muscovites arrived, hunted. They liked our places, and they said they wanted to take the site,” recalls an employee of one district hunting society. “We applied, won the competition, and got a license for the site we wanted,” says a Moscow businessman, one of the largest hunting ground leasers in the Northwest, reluctantly.

To obtain a license, it was enough to submit an application and win in a penniless "competition of intentions": the winner was the one who promised to invest more in the land. Who to award the victory was decided by the competition commission, which consisted mostly of local officials. “Naturally, we saw who was supported by officials of the regional administration,” recalls a hunter from Tver who participated in such competitions.

How this happened can be judged from the story of Anatoly Durandin, chairman of the board of the Yaroslavl regional hunting society (the transcript is on the society’s website):<…>And for more than a year, an employee of the Poshekhonsky prosecutor's office went to the office of the Poshekhonsky hunting society as if he were going to work - in the morning he came before the employees of the society and waited for the door to be opened. Yaroslavl hunters eventually abandoned 600,000 hectares, which were put up for open tenders (although they still have 2 million hectares left).

The military hunters of the Leningrad region have lost a lot, says Sergey Bolshikhin, assistant head of the Zapasnoye hunting base in the Priozersky district of the Leningrad region. “We basically have only bases left, and we no longer have our own land,” he says.

“The Bezhetsk regional society of hunters and fishermen in 2001 received 143,700 hectares in the Tver region for 10 years, and all this time plots are constantly being cut off from us,” Nikolai Filipovich, chairman of the board of the society, complains. According to him, attempts to take away the land from Bezhetsky hunters are made every two years - the governor cancels his decision, the Tver hunting department cancels the license, and the society restores its right to hunt in court.

In the interval between the courts, the Bezhetsky hunters almost lost 35,800 hectares - in 2005 they managed to put up a site for a tender, and it passed to the Dubakinskoye company of the then vice-president of Lukoil Alexei Smirnov. The company managed to challenge this competition in court. Until 2000, Dubakinskoye itself belonged to the Military Hunting Society of the Moscow Military District, and then, along with the Tver lands, went to Lukoil. The press service of Lukoil told Vedomosti that it was a personal project of Smirnov, a native of Bezhetsk. “When the military society had Dubakinskoye, it was a dull ruined enterprise,” Smirnov said. “I had a helicopter, and when we flew around the farm and counted how many moose there were, there were only 16 of them. Now there are more than 500 moose in Dubakinsky.” The former top manager of Lukoil is convinced that the state and public organizations have shown themselves to be inefficient owners.

On April 1, 2010, the law on hunting came into force, which was supposed to change the rules of the game: the lands are now raffled off at open auctions for real money. But most tenants prepared for this in advance - they won tenders that secured land for them for 49 years. For example, in the Tver region, the then governor Dmitry Zelenin on March 30, 2010 signed 16 orders on the provision for 49 years "for the use of wildlife in the form of hunting" forest plots with a total area of ​​220,085 hectares. The companies won this right at open tenders held shortly before. A week earlier, on March 22, 2010, Zelenin signed 15 orders for the provision of 205,514 hectares. Similar contests were held on the eve of the entry into force of the new law in Leningrad, Pskov, Yaroslavl and other regions. In fact, the tenants in this way staked out plots for almost a century - the same law provides that they will receive another 49 years later on a pre-emptive right, without an auction.

Hunting is not a business

It is almost impossible to make money on a hunting farm, all users of the land interviewed by Vedomosti insist. “Hunting farms do not pay off in Russia, because this is not Africa and we do not have hippos. We only have wild boars, moose and very few bears,” says Vladimir Tovmasyan, a Moscow businessman whose company Vologda Okhota is the largest private tenant of Vologda land (218,000 hectares). According to Tovmasyan, the economy of the hunting farm is simple: the salary of a ranger is 7,000 rubles. per month, and a ticket for wild boar hunting can be sold for 8,000 rubles. "Vologda Okhota" receives a limit on the production of 12 wild boars per season, that is, with the money received from the sale of all vouchers for a wild boar, you can pay the salary of one huntsman. And there are several of them, plus hunting farms should buy grain to feed animals, build towers, and maintain equipment.

The hunting farm buys a license for hunting elk from the state for about 3,000 rubles, wild boar - for 750 rubles, says the chairman of the board of the Tver "Huntsman" (600,000 hectares on lease) Yuri Poluiko. In private hunting farms, a ticket for an elk will already cost 30,000 rubles. plus 3000 rub. per day for accommodation and meals. The difference is used to cover the costs of feeding animals, keeping rangers and hunters, and equipment. But the ticket money is not enough. In Jaeger, they were able to earn only 5 million rubles on tours in 2010. at an expense of 200 million rubles, says Poluiko.

Hunting farms are kept not for business, but for recreation. Therefore, they try not to let strangers in here. “We tried to sell vouchers, but it did not suit us rather morally. You come to your farm - and there are strangers who bought tickets. There were excesses, drunk on the hunt. Therefore, now we keep the hunting farm only for ourselves and friends from the shooting club, ”says Sergey Ivankin, co-owner of the Kudeversky hunting farm in the Pskov region.

“Ordinary hunters are not allowed there [to Shamalov's lands]. We have wealthy people who are willing to pay for hunting wild boar and elk, but they do not sell vouchers. They keep quotas for themselves,” says Bolshikhin. “There are public lands for them (according to the law, 20% of the lands in the region should be available to everyone. - Vedomosti),” explains Shamalov. In the Melnikovsky Society (Yakunin and his partners hunt here), you can buy a ticket for a duck, but it costs much more than the Military Hunting Society of St. Petersburg, Bolshikhin adds.

In Rumelko-sporting, Lisin's Tver hunting estate, everyone is allowed to hunt a hare or a duck, says the director of the company, Eduard Kulishkin. But the club does not sell vouchers for elk and wild boar.

The Bezhets hunters can theoretically hunt ducks and geese in Dubakinsky. “But there the cost of one dawn is 10,000 rubles. We don’t have such salaries,” Filipović is indignant. The owner of "Dubakinsky" Smirnov, however, assures that benefits have been established for Bezhetsky hunters.

Rest in the circle of their own often benefits the cause. “Hunting is a way of informal communication with the right people”- this is how the top manager of the Moscow food holding formulates this idea. In 2008, he and a partner leased over 30,000 hectares of land in the Tver region. “In the world, hunting has always been a meeting place for friends and colleagues, where various problems can be discussed in an informal setting. Only in Russia, for some reason, they treat this negatively and consider it corruption,” one of the owners of the hunting farm agrees. “But this is not a classic hunt, but something else. I was once in “Zavidovo”, I will not go there again. I'd rather hunt in Belarus,” says the owner of a large grain company.

hunting farm located in the Smolensk region in the upper reaches great river Dnipro, will be glad to consider you as our guest. The hunting farm was founded in 2010 and since then has been hunting in the vicinity of the village of Kholm-Zhirkovsky on an area of ​​48 thousand hectares. A comfortable hunting base has been built for guests, which can be reached by car on an asphalt road.

In addition to hunting in the wild, within the time limits specified by law, effective hunting for wild boar is possible in a fenced enclosure with an area of ​​120 hectares in which they are kept. In addition, the hunting farm has put into operation a deer farm and a deer park built according to English technologies, on which we are raising livestock of European red deer for sale in the near future. Guests are offered a tour of the farm and the opportunity to feed the deer.

For hunting, we have all the conditions: a good density of the animal, equipment for delivering hunters to the hunting place at any season, including all-terrain vehicle on caterpillar tracks. Semi-towers are equipped for driven hunting, and comfortable all-weather towers are built for hunting wild boar from ambush.

Why did I decide to start a hunting farm? To explain this, we must mentally return to the early 2000s: the “dashing 90s” are over, the time has come for the economy to rise and private business to emerge. The young private enterprise, of which I am the head, has already more or less got on its feet, so there are financial opportunities to go hunting, and free time.

I didn’t master hunting abroad then, but I hunted in Russia. I did not like to come somewhere for a couple of days, not for long, and besides, it was more or less clear how I wanted to hunt. Then the idea arose to find like-minded people and create their own hunting farm.

The very first and one of the most difficult problems (and there were many) was building relationships with the regional authorities. It was necessary to convince them to give us one of the nine regional reserves for hunting grounds. Fortunately, the management believed in us and allowed us to “steer”. And in 2008, we issued a long-term lease of land in the Ryazan region, with an area of ​​28,000 hectares. It was obvious that the lands needed help: before that, hunting was carried out in the reserve either for the local authorities or for local poachers. Both were episodic.

The main animal in the lands is the wild boar, and at the very beginning of our journey, even this ubiquitous animal was extremely scarce in the lands: in the first seventeen hunts, not a single wild boar was caught. The thing is that if now in our economy it is forbidden to shoot billhooks during the rutting season, and the ban on shooting breeding stock is valid all year round, then everyone used to be shot in a row. Work on the improvement of roads, top dressing and other biotechnical activities in the reserve were also not carried out: for example, in 2006, only one thousand rubles were allocated from the state budget for all biotechnology. For a year. There were only two towers and four feeding troughs on the grounds, to which a cart of waste or potatoes was occasionally delivered in autumn. There was one huntsman who did not have any equipment.

We started by properly organizing the protection of the land and the abundant feeding of wild boars. Firstly, we sowed (and continue to sow now) about 130 hectares of our fields (all that is) with oats, Jerusalem artichoke and corn. Secondly, they began to bring so much food to the feeders that the wild boars could not eat everything. Queens fed in this way began to bring twice as many offspring as before. Stray billhooks, who came to the feeders with surplus food, began to bring neighbor's wild boars with them. Neighboring hunting farms began to complain that the wild boars had all gone to us, but then the number of wild boar and elk began to grow. By the way, we border on three hunting farms, with the leaders of which we have long established friendly relations. We join forces to fight poaching, we hunt wolves together, we buy seeds and feed.

It’s even scary to remember the initial amount of work: it was necessary to equip salt licks, make bathing pits, cut clearings in the forest, clear forest roads littered with fallen trees, purchase equipment, find rangers, “make friends” with the local population ...

Truth, a good relationship with the inhabitants of neighboring villages, we developed quite quickly. Local men are used to poaching in the reserve, because they didn’t give vouchers. And I invited them to my team as so-called activists. At first, people shied away, they thought that they would only be used to catch up. Now we have more than 30 activists, this is a well-coordinated friendly team, guys whom I am always glad to see, whose help I really need and really get it. They help us clear roads, lay out food, lay hare salt licks, clear swamps, make artificial nests, and clean towers. Now, for example, the sowing campaign is underway - people are needed who scatter the grain with their hands where the seeder does not pass, they seat the Jerusalem artichoke under the shovel. Activists hunt and use the amenities of the hunting base with us on an equal footing. This means that we give them free tours, eat at the same table, shoot at the same range. To be able to hunt on the grounds, that is, to become an activist, you need to be recommended by two members of the collective. The second condition - 10 days per season (for hunting ungulates by paddock and from a tower) or 3 days (for all other types of hunting) must be worked out for the benefit of the economy, providing any feasible assistance. This rule does not apply to pensioners and the disabled, they get vouchers without working off.

Now 17 people are constantly working and serving the hunting ground: cooks, engineers, rangers and security guards. I personally run the business. But besides me, there is a director, a chief hunter and a chief engineer who are responsible for order in my absence. I communicate with the team every day by phone and at least once every two weeks in person. Before the start of the hunting season, we hold operational meetings. In our free time, we work on subbotniks, organize competitions (hunting biathlon, shooting at the “running boar”, skeet, in an electronic shooting range), we hold in a hunting house open lessons biology for schoolchildren.

Today, the farm is not operating on a commercial basis and most likely will not work in the future. Five volunteer founders fully cover all material costs. All hunts are not commercial, only for yourself and for friends. But there are many friends, and therefore, every weekend in the season, someone hunts in the lands.

We have the following limit on hunting. Moose licenses - 12 per year. For wild boars - 60+, but this limit can be increased if there is a threat of epidemics. There is also hunting for foxes, hares and several types of bird hunting. Probably, it would be possible to follow the example of the well-known hunting user Viktor Labusov and make the farm partly commercial. But, firstly, while this is not necessary, all owners are satisfied with the chosen cooperation option. Secondly, all the founders understand that the hunting business will not bring a stunning income, and even for this reason they do not seriously think about it. And thirdly, Viktor Labusov, as far as I know, immediately oriented his hunting farm to conduct both commercial hunting and hunting “for himself”. For us, if we ever decide to embark on a commercial footing, we will have to rebuild the entire system of work. So we don't have any plans for now. True, recently I had ideas, as an experiment, to agree with the owners of the base for fishermen, which is being built on the banks of the Oka not far from us. The bottom line is to offer their guests hunting in our lands at a price list. Something similar was done in the Breeze hunting farm.

For five years of hunting use, we managed to solve many problems. But many problems, or rather tasks, still remain.

The first is animal breeding. We do a lot to breed wild boars, elks, foxes and hares. We are actively fighting wolves, and therefore we have a lot of animals. But I believe that the animal should be twice as large and it should be more diverse (which is not observed now). I dream that fallow deer and roe deer will appear in our forests. Belarus serves as an example for me in this matter: I see how much is being done and how much there is as a result of the beast.

The second task is the fight against bipedal predators. We carry out protection only by members of our team and, in my opinion, quite effectively, but, despite our efforts, once a quarter we definitely detain one or two poachers. To be honest, today I do not know how we are generally able to solve this problem. After all, there is a direct relationship - the more the beast, the more poachers. Which is logical: neither a wolf nor a poacher will climb into a bad economy, where there are few animals.

But the most serious problem is the attitude of people working on the farm. All five years I have been trying to establish good working relationships with rangers, to ensure that they take the initiative, keep to work. But, unfortunately, this does not work out with all members of our team. Due to the fact that not all rangers work responsibly, the whole team suffers and things get up. It turns out that if I personally do not keep everything under control every day and check every step, nothing will be done.

The most the main problem modern rangers, I think, lies in the fact that they can tense up, grit their teeth and once do what is needed (and then you need to look for such). But for the most part, they are not ready for constant daily painstaking work. Sometimes it seems that their main goal is to quickly do what they were told and go home - and then at best. And at worst, leave without doing anything. However, most of the gamekeepers I have worked with are constantly convinced that they work too hard.

Yes, there is a lot of work, I do not argue. Rangers are engaged every day in quite routine work: delivering feed along the same roads to the same feeders, maintaining equipment that breaks down all the time, and guarding the territory. But, firstly, no one forces you to work around the clock, and secondly, there are also many pluses in work, as in the well-known black joke: then with people! Seriously, we have the opportunity to pay employees a decent salary not only by Ryazan, but also by Moscow standards, send them to study jaegers at our own expense, share meat, not only work together, but also relax.

As a leader, I lack responsibility, interest, dedication, initiative, and love for my work in rangers. Unfortunately, many huntsmen are indifferent to the fact that poachers can use their work, they do not have a zealous attitude towards “their” lands. I came to the conclusion that no matter how you explain that we work for ourselves, a rare ranger will look at the farm as if it were his own. As the older generation says, "not native - not sick." Apparently, in Russia, in general, compared with the same Europe, the internal sense of ownership (the feeling of the owner) is poorly developed.

I am more and more inclined to think that I will not be able to “grow up” an employee who would meet all my simple requirements. Apparently, we need to look for a ready-made specialist, with education and experience in a hunting farm like ours. But searching is also not an easy task. For example, at one time we were looking for a director by advertising in a newspaper. We searched for a very long time, interviewed 30 candidates. In the end, they still found the director among their own. It turned out to be an old acquaintance who built our hunting base many years ago, whom we tested in practice and whom we trust. He is a reliable person, but now he is already 67 years old, and soon he will not be able to work, he will have to look for a new one - and everything will start all over again.

I'm almost sure that the problems we face are also in others. Russian farms. I would be very happy if someone would dissuade me from this ...

Russian hunting magazine, June 2013

At present, the problem of hunting economy is no less acute than ten years ago. And it lies not only in the high cost of licenses and vouchers for certain types of animals, but also in the rationality of the management of the economy itself.

In our country, the hunting economy is sometimes classified as agricultural, sometimes as forestry, sometimes it is considered as an independent branch of nature management, and, finally, according to V.V. Dezhkin, as "an integral and important constituent part» biological nature management.

The most convincing arguments belong to the authors who consider hunting as a specific branch of agricultural production. This issue was considered in some detail by V.K. Melnikov.

To the main features Agriculture he attributed the following: the combination of the economic process of reproduction with natural reproduction; more significant than in industry, the gap between the period of production and the working period; the use of land as the main means of production, and not just as the location of the enterprise; seasonality of production and its complexity; great influence of natural factors on labor productivity; the vastness of the arena of labor of a large territory. All these features of agriculture are unambiguously characteristic of the hunting economy. But the latter has a number of specific features, which have already been noted by D.N. Danilov, S.D. Pereleshin, V.N. Skalon, V.K. Melnikov and other researchers.

The main ones are:

Low income received per unit area of ​​hunting grounds compared to agricultural land;
- direct impact on the object of labor (hunting animals), as a rule, only at the time of their acquisition and the insignificance of that part of the labor that is aimed at reproduction (the rest of the time, animals are only indirectly affected when their conditions of existence change);
- limited opportunity the use of mechanization in production, especially in the production of animals;
- the predominance of individual labor over collective labor in the main production process - animal production;
- the use of hunting grounds and hunting animals as the main means of production, the inseparability of hunting grounds from hunting animals. Where there are no hunting animals, there are no hunting grounds, and, consequently, there can be no economy itself.

V modern world newer and more advanced forms of farming are emerging, financed by individual individuals and legal entities who invest quite a lot of money in the organization, as well as in a complex of biotechnical and reproductive measures. But still, for the most part, the main principle of market relations is applied: with a minimum of investments - a maximum of profit.

The profitability of hunting farms leaves much to be desired, but if they still exist, then it's worth it.

There are a number of proposals that will make their existence a little easier, and to some extent apply the principle of the market, but more on that below.

Considering the actual problems of hunting management, I would like to focus on the most important ones, which were mentioned by some heads of hunting farms and chairmen of regional OOiR. In turn, they are also proposals to bring the Russian hunting economy out of the crisis, it is required to restore the federal body for control over the use of wildlife and management of the country's hunting economy, thereby ensuring the independence of the hunting industry, and to transfer all operational groups to combat poaching from the subjects of the federation under this authority.

Adopt the law of the Russian Federation "On hunting and hunting economy", in which:

a) expand the powers of the subjects of the federation to determine quotas for the production of game animals, except for rare and endangered ones;
b) to provide benefits to hunting users engaged in aviary breeding;
c) simplify the procedure for assigning hunting grounds to promising users;
d) expand the rights of hunting users in terms of rationing and use of game animals;
e) increase the responsibility of state bodies for the economic consequences of their decisions, restrictive measures, if they cause economic damage to game users and the state.

• To strengthen and improve the system of training hunting personnel (hunters, rangers).
• Create an all-Russian non-profit organization (association) of hunting users to protect their rights and interests, develop legislative initiatives on hunting and game management.
• Introduce compulsory training and an examination (similar to the principle of obtaining a driver's license) for citizens wishing to use the right to refuse.
• Develop and widely use measures to encourage hunting users who have achieved positive results in the increase in the number of game animals.
• To return the right to rangers and hunters to search and draw up protocols on violation of hunting rules.

Another important issue is accounting. Winter route accounting, in my opinion, is already outdated, there are more advanced methods, no more laborious than ZMU, that allow you to more accurately assess the capacity of hunting grounds.

In addition to general economic problems, it is necessary to note the problems of ordinary hunters, who every year have less and less chances to acquire licenses for large game animals due, as noted above, to the high cost of licenses and vouchers. In such a situation, low-income hunters take the path of poaching.

It is not difficult to satisfy the recreational needs of the society, and along with the organization of hunting, it is possible to conduct ecological excursions around the farm of both Russian and foreign volunteers. In America and Europe, for example, tourists pay money to listen to the howling of wolves, to watch some moments of the life of wild animals.

Watching wild animals in nature is much more interesting than in a zoo. Feeding bears and wild boars can be put on display from the same storehouses. Recording capercaillie and black grouse on video is more difficult than successfully organizing a hunt for him, observing moose during the rut and luring them - all this will bring a good income and allow you to better study the animals.

The hunting fauna is very diverse, each species is attractive in its own way, and in order to observe them in wildlife, a competent approach of hunters is required. Close collaboration with scientists who study wildlife, it will fruitfully influence the development of science as a whole.

During the hunting season, farms accumulate a large and diverse biomaterial that needs to be investigated. It is already obvious that with increased pressure on any kind of animal, the number of individuals in the offspring increases, and the total extermination, for example, of wolves will not solve the problem of increasing the number of ungulates.

Having several dens on the territory of the farm, it is possible to maintain the optimal number of wolves, while making good money on tourists. Arrange exciting waba hunts, and the wolves, in turn, protect their brethren from raids. Wolves have a very well-defined territoriality, the average area of ​​​​the territory of one family is about 500 square kilometers. When the offspring transition to an independent life, they leave their parents and leave the places where they were born.

There are many examples of a prosperous neighborhood of wolves and ungulates. An example is Yellowstone national park in North America. There, by the thirties of the twentieth century, the wolf was completely exterminated, but in 1995, contrary to public opinion, it was again brought from Canada.

After years of observation, scientists national park confirmed the fact that wolves eat mostly weak and sick animals. For reliability, I will cite the data of P.N. Korablev on assessing the health status of elk in terms of periodontal disease in the area of ​​the Central Forest Reserve from the book by V.P. Bolotov "Hunting for a wolf".

In our country, the wolf is outlawed, but poaching and various diseases cause much more damage to farms than the “gray”. The heads of farms involved in the breeding of wild boar, I think, can also confirm this.

In Russia, the hunting economy is moving to a newer and more advanced type of development - commercial. And I would like to see progressive methods of management, competently combined with the rational use of the animal world.