Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Gunshot Activity in Cooking Lake-Blackfoot Provincial Recreation Area

• DOI: 10.29173/aar44
• Publication Date: 2019-10-01T17:08:02Z
• Authors: Keelin Henderson-...; Richard Hedley; Justin Johnson; Jeremiah Kennedy; Erin Bayne
• Keywords: Sunrise; Sunset

In the past, monitoring hunting behavior has been limited to self-reported numbers. However, ability of autonomous recording units monitor soundscapes may make them suitable for assessing spatio-temporal shooting patterns. Our goal this project was find out if it is possible use acoustic track human activity, and there were differences in seasonal or daily intensities. We hypothesized that intensity would decrease from September November afternoon till morning due people being less likely go cooler temperatures. A grid 91 ARU’s deployed between 2nd 30th, 2018 Cooking Lake-Blackfoot Provincial Recreation Area. They set record continuously sunrise sunset with some during night as well. selected a random subset 30 minute recordings, visualized using spectrograms; visual representations sound time on x-axis frequency y-axis, counted gunshots each. compared gunshot detections months different times day analysis variance (ANOVA). There no statistical found One reason be sample sizes low, needed manually process recordings. demonstrated can used provide us an accurate way patterns therefore, useful other behaviors such detecting poachers, compliance laws.