APPENDIX K: OUTCOME CATEGORISATION

At each range the overall effect is rationally divided into two categories of shot quarry:

These two categories constitute all hits, H:

All other shots are regarded as complete misses, M, so

Note: pellets which fail to perforate both feathers and skin are interpreted as misses by the program, so changes to factors which affect pellet retardation in flight can modify the apparent hit rate even though the number of pellets which touch the bird is unaffected.

Category K always results in the quarry being bagged. However, following being downed by a category F injury, the overall effect due to other injuries depends on the combination of tissue incapacities, the environment and the availability of a retrieving dog. Essentially, if downed over land, a bird with the capacity to run (i.e. no P, L or R injury) will escape unless a retriever is present. Also, a wildfowl falling into water may retain the ability to escape recovery by hand if only one leg is disabled … that is to say, it can swim away. The environmental permutations are:

* Wildfowl only.

In the 'C injury implies K' effect above for a bird downed over water and without a retrieving dog, it is presumed that the unconscious bird drowns.

These combinations are implemented as follows.

and lumping the pelvic/lumbar and leg injuries together

Then

* Wildfowl only.

An analytic audit has shown that all four cases above correctly give

B and U are calculated as above for each range, and this needs to be repeated to assess all ranges (i.e. 0 to 100m).