Band Return Models: Use of Solicited Bands and Separation of Hunting and Natural Mortality

The Brownie et al. (1985) band return models have been widely used to estimate survival and recovery rates for hunted species, especially migratory waterfowl. We developed a generalization of the Brownie models that allowed incorporation of solicited and reported bands into one analysis. This is an important addition to banding model literature, which has ignored solicited bands in the model formulation. Furthermore, if a reporting rate estimate is available from, for example, a reward banding study and a retrieval rate (1 − crippling loss rate) from a hunter questionnaire survey, we show that it is possible to estimate harvest rate, kill rate, and hence natural mortality rate in the presence of hunting