How constraints affect the hunter’s decision to shoot a deer

Significance Wildlife populations in Europe and North America are regulated through hunting, as natural predators are still scarce. Therefore, wildlife is a social–ecological system with delicate feedbacks between the social and ecological subsystems. Both for population control and for evolution and because of cultural values, it is essential to understand how many and which animals are removed from the population. However, the question of how the social context influences the individual hunter’s decision to shoot or not to shoot an animal has not been addressed. We apply insights from economic search theory to explain how hunter selection is shaped by social constraints. We provide convincing evidence, using a unique dataset from deer hunting, that selectivity declines with more hunters competing and a shorter remaining season.