There was no discernible effect of habitat type on the detection and subsequent dispatch of target animals for either species. However, there was a moderate effect of both habitat type and species type on time to incapacitation. These effects can likely be attributed to species behaviour. Both populations had been subject to previous aerial control and previous studies report that experienced animals will evade aircraft by seeking shelter [e.g., 16, 19, 49, 50, 51, but see 52]. This behaviour and the observation most of the detected animals were in dense habitat, probably increased time to incapacitation. However, the metrics we report for deer are comparable to those reported during a welfare assessment of visual aerial culling programs for deer [48]; we report a similar number of average impact shots (2.2, SD = 1.2) compared to 1.43–2.57 for the visual-only [48], potentially shorter chase times (62.5s, SD = 56.7 versus 73–145 s, respectively), similar average total times (107.7 s, SD = 71.4 versus 109–162 s, respectively) and comparable times from first shot to last shot (21.9 s, SD = 33.2 versus 17–37 s, respectively). Welfare assessments for visual helicopter-based aerial culling have not been done for pigs, but the number of impact shots pig-1 in a visual aerial culling study assessing ammunition were similar (2.7, SD = 1.3 versus 2.98–3.29) [53].