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Abstract For many people around the world, especially in Indigenous communities, seasonal changes affect the availability and desirability of different types of food. Assessing the relationship between seasonality, sociocultural preferences and hunting patterns is vital for understanding how these populations harness seasonal food production dynamics to create dietary resilience. In Madagascar's Makira Protected Area, local residents rely on hunting wild animals for nutrition. However, many of the species that they hunt are threatened due to a combination of pressures, including from hunting, habitat loss and climate change. To protect these species and meet the needs of local people, understanding the drivers of hunting practices is critical. Building on social–ecological systems theory and a biocultural calendar framework, we combined multiple data sources to analyse the interplay between wild animal population dynamics, availability of food resources for animals, hunting effort and catch and people's stated taste preferences among wildlife species by season throughout the year. We found no significant correlation between the estimated density of species and hunting success. However, we found that peak snare hunting effort occurred in April, several months after maximum fruit availability and coinciding with the period when local people reported that frugivorous lemurs tasted the best. Hunting success for frugivorous lemurs also showed a strong seasonal trend, peaking in April. Catch rates of animals with other diet types exhibited less seasonality, but respondents still indicated a preference for eating various species during April–May. Survey data indicate a clear taste preference for frugivorous lemurs over animals with other diet types (such as omnivores, carnivores, or folivores). Human taste preferences for frugivorous lemurs also showed the strongest seasonality. Our findings support the hypothesis that hunters pursue frugivorous lemurs when catch success may be more likely, which coincides with the time when they taste best, possibly due to the animals' recent fruit consumption. This highlights the complex relationships between ecological dynamics, human preferences and hunting practices in the Makira Protected Area. Understanding these interactions, while also considering alternative explanations, can inform effective conservation and food security strategies that consider both wildlife protection and the nutritional needs of local communities. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.