Dhurtubise wrote:I remember reading a study that showed that on average a pack of wolves of typically 5 to 8 animals will take down one Deer every 3 to 4 days. You can expect one pack to take down about 100 deer every year. Somewhere on this site I read that you guys have about 1000 animals, so that would mean roughly 170 packs. So wolves in Wisconsin would take roughly 17,000 deer per year. That sounds like a fair number.
Here in Ontario, we also have moose. Wolf packs are either Deer specialists, or moose specialist, and in rare cases woodland caribou also form a good part of their diets if they live in the right area. We have many more Wolves, But they also have a lot more prey items to hunt. Our deer densities are kept low as a result but every year we see more deer and less moose. The, the MNR, attributes this mostly to competition for food and and habitat, but also that they carry brain-worms which is lethal for moose. So there is a gradual habitat replacement going on especially in northwestern Ontario.
On another note, It is highly unlikely you would ever have to compete with wolves for one of your kills. Wolves are notoriously sheepish around humans. We never see them even though there are plenty around.
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Makes you wonder why? A weapon puts humans as the top predator. They can't know if we have a weapon or not though.
