Figure 29.—The main prey of wolves in northern Minnesota is the white-tailed deer. (Photo courtesy of L. D. Mech.)
Figure 30.—Moose are also killed by wolves. (Photo courtesy of Allan Taylor.)
The remains of 93 wolf-killed deer, and 49 probable wolf-kills, were examined for age, sex, and condition and were compared with a sample of 433 hunter-killed deer from the same general area. The wolf-killed deer were generally much older than the hunter-kills and had a significantly higher percentage of jaw and limb abnormalities (see Mech and Frenzel, [page 35]).
Figure 31.—Only a few wolf-killed moose were located during the study. (Photo courtesy of Laurence Pringle.)
Until recently the only observations of wolves hunting deer were those reported by Stenlund (1955) for northern Minnesota. He described two reports of actual observations and two reports of interpretations of tracks in the snow, all successful hunts. Since that time several descriptions of successful and unsuccessful hunts have also been published (Mech 1966b, Rutter and Pimlott 1968, Pimlott et al. 1969, Mech 1970). Nevertheless, many more observations must be made before generalizations can be formed.