chigacotrs-your numbers are pretty close. Although 20 deer a year per wolf is slightly on the high end. It's more in the area of 10-15, but does vary greatly. In a tough winter such as this one, I would expect that to probably reach up to 20 for some wolves because of the ease of hunting. I never meent to say this is an insignificant figure...just very very small. In north central and north eastern MN, wolves account for the deaths of somewhere around 5% of deer in the same range, and about 2-3% of the entire states herd. To be honest with I'm not positive on numbers for wisconsin or michigan but I do know MN has 5-6x as many wolves as both those states...so I imagine they would be significantly less.
Lungbuster...not sure where you get your information from. I'd definetily like to see it...becasue despite your blatant insults to my research, I do try and stay as unbiased as possible. As far as wolves killing for pure sport...this is another example of perpetuating the image of wolves as savage killers. In biology is called the "conservation of energy." It takes a ton of energy to take down a deer(usually), and wolves won't waste that energy for "sport." The only time a situation like that may come up is when they are teaching pups to hunt, which isn't often. If they make a kill, it's because they need to eat, and they will eat it.
lungbuster...I'm not trying to insult you. I'm trying to help you see the issue from a conservationalists pov. I hope we can both agree that we don't want to see wolves go extinct. I can agree with you that limited control isn't neccessarily a bad idea either. Anti-wolf fear mongering is not a means of control though...it will only lead to extinction. As far as your comments on the DNR...you think a "pro-wolf agenda" among the people who are most educated and experienced on the issue is a coinsidence? Or some huge DNR conspiracy to ruin whitetail hunting? Most of them are sportmen just like ourselves. And you'd be hard put to find a biologist worth his salt that thinks Cronic Wasting Disease can be eradicated entirely.
