Originally Posted by
natimage
Coming from Wisconsin though I don't trust much the dnr says sometimes when it comes to deer population...they're starting a much better survey and study to see how much the presence of predators effects the population of the deer herd...It'll be a multi year study but should shed some light on how much it effects mortality of healthy animals or if they primarily take out the sick and injured.
Hey, I'm no huge fan of the DNR here, either. But the research they refer to in that link I posted wasn't done by the DNR, it was an outside organization (at least I'm pretty sure it was). I talked to the big game ecologist in Madison this week about the new study. He said it'll take 5 years to complete and will look at all kinds of predators, not just wolves.
The only reason I spoke up in the first place is that I think people hear the wolf and assume their hunting is going to suffer. I've seen a lot of research that would contradict that idea. There have been a lot of reports of wolves on my hunting property and I've seen tracks that would be hard to classify as anything other than a wolf. But I'm still seeing deer and bagged my biggest buck this year. The wolves in my area haven't destroyed the herd.