Wolves hunting and killing deer on roads and trails

Here is a collection of videos showing wolves hunting—and in two instances killing—deer on roads and trails in our area. These observations are the basis for a new scientific paper we just published which provides some insight into how people are indirectly influencing wolf predation on deer…here is a synopsis of this new research.

First a little background: there is a large amount of evidence that indicates when people build roads, trails, power lines, etc.  in previously undeveloped areas, they impact wolf-prey relationships. And the more road and trails there are, the bigger the impact.

In particular, by creating (and maintaining) this network of “linear features” in the ecosystem, people inadvertently create excellent travel routes for wolves who are able to move faster and cover more ground on linear features.

And this increase in travel efficiency likely means that wolves are able to find vulnerable prey more easily than they would be able to if there were not roads, trails, etc. Thus, these road and trails likely make wolves more efficient predators.

But one question remained somewhat unanswered: do wolves use "linear features" just to travel around and find prey that are a good ways off of the linear features, or are wolves actually hunting and killing prey on the linear features themselves?

In other words, are the linear features just travel corridors for wolves or are they also active hunting grounds for wolves?

Our trail camera observations over several years clearly indicate that wolves detect, hunt, chase down, and kill adult deer and deer fawns on human-made linear features…meaning that linear features are not simply travel corridors for wolves.

We have observations of wolves hunting deer on linear features during summer and winter, alone and with pack members, during day and night, and in almost every month of the year. So this appears to be a pretty common occurrence.

Notably. we found that wolves used a variety of different kind of human-made linear features to hunt and kill deer from big features such as well-maintained logging roads and snowmobile trails to smaller ATV trails and hiking trails.  

In sum, this new work, in conjunction with other research, provides just a bit more information about how people influence the predation behavior of wolves.

We will have much more to share on this topic soon as we have some more research being published soon that will provide a much more in-depth look on how people are having a dramatic impact on wolf predation on deer fawns. Stay tuned for that!

Citation for our new paper:
Gable et al. 2023. Video observation of wolves hunting ungulate of linear features. Food Webs.

Link to PDF of paper in comments:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...

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