Boundary Waters Deer: Life Among Wolves

Join wildlife biologist Michael E. Nelson as he takes you into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota to radio track deer and wolves. Written in nontechnical language for teens and adults inspired by wildlife, he shares his three decades of discovering how deer survive in the constant presence of wolves sharing the same wilderness home. You enter the wilderness, flying, canoeing, snowshoeing, or skiing to locate wolf-killed deer. You follow in the footsteps of wolves as they chase a deer in knee-deep snow, discover the blood trail of the first contact with the deer, and finally reach hardpacked snow where parts of the deer are scattered under spruce trees where individual wolves ate parts of the deer separated from pack members. It is a single act of the struggle of survival replayed over millions of years. It is a current of energy flowing through the hoofbeats of deer to the footsteps of wolves. You live-capture and radio-collar one deer family, experiencing the blast of a rocket-net, the stink of burned black powder smoke, and an angry entangled doe and fawns, subdued before being sedated with drugs. The mother's movements with her fawns include a pattern of a separate summer and winter home range, six miles apart from each other. For twenty years covering four generations, the family's does continue using that same home range pattern, learned by fawns following their mothers, however, most bucks establish new home ranges. For the does, this is a living movement tradition continuing to the end of their lives. To test the strength of home range tradition, you capture and release GPS-collared does five to ten miles away from their home ranges. Most make roaming movements before eventually returning to their home ranges, indicating a strong attachment to a specific familiar site, perhaps enhancing survival. You fly with Nelson on nine winter wolf radio tracking flights and observe deer interacting with wolves. Descending to fi

About the Author :
Michael E. Nelson was Wildlife Research Biologist for the Federal wolf and deer research in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Area in northeastern Minnesota for thirty-six years (1974-2010). The results of the deer research are published in a half dozen scientific journals. He lives in northern Arizona.