We flew a total of 480 hours during this and related research, mainly
during January through March 1967 and December 1968 through March 1969;
about one-third of this time was devoted primarily to searching for
kills. Jaws were examined from 93 wolf-kills and 49 probable
wolf-kills.
[Illustration: _Figure 6.--All hunter-killed deer examined were checked
for age. (Photo courtesy of L. D. Frenzel.)_]
Hunter-check stations yielded information from 335 deer (fig. 6), and
data on 98 additional hunter-killed deer were contributed by other
hunters. Incisors were collected from 82 of 214 hunter-killed deer
checked that were older than yearlings; comparisons were then made
between ages of the deer based on incisor sectioning and those based on
field checks using the wear method. Similarly, incisors were sectioned
from 195 wolf-killed and hunter-killed deer older than yearlings that
had been aged by the tooth-wear method in the laboratory, so that these
two methods could be compared (Kuehn 1970). (Note: incisor-sectioning
is unnecessary for fawns and yearlings because animals of these ages
can be aged objectively by the progress of tooth replacement.)
Because age or sex distributions might differ in the various subsamples
of deer examined during this study, these parameters were compared in
subsamples of both wolf-kills and hunter-kills (table 1). No
significant differences were found in the age or sex structures between
the known wolf-kills and "probable" wolf-kills, so these subsamples
were pooled and considered wolf-kills for all subsequent comparisons.
Three significant differences in sex ratio were found among the
subsamples of wolf-kills: (1) wolves killed more female fawns than male
fawns, but more male adults than female adults (table 2); (2) more of
the adults killed in the hunted area were females, while in the
wilderness more males were taken (table 3); and (3) after January 1969,
when snow was unusually deep, 57 percent of the deer killed were
females, compared with only 38 percent before this date.
_Table 1.--Results of statistical comparisons between various samples
of deer kills from northeastern Minnesota_
%: _percent_
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: : : : : Results of :
: : : : : comparisons: :
Sample: : :Sample: :--------------------: Direction
size :Sample :VS: size :Sample : [20]Age :[21]Sex : of
:description: : :description :structures: ratios : difference
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Wolf-kills:[22] Wolf-kills:[22]