Patterns of Gray Wolf and White-tailed Deer Movement: Local, County and Regional Camera-trap Data (2018-2025)

Damian Anthony Vraniak

The gray wolf (Canis lupus) is the apex predator of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), but on a single restored site it can be too rare to study. A year-round survey of about ten cameras at nine fixed stations on an approximately 100-ha prairie–savanna complex located within Washburn County, Wisconsin, yielded too few wolf detections over three years (11,473 animal detections, 2024–2026) to analyze wolf movement. The same camera-trap method was applied at a broader scale using data for Washburn County and too few detections were available for analysis (55 wolf detections, two sequential wolf–deer events). A wolf-enriched extract of the Snapshot Wisconsin citizen-science camera network for the five surrounding counties (Barron, Burnett, Bayfield, Douglas, and Sawyer; 525 cameras, 294,031 camera-days, 634,214 detections, 2018–2025; 1,856 wolf detections on 197 cameras) provided sufficient data for analysis. For each wolf detection the nearest deer within 30 min was scored as co-occurrence, follow, or precede. The results were tested against a day-reassignment permutation null (each wolf detection reassigned to a random day at the same camera and season). Wolves arrived after the deer in 75% of 116 sequential encounters (null 50%, P = 0.002; median lag 5.8 min, P = 0.002), most strongly in the spring denning and fall rut seasons (0.88 and 0.87, both P = 0.002; median lag 3.3 min in spring, 10.5 min in fall). Wolf detections were predominantly nocturnal (62.4% between dusk and dawn), with low diel activity overlap with humans (0.301) and high overlap with bucks (0.869). Antlered bucks were over-represented among deer nearest a wolf relative to availability - bucks were 14.3% of deer recorded but 26.3% of deer nearest a wolf (selection ratio 1.84, versus 0.89 for does and 0.52 for fawns; χ² = 12.53), rising to 1.92 during the fall rut, remaining elevated within the night alone (1.67), indicating the association is not attributable solely to shared nocturnality. Deer returned to a site 2.24× more slowly after a wolf than on their baseline interval (110 cameras), a larger delay than after humans (1.83×, 432 cameras). Compared to this regional baseline, deer at the local stewarded home site returned close to their normal schedule (≈ 1.05). Two companion associations on the same trails — the wild turkey closely associated with does by day and the black bear following fawns in fall (0.82, P = 0.002) — provided some community context to interpret results. The results indicated that the regional wolf–deer relationship is structured by season, deer sex, and diel timing, in contrast to other species (bear, turkey), and that our local site-level deer tolerated us more than the deer tolerated people in the surrounding counties.