Wolf–Deer and Guild Camera-trap Detections Across Wisconsin’s Statewide Wolf Range (2018–2025), Resolved by Deer Class: Buck Selection in the Hard-Antler Season, Bears and Fawns, and Class-Specific Reference Values for Displacement

Damian Anthony Vraniak

A statewide analysis of wolf-enriched Snapshot Wisconsin camera data (Vraniak 2026d) reported four things: wolves following deer, a temporary rise in that following after the February 2021 wolf harvest, displacement of deer by wolves, and avoidance of people across five co-occurring species. All of it treated deer as a single class. This companion resolves the deer into antlered bucks, antlerless does, and fawns. Each class is analyzed within the season in which it can actually be measured reliably from a photograph. The record is the same statewide extract (7,791,771 detections on 5,371 cameras, 2018–2025; 461 sequential wolf–deer encounters), the measures are identical, and before any new analysis the data pipeline was required to reproduce the parent study’s published values exactly, which it did. The wild turkey again serves as the control, now resolved by class. A turkey poses no danger to deer, so each deer class’s return delay after a turkey is that class’s own reference value. The classes differ substantially (bucks 2.21×, fawns 1.84×, does 1.36×). Raw comparisons between classes therefore overstate differences in fear. Four results were obtained: (1) In the hard-antler months (September–December), an antlered deer is reliably a buck. In those months the wolf’s nearest deer was a buck 1.40× more often than the bucks’ share of deer detections t the same cameras would predict (P = 0.004). In the October–November rut the selection rose to 1.48×. The same test run across the whole year finds almost nothing (1.10×), because for most of the year antlers cannot separate the sexes. (2) The bear’s and the coyote’s following of deer resolve to the same target and the same season. When a bear and a fawn passed the same camera within half an hour in May–August, the bear was the second-comer 82% of the time; behind a doe, 59% (P = 0.00001). The coyote behind a fawn was second 76% of the time; behind a doe, 49% — chance (P < 10⁻¹⁷). The coyote followed a median 5.1 minutes behind the fawn, tighter than the bear (11 minutes) and as tight as the wolf behind any deer (5.9 minutes). In the warm months the coyote did not follow does at all; its following arrow pointed only at the fawn. For both hunters the pursuit fades by fall. (3) Compared each against its own class reference, paired within camera (June–November), the bear is the only species that significantly displaces all three classes (bucks 1.55× over the reference, P < 10⁻⁶; does 1.21×; fawns 1.22×). The buck’s raw delay after a bear (4.29×) is the largest return value in the record. The coyote displaces no class at all (0.99–1.01×). The fawn’s delay exceeds its reference only after the bear and the bobcat — the two predators that kill summer fawns at close range. (4) In the hard-antler months the buck looks to be much warier of people than the doe (2.17× against 1.54×). That difference nearly levels once each sex is measured against its own reference (bucks 1.08×, does 1.15× over their references, paired within camera). Most of the buck’s extra delay after a person is the buck’s extra delay after anything. The turkey, resolved by class, also shows a small preference for the company of does: its nearest deer is a doe 1.07× more often than availability predicts (P = 0.0001). There is no arrow of following in it — the bird is second-comer at chance in every season and class. Resolved by class and season, the record separates pursuit (the wolf and the rutting buck; the bear, the coyote, and the summer fawn), displacement (owned by the bear, absent in the coyote), and company (the turkey among the does) — three relationships that pooled analyses blur into one. The coyote states the separation most sharply: it pursues the fawn on the trail, yet no deer class treats its passage as a reason to stay away — it is pursuit without displacement.