Late during our unusually unproductive, chaotic hunting season in Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region in 2023, my family of avid buck hunters and I began to suspect that our remaining three deer per square-mile had prematurely migrated to their traditional wintering area located miles east of our deer hunting area. On the final morning of his hunt, my grandson, Tyler, hiked to the eastern edge of that wintering area, where he discovered a great number of freshly made deer tracks, revealing that deer had indeed migrated there much earlier than usual. In the past, our deer did not normally migrate to this area until about Christmas, regardless of snow depth.

Based on what other hunters who hunted in various other parts of the Arrowhead Region that year had to say about that hunting season, plus published outcries made by many other irate deer hunters during following weeks, early migrations to distant wintering areas had very likely occurred throughout most of this wilderness region that November. After we discovered that an early migration had again taken place last year, we are now wondering if this is going to plague us again this year.

There is now another unexpected complication for us to look forward to in this region. Whitetail does with fawns and yearlings to care for were forced to almost completely abandon traditional habits, home ranges and once-effective evasive tactics to avoid being completely overwhelmed by starving wolves in 2018. They became nocturnal (active at night only); they abandoned their small traditional home ranges (averaging 126 acres) located within square-mile home/breeding ranges of dominant breeding bucks); they formed small herds with other mature does with young; these herds bedded, fed and watered together at widely separated sites and never returned to any of them during hunting seasons; and these doe herds thereafter utilized overlapping home ranges two to three square-miles in size. How’s all this for ruining the daily plans of wolves, dominant breeding bucks searching for does in heat, and we stand hunters attempting to key on trophy-class bucks?

Seven years have passed since mature does began doing all the above, meaning that fawns and yearlings born in this region during these years have not been trained by their mothers to maintain former traditional habits, home ranges and evasive tactics that were characteristic of these deer during preceding centuries. Future generations of mature, Arrowhead Region does will therefore continue to train their fawns and yearlings to survive once-overabundant, desperately hungry wolves, because this is all they now know to teach their young. Even when more numerous again, Arrowhead Region whitetails there will therefore continue to be the most difficult of whitetails to hunt.

Also in the future, deer there will continue to be forced to adapt to avoiding the discomforts of increasingly common, unseasonably warm temperatures in fall and early winter after growing their winter fur. This is due to worldwide climate change likely to be made worse by the continuing reluctance of world leaders to reduce burning of fossil fuels.

Before 2018, our whitetails were becoming nocturnal whenever the temperature exceeded 50 degrees during hunting seasons. Our deer will therefore continue to be most active, if not completely active, during cooler nighttime hours in future hunting seasons. During past hunting seasons since 2018, great numbers of starving wolves were forcing our whitetails to be nocturnal whatever the temperature happened to be. It didn’t matter if snow was on the ground, and it was cold; whitetails were nocturnal anyway. I’m therefore hoping that being nocturnal won’t continue to be a permanent whitetail habit after enough wolves have finally perished from starvation.

After the length of time it has taken to get to the point when there were only about three deer left per square mile remaining in much of this region, and Mother Nature had to take sole charge of ruthlessly remedying the highly destructive ratio of meat-eating predators (wolves) to their prey (whitetails) in the Arrowhead Region, made worse by the stunning failure of the Endangered Species Act to protect wolves during the past 24 years, it is even quite possible that Arrowhead Region whitetails may never resume the predictable habits and behavior that characterized them throughout past centuries.

Unless great numbers of whitetails from surrounding regions (west and south), where deer were not forced to suffer the consequences of wolves being protected by the Endangered Species Act for 49 years, move in and become dominant.

What all this means is that, I believe, after enough wolves have finally perished from starvation to allow whitetails in this region to become at least half as numerous as they once were (22 per square mile in the 1950s and early 1960s), they will not resume being as predictable and easy to hunt as they originally were. During future hunting seasons, Arrowhead whitetails will continue to survive the only ways they have become accustomed to during the past 24 years: Using precautions forged by overwhelming numbers of desperately hungry, day- and night-hunting wolves and unusually warm temperatures becoming more common.

Trophy-class bucks will surely become more numerous again, but much fewer will be seen by average deer hunters who have been taught to ignore wind directions and use formerly effective, traditional hunting methods, lures, baits, calls, stand sites and off-trail vehicles that, after 40 years of use by 15 million deer hunters, logically became identifying characteristics of deer hunters. All of this, unfortunately, makes today’s deer hunters hugely easier for mature bucks and other deer in this region (or any other region) to identify and avoid.

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