The DNR Tells You to Protect Fawns. Its Own Policies Are Killing Them by the Thousands
- Randall Tlachac
- Jun 26
- 2 min read
What the DNR does not tell you is that its own management policies are doing far more damage to the next generation of deer than any well-meaning hiker ever could.
Across the DNR recognized 30,000 square miles of Minnesota wolf range, wolves kill an estimated 27,000 to 45,000 deer fawns every year. This is not a hunting organization's estimate or a political talking point. It is the product of applying thirty-year-old DNR-cited science — Kunkel and Mech's 1994 study of wolf and bear predation on radio-collared fawns in the Superior National Forest — to the DNR's own current deer population data. The math is straightforward. The implications are not comfortable.
What makes this inexcusable is the agency's own behavior with its own research. The DNR's deer population model — the model that sets every antlerless permit quota in every deer permit area in Minnesota — cites the Kunkel and Mech study in its methods section. Then it extracts nothing from it. No wolf-specific fawn mortality rate. No link between fawn survival and wolf population size. No geographic adjustment for the fact that the northeast zone — the lowest-productivity deer range in the state, at 1.55 fawns per adult doe — is simultaneously the highest wolf-density zone in the state. The model simply uses a generic fawn survival range drawn from studies across six states and treats every fawn in Minnesota as equally likely to reach autumn.
They are not. Not in wolf range. And the DNR has known it for thirty years. Deer Management Unit 11 has declined 46 percent in five years. Unit 9 has declined 42 percent. The DNR projects both will recover during mild winters. They will not — because the fawns the model assumes are reaching November are being killed in June, at rates the model does not see and has never been designed to see.
The agency tells the public to protect fawns. It should start by building a deer management model that counts the ones wolves are killing.
Read the Full Study
Wolf Predation on Deer Fawns by Deer Management Unit
Minnesota Wolf Range North of Interstate 94 — Annual Fawn Kill Estimates
Sources: Michel & Giudice (2024) Deer Population Model Table 1 | Kunkel & Mech (1994) | Wildlife Oversight | May 2026
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The author is a wildlife management consultant and longtime Minnesota hunter with nearly three decades of service on Minnesota DNR citizen oversight committees.
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed by the guest author in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Hunters for Hunters.
The DNR used this same practice collaring moose and moose calves back in 2013. 25 of the 34 calf moose, and 26 of 111 adult moose they collared had died by January of that year.
https://www.carleton.edu/voice/stories/the-mystery-of-the-disappearing-moose/
The DNR needs to keep their hands off these animals! Their "Studies" are killing our wildlife! They can watch these animals from afar like the rest of us!