ORR, Minn. – Wildlife researchers often focus on rates of survival and causes of mortality.

Sometimes one animal serves to illustrate both.

Within minutes of the start of a field expedition in northern Minnesota to learn about gray wolves, Thomas Gable and Austin Homkes provided our group with a fresh, up-close, real-world example of wolf life and death.

The Voyageurs Wolf Project researchers pulled a stiff, sheet-covered animal out of storage and placed it on the ground outside their workshop.

They pulled back the cover and revealed a wolf pup, 5 months old and 29 pounds. The young wolf had recently been struck and killed by a vehicle on a nearby road.

"Two things," said Gable, founder and leader of VWP. "Most wolf pups don't make it to their first birthday. And although deer numbe

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