A recent study in Ecology Letters (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122605227/abstract) finds that as wolves age, their hunting abilities eventually do dull and wear thin. While this seems like common sense since we look at ourselves, the animal we know best, and see that our performance goes down with age, many researchers thought wolves and other wild animals usually did not live long enough to see a performance reduction.

This research by Daniel MacNulty (Dr. at Michigan Technological University) and his team shows that wolves do in fact find a dwindling affect to their hunting performance as they grow older. Preliminary data shows that the population ages of wolves is not consistent, and their ability to impact populations of prey animals like deer and elk goes down as the wolf population ages.