And what they eat - they do eat some carrion, and they pick that up. Brown is helping DNR biologist Sam Merrill with a new kind of wolf study. It came off a wolf recently - and if you get within ten feet of it, you'll understand what Brown means about the smell. But Merrill says under that eyewatering veneer lurks a space-age piece of equipment. The technology itself is only somewhat new - it's known as GPS, for Global Position System.
Many hunters use similar devices to keep from getting lost.
It stores that information on a chip, along with the date and time of the reading. Then I hone in on it, retrieve the collar, hook it up to the computer, and download 1,500 points of beautiful data. Four to six collars have been in use since spring, with dramatic results. The GPS readings show the wolves' haunts and habits, day and night. The satellite sees what no human in a helicopter can.