Thats often the issue. Damn militia dwarves refuse to break off an engagement and continue fighting until death by exhaustion.
I broke into the third caverns yesterday, found adamantine, decided i wanted it. No wildlife anywhere, shits golden. So i send some dorfs down to seal off the cavern edges. Meanwhile i have a miner seeking out every last corner of the map, and in the process find where the wildlife has been hiding; a pair of witchlights trapped behind a fully grown tunnel tube tree and the volcano magma pipe, and the map edge. The witchlights go bonkers for the chance to escape and rush the hole before i can seal it off, and the miner gets into a long drawn out fight, breaking away the gas orbs around either of them, rendering them both unable to harm her. She eventually kills one and the other gets walled off from the fort. So i have a team wall off the exit to its entry point at the map edge. Now i have a captive critter which means... no more wildlife will spawn in that cavern! Did the same in the second cavern with some trogs and walled it off too. The first i never really explored because its all underwater, so no point visiting it, right?
During the same playthrough i missed a couple mandates from my mayor and baron, who has since become the count, and one of the guards just beat my starting 7 metalsmith to death. The other guy got a month in jail.
I never did find a source of iron on the map, so ive been working with gold, tetrahedrite, and sphalerite and imports to produce some alloys, exporting tons of masterwork copper bolts and rose gold crafts for huge money and importing things like steel anvils and iron gear from the humans. Ill see what ive got below the third caverns, maybe there will be a cassiterite? Bronze would be sweet.
I made a nice rose gold shrine to the goddess of nature and beauty. The smiths kept producing statues of other dwarves embracing her, so i had to commission an image with her as the central figure. Shes being held up by two nymphs and admired by worshipping deer people, while striking a menacing pose. I named it something terribly lewd and suggestive.