Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 430: Jon McRoberts and the Story of One Buck's 185-Mile Rut Journey

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Ep. 430: Jon McRoberts and the Story of One Buck's 185-Mile Rut Journey · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
0:05
Speaker 1: modern whitetail hunter, and now your host Mark Kenyon. Hey'll,
0:14
Speaker 1: welcome to Where to Hunt. I'm your guest host Tony Peterson,
0:16
Speaker 1: and today we're talking with dear researcher Dr John McRoberts
0:20
Speaker 1: about a radio collared buck that walked nearly two hundred miles.
0:39
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wired to Hunt, which is brought to you
0:41
Speaker 1: by First Light. I am your guest host, Tony Peterson.
0:46
Speaker 1: Mark is out of the office this week. He is
0:48
Speaker 1: down I think he said at a Cosplay convention in Tuscaloosa.
0:53
Speaker 1: He said he was gonna be a anime samurai or something. Anyway,
0:57
Speaker 1: I hope Mark's having fun down there. I've got the
1:00
Speaker 1: rains to Where to Hunt today, and I've got a
1:02
Speaker 1: fascinating guest with me. His name is Dr John McRoberts,
1:06
Speaker 1: and he's done all kinds of wildlife research in his life,
1:10
Speaker 1: some really cool international studies, but he's also led some
1:14
Speaker 1: studies here in the States, including a pretty comprehensive two
1:19
Speaker 1: regions study in Missouri that they're still parsing through all
1:23
Speaker 1: the data. But it's the one that came uh that
1:26
Speaker 1: came out recently where this buck that they had Collard
1:32
Speaker 1: walked nearly two hundred miles from his home range as
1:35
Speaker 1: a three and a half year old and kind of
1:37
Speaker 1: set the dear world on fire a little bit, because
1:40
Speaker 1: a lot of us think that dear you know, stick
1:42
Speaker 1: to a core range, they disperse when they're young bucks,
1:45
Speaker 1: and then they find a nice area they like and
1:47
Speaker 1: they hang out there. And this GPS study kind of
1:51
Speaker 1: turn that around on its head and really has has
1:54
Speaker 1: opened up some possibilities that maybe that buck that you
1:56
Speaker 1: think is going to live on your farm forever, he
1:59
Speaker 1: could just lie out and take off. It also kind
2:02
Speaker 1: of explores the possibility that this was an anomalous one
2:05
Speaker 1: off event. Uh. John has so much interesting information. It's
2:10
Speaker 1: always it's always a pleasure to talk to wildlife researchers
2:12
Speaker 1: who are also passionate hunters, and he definitely Uh is
2:18
Speaker 1: that I think you're gonna absolutely love this episode. John,
2:22
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Tony,
2:26
Speaker 1: it's a pleasure to be here with you today. So
2:28
Speaker 1: you're you're like a secret celebrity in the hunting industry
2:32
Speaker 1: right now because you're you're you're one of the one
2:34
Speaker 1: of the folks behind this research study that's getting all
2:38
Speaker 1: this this crazy press in the in the white tail space,
2:41
Speaker 1: specifically on this buck who took a crazy journey that
2:44
Speaker 1: you guys tracked. And we're gonna get to that a
2:47
Speaker 1: little later, but let's let's talk a little bit about
2:49
Speaker 1: how you got into wildlife biology and you've you've done
2:52
Speaker 1: some really cool research not just with white tales but
2:55
Speaker 1: but other game animals as well. Where did that come from? Well,
3:00
Speaker 1: like a lot of biologists these days, I got interested
3:03
Speaker 1: in the field because I grew up hunting. I mean
3:05
Speaker 1: from a young age. My dad had me in the
3:07
Speaker 1: duck blind with him, and then that transferred to other
3:10
Speaker 1: hunting opportunities. Growing up in Missouri and we were a
3:13
Speaker 1: family farming. UH had that background going for me and
3:17
Speaker 1: so always access to a spot to hunt. And that
3:21
Speaker 1: interest in hunting blossomed into an undergraduate degree and Fisheries
3:26
Speaker 1: and Wildlife from the University of Missouri. And I was
3:29
Speaker 1: never a great student and grad's grad school was never
3:32
Speaker 1: on my radar, but I was having a lot of
3:34
Speaker 1: fun studying wildlife and helping with different research projects led
3:41
Speaker 1: me to some interesting travels and it just kept kept snowballing.
3:45
Speaker 1: So you wanted to your growing up with your background hunting,
3:49
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing in Missouri, you knew you wanted to
3:51
Speaker 1: be around that, you know, and there's only so many
3:55
Speaker 1: career paths to take, right. You could be a conservation
3:57
Speaker 1: officer maybe, or you can you can get into science.
4:00
Speaker 1: That's kind of kind of it, right, Yeah. And one
4:04
Speaker 1: of the funny things was I didn't even connect the
4:08
Speaker 1: dots when I was high school and younger that you
4:11
Speaker 1: could do this as a career. And so I knew
4:13
Speaker 1: that there were folks working in the in the field,
4:17
Speaker 1: but I didn't know how you got there. And so
4:19
Speaker 1: I started off as a as a biochemistry major in
4:23
Speaker 1: college and then figured out there was a fisheries and
4:26
Speaker 1: wildlife program and slowly started trick laing over into that,
4:30
Speaker 1: into that space. And it was a fantastic life decision.
4:35
Speaker 1: And I've never looked back. And you ended up in
4:38
Speaker 1: a in a position where you get to ask a question.
4:42
Speaker 1: You so something in your experience makes you ask this
4:47
Speaker 1: big question that you that you get to design a
4:49
Speaker 1: study around, to work with some people to design a
4:51
Speaker 1: study around. When you were growing up, was it, you know,
4:54
Speaker 1: were you looking at those green heads coming in or
4:56
Speaker 1: those deer walking through the field, were you thinking Do
4:59
Speaker 1: you feel like you were thinking a little deeper about
5:01
Speaker 1: it than the average hunter, where you're like, why are
5:02
Speaker 1: those deer here? Why do they do this? Or I
5:06
Speaker 1: wouldn't say thinking deeper. All of us as hunters are
5:09
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what the next step is for
5:13
Speaker 1: for those long beards, for those green heads, for whatever
5:16
Speaker 1: we're after. And so, yeah, there are a lot of
5:19
Speaker 1: questions from the deer stand and from the duck blind
5:23
Speaker 1: and as you're walking the fields for pheasants, just trying
5:25
Speaker 1: to figure out why are these species doing what they're doing,
5:29
Speaker 1: Why are they in this location and not the other location?
5:32
Speaker 1: And that was to be, you know, to enjoy hunting
5:37
Speaker 1: a bit more, to understand what made these species make
5:42
Speaker 1: the decisions they made. And so I think that's something
5:45
Speaker 1: that all of us hunters share together, and I had
5:48
Speaker 1: the good fortune to turn that into a career. Yeah,
5:51
Speaker 1: you and I were just chatting before we started here
5:53
Speaker 1: about you've got a little little, tiny baby at home,
5:56
Speaker 1: and I was telling you about my time with raising
5:58
Speaker 1: two babies at the same time time. And I think
6:01
Speaker 1: one thing that kids remind you of, especially when they
6:03
Speaker 1: get to a certain age, is they're they're just curious.
6:07
Speaker 1: They're asking questions all the time. And it's so it
6:11
Speaker 1: makes you think, like how jaded sometimes we can get
6:13
Speaker 1: as adults, or how we can kind of just like
6:15
Speaker 1: make up our mind that you know, X, Y and
6:16
Speaker 1: Z or this way we don't have to think about
6:18
Speaker 1: them anymore. And hunting fishing too, of course, but hunting
6:22
Speaker 1: is sort of a nice conduit to curiosity, Like it
6:25
Speaker 1: keeps you you know, because you're never gonna master it,
6:29
Speaker 1: and it keeps you thinking because you see things out
6:31
Speaker 1: there that you you just naturally have to question because
6:34
Speaker 1: it's something new or something different. I think that's one
6:35
Speaker 1: of the best things about it. I would agree entirely.
6:39
Speaker 1: And it's you're you're right, you don't master it, but
6:42
Speaker 1: you can hopefully get a bit better the more you
6:44
Speaker 1: learn and the more you study. Yeah, and if somebody
6:47
Speaker 1: tells you they've mastered it, there they're full of ship.
6:51
Speaker 1: Feel free to run away. So you go to college,
6:54
Speaker 1: you have this moment where you say, you know this
6:56
Speaker 1: is this is a career. Fisheries and wildlife research is
6:59
Speaker 1: something I could I could get into. Where where do
7:01
Speaker 1: you go from there. Well, the next step was gaining
7:06
Speaker 1: experience and the you know, the average college student in
7:11
Speaker 1: this field would spend a few summers or a year
7:14
Speaker 1: following graduation doing what we'd call technician work, and there
7:18
Speaker 1: you're on a research project. And that is one of
7:21
Speaker 1: the funniest parts of this whole career path because you're
7:25
Speaker 1: getting such a diverse exposure to wildlife research. I uh did,
7:33
Speaker 1: did tech work on blackfooted ferrets in eastern Montana. I
7:37
Speaker 1: spent some time in South Africa, spent some time catching waterfowl,
7:41
Speaker 1: and then right before college, I had an interesting chance
7:44
Speaker 1: to go to Western China and work with the Smithsonian
7:47
Speaker 1: doing panda research, and so spent six months in China
7:52
Speaker 1: and then came back and started grad school at Texas
7:55
Speaker 1: Tech and their wildlife program. What did you do in
7:58
Speaker 1: South Africa? That was a variety of projects. I was
8:03
Speaker 1: helping grad students, and so I did everything from radio
8:06
Speaker 1: tracking leopards, which was you know, maybe the pinnacle, to
8:11
Speaker 1: doing vegetation surveys, doing soil surveys. Spent a lot of
8:15
Speaker 1: time digging in the dirt to get soil profiles, and
8:17
Speaker 1: so everything was related to natural resources to wildlife, and
8:22
Speaker 1: I bounced around among grad students and had a ball,
8:26
Speaker 1: And that was really what solidified my my career path.
8:33
Speaker 1: Was that semester in South Africa. Yeah, I'm going to
8:37
Speaker 1: speculate here that growing up as a young man in Missouri,
8:41
Speaker 1: you probably didn't see yourself in South Africa studying leopards
8:45
Speaker 1: or in China studying pandas. No. I didn't. I didn't.
8:49
Speaker 1: Did you Did you ever have any close calls with leopards? No?
8:54
Speaker 1: I really didn't. I wish I had a good leopard story,
8:56
Speaker 1: but they were They had VHF transmitters on them, and
9:00
Speaker 1: we weren't trying to see how close we could get
9:03
Speaker 1: to these leopards. We were trying to get a point
9:06
Speaker 1: and triangulate and plot a location on their map. But
9:09
Speaker 1: we didn't. We had very clear instructions from the professor
9:14
Speaker 1: in charge not to Yeah, not to push it. Good call,
9:18
Speaker 1: good advice, reasonable advice. Yeah, they I got to go
9:22
Speaker 1: to Africa, South Africa in like I think two thousand
9:25
Speaker 1: and seven, and where we were hunting, they said, you know,
9:28
Speaker 1: we've got a pretty healthy leopard population. And when I
9:31
Speaker 1: went over there, I was like, I would love to
9:33
Speaker 1: see a leopard and I was sitting in a sort
9:37
Speaker 1: of a makeshift blind. It was like they kind of
9:39
Speaker 1: a test out spot first, So it was just it
9:41
Speaker 1: wasn't like the big concrete ones they build that are
9:44
Speaker 1: you know, almost impenetrable, right. And I was sitting there
9:48
Speaker 1: and I had all these kudo just go blowing out
9:50
Speaker 1: of there, and I was like, oh, that that was
9:51
Speaker 1: so weird. I mean they took off like knocking over
9:54
Speaker 1: trees and just crazy. And then I had a leopard
9:57
Speaker 1: call behind me, and I was like, I don't want
9:59
Speaker 1: to see a leopard. When you hear that guttural, just
10:03
Speaker 1: you know, it sounds like a saw going through wood,
10:05
Speaker 1: almost like a rough saw. I mean it's just that's
10:08
Speaker 1: that is an animal that commands respect really quickly. Yeah, yea.
10:12
Speaker 1: Through their vocalizations, they just convey power. Yeah. Yeah, they're
10:17
Speaker 1: no joke. And you know that a lot of the
10:19
Speaker 1: natives that we were around over there, that was what
10:21
Speaker 1: they were most scared of. Well, they they deserve respect,
10:26
Speaker 1: no doubt about that. Yeah. We're gonna get to deer
10:29
Speaker 1: in a second. I gotta ask you. Any everybody looks
10:32
Speaker 1: at pandas like they're these uh, sweet lovable teddy bear
10:36
Speaker 1: type of things. Are they secretly kind of pricks or not.
10:40
Speaker 1: I've never called him a prick before. But they aren't
10:43
Speaker 1: the They aren't the cuddly animal that that they get
10:47
Speaker 1: made out to be. I mean, there they you gotta
10:52
Speaker 1: watch yourself around them. And so where I was working
10:55
Speaker 1: was a breeding research facility looking at reproductive behavior oh
10:59
Speaker 1: pain because of the captive breeding interest in this species.
11:03
Speaker 1: And you didn't get too close to the bars on
11:07
Speaker 1: the cage. I mean, you didn't get in there and
11:11
Speaker 1: give them a big bear hug. They had stories of
11:15
Speaker 1: workers at this facility that had been hurt and a
11:19
Speaker 1: panda yawns and you see those canine teeth and it's
11:24
Speaker 1: it's not the cute, cuddly animal that is made out
11:27
Speaker 1: to be. Now, I did get to play with some
11:29
Speaker 1: of the baby panda cubs and that was that was fun. Yeah,
11:34
Speaker 1: I bet it's so interesting. So you so you kind
11:38
Speaker 1: of you go through this phase in your research career
11:41
Speaker 1: where you're starting out and you kind of get to
11:42
Speaker 1: be a globe trotter, go do some really cool stuff.
11:45
Speaker 1: What do you do when you end up back in
11:46
Speaker 1: the States. Well, I want I got back to the
11:50
Speaker 1: States in uh and started grad school in Texas and
11:54
Speaker 1: was doing lesser prairie chicken research and so lesser prairie
11:57
Speaker 1: chickens are getting a lot of press these days because
12:00
Speaker 1: of listing potential and some some conflict and some disagreement
12:06
Speaker 1: between different industries and conservation groups. And so got back
12:11
Speaker 1: here after China and started doing a research project design
12:16
Speaker 1: a aerial survey technique to find lex lesser prairie chicken
12:22
Speaker 1: breeding areas from helicopters, and so got to spent two
12:27
Speaker 1: years flying at low altitudes in Texas and New Mexico
12:32
Speaker 1: developing the technique to find these birds and and get
12:35
Speaker 1: a better idea of what populations were like. And it
12:39
Speaker 1: was the goal. There was the assumption, you know, that
12:42
Speaker 1: the populations were going down because the land use practices
12:45
Speaker 1: and stuff, and you're trying to figure out what the
12:47
Speaker 1: what the a more accurate way to determine populations to
12:50
Speaker 1: follow them or what well it was to get baseline
12:53
Speaker 1: information because everybody saw the writing on the wall that
12:56
Speaker 1: the populations had been declining for a long time, for
12:59
Speaker 1: decade and decades, and that had a companied land use changes,
13:03
Speaker 1: and there were other factors in play. But to start
13:07
Speaker 1: off with, with these conservation efforts, we needed to know
13:11
Speaker 1: where birds were, where birds were not, and how to
13:15
Speaker 1: survey their range, what was going on with them That
13:20
Speaker 1: was knock in the population down. Um. It was more feature,
13:25
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a variety of things. It was
13:27
Speaker 1: different grazing practices, it was different land use practices putting
13:31
Speaker 1: up features on the landscape like you know, telephone poles
13:36
Speaker 1: for example, that provide purchase for raptors and that would
13:39
Speaker 1: nail them. There were industries expanding in this area of
13:43
Speaker 1: oil and gas ranching, industries that I'm not saying aren't
13:48
Speaker 1: necessary to our our survival, but competition for for habitat,
13:57
Speaker 1: and any conservationist, me, hunter, outdoor enthusiast knows that we
14:02
Speaker 1: don't have the prairies like we used to down there.
14:05
Speaker 1: It was short grass or mixed grass prairies, and like
14:09
Speaker 1: everywhere else, those habitats were becoming more fragmented and prairie
14:14
Speaker 1: grouse like prairie chickens or sharp tails or sage grouse,
14:17
Speaker 1: they need big open spaces and they don't do well
14:20
Speaker 1: with overhead cover, no even the appearance of overhead cover
14:25
Speaker 1: right right now. And so that was an interesting project
14:28
Speaker 1: finished up that and then again was not going to
14:31
Speaker 1: go I was going to get out of school as
14:33
Speaker 1: quick as I could. But I had a wonderful advisor
14:38
Speaker 1: and decided to start a PhD project. Started one looking
14:42
Speaker 1: at mule deer research, and then had the opportunity to
14:45
Speaker 1: go to the Yucatan Peninsula and do some of the
14:48
Speaker 1: first oscillated turkey research down in the Jungles in Mexico.
14:52
Speaker 1: And so spent about four years down there catching oscillated turkeys,
14:58
Speaker 1: putting transmitters on them and tracking their movements, their survival,
15:03
Speaker 1: and learning as much we could about that species. What
15:06
Speaker 1: what what was the meal dear research all about? Well,
15:09
Speaker 1: that was that was looking at at habitat use in
15:13
Speaker 1: New Mexico, and I started on that, but it was
15:17
Speaker 1: only there for about three or four months before this
15:19
Speaker 1: opportunity came up to two doing the turkey research. So
15:23
Speaker 1: another student picked up the mule deers and I headed
15:26
Speaker 1: south of the border. So I didn't get too deep
15:28
Speaker 1: into that. Did you did you get to hunt oscillated
15:31
Speaker 1: when you were down there at all? I did a
15:33
Speaker 1: number of times, right place, at the right time. Do
15:36
Speaker 1: you as a you know you're ensconsin academia in your research,
15:42
Speaker 1: even though even though you're you're a chosen field is
15:45
Speaker 1: wildlife biology, which implies hunting and conservation. Do you do
15:49
Speaker 1: you find any times where you kind of have to
15:51
Speaker 1: hide that, like, oh, I'm doing, you know, oscillated research,
15:53
Speaker 1: but I'm also hunting these things. Or do you just
15:56
Speaker 1: you know, wave it loud and proud. I I don't
16:00
Speaker 1: it and I occasionally find folks who don't agree with it.
16:05
Speaker 1: But there's a real great story with oscillated turkeys specifically
16:10
Speaker 1: that ties in with hunting. And there's an area and
16:13
Speaker 1: I'm gonna name drop the area because I'm sure some
16:16
Speaker 1: of your your listeners have heard of Carlos Cana Cruz
16:20
Speaker 1: or Los Flores. There are two management areas in the
16:23
Speaker 1: state of Campeche and they are they're a commonplace for
16:28
Speaker 1: hunters coming from the US to go down and harvest
16:31
Speaker 1: an oscillated turkey. This area has without question, the most
16:36
Speaker 1: dense population of oscillated turkeys in the world. Now, when
16:40
Speaker 1: I say the world, we only find them in the
16:42
Speaker 1: Yucatan in Mexico and the northern parts of Belize and Guatemala.
16:46
Speaker 1: But the reason why populations are so dense is because
16:51
Speaker 1: it's it's more economically practical for the locals to conserve
16:58
Speaker 1: turkeys and not shoot them for the dinner pot each
17:02
Speaker 1: day and then bring Americans down who are paying three
17:06
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars into this community and you know, have
17:12
Speaker 1: a good hunt. Hunters come through, they win, they get
17:15
Speaker 1: their birds. You've got jobs for people, cooking for people,
17:19
Speaker 1: driving for guides in a hunting guide down there. Is
17:22
Speaker 1: one of the most lucrative business for these local Mayan
17:26
Speaker 1: people in that area and so the reason why there
17:29
Speaker 1: are are so many birds is because there's that conservation
17:32
Speaker 1: and that value in place directly because of sport hunting. Yep. Yeah,
17:38
Speaker 1: it's a there's just such a weird balance with you know.
17:41
Speaker 1: I mean, you could call nobody really needs to go
17:43
Speaker 1: hunt oscillated turkeys. It's like a cool trophy and kind
17:46
Speaker 1: of the you know, the fifth subspecies in the in
17:49
Speaker 1: the Grand Slam or the Super Slam, I guess or
17:51
Speaker 1: whatever it would be for turkeys, but you can't, you know,
17:54
Speaker 1: like trophy hunting is is sort of has a lot
17:57
Speaker 1: of negative connotations throughout the world, and you know that's
18:00
Speaker 1: what we get painted as all the time. But there's
18:02
Speaker 1: you can't divorce those cottage industries and those economic benefits
18:06
Speaker 1: from it like that. You can't. You can hate it
18:08
Speaker 1: all you want, but you can't take away the fact
18:11
Speaker 1: that some of those places that are really really economically challenged,
18:15
Speaker 1: these these little industries rise up around there and the
18:18
Speaker 1: conservation comes with it, and now all of a sudden,
18:21
Speaker 1: it's pretty much win win win, even though not everybody
18:25
Speaker 1: wants to acknowledge that, Yeah, it is the case. It's
18:28
Speaker 1: an interesting hunt. It's a lot different than hunting turkeys
18:30
Speaker 1: back in the US, and that's one of my favorite
18:33
Speaker 1: things to do is turkey hunt. But when you're out
18:35
Speaker 1: there and you've got the chance of seeing a jaguar
18:37
Speaker 1: walk by, and you've got two cans up in the trees,
18:40
Speaker 1: and you've got how our monkeys howling, it's it's a
18:45
Speaker 1: really unique, interesting, well interesting part of the world. And
18:48
Speaker 1: then when there's a hunt to go with it, is
18:52
Speaker 1: anybody making an oscillated decoy? Um, yeah, I've got one
18:57
Speaker 1: right here in my office. They don't work too well.
18:59
Speaker 1: Or yeah, I had one made up thinking that I
19:03
Speaker 1: could use it to help capture turkeys, and oscillated are
19:08
Speaker 1: as wary as as I've ever seen. And I grew
19:11
Speaker 1: up hunting turkeys easterns in Missouri, public land and private land, um,
19:18
Speaker 1: and that can be a wary bird. When you get
19:21
Speaker 1: an old tom but oscillated, it's just takes it to
19:24
Speaker 1: the next level. And I think it's because that so
19:26
Speaker 1: many predators down there in a oftentimes thick environment that
19:32
Speaker 1: they're just they're neurotic. They're on all the time, thinking
19:36
Speaker 1: that something's about to grab them. Is it? Is it
19:40
Speaker 1: any part of that due to Probably I would just
19:43
Speaker 1: assume there probably has been a pretty good history of
19:45
Speaker 1: unregulated hunting of them as well. Yes, And that is
19:50
Speaker 1: a would be a major mortality source of that bird
19:55
Speaker 1: down there, is the subsistence hunting. And you know, it's
19:59
Speaker 1: a poor part of of the country, Mexico specifically, and
20:03
Speaker 1: so it's hard to fault people. I mean, you can't
20:05
Speaker 1: fault them at all, and they need to feed their families.
20:08
Speaker 1: But that is a major mortality source. We had radio
20:11
Speaker 1: marked birds with radios that would end up in town,
20:14
Speaker 1: that would end up hung on a you know, on
20:17
Speaker 1: a t post somewhere along the road. And so the
20:22
Speaker 1: subsistence hunters were definitely definitely taking some birds. Uh. I
20:27
Speaker 1: know I keep saying we're gonna get into white ties.
20:29
Speaker 1: I gotta ask you something else. I swear to God,
20:31
Speaker 1: anybody who's listening, we're gonna get there. So the we
20:34
Speaker 1: we have a little place on a lake in north
20:35
Speaker 1: central Minnesota and they're doing a study on the walleye
20:39
Speaker 1: movements right now because they're the natural reproduction. The take
20:43
Speaker 1: is pretty high. The natural reproduction seems to be pretty low,
20:46
Speaker 1: and a lot of the walleyes seem to be reaching
20:48
Speaker 1: sexual maturity really small, because you know, there's not you're
20:52
Speaker 1: not getting those two females that would kind of be
20:57
Speaker 1: driving the reproduction in a lot of bodies of water.
21:01
Speaker 1: And so they they I don't know how many walleyes
21:04
Speaker 1: are part of this, it seems like a lot of them.
21:06
Speaker 1: But they went up, fisheries went out and I'm assuming
21:10
Speaker 1: the electro shocked um. And then they tagged a ton
21:12
Speaker 1: of them and put transmitters in them, and then they
21:14
Speaker 1: sunk some listening devices throughout the lake to to follow
21:17
Speaker 1: the patterns and see if there's one damn on there
21:19
Speaker 1: where if they go through it, they can't get back up.
21:21
Speaker 1: And so they're like, are we are we losing them down? There,
21:24
Speaker 1: and I get personally frustrated because I know a lot
21:27
Speaker 1: of people fishing up there who are not calling in
21:31
Speaker 1: or or you know, turning in any of the data.
21:33
Speaker 1: They're just knife in those suckers and chucking the transmitters.
21:36
Speaker 1: Like I I'm only assuming here, But it seems like
21:39
Speaker 1: the compliance with with you know, this study from the
21:42
Speaker 1: general population is really low. Have you bumped into that
21:45
Speaker 1: and some of the stuff you've done, I mean, I
21:46
Speaker 1: know that's a different kind of thing. Yeah, and you
21:50
Speaker 1: get a little bit of everything. Um, And we can
21:53
Speaker 1: talk about this as we move into deer. But as
21:56
Speaker 1: the technology improves, your capability to track wildlife species just
22:04
Speaker 1: keeps improving. And so when I was talking about the turkeys,
22:07
Speaker 1: we had a VHF transmitter that's very high frequency. That's
22:10
Speaker 1: the one that beeps and you hold out your antenna
22:13
Speaker 1: and try and home in or trying triangulate to find
22:16
Speaker 1: out where that animal is. When we started with this
22:21
Speaker 1: deer project, we're going to discuss it's all GPS based
22:24
Speaker 1: and so, um, it's harder for anybody not to comply
22:32
Speaker 1: because it's all satellite based, and you know, I get
22:36
Speaker 1: more worried about invading people's privacy than them taking a
22:42
Speaker 1: collar and not reporting it because if they throw it
22:46
Speaker 1: in the bed of their pickup truck, I still know
22:49
Speaker 1: where that collar is. Yeah, I guess you don't. You
22:52
Speaker 1: don't think about that that aspect of it. And so
22:57
Speaker 1: it's it's imperative that that people calling duck bands that
23:02
Speaker 1: if they harvest a marked animal, it's always helpful to
23:05
Speaker 1: know that. And we should all be on the same team.
23:10
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this research hasn't done for our
23:13
Speaker 1: own ships and giggles. It's for to inform well part
23:19
Speaker 1: of the part of the reason I asked that, right,
23:20
Speaker 1: I wonder about that. So this this study where this
23:23
Speaker 1: buck took this crazy walk and crossed all these rivers
23:26
Speaker 1: and highways and interstates. The when you when you read
23:30
Speaker 1: the research summary that you guys put out there the paper,
23:34
Speaker 1: you know it mentions you know this, this could have
23:37
Speaker 1: serious implications for c w D management. And you know,
23:41
Speaker 1: I know, as somebody who's written about CWD a million times,
23:44
Speaker 1: like I know, how like man, there's two factions, right,
23:48
Speaker 1: and some people don't want to hear it, and so
23:50
Speaker 1: I could see it. There's kind of, at least to
23:54
Speaker 1: some extent, some people just kind of seem to want
23:56
Speaker 1: to stick their heads in the sands say this is
23:57
Speaker 1: not an issue and I'm not gonna worry about that.
24:00
Speaker 1: And so I could see something like this where a
24:02
Speaker 1: study goes, hey, this buck walk two d miles, you know,
24:05
Speaker 1: in a way we've never seen before, or you know,
24:07
Speaker 1: beat the previous record by a hundred miles. I could
24:10
Speaker 1: see people kind of being like, I don't you know
24:12
Speaker 1: if this is gonna lead the more restrictions around CWD,
24:15
Speaker 1: I don't want anything to do with this. You pull
24:17
Speaker 1: their funding, whatever do you do you bump in anything
24:19
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, and people will use whatever results you have,
24:25
Speaker 1: they'll spin them to align with their their personal values
24:30
Speaker 1: or personal objectives. Luckily, most wildlife biologists and the state
24:37
Speaker 1: agency we're working with through this research, the Missouri Department
24:42
Speaker 1: of Conservation, who have been fantastic and very valuable collaborators,
24:47
Speaker 1: and this whole research has been done hand in hand
24:49
Speaker 1: with them. But they get it that you manage for
24:52
Speaker 1: a population, you don't manage for an individual. And so
24:56
Speaker 1: we saw this this amazing uh dispersal, But we're not
25:03
Speaker 1: going to or I wouldn't recommend that CWD regulations are
25:07
Speaker 1: changed because we saw this and documented it. Once we
25:10
Speaker 1: can get into some more of the averages, and you know,
25:15
Speaker 1: I can check the figures, but about the deer don't
25:17
Speaker 1: move more than five miles. But then you've got something
25:20
Speaker 1: that go a little bit further. And then you need
25:22
Speaker 1: to be conservative with your recommendations on how to manage
25:26
Speaker 1: c w D, but also balance opportunity and be pragmatic
25:31
Speaker 1: with with those regulations as well. And so yes, some
25:35
Speaker 1: people say, you know two miles put a two hundred
25:39
Speaker 1: mile buffer on anything, and well, all of a sudden
25:43
Speaker 1: that covers Missouri and the surrounding states. Yeah, I mean
25:49
Speaker 1: the question behind that, right is is this a was
25:53
Speaker 1: this just a weird, circumstantial thing that led to this
25:57
Speaker 1: buck during a hunting season? Um, and you know the
26:01
Speaker 1: land break down as far as open ground and little
26:04
Speaker 1: little patches of cover, and the way those natural barriers
26:07
Speaker 1: are what we thought were natural barriers funneled in one
26:10
Speaker 1: way and then the next was this just sort of
26:12
Speaker 1: a one off phenomenally or as we do more of
26:15
Speaker 1: these GPS studies, is this gonna are we gonna see
26:18
Speaker 1: that dispersal range open up a little bit because of this? Well,
26:22
Speaker 1: I think I think your last two comments were both correct. One,
26:27
Speaker 1: it's an anomaly. I mean, we've got we've had hundreds
26:30
Speaker 1: of deer marked with these GPS colors where we can
26:33
Speaker 1: find them, and we're not seeing this. We had another
26:38
Speaker 1: interesting dispersal, but after this one, the next maximum distance
26:44
Speaker 1: was about forty seven miles and so that's that's almost
26:48
Speaker 1: a third of what we saw with this, dear. And
26:51
Speaker 1: maybe I should should just get in and describe this, dear,
26:54
Speaker 1: so we can all be on the same page with
26:56
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. Can we can we start with
26:58
Speaker 1: what the study was designed for first? Certainly so. There
27:02
Speaker 1: was a study that we did University of Missouri, University
27:05
Speaker 1: of Montana, and the Missouri Department of Conservation where we
27:09
Speaker 1: wanted to look at white tailed deer survival, population recruitment,
27:16
Speaker 1: habitat use, and resource selection. And the purpose of this
27:20
Speaker 1: study was to be able to manage dear more effectively,
27:25
Speaker 1: and so the survival and the recruitment data would be
27:28
Speaker 1: used for population models so that the dear biologists in
27:32
Speaker 1: the state could tweet different factors that they can use
27:37
Speaker 1: to affect deer management and see what the outcome of
27:40
Speaker 1: those would be. There was interest among landowners and deer
27:45
Speaker 1: hunters to know more about localized management scales, and so
27:49
Speaker 1: that's what we were looking at with resource selection and
27:51
Speaker 1: with habitat use, and then with those movement questions. C
27:55
Speaker 1: w D has been detected in Missouri, and so knowing
27:58
Speaker 1: how dear move on the land endscape would help the
28:02
Speaker 1: state agency designed the best management practices two try and
28:07
Speaker 1: minimize c w D transmission. So it was a big study.
28:12
Speaker 1: We had to study areas one in northwest Missouri and
28:16
Speaker 1: one in the central Ozarks in southern Missouri. And that
28:19
Speaker 1: was because basically we're two different states of Missouri. Northern
28:22
Speaker 1: it's more agrarian, glaciated planes agg country, and then you
28:27
Speaker 1: get down into the southern part of the state and
28:30
Speaker 1: it's it's the Ozarks, it's rocky soils, it's red oak
28:36
Speaker 1: dominated communities, some pine down there, and so two very
28:40
Speaker 1: different ecosystems, and so we needed to study areas. We
28:43
Speaker 1: captured deer using rocket nets and clover traps from January,
28:48
Speaker 1: February and March for five years and then would put
28:53
Speaker 1: GPS transmitters on the deer and that could give us
28:56
Speaker 1: information about where they're moving, what their survivals lie. Habitat
29:00
Speaker 1: that they're using. And then in the spring we captured
29:03
Speaker 1: fams the young neo Nate fawns day old faons and
29:07
Speaker 1: put expandable collars on them so that we could get
29:09
Speaker 1: an idea of fallon survival to get back at those
29:12
Speaker 1: questions about population recruitment. So this was I mean, this
29:17
Speaker 1: was sort of a multifaceted study where you're looking at uh,
29:22
Speaker 1: mortality rates, you're looking at dispersal rates, and and kind
29:26
Speaker 1: of the overarching theme there is to give the Missouri
29:31
Speaker 1: Department of Conservation better data to manage populations around exactly. So,
29:38
Speaker 1: and this is this is one thing when I I've
29:41
Speaker 1: dealt with state game agencies a lot, with interviews and
29:44
Speaker 1: just you know, various things, and I've always felt like
29:48
Speaker 1: the missing component to a lot of this stuff was
29:51
Speaker 1: the pr And you know, so when you when you
29:53
Speaker 1: talk about that, what you're really doing is is using
29:56
Speaker 1: science to give the Department of Conservation better to tools
30:00
Speaker 1: to manage the deer in a better way, which is
30:03
Speaker 1: you know, pretty easy to get behind. But there's always
30:07
Speaker 1: been this kind now I shouldn't say always in a
30:09
Speaker 1: lot of states, there's been this sort of perception that
30:13
Speaker 1: the state agencies are like, you know, we'll throw out
30:15
Speaker 1: a million deer number because it's I actually had a
30:19
Speaker 1: big game coordinator in Minnesota tell me this one time.
30:22
Speaker 1: We we say a million deer because it sounds really good,
30:25
Speaker 1: but because we you know, we don't really know. I mean,
30:28
Speaker 1: they're not actually counting noses in the woods, right, And
30:31
Speaker 1: so there's kind of this perception out there with a
30:33
Speaker 1: lot of hunters where it's like the state gaming they
30:35
Speaker 1: have no idea how many deer out there, and and
30:37
Speaker 1: and to some extent over the years, that's probably been
30:40
Speaker 1: a little bit true because of the nature of you know,
30:43
Speaker 1: an entire wildlife population in the state. That's a big
30:47
Speaker 1: thing to get a handle on. And so if you've
30:49
Speaker 1: fallen into that camp and said that this is the
30:52
Speaker 1: kind of research that makes you know, you don't get
30:54
Speaker 1: to an exact number, but you get better at these
30:57
Speaker 1: population modeling through this kind of research, You're exactly right,
31:01
Speaker 1: and it's it's to be more informed. And so, like technology,
31:07
Speaker 1: the methods to answer those questions on population size or
31:11
Speaker 1: growth keep getting better and better. And so we use
31:14
Speaker 1: these data that we're collecting put in a statistical model.
31:19
Speaker 1: I mean, this isn't me as a biologist designing this tool.
31:24
Speaker 1: These are high end statisticians who work with the biologists,
31:28
Speaker 1: and so you have biology and play, you have real
31:32
Speaker 1: field data, you have statisticians, and everybody brings their strengths
31:38
Speaker 1: to the table to develop this tool to manage dear
31:43
Speaker 1: and you get better estimates out on what population sizes
31:47
Speaker 1: are or growth rates are. But you also get measures
31:50
Speaker 1: of confidence around those estimates. And so instead of just saying, Okay,
31:56
Speaker 1: a million sounds like a nice, pretty round number, you
32:00
Speaker 1: might have this very odd number, very specific number, and
32:04
Speaker 1: then a measure of confidence around that number, so you know,
32:08
Speaker 1: you know how strong to place your bet. Yeah, and
32:12
Speaker 1: I the the idea behind the two separate you know
32:16
Speaker 1: study areas is I think that's super important as well.
32:20
Speaker 1: You know, anybody who's been in northwestern Missouri versus you know,
32:23
Speaker 1: the ozarks nose, it's the same thing here in Minnesota.
32:25
Speaker 1: If you're in you know, up by the boundary waters
32:28
Speaker 1: versus the southwest corner of the state, you might as
32:29
Speaker 1: well be in different states. There's they're so vastly different.
32:32
Speaker 1: So when you're talking about predation and fawn mortality rates
32:36
Speaker 1: and things like that, they're gonna vary. I would assume
32:38
Speaker 1: very so much from those two different areas. It is.
32:42
Speaker 1: It is the case, and you can't extrapolate one to another.
32:45
Speaker 1: And so to really have a complete study you need
32:47
Speaker 1: to have those two questions. I mean, you gave the
32:50
Speaker 1: Minnesota example, deer in so many states could could follow
32:56
Speaker 1: the same example, and so we needed both of those studies.
33:00
Speaker 1: And it's a it's a testament to the Conservation department.
33:03
Speaker 1: This research is expensive. I mean getting the collars out there,
33:07
Speaker 1: it's a lot of hands on deck to make this work.
33:11
Speaker 1: It's a lot of um of resources of a variety
33:16
Speaker 1: of types. And so to have one study is a big,
33:20
Speaker 1: a big step with with the size of the project
33:23
Speaker 1: we were working to have these two. It's it's more
33:26
Speaker 1: than double. And this this was this was a five
33:30
Speaker 1: year study. Five year study. Okay. And this Buck the Wanderer,
33:35
Speaker 1: Uh you captured him. It was a rocket net, right, correct? Yep.
33:40
Speaker 1: We captured him in January of two thousand seventeen in
33:44
Speaker 1: north west Missouri using a rocket net one evening. And
33:48
Speaker 1: how old was he then? Do you think about two
33:50
Speaker 1: and a half And we could say that with confidence,
33:53
Speaker 1: just with you know, going beyond two and a half
33:56
Speaker 1: for an adult is you know, there's some question, but
33:59
Speaker 1: still we can feel like we can get pretty close.
34:02
Speaker 1: But this one would have been a two and a
34:03
Speaker 1: half year old adult buck. When when did he go
34:07
Speaker 1: on his excursion? He started moving in early November of
34:13
Speaker 1: that year and Missouri's Missouri has a very long bow season,
34:18
Speaker 1: as you probably know, September fifteen to January, but then
34:22
Speaker 1: a rather concentrated firearms season ten eleven days in mid November,
34:27
Speaker 1: and he started moving about a week before that season began,
34:32
Speaker 1: and the next twenty two days he was on the move.
34:36
Speaker 1: So previous to the you know, we'll get into the
34:40
Speaker 1: red movement versus the pressure, the hunting pressure movement, but
34:43
Speaker 1: previous to that he had stayed pretty tight. Right, that's correct.
34:47
Speaker 1: But what was his home range before that? It was,
34:51
Speaker 1: you know, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Um
34:54
Speaker 1: the area where he was captured, it was a couple
34:57
Speaker 1: of sections of very good a deer habitat. It was
35:01
Speaker 1: a ground, there was plenty of timber, there was a
35:03
Speaker 1: stream moving through, and so it was where you would
35:08
Speaker 1: want to be as a deer. It was hunted, it
35:11
Speaker 1: was not pressured. In fact, two biologists owned the property
35:17
Speaker 1: where we happened to capture this deer, and so they
35:20
Speaker 1: knew management and up until he started moving. Well, from
35:25
Speaker 1: the time we caught him and collared him with the
35:28
Speaker 1: GPS collar until the time he began this this long
35:31
Speaker 1: distance movement, he was a very normal adult book as
35:49
Speaker 1: a hunter in this rule do you do? You just
35:52
Speaker 1: look at that buck and go. He had no reason
35:54
Speaker 1: to leave, knowing knowing where he spent most of his time.
35:58
Speaker 1: I as a as a hunter and as a biologist,
36:01
Speaker 1: I'd say that, I mean there there. It wasn't like
36:04
Speaker 1: it was a density dependent question where there were too
36:10
Speaker 1: many deer. It wasn't like there was too much hunting pressure.
36:13
Speaker 1: He was in a good spot when he when he
36:16
Speaker 1: starts moving. How how often are you seeing these you know,
36:21
Speaker 1: GPS readings? Is it? Are you? Are you seeing them
36:23
Speaker 1: every day? Or you did you did this happen? You
36:25
Speaker 1: check back a couple after a couple of weeks and go,
36:27
Speaker 1: holy cow, it was well, it was neither. We had
36:32
Speaker 1: so many deer that it, uh, it's not practical for
36:36
Speaker 1: me to check on each deer each day, something like that,
36:38
Speaker 1: And so we have hundreds of deer locations during the
36:42
Speaker 1: hunting season, we're coming in every ninety minutes, so it's
36:45
Speaker 1: just a huge amount of data that would come in.
36:49
Speaker 1: And so the story of this one was I got
36:54
Speaker 1: an email that kind of filtered through a handful of
36:58
Speaker 1: folks said do we have deer and a color deer
37:02
Speaker 1: in Monroe County? And I said, no, that's way off
37:08
Speaker 1: of our study area. And I would have been surprised
37:12
Speaker 1: at the number of questions I get, like that somebody
37:14
Speaker 1: will catch a fall on and put a dog collar
37:16
Speaker 1: on it or something stupid like that, and you know,
37:21
Speaker 1: do you have a color deer down here on though?
37:23
Speaker 1: And then I get a picture and it's whatever on
37:27
Speaker 1: this deer, which is too bad for the deer. I'd
37:29
Speaker 1: encourage people not to do that. But anyway, so I
37:32
Speaker 1: got this picture and it was a real grainy trail
37:36
Speaker 1: camp photo, and I thought, and that looks like one
37:39
Speaker 1: of our collars. And then I think, Okay, it's somebody
37:43
Speaker 1: playing a joke on me, because this wouldn't be the
37:45
Speaker 1: first time within the community that that sort of stuff
37:49
Speaker 1: has gone on. So I didn't There wasn't a real
37:53
Speaker 1: good way with how these data were structured for me
37:55
Speaker 1: to figure out if this was one of our deer.
37:57
Speaker 1: Other than looking at this game in camp picture, I
38:01
Speaker 1: could see that it was an adult, and so I
38:03
Speaker 1: got our list of adult deer one morning when I
38:07
Speaker 1: couldn't sleep but about two in the morning, and started
38:10
Speaker 1: going through deer by deer by deer looking at locations,
38:13
Speaker 1: and I don't know on deer, you know fifteen. I
38:18
Speaker 1: opened up these points and they all display on Google
38:20
Speaker 1: Earth and thought, holy smoke, and I see this line
38:23
Speaker 1: going across northern Missouri. Knew exactly where we captured it,
38:27
Speaker 1: and then lo and behold it was where this photo
38:31
Speaker 1: had had come from. So we would have figured out
38:33
Speaker 1: once we started running all the analyzes, but how this
38:37
Speaker 1: one transpired was a bit unusual and was a bit
38:40
Speaker 1: of a shock when I drew up all these locations
38:43
Speaker 1: for the first time. So when you when you get
38:45
Speaker 1: that email with that grainy photo and you look at
38:47
Speaker 1: it and you go, man, that could be one of
38:49
Speaker 1: our collars, and what what percentage are you buying into?
38:53
Speaker 1: Maybe this is one of our d are you? Are
38:54
Speaker 1: you at like three? It'd be hard to pay the
38:58
Speaker 1: percent I didn't. I thought something was up. I thought
39:01
Speaker 1: something was fishy, and you know, it's hard to trust
39:08
Speaker 1: what comes in on a trail camera. I mean, we
39:11
Speaker 1: get a lot of mountainline photos from around the country
39:15
Speaker 1: that end up in you know, who knows where, um,
39:19
Speaker 1: and so people just claiming, oh, yeah, here's a photo
39:21
Speaker 1: from the back forty So I wasn't quite sure what
39:24
Speaker 1: was up, but it looked enough like our collar that
39:29
Speaker 1: I was definitely curious. And then lo and behold it
39:32
Speaker 1: was our dear that had had moved across the better
39:36
Speaker 1: part of north Missouri and at that point he was
39:38
Speaker 1: still alive. Correct. What do you do? Then? Uh, share
39:46
Speaker 1: the news with with the study collaborators and say, hey,
39:49
Speaker 1: look at this. There was nothing that we needed to
39:51
Speaker 1: do that here obviously didn't do anything wrong. I was
39:55
Speaker 1: initially most surprised that he was still alive after making
39:59
Speaker 1: this movement during the firearms season, when we have hundreds
40:04
Speaker 1: of thousands of deer hunters in Missouri out there. This
40:09
Speaker 1: was a nice deer. Um. It was you know it
40:13
Speaker 1: dear that many a hunter would have taken without question. Ye,
40:19
Speaker 1: this this buck at that point three and a half, right, yeah, yeah,
40:22
Speaker 1: and he's he's walking a couple hundred miles through a
40:25
Speaker 1: state during a gun season that's open with like, you know,
40:28
Speaker 1: half a million hunters out there and there's seven of
40:31
Speaker 1: them that would give him a pass if that. Yeah,
40:35
Speaker 1: and so what you see this and you go, this
40:38
Speaker 1: is this is real? This buck did this. You start
40:41
Speaker 1: to I'm guessing you kind of start to reverse engineer
40:44
Speaker 1: his his route and take a look at these you know,
40:47
Speaker 1: these things that we kind of thought they're not he's
40:49
Speaker 1: not gonna cross or he's not gonna do this. And
40:51
Speaker 1: he he broke a lot of rules, didn't he. Well,
40:53
Speaker 1: he just he covered a lot of ground. And so
40:58
Speaker 1: the data that we had for this deer was a
41:01
Speaker 1: GPS point every five hours for most of the year,
41:05
Speaker 1: and then ten days before the gun season started the
41:09
Speaker 1: firearms season, I up that sampling frequency to every ninety
41:13
Speaker 1: minutes so I could see how the hunting pressure might
41:17
Speaker 1: affect dear. I did that for all deer, which was
41:20
Speaker 1: about the time he started moving. Now those were related.
41:23
Speaker 1: This was all just something done laptop to satellite to collar,
41:27
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't affect the deer any the change of
41:30
Speaker 1: sampling frequency, and so having that resolution is really pretty
41:35
Speaker 1: good to know every hour and a half, here's where
41:37
Speaker 1: he is. And this was big agg country, and seeing
41:41
Speaker 1: how he moved across some of these open egg fields
41:44
Speaker 1: was very interesting, seeing how some of the major barriers
41:50
Speaker 1: like Interstate thirty five going north south that he had
41:54
Speaker 1: to work along that, seeing across you know, the river crossings,
41:59
Speaker 1: and then he'd find some good place to hang up
42:02
Speaker 1: during the day. Typically timber area wasn't moving a lot
42:05
Speaker 1: during the day, and then night would fall and he'd
42:09
Speaker 1: be back back moving. Yeah, And I mean it's I
42:14
Speaker 1: think a lot of hunters would look at that and go, yeah,
42:17
Speaker 1: you know, it makes sense that he a buck during
42:20
Speaker 1: the rut in a heavily pressured state when the firearms
42:23
Speaker 1: season is open, it's going to kind of hole up
42:25
Speaker 1: in the day and whatever, you know, his just chosen
42:28
Speaker 1: cover and then at night he's going to cover a
42:29
Speaker 1: ton of ground and get his thing done and then
42:31
Speaker 1: hold up again. But this buck, and and this is
42:34
Speaker 1: kind of seems like what this buck did. But he
42:36
Speaker 1: did it, you know, eight miles apart every day for days.
42:41
Speaker 1: And it's not like he was not coming across Doze
42:45
Speaker 1: at this time. If he was looking for a breeding
42:47
Speaker 1: opportunity with the ground he covered, he would have found
42:52
Speaker 1: does and so that's him dispersing to find breeding opportunity.
43:00
Speaker 1: Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. He
43:03
Speaker 1: was in good habitat. He wandered through very good habitat,
43:09
Speaker 1: And so what motivated this eighty five mile dispersal is
43:17
Speaker 1: still the big question. What do you think it was?
43:25
Speaker 1: I was afraid you're gonna ask that. No, I've had
43:27
Speaker 1: a lot of time to think about this. I think
43:29
Speaker 1: this was an individual deer that was just marching to
43:33
Speaker 1: his own beat, and a deer hunter would like a
43:37
Speaker 1: better answer. I'd like a better answer as a biologist.
43:41
Speaker 1: But you think of the things conventional wisdom that would
43:45
Speaker 1: drive a deer to disperse. You know, there's age related
43:49
Speaker 1: factors where you know, new deer are coming into the population,
43:55
Speaker 1: the young, the yearlings, the juvenile deer get pushed out
43:59
Speaker 1: by by you know, mom or whatever social pressures are there.
44:04
Speaker 1: That wasn't the case here habitat. He was an excellent
44:08
Speaker 1: habitat and he really went through good habitat this whole area.
44:12
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a place that does well by deer,
44:15
Speaker 1: not overcrowded, not undercrowded. It was just in good, good,
44:20
Speaker 1: dear habitat. This whole way, and I know this country well,
44:24
Speaker 1: and so I think this was a an anomaly of
44:28
Speaker 1: a deer that just started moving and maybe got to
44:32
Speaker 1: this new area as the breeding season was winding down
44:37
Speaker 1: and there was not the you know, some in a
44:43
Speaker 1: pressure that was driving him that maybe he didn't even realize. Yeah,
44:48
Speaker 1: it's it's a good question, and all of us involved
44:51
Speaker 1: at the study are looking for or interested in an answer,
44:54
Speaker 1: but we might never know what drove this particular dear
44:57
Speaker 1: to do what he did. He may have known that
44:59
Speaker 1: it was time to breed, but didn't connect the dots
45:02
Speaker 1: on what that meant. And maybe that's one out of
45:05
Speaker 1: ten thousand that this happens to. It's it's really interesting
45:11
Speaker 1: that the explanation might just be that he's wired to
45:14
Speaker 1: be a pioneer and not a settler and he really
45:17
Speaker 1: found his legs at three and a half years old,
45:21
Speaker 1: do you think. So. I do a lot of work
45:24
Speaker 1: in the dog space, the working dog and sporting dog space,
45:27
Speaker 1: and there's a new, uh, a new kind of trainer
45:30
Speaker 1: out there. I say, like a younger trainer out there.
45:34
Speaker 1: And I'm generalizing here, but the focus is is way
45:37
Speaker 1: more on assessing your dog as an individual you know,
45:40
Speaker 1: not as uh Labrador retriever or not as a GSP
45:44
Speaker 1: or what. You know, you can factor that and of
45:45
Speaker 1: course that stuff is gonna filter in, but really looking
45:48
Speaker 1: at like, how how's the best way to train this
45:50
Speaker 1: individual dog of mine through you know, taken into account
45:53
Speaker 1: of drive and temperament and the time I have and
45:55
Speaker 1: all of that stuff, and you start to realize how
45:58
Speaker 1: individualized dogs are. And we we kind of know this
46:01
Speaker 1: because we've co evolved with them for twenty years. But
46:04
Speaker 1: do you think that there's a chance the more research
46:07
Speaker 1: you do like this on deer, especially if you start,
46:10
Speaker 1: you know, mixing in uh bucks that are reaching more
46:13
Speaker 1: mature age, which are probably like typically a little bit
46:16
Speaker 1: underrepresented in a lot of these studies, you'll see just
46:19
Speaker 1: these individual tendencies of more dear kind of breakout or
46:23
Speaker 1: do you have enough history with research to go. I
46:26
Speaker 1: don't think that's going to happen. No, I think we'll
46:28
Speaker 1: see it more. I mean, I think this is a rarity,
46:31
Speaker 1: or we'd be more familiar with it already. But a
46:36
Speaker 1: while back in our conversation you ask if this was
46:38
Speaker 1: an anomaly or if we might see this more. I
46:40
Speaker 1: think we will see it more because of the technology.
46:43
Speaker 1: And so the traditional way to monitor deer for research
46:47
Speaker 1: like this would be with that very high frequency color
46:51
Speaker 1: that beats and you have to be so close to
46:54
Speaker 1: hear it. And so what happens when we have a
46:57
Speaker 1: major dispersal. I never would have looked for this deer
47:00
Speaker 1: where it was, and so with the VHF collar. You know,
47:08
Speaker 1: we biologists are great at coming up with excuses on
47:11
Speaker 1: why things don't work, you know, radio failure, hit by
47:15
Speaker 1: a car, poached, whatever the case. We can't hear the
47:18
Speaker 1: beep anymore. And the farther it goes from its known area,
47:22
Speaker 1: the more surveys you would have to do as the
47:25
Speaker 1: biologist to figure out where this dear moved. Well, now
47:28
Speaker 1: with GPS technology, we get locations delivered us via satellite
47:33
Speaker 1: that we pull up on Google Earth or whatever platform
47:37
Speaker 1: you're using, and we can see these long distance movements.
47:40
Speaker 1: We can see movements where dear go aways and then
47:45
Speaker 1: come back, where with VHF technology you just would have thought, well,
47:49
Speaker 1: I didn't find that dear today, and then it came
47:52
Speaker 1: back and you start tracking it again, and you had
47:54
Speaker 1: no idea that it had this this movement where it
47:57
Speaker 1: went ten miles and then came back. So not many
48:02
Speaker 1: folks are using VHF anymore. Everybody's gone the satellite route.
48:06
Speaker 1: And with the migration work out west, with deer research
48:11
Speaker 1: in the Midwest. I had an oscillated turkey that I
48:14
Speaker 1: put a GPS transmitter on into Yucatan, and right before
48:18
Speaker 1: she started to nest, she went twelve miles straight into
48:21
Speaker 1: the jungle, nested, and then came back to exactly where
48:24
Speaker 1: I caught her, without a hundred yards or where I
48:26
Speaker 1: caught her. So had I not had that GPS technology,
48:29
Speaker 1: I never would have seen that movement. And so I
48:32
Speaker 1: think we'll start seeing more of these interesting long distance
48:35
Speaker 1: movements just because we have the capability to track now. Yeah,
48:40
Speaker 1: and we should we should kind of clarify this too,
48:42
Speaker 1: because I probably I probably keep conflating these two. There's
48:45
Speaker 1: dispersal and there's excursions. And you know when you talk
48:49
Speaker 1: about dispersal for various reasons, you know, mom kicking the
48:52
Speaker 1: youngster out or whatever, because the in breeding. You know,
48:55
Speaker 1: there's bucks that are maybe a year and a half
48:57
Speaker 1: old ending up, you know, three miles away into what
49:01
Speaker 1: will be his home range, and you know, and vice
49:05
Speaker 1: versa Buck's coming back into that. And then there's these
49:07
Speaker 1: excursions we see and that there was that buck, I
49:09
Speaker 1: think it was in Pennsylvania. They did that study where
49:12
Speaker 1: that buck made an excursion. He lived on public land
49:14
Speaker 1: in a real tight area and early in his life
49:18
Speaker 1: made an excursion way, you know, twelve miles away or something,
49:21
Speaker 1: and then he went and died there and they were
49:23
Speaker 1: kind of like, well, what the hell happened here? Where this?
49:25
Speaker 1: This just felt like an area he knew about somehow,
49:28
Speaker 1: but you know, only built it into his life like
49:30
Speaker 1: basically twice. And so there's there's those two different things.
49:33
Speaker 1: Do you think you'll see maybe like a clear picture
49:37
Speaker 1: now of those excursions as well? I mean I think
49:40
Speaker 1: you'd have to. With this right, we'll see anything that
49:43
Speaker 1: that is movement, and so you can adjust these callers
49:48
Speaker 1: to take a point every you know, every fifteen minutes
49:51
Speaker 1: if you want to. And so depending on the research question,
49:55
Speaker 1: as your aunts asking, you'll see how animals move on
49:58
Speaker 1: the landscape. You'll see when they go, when they stop,
50:02
Speaker 1: and and you know, as with everything technological, it keeps
50:08
Speaker 1: getting more refined, more capabilities, lighter weight, better battery life,
50:13
Speaker 1: and so the the questions that we will be able
50:18
Speaker 1: to ask as biologists will keep getting more and more
50:21
Speaker 1: refined and informative. As a deer hunter, does this secretly
50:25
Speaker 1: give you hope that at any moment a buck could
50:27
Speaker 1: just show up from six counties away and you could
50:30
Speaker 1: kill him. It does, It does, But what's more this project.
50:37
Speaker 1: I've always been a deer hunter, But after five years
50:41
Speaker 1: of doing nothing but deer, after spending hours upon hours
50:45
Speaker 1: upon hours catching deer, handling deer, traveling for deer, I've
50:49
Speaker 1: taken a break from deer hunting for for just a
50:53
Speaker 1: year or two to regathered. Haven't taken a break from hunting,
50:57
Speaker 1: but I've I've hit a little bit of dear fatigue
51:02
Speaker 1: on waiting for deer to appear. Well, you're you're out
51:05
Speaker 1: in Montana, right, m Yeah, you can take a break
51:07
Speaker 1: from deer in Montana. Took a took a new position
51:11
Speaker 1: at the University of Montana, and so based out of Missoula.
51:13
Speaker 1: These days, if you if you live in I don't know,
51:16
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania or some of these dates, you don't get a
51:18
Speaker 1: break from deer. You take a break from dear. You're
51:20
Speaker 1: taking a break from big game hunting just about right,
51:23
Speaker 1: and I know I said that, and listeners are going
51:25
Speaker 1: to be thinking this guy's crazy because one of the
51:28
Speaker 1: neat parts about this job, in this research was being
51:32
Speaker 1: able to spend so much time with so many avid,
51:35
Speaker 1: passionate deer hunters. And I learned a lot from these
51:38
Speaker 1: folks and new things to think about and and so um,
51:42
Speaker 1: I will not claim to be in that in that rank,
51:46
Speaker 1: but the people who are man more power to him.
51:50
Speaker 1: So this this study, you know, obviously everything that the
51:53
Speaker 1: thing that gets the most attention is this buck that
51:55
Speaker 1: walked the eighty five miles out of out of his
51:58
Speaker 1: home range. Was there in anything else in there? Because
52:00
Speaker 1: this was this was comprehensive. It was five years and
52:03
Speaker 1: two locations and a lot of a lot of deer collared?
52:06
Speaker 1: Was there anything else? Like, is there like a one
52:09
Speaker 1: b uh, you know, secondary kind of finding that you
52:14
Speaker 1: saw or something that happened where you're like, man, that
52:16
Speaker 1: was really cool. But it's getting overshadowed by this this wanderer. No,
52:20
Speaker 1: but there will be and so uh we this data
52:23
Speaker 1: set was hundreds of individuals, thousands of individuals, really millions
52:27
Speaker 1: of data points. This was a huge undertaking and we're
52:31
Speaker 1: still in the in the stages of analyzing these data,
52:34
Speaker 1: and so this particular individual, This was a very comprehensive analysis,
52:41
Speaker 1: but it was pretty straightforward because you're reporting on on
52:43
Speaker 1: one individual. Over the next couple of years, we're gonna
52:47
Speaker 1: have more and more information coming out, and I think,
52:50
Speaker 1: I think we've just scratched the surface on the interesting
52:53
Speaker 1: findings that will result from this project. Yeah. So this,
52:56
Speaker 1: this buck and getting kind of clued into this, this
53:00
Speaker 1: uh anomaly of a dispersal is almost like a distraction
53:04
Speaker 1: or a little bit of a mission creep on the
53:05
Speaker 1: overall project. You know, this, this will probably have the
53:11
Speaker 1: most press, press and most exposure from anything we do.
53:15
Speaker 1: Now from a management standpoint, this will not be the
53:18
Speaker 1: most important, but it'll probably make the best deer camp conversation. Yeah.
53:24
Speaker 1: Does that? So let me ask you this, like, personally,
53:27
Speaker 1: does that drive you nuts that guys like me focus
53:29
Speaker 1: on just this part and then there's so much more
53:31
Speaker 1: to the work you're doing. Not at all? I mean,
53:35
Speaker 1: I whatever folks UH find interesting, I'm just glad that
53:39
Speaker 1: they're interested in the work that we're doing. I Mean,
53:42
Speaker 1: the the most frustrating thing is the research that gets
53:46
Speaker 1: done that really doesn't mean much, and it's done for
53:49
Speaker 1: the sake of publishing a paper or for doing research,
53:54
Speaker 1: and so that's that's where I get frustrated. We don't
53:56
Speaker 1: have that with this project. And that's the great thing.
53:59
Speaker 1: The work that we're doing will be used for management.
54:02
Speaker 1: It will be uh available to landowners, to deer hunters,
54:07
Speaker 1: to a wildlife enthusiasts of any kind to use what
54:11
Speaker 1: we find that might affect their land management or their
54:14
Speaker 1: conservation goals or their deer hunting or whatever the case
54:17
Speaker 1: will be. So any of it that gains exposure, gains interests,
54:21
Speaker 1: can help people is fantastic. Is there This might be
54:26
Speaker 1: a little bit of a weird question, but there's you know,
54:28
Speaker 1: there's kind of like politics involved in everything every career,
54:32
Speaker 1: and especially when you're doing you know, depending where you're
54:34
Speaker 1: getting funding and working with the general public or something
54:36
Speaker 1: that's you know, directly affects the general public. Is this
54:40
Speaker 1: Do you look at this kind of and you kind
54:42
Speaker 1: of just said this but as sort of a weird
54:45
Speaker 1: just like a nice win to get where it got
54:47
Speaker 1: people interested, and it could you could use it in
54:50
Speaker 1: the future at least as like a public goodwill thing,
54:53
Speaker 1: like somebody finds, you know, like the general hunting population
54:55
Speaker 1: finds this super interesting. It might make it easier to
55:00
Speaker 1: come up with some other research projects in the future
55:02
Speaker 1: and get support for it through you know, the Department
55:04
Speaker 1: Conservation or something like that, because of just like one
55:06
Speaker 1: little this is like this is like a weird little
55:08
Speaker 1: lottery ticket for you, I hope. So, I mean best
55:11
Speaker 1: case scenario, very best case scenario is some high school
55:16
Speaker 1: or reads this paper, finds it interesting, and then picks
55:20
Speaker 1: a path to be a wildlife biologist. And so if
55:24
Speaker 1: this gets us any goodwill this one deer that that
55:27
Speaker 1: is getting a lot of national press these days, even
55:29
Speaker 1: international press. Our our adult book from MISSOURIUS hit some
55:34
Speaker 1: international news outlets. Whatever gets people more interested in wildlife conservation.
55:40
Speaker 1: Wildlife research um is is excellent and I'll take that
55:44
Speaker 1: however I can get it absolutely it's a win. What's
55:49
Speaker 1: next then, Man, So you mentioned you've got some white
55:52
Speaker 1: tail burnout, and so are you Are you switching gears
55:55
Speaker 1: here and and studying something else or do you have
55:58
Speaker 1: something you're like, is there is there a white until
56:00
Speaker 1: related question you as a research or you're just sitting there.
56:03
Speaker 1: It's kind of rallying around the back of your head,
56:04
Speaker 1: You're like, Man, I want to address that. Is there
56:06
Speaker 1: anything like that? Not at the moment. I mean, with
56:10
Speaker 1: this work, we've got we've got the survival questions we're
56:13
Speaker 1: still asking, we've got the recruitment questions, we've got the
56:15
Speaker 1: habitat use. What I'm most excited about right now with
56:19
Speaker 1: these data, and we were just scratching the surface on
56:21
Speaker 1: on what we can use this data set for is
56:25
Speaker 1: to see this final product of the population model. And
56:29
Speaker 1: I think that's gonna be real slick, and I think
56:32
Speaker 1: it's gonna make everybody who cares about deer in Missouri
56:36
Speaker 1: make their lives better because we're gonna be able to
56:38
Speaker 1: manage that much better when we take all this this
56:42
Speaker 1: ecological data, land cover data, put the statistics to it,
56:49
Speaker 1: and we're going to have a product that will be
56:51
Speaker 1: very powerful for for deer management in Missouri. So that's
56:54
Speaker 1: what I'm most most excited about now. And I had
56:57
Speaker 1: I had a little white tail burned out. I'm not
56:58
Speaker 1: burnt out on on the question an answer side of
57:02
Speaker 1: it and doing these analyzes, I I just found myself.
57:07
Speaker 1: I took one dough this year with my muzzle loader
57:10
Speaker 1: because I needed stuff for the freezer. But in the
57:12
Speaker 1: November portion of the of the hunting season, it uh,
57:16
Speaker 1: it felt like I was back in the rocket net
57:19
Speaker 1: blind saying all right, where where's the deer? And I
57:22
Speaker 1: spent so many hours with that, I was ready to
57:24
Speaker 1: get my GSP and go go find quail instead. Believe me, man,
57:28
Speaker 1: you don't have you don't have to explain yourself. I've
57:30
Speaker 1: hunted deer for my job for a long time, and
57:33
Speaker 1: I really like fishing Smalley's and I really like following
57:36
Speaker 1: my dog around for roosters. Like there's a time every
57:40
Speaker 1: deer season I hit where I cannot wait to get
57:42
Speaker 1: out of the trees and go do something else. Well,
57:44
Speaker 1: my dad, Duck hunts hard, and he says his favorite
57:46
Speaker 1: day is opening day and his second favorite day is
57:50
Speaker 1: the last day of the season, and he doesn't miss
57:52
Speaker 1: too many days between. Yeah, it's it's a weird. It's
57:57
Speaker 1: a weird place to get into. I think, I think
57:59
Speaker 1: this is what a lot of you know this This
58:01
Speaker 1: podcast is so so focused on white tails, but hunting
58:04
Speaker 1: in general, it's weird to get into that space where
58:07
Speaker 1: you know, like this is the thing I just I
58:10
Speaker 1: have to go do this, like I live for this,
58:12
Speaker 1: I have to go do it. But you also come
58:14
Speaker 1: to terms with the fact that there's points where you're
58:16
Speaker 1: really gonna hate it and and really but but you
58:20
Speaker 1: also get to that spot where you're like, I know,
58:23
Speaker 1: even though I want to just smash that alarm and
58:25
Speaker 1: not get up today, I know it's going to be
58:27
Speaker 1: worth it every time I do. So you have these
58:29
Speaker 1: just up and down moments, uh huh, and you're exactly right,
58:32
Speaker 1: and then you get out there and the stunts sun
58:34
Speaker 1: starts coming up and you're glad you got up. Do
58:37
Speaker 1: you do you see? So you you mentioned that you
58:40
Speaker 1: know this is obviously a Missouri study and it's going
58:43
Speaker 1: to help the game managers in Missouri at the Department
58:46
Speaker 1: of Conservation balance that check book much better from year
58:49
Speaker 1: to year as far as figuring out, you know, how
58:51
Speaker 1: many deers should be, how many deers should be out there,
58:53
Speaker 1: and how many can we allow to be taken and
58:55
Speaker 1: you know how many you're gonna end up in coyote
58:57
Speaker 1: bellies and all that stuff. Do you have uh you know,
59:01
Speaker 1: are there are there state game agencies? Is does Kansas
59:04
Speaker 1: reach out to you and say, hey, can we like,
59:06
Speaker 1: can we talk to you about this or do other
59:08
Speaker 1: states or is there kind of like individual fife terms
59:10
Speaker 1: where you don't really work together. No, it's a very
59:13
Speaker 1: very collaborative field. And it's a small world. I mean,
59:15
Speaker 1: there's just not that many of us out there, and
59:17
Speaker 1: so you go to the meetings and you see the
59:19
Speaker 1: same faces and you bounce ideas, and there's no you know,
59:23
Speaker 1: there's no territoriality, there's no uh, there's really no competition
59:28
Speaker 1: because everybody's working toward the same goal and helping each
59:32
Speaker 1: other out. And so I mean it goes so far
59:34
Speaker 1: as to share an equipment if somebody gets shorthanded and
59:38
Speaker 1: you need to go help someplace over here or teach
59:41
Speaker 1: a new technique. I mean, with the the learning curve
59:45
Speaker 1: on some of this stuff is very steep, and so
59:48
Speaker 1: I've been people around the country about techniques for capturing
59:52
Speaker 1: gear or how to fit collars correctly, or what to
59:56
Speaker 1: watch out for with you know, programming, GPS, call ours
1:00:00
Speaker 1: or whatever the case may be. And so it's a
1:00:02
Speaker 1: very very collaborative community. And that's deer, that's turkeys, that's
1:00:08
Speaker 1: quay o, that's roosters, that's all of this stuff because
1:00:11
Speaker 1: we're all we're really all on the same team. Yeah,
1:00:14
Speaker 1: I suppose with the you know, you mentioned the rocket
1:00:16
Speaker 1: netting and some of the some of the other ways
1:00:18
Speaker 1: you capture deer for studies, I suppose you have to
1:00:21
Speaker 1: be super careful about how that's presented so the general
1:00:27
Speaker 1: public can digest it and be okay with it. Yeah,
1:00:30
Speaker 1: you do, and we take steps. I mean, the last
1:00:33
Speaker 1: thing we want to some you know, capture related mortality,
1:00:39
Speaker 1: because that's not why we're doing the work. That's not
1:00:41
Speaker 1: why we got into this field. And so, for example,
1:00:44
Speaker 1: the rocket nets, there have been many many times that
1:00:48
Speaker 1: I can think of having deer at the capture site
1:00:53
Speaker 1: where I can't hit the button on the net to
1:00:56
Speaker 1: shoot the net because there's too many deer and we
1:00:58
Speaker 1: don't have enough handlers, or their deer are two packed
1:01:02
Speaker 1: in close together and they're gonna hurt each other, or
1:01:06
Speaker 1: you know, they're too close to the net or too
1:01:08
Speaker 1: close to the rockets or whatever, and so it's not dear,
1:01:10
Speaker 1: show up and you you shoot things. You know, it's
1:01:13
Speaker 1: an ethical shot. And so usually with the rocket nets,
1:01:17
Speaker 1: that's how we are capturing adult books, and oftentimes they
1:01:22
Speaker 1: travel alone, and so that makes it a bit easier.
1:01:24
Speaker 1: But it's uh, you know, it's not just go out
1:01:27
Speaker 1: and take your first shot. You're waiting for things to
1:01:29
Speaker 1: be right so that that animal safety is ensured. Is
1:01:34
Speaker 1: there is there some like a similar kind of rush
1:01:37
Speaker 1: when you start doing that right away? As you know,
1:01:40
Speaker 1: like when you start hunting in a in a buck
1:01:42
Speaker 1: walks in and it doesn't wear off. No, it doesn't
1:01:44
Speaker 1: wear off. It doesn't wear at all. No, But I
1:01:48
Speaker 1: I can think of, well, you know all hunters know
1:01:52
Speaker 1: when your heart starts pounding and you're thinking, is this
1:01:55
Speaker 1: going to come through my shirt? I mean, it's just
1:01:57
Speaker 1: so it feels like it almost shakes your whole body.
1:02:00
Speaker 1: I've had those times in the rocket net blind and
1:02:03
Speaker 1: so you know, it's just circumstances or it's a big
1:02:06
Speaker 1: buck coming out or whatever the case may be, but
1:02:09
Speaker 1: it is. It is definitely a thrill. Do you ever miss?
1:02:14
Speaker 1: I don't. Some of your colleagues do. Some of my
1:02:18
Speaker 1: employees have missed before. And that's always a you know,
1:02:21
Speaker 1: when you miss with a forty by sixty ft net,
1:02:25
Speaker 1: usually you're the one buying beers that night, is I
1:02:29
Speaker 1: you don't have any like you've never just like filmed
1:02:32
Speaker 1: that have you somebody just with him? Oh withing, No, No,
1:02:37
Speaker 1: we don't do much filming just because there's enough other
1:02:41
Speaker 1: things going on. But we had one of the media
1:02:43
Speaker 1: folks with the Conservation Department come out and you know,
1:02:46
Speaker 1: I had to clarify this doesn't happen every time. And
1:02:53
Speaker 1: you know, it's like stars aligned and a nice ten
1:02:56
Speaker 1: point walked out about four thirty in the afternoon and
1:02:59
Speaker 1: it's snowing, and you know, he was on the road
1:03:02
Speaker 1: with the footage he wanted to share with the public
1:03:05
Speaker 1: before the sun went down, which rarely happens, and so
1:03:08
Speaker 1: we've had a few a few lucky spots over the years.
1:03:13
Speaker 1: I was just thinking with with somebody missing, what with
1:03:16
Speaker 1: a net like that, what a wonderful representation of buck
1:03:19
Speaker 1: fever that would be? Yeah, and there you know the
1:03:27
Speaker 1: it's happened. There's been some buck fever in the rocket
1:03:29
Speaker 1: net blind before, but it's a it's a very effective
1:03:32
Speaker 1: tool to catch him. Yeah, that's that's awesome. So you what,
1:03:40
Speaker 1: what do you want to do? You know, you're a
1:03:42
Speaker 1: young fellow, you've done a lot of really really cool
1:03:44
Speaker 1: stuff already. What's kind of like a dream study for you?
1:03:47
Speaker 1: Doesn't have to be white tails, Like, what's what's something
1:03:49
Speaker 1: out there that's just like man, I would that that
1:03:52
Speaker 1: keeps me up at night. I think more about oscillated turkeys,
1:03:56
Speaker 1: and just because there have been so few, there's been
1:04:00
Speaker 1: next to no research on there on those that species.
1:04:02
Speaker 1: And so I was one of the first, maybe the
1:04:06
Speaker 1: first to put transmitters on wild birds. Other people had
1:04:11
Speaker 1: caught some birds that were in some protected areas, but
1:04:13
Speaker 1: it'd be like collar and elk and yellowstone at one
1:04:16
Speaker 1: of the campgrounds doesn't really represent the wild bird. And
1:04:21
Speaker 1: that's such an interesting bird and an interesting area and
1:04:24
Speaker 1: interesting questions to be asked that that would be if
1:04:29
Speaker 1: somebody gave me a million dollars to design a study,
1:04:31
Speaker 1: that'd be where I'd go. So is there is there
1:04:34
Speaker 1: a level just of personal interest because you think it's
1:04:37
Speaker 1: they're cool and where they live is really really neat,
1:04:39
Speaker 1: But also there's just sort of a gap in the
1:04:42
Speaker 1: there's there's a void in the in the knowledge about
1:04:45
Speaker 1: him out there. Both of those definitely. And then the
1:04:49
Speaker 1: other thing is there's research like that that could really
1:04:52
Speaker 1: help people, and that's still used as a food source by,
1:04:58
Speaker 1: like I said, very poor people. And I don't see
1:05:01
Speaker 1: that changing. And then there's that international hunting interest in
1:05:06
Speaker 1: the species, and there is a void and so there's
1:05:09
Speaker 1: just a lot of reasons that it's appealing, but it's
1:05:12
Speaker 1: a personal, personal one. Yeah. I mean there's a lot
1:05:15
Speaker 1: going on there. There. There could be you know, globally,
1:05:18
Speaker 1: there could be so many kind of parallel situations to
1:05:21
Speaker 1: that that that that could benefit from this, This particular
1:05:24
Speaker 1: there might not seem related at all. Is there is
1:05:27
Speaker 1: there a part of that too? It kind of feels like,
1:05:31
Speaker 1: you know, white tales, there's there's been so much focus
1:05:34
Speaker 1: on them for so long, and they're the most popular
1:05:36
Speaker 1: game species out there, and you know, I would assume
1:05:39
Speaker 1: they've been studied as far as like game species, they've
1:05:41
Speaker 1: probably been studied more than anything is in this country anyway.
1:05:45
Speaker 1: Is there is there a part of that where you're
1:05:47
Speaker 1: just like, man, there's just less to learn about white
1:05:50
Speaker 1: tails or not. No, I think it just becomes more
1:05:53
Speaker 1: nuanced and and um, you know, white tailed research has
1:05:58
Speaker 1: gone back longer in any other game species research probably,
1:06:03
Speaker 1: and so you keep getting better tools to ask more
1:06:09
Speaker 1: difficult and more informed questions. And to me, that's progress.
1:06:14
Speaker 1: And I agree with you white tail deer are the
1:06:19
Speaker 1: game species of North America. They probably generate more excitement,
1:06:24
Speaker 1: generate more dollars for conservation than than other species. And
1:06:29
Speaker 1: so I I'm glad to see that that research is
1:06:33
Speaker 1: still going strong and glad to see that people are
1:06:35
Speaker 1: interested in it. Yeah. So last question here. You mentioned
1:06:40
Speaker 1: way at the beginning of this when we were talking about,
1:06:43
Speaker 1: you know, your time in South Africa, your time in
1:06:45
Speaker 1: China studying prairie chicken LECs and finding those like you
1:06:49
Speaker 1: you mentioned multiple times habitat and land use and habitat
1:06:53
Speaker 1: and land use. As you as you get further into
1:06:56
Speaker 1: your career and do more research on various wildlife species
1:07:00
Speaker 1: across the world, do you like, how often do you
1:07:03
Speaker 1: just come back to habitat and go, Man, this is
1:07:05
Speaker 1: like this is the lynchpin that holds everything together for
1:07:09
Speaker 1: game population. I know, I know, it's like so dynamically variable,
1:07:13
Speaker 1: but that's like one constant that just seems to need
1:07:17
Speaker 1: love all the time. Well, it exactly is. I mean,
1:07:20
Speaker 1: you need the food, water, the cover, and so you
1:07:24
Speaker 1: don't have good habitat. Some some species can live anywhere.
1:07:28
Speaker 1: I mean you look at coyotes, look at white tailed deer,
1:07:32
Speaker 1: I mean, um, some of these generalists can get by anywhere,
1:07:36
Speaker 1: but then you get more into the specialist species and
1:07:42
Speaker 1: the habitat needs become very specific or very large or
1:07:46
Speaker 1: something that makes it a challenge to have that on
1:07:49
Speaker 1: the landscape. But without good habitat, you're gonna have nothing. Yeah,
1:07:54
Speaker 1: and that's you mentioned this great intangible with some game
1:07:57
Speaker 1: species they just play well with man and some don't.
1:08:00
Speaker 1: And you know when you when you talked about that
1:08:03
Speaker 1: the buck that took the huge dispersal and you know,
1:08:06
Speaker 1: he crossed and he crossed I think it was the
1:08:10
Speaker 1: Grand River like multiple times, and you think of all
1:08:15
Speaker 1: these things that you go, that's probably a pretty good
1:08:17
Speaker 1: natural barrier, and a lot of times he paralleled it, it
1:08:19
Speaker 1: it seemed like, especially the roads. But eventually it was
1:08:22
Speaker 1: time to cross. And you you just I would think
1:08:26
Speaker 1: mule deer other than maybe a migration or elk or
1:08:28
Speaker 1: some of these other critters that maybe don't play as
1:08:30
Speaker 1: well with man. You'd think, man, that would be like
1:08:32
Speaker 1: a really really hard edge for them. They might cross it,
1:08:37
Speaker 1: but probably not. And then you think about that white
1:08:38
Speaker 1: tail and you look at his route and go, it
1:08:40
Speaker 1: didn't seem to really phase him, right, Now he definitely
1:08:44
Speaker 1: knew it was there. He responded to it, but it
1:08:47
Speaker 1: wasn't going to stop him. Yeah, yeah, it's wild. It's
1:08:51
Speaker 1: wild anyway, John, Uh, this was so much fun, man.
1:08:54
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you coming on. Where can people if
1:08:57
Speaker 1: they want to geek out on this research, where can
1:08:59
Speaker 1: they go to find it? Well, the the scientific publication
1:09:04
Speaker 1: is open access and so google or search however you
1:09:09
Speaker 1: want because it's in metric for the scientific title ko
1:09:16
Speaker 1: dispersal by a white tailed Deer and you can get
1:09:18
Speaker 1: the article. And that's where I'd encourage people to go,
1:09:23
Speaker 1: just to see what kind of work goes into preparing
1:09:26
Speaker 1: a peer reviewed scientific publication to find out more. This
1:09:32
Speaker 1: is um. This is really getting extensive news coverage and
1:09:36
Speaker 1: so um folks won't have to look for to find this.
1:09:41
Speaker 1: Now the future research that is coming out, keep an
1:09:45
Speaker 1: eye on the Missouri Department of Conservation web page and
1:09:48
Speaker 1: we're going to have everything out and available for the public.
1:09:52
Speaker 1: And they were the sponsoring agency and so they're going
1:09:55
Speaker 1: to help get the word out to folks interested in
1:09:58
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. Yeah, that's there's there's gonna be
1:10:00
Speaker 1: more coming on this. Let's let's touch on that quick
1:10:02
Speaker 1: and then we will wrap this up. When you mentioned
1:10:04
Speaker 1: this paper, this this peer reviewed research paper that's out there. People,
1:10:11
Speaker 1: they're very quick to make judgments on something like this.
1:10:14
Speaker 1: If you say, oh, this buck walking and you're you're
1:10:15
Speaker 1: laughing because you know this, go read. If you're like,
1:10:19
Speaker 1: I don't believe this is be somebody through that collar
1:10:21
Speaker 1: in the back of a truck and it drove a
1:10:22
Speaker 1: hunter in eighty five months, go look at this paper,
1:10:24
Speaker 1: look at the resources cited, the sources cited, go look
1:10:27
Speaker 1: at the extensive uh level of evidence in this and
1:10:32
Speaker 1: then make your judgment call on what happened here. Very
1:10:37
Speaker 1: I would encourage that, yes, yes you will. You will
1:10:40
Speaker 1: have a harder time refuting these findings if you actually
1:10:43
Speaker 1: go give that a read. It's kind of a long
1:10:45
Speaker 1: one and it's pretty dense, but it'll be worth it. Uh, John,
1:10:48
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I really appreciate this. It was
1:10:50
Speaker 1: my pleasure. I enjoyed visiting. That's it for this week, folks.
1:10:54
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed listening to John as much as
1:10:56
Speaker 1: I love talking to him. Such interesting conversation with deer
1:11:01
Speaker 1: researcher like that, who has who has so much real
1:11:04
Speaker 1: world information and also comes from a hunting background. You
1:11:07
Speaker 1: gotta love that I have been your guest host, Tony Peterson.
1:11:11
Speaker 1: This is Wired to Hunt, which is brought to you
1:11:12
Speaker 1: by First Light. As I always thank you, thank you,
1:11:15
Speaker 1: thank you for listening and checking in. If you want
1:11:17
Speaker 1: more white tail information, check out our YouTube stuff that
1:11:20
Speaker 1: we're putting out every week. We've got how to videos,
1:11:23
Speaker 1: all kinds of neat things there. Check out my Wire
1:11:25
Speaker 1: to Hunt Foundations podcast as well, and of course go
1:11:29
Speaker 1: to the meat eater dot com. You're gonna find a
1:11:31
Speaker 1: whole bunch of articles by some of the top white
1:11:34
Speaker 1: tail writers in the country.