Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #139: The Fascinating World of Whitetail Research with Bronson Strickland

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Wired To Hunt Podcast #139: The Fascinating World of Whitetail Research with Bronson Strickland · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
0:06
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
0:11
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm
0:16
Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. This is episode number one thirty
0:19
Speaker 1: nine Tannis Show. We were joined by wildlife biologists Bronson Strickland,
0:24
Speaker 1: and we're talking white tail research. All right, Welcome to
0:49
Speaker 1: the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sitka Gear,
0:53
Speaker 1: and today I think is going to be a very
0:57
Speaker 1: interesting episode because joining us here soon is a man
1:00
Speaker 1: by the name of Bronson Strickland. And Bronson is a
1:03
Speaker 1: wildlife biologist and his technically his title is Associate Extension
1:08
Speaker 1: Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Management at Mississippi State University,
1:14
Speaker 1: and he's the co director of Mississippi State's Deer Lab, which,
1:18
Speaker 1: as I understand it is one of the nation's premier
1:20
Speaker 1: dear focused research departments. So with all those impressive titles,
1:24
Speaker 1: Bronson is going to bring with him a fascinating array
1:28
Speaker 1: of insights into the biology and behavior of white tailed deer.
1:32
Speaker 1: And from what I've read and different things I've seen
1:34
Speaker 1: from in the past, he's just been involved in so
1:36
Speaker 1: many different interesting research projects when it comes to white tails,
1:42
Speaker 1: what they do, why they do it, um, and and
1:45
Speaker 1: some interesting insights into what we can take from that
1:48
Speaker 1: as hunters. So so that's gonna be the kind of
1:50
Speaker 1: game plan today. UM. I don't have any particular single agenda.
1:54
Speaker 1: I just want to dig into everything we possibly can
1:57
Speaker 1: from Bronson, everything we can possibly learn. So, uh, Dann,
2:00
Speaker 1: are you up for some science? Dude? I love science.
2:04
Speaker 1: I used to like take a balloon and rub it
2:06
Speaker 1: on my brother's head and then stick it to the wall.
2:09
Speaker 1: That's that's science, static electricity, you know. So I'm I'm
2:15
Speaker 1: up for good. I'm up for science. I love I
2:18
Speaker 1: love the details behind the you know, the animal and
2:24
Speaker 1: what makes them tick. And you know, from a from
2:28
Speaker 1: a hunter standpoint, that should almost be as important. Of
2:33
Speaker 1: knowing how a white tail operates should be more important
2:37
Speaker 1: than you know, like strategy of how to intercept them.
2:40
Speaker 1: I think I think they kind of go hand in hand.
2:42
Speaker 1: But it's it's the foundation, right, You need this foundation
2:47
Speaker 1: both to become a better hunter from execution of a strategy.
2:51
Speaker 1: But then also I think it makes you a better hunter,
2:53
Speaker 1: just maybe not a better quantifiably as like how effectively
2:59
Speaker 1: you can kill it here, but it might make you
3:00
Speaker 1: a more well rounded hunter and just understanding our quarry,
3:05
Speaker 1: understanding these animals, having some insight, and uh, I don't know.
3:09
Speaker 1: I think it's just very interesting too. I mean, I'm
3:11
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated. If I didn't go into what I did
3:15
Speaker 1: so well, I went into marketing and business and stuff
3:17
Speaker 1: and then roundabout way I got to hear. But if
3:20
Speaker 1: I hadn't done that, I think I could have been
3:22
Speaker 1: a wildlife biologist or like a I don't know, I
3:25
Speaker 1: could just sit and watch animals all day and like
3:28
Speaker 1: just take note of what they're doing and why are
3:30
Speaker 1: they doing this? And I mean, I don't think I'm
3:34
Speaker 1: too unique in that either. I mean a lot of
3:36
Speaker 1: hunters we just enjoy watching them right right. Amen, It's uh,
3:41
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's gonna be interesting because I
3:44
Speaker 1: have there's so many things that we see. We talk
3:47
Speaker 1: all the time with different guests or just you and me,
3:49
Speaker 1: like we as hunters make all these different assumptions or
3:52
Speaker 1: we identify these patterns or trends, and we say, dear,
3:55
Speaker 1: do this most of the time. So we're gonna just
3:57
Speaker 1: our hunting stretch. You know, maybe it's because of like
4:00
Speaker 1: you know, moon ideas or barre metric pressure things, or
4:04
Speaker 1: we see these different things and people write about articles
4:07
Speaker 1: and we we go base a lot of what we
4:09
Speaker 1: do in October and November and December based on this stuff. Um.
4:13
Speaker 1: But I'd venture to guess at least three quarters of
4:17
Speaker 1: those like recommendations usually aren't backed up by verifiable science. UM.
4:23
Speaker 1: So it's always nice to be able to go and
4:25
Speaker 1: talk to the people that really do have data and
4:27
Speaker 1: really do have you know, quantifiable evidence to say whether
4:30
Speaker 1: or not some of these hunches that we have are
4:32
Speaker 1: actually true. So I'm hoping that Bronson can help us
4:34
Speaker 1: do that. Can he help verify or um, you know,
4:38
Speaker 1: dispel some of these different hunches that we as hunters have,
4:41
Speaker 1: and I think we'll probably have a lot more above
4:43
Speaker 1: and beyond. But that's what I'm particularly treated. I think
4:49
Speaker 1: what everybody should really pay attention to about, you know,
4:53
Speaker 1: the biology of a white tail. You know how they smell,
4:57
Speaker 1: how they see, you know how you know how their
5:00
Speaker 1: body is, you know their senses here, how they hear,
5:04
Speaker 1: and then maybe relate that to some of the products
5:08
Speaker 1: that you buy and say, okay, is this product making
5:12
Speaker 1: a uh you know, just a b S claim or
5:16
Speaker 1: is there a um a biological reasoning why they're why
5:22
Speaker 1: their product works with white tails as well? So that's
5:26
Speaker 1: so that's that's that's the kind of stuff I'm interested in,
5:30
Speaker 1: you know, like, Okay, so does in ozonics or really
5:34
Speaker 1: work or does these these sprays really work to a
5:38
Speaker 1: white tails nose? How sensitive is a white tails nose?
5:42
Speaker 1: What's the best camo pattern? Right? You know, like are
5:45
Speaker 1: all these things? Can can you can you quantify whether
5:50
Speaker 1: or not um a company claims that their product does
5:54
Speaker 1: this if you know, like actually no, because I'll tell
5:58
Speaker 1: you why the biology of a white tales I is
6:00
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah. You know what I mean. Yeah,
6:03
Speaker 1: it is always interesting to get a biological perspective on
6:07
Speaker 1: those things. So is a product aimed to you know,
6:10
Speaker 1: actually make a difference based on known science of a
6:13
Speaker 1: white tail? Or is it is the unique value of
6:16
Speaker 1: this product simply that it's catchy to the hunter's eye,
6:20
Speaker 1: you know, right, it's got something that's gonna make a
6:22
Speaker 1: hunters say, oh, or I want to wear that because
6:25
Speaker 1: it looks cool or whatever. So, yeah, there's there's something
6:28
Speaker 1: to be said about trying to get some science behind it.
6:30
Speaker 1: So I'm pretty I'm pretty excited for this stuff because
6:34
Speaker 1: I grew up watching national geographics with my dad and brother,
6:38
Speaker 1: and uh that was like our Sunday night tradition, pop
6:41
Speaker 1: some popcorn and watch national geographics. And typically it was
6:45
Speaker 1: about some kind of animals, right, and and they would
6:48
Speaker 1: always go into detail about you know, this fish has
6:53
Speaker 1: this extra appendage through you know, through evolution because it
6:58
Speaker 1: does this or does I to do this specifically, so
7:02
Speaker 1: you know, everything poor genetics always fails during you know,
7:07
Speaker 1: through evolution. So the white tail has got to the
7:11
Speaker 1: point it is today because it is it's it's almost perfect.
7:17
Speaker 1: It's in its environment, you know what I mean minus
7:20
Speaker 1: minus hunters like human beings right well, and and AND's
7:25
Speaker 1: and even above and beyond that, the the unique adaptability
7:29
Speaker 1: of the white deer and that it can learn to
7:32
Speaker 1: live with anyones and around humans, I mean, more so
7:36
Speaker 1: than most other large mammals in the world, let alone
7:40
Speaker 1: North America. White tails have adapted to that better than
7:43
Speaker 1: more many many other species. So um, I mean that's
7:46
Speaker 1: one of the you know, you know, and we talked
7:48
Speaker 1: to talk about a lot. But in the world where
7:50
Speaker 1: the human footprint is massive and ever increasing UM. Unfortunately,
7:56
Speaker 1: much to our dismay. You know, we're pushing a lot
7:59
Speaker 1: of species to the brink or pushing them into increasingly
8:02
Speaker 1: small little pockets UM. Fortunately for deer and deer hunters,
8:06
Speaker 1: deer one of those species that can handle that increasing
8:09
Speaker 1: footprint and they can learn to live within it. UM.
8:12
Speaker 1: So that's ah, they found it a nice little evolutionary
8:17
Speaker 1: niche here where they fit in very well as kind
8:19
Speaker 1: of a mutually what it's a symbiotic relationship, I think
8:24
Speaker 1: would be the biological term, right if I'm reminder science
8:27
Speaker 1: class right, where two species UM do better in conjunction.
8:31
Speaker 1: And I think in some cases white tailed deer and
8:34
Speaker 1: humans almost have the type of relationship because in a
8:36
Speaker 1: lot of ways, UM. A lot of things that human
8:40
Speaker 1: development brings to some degree, whether it's agriculture UM or logging,
8:45
Speaker 1: different things, creating edge creating, you know, fresh regrowth. A
8:49
Speaker 1: lot of things that we've done have actually helped white
8:52
Speaker 1: tail populations UM, which is unique compared to a lot
8:55
Speaker 1: of the other animals that our development hasn't. So it's
8:57
Speaker 1: it's one nice silver lining I think in the I
9:01
Speaker 1: know the story of humans impact on wildlife in this country. Um,
9:04
Speaker 1: you know, we've been able to find a good way
9:06
Speaker 1: to make it work with white tails for the for
9:08
Speaker 1: the most part. Right, So right, Yeah, I'm excited about
9:13
Speaker 1: this one. I love science. Is just cool period biology,
9:18
Speaker 1: and you know how things work, why they do what
9:20
Speaker 1: they do, and and all that stuff. Yeah. So I
9:24
Speaker 1: don't have anything too terribly exciting in my neck of
9:27
Speaker 1: the woods to share. Um, so, do we want to
9:30
Speaker 1: jump right into our conversation with Bronson or do you
9:32
Speaker 1: have anything that's a I think note in the lander Dan, No, man,
9:36
Speaker 1: I think we get I think we're gonna need every
9:38
Speaker 1: minute today with this guest, because I have a whole
9:41
Speaker 1: sheet worth of question questions. Perfect, all right, does the
9:46
Speaker 1: does the acorn cruncher really work? Please? Let's lead with that.
9:53
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's take a quick break for a
9:57
Speaker 1: word from our partners at sick Gear, and then we'll
10:00
Speaker 1: give Bronson call. Alright, So, last week in our Sickest Story,
10:04
Speaker 1: we heard from Jessica de Lorenzo, one of the female
10:07
Speaker 1: hunters involved with the designing and testing of sick as
10:10
Speaker 1: new women's line, And today I wanted just to tell
10:13
Speaker 1: us just a little bit more about what her and
10:15
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10:18
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10:22
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10:27
Speaker 1: product designers and everybody at SICCA and MIA. We really
10:32
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10:37
Speaker 1: and a lot of attention detail went into UM warmth
10:42
Speaker 1: and how females bodies um snooze or keep any heat
10:47
Speaker 1: as opposed to males. So we did a lot of
10:50
Speaker 1: testing UM with like body heat loss, and we found
10:55
Speaker 1: that the females lost their body heat from completely different
11:00
Speaker 1: areas UM at a different rate than men do. So
11:03
Speaker 1: we went through a lot of processes making sure that
11:07
Speaker 1: the prototypes had UM the ground shield technology underneath the
11:12
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11:16
Speaker 1: on the big game side, I know they get a
11:17
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11:20
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11:25
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11:30
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11:32
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11:35
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11:38
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11:41
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11:43
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11:46
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11:49
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11:53
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11:57
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12:01
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12:05
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12:07
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12:11
Speaker 1: isn't in the men's line. UM, the ground shield pathnology
12:14
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12:18
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12:21
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12:25
Speaker 1: which was a big deal for us. And another thing
12:27
Speaker 1: all the gloves and accessories where we made sure that
12:30
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12:33
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12:37
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12:40
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12:44
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12:47
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12:49
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12:54
Speaker 1: to the show in Bronson Strickland. All right with us?
12:58
Speaker 1: Now is Bronson Strickland. Thanks for joining us. Bronson, Hey,
13:03
Speaker 1: I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah,
13:05
Speaker 1: we just established off air. I wish we were recording,
13:08
Speaker 1: but we just established off air. Given your name and
13:10
Speaker 1: what how Dan feels about it, you are officially a badass, um.
13:14
Speaker 1: So I just want to make sure everybody knows that. Yeah,
13:18
Speaker 1: every everybody that knows me knows that too. When they're
13:24
Speaker 1: all laughing right now. What was it about his name,
13:27
Speaker 1: Dan that just made you feel that way about him?
13:29
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe your delivery, but Bronson Strickland, you know,
13:34
Speaker 1: like he's an action star or maybe a bodybuilder or
13:38
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, man, did you hear Bronson Strickland just
13:42
Speaker 1: broke the squat record. I could see him being a
13:44
Speaker 1: UFC fighter. Is what UFC fighter? Yes? Yeah, yeah, maybe yeah. Coincidentally,
13:50
Speaker 1: I just retired from from that a few years ago
13:53
Speaker 1: and it started to do this professor gig. So yeah,
13:58
Speaker 1: this this is just a cover up, right, what what
14:00
Speaker 1: do you really do for a loving so on that tonson?
14:05
Speaker 1: What in all reality can you? Can you kick this off?
14:09
Speaker 1: But just tell us a little about yourself, how you
14:11
Speaker 1: got to be here, and what you're doing today. Yeah
14:15
Speaker 1: you bet. Um, I'll give you just a little bit
14:17
Speaker 1: of background about myself. Um, Like a lot of people
14:21
Speaker 1: your listeners, have always been uh fascinated and enamored with
14:26
Speaker 1: the outdoors. Um. As soon as I could begin hunting,
14:29
Speaker 1: I was fortunate enough to raid to be raised in
14:32
Speaker 1: an area where we had about fifty or a hundred acres,
14:35
Speaker 1: And so it began with a bb gun and then
14:37
Speaker 1: a four teen and then a twenty two, and then
14:39
Speaker 1: evolved into deer hunting. And my my story is kind
14:44
Speaker 1: of funny. I remember vividly. I was in eighth grade
14:47
Speaker 1: and I was with my hunting buddy and he said, Hey,
14:49
Speaker 1: I've got this guy this in my boy Scouts group.
14:52
Speaker 1: And his father is a dear biologist. He's actually a
14:57
Speaker 1: professional deer biologist and he works for the University of
14:59
Speaker 1: your Regia. And in eighth grade, when I heard that,
15:03
Speaker 1: I knew that my life was set in front of me,
15:07
Speaker 1: that I cannot possibly fathom another career that would interest
15:10
Speaker 1: me more than being a deer biologist. So from from
15:14
Speaker 1: that point forward, UH got through high school and attended
15:18
Speaker 1: the University of Georgia and got an undergraduate degree in
15:21
Speaker 1: wildlife biology. And after that I went to South Texas
15:25
Speaker 1: UM again because of my fascination with the deer management.
15:29
Speaker 1: The University of Georgia had a cooperative project there with
15:32
Speaker 1: Texas A and in Kingsville in in South Texas, and
15:35
Speaker 1: I got to work on one of these just dream
15:38
Speaker 1: come true ranches sixty thousand acres where UH deer management
15:44
Speaker 1: was the priority, and just learned so much about deer
15:47
Speaker 1: management number one, but deer management in a completely different
15:51
Speaker 1: context in the southeast. And after I graduated there, I
15:55
Speaker 1: came to Mississippi State and I started working here with
16:00
Speaker 1: UM my colleague now UH and co director of the
16:03
Speaker 1: Deer Lab, Steve Dameris, and we started analyzing harvest data
16:07
Speaker 1: collected throughout Mississippi and started looking at spatial trends and
16:13
Speaker 1: trends over time with how the deer heard is responding
16:16
Speaker 1: to the various regulations UH for example, like antler regulations
16:20
Speaker 1: and things like that. UH and Lucky for me. As
16:23
Speaker 1: soon as I graduated in about a year later, a
16:26
Speaker 1: faculty position opened up here in the department. That was
16:30
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, and I've been here ever since.
16:33
Speaker 1: And my job now is that I'm a professor. But
16:38
Speaker 1: my my role is a little bit different. Uh. My
16:41
Speaker 1: appointment is called extension, and extension essentially means outreach. So
16:46
Speaker 1: I do very little teaching in the classroom like my colleagues.
16:50
Speaker 1: My teaching is in the field, so I conduct a
16:53
Speaker 1: lot of seminars and workshops, online training and things like that.
16:58
Speaker 1: That is a sin my my teaching appointment for the
17:01
Speaker 1: State of Mississippi. It sounds like a dream job as
17:04
Speaker 1: far as I can for it is for me, it
17:08
Speaker 1: sure is. I'm very lucky. That's incredible. Now, can you
17:12
Speaker 1: elaborate a little bit more on on what your department does?
17:16
Speaker 1: The Deer lab Um, what's the breadth of that, what's
17:21
Speaker 1: the scope and breadth of your work there? Well, it
17:24
Speaker 1: was established over twenty years ago by by two fellas.
17:29
Speaker 1: You've probably heard of, one guy named Harry Jacobson. He's
17:31
Speaker 1: a long time deer researcher and dear biologists from Mississippi
17:34
Speaker 1: State UH and David Gwen was also here at the time,
17:38
Speaker 1: and they they began the Deer Lab and it's really
17:40
Speaker 1: started a focused effort on applied dear research and and
17:46
Speaker 1: the biggest thing that they did, along with a lot
17:49
Speaker 1: of physiology studies and and age related studies with antlers
17:53
Speaker 1: and so forth, uh, was they started working with Mississippi
17:57
Speaker 1: Hunters in association with our state alife agency, the Mississippi
18:02
Speaker 1: Department of Wilafe, Fisheries and Parks, and started what is
18:05
Speaker 1: called the d MAP program. D MAP stands for the
18:09
Speaker 1: Deer Management Assistance Program and and over the years, excuse me,
18:14
Speaker 1: how this relationship works is that in return for some
18:19
Speaker 1: consultation from a state agency biologists, hunters are required to
18:23
Speaker 1: collect harvest data from from all the deer that are
18:27
Speaker 1: killed on their property, both bucks and does. And we
18:30
Speaker 1: get biological data from dose you know, what what was
18:32
Speaker 1: their age, what was their body weight, what was their
18:34
Speaker 1: lactation status, And from that we can heard, excuse me,
18:39
Speaker 1: we can engage her dynamics in terms of reproduction. And
18:43
Speaker 1: and then also from from the bucks we get of
18:45
Speaker 1: course age, body weight, and antler size, and so from
18:49
Speaker 1: that from having that data set literally statewide and and
18:54
Speaker 1: now we have over three quarters of a million harvest
18:59
Speaker 1: records from Mrs Sippy. Is that we can look at
19:02
Speaker 1: at different trends and and like I said earlier, different
19:05
Speaker 1: impacts regulations have on the demographics of the herd and
19:10
Speaker 1: in terms of antler size and and and things like that.
19:13
Speaker 1: So that was really their brain child. That is what
19:16
Speaker 1: those two guys got started. UM. Steve. Of course, when
19:20
Speaker 1: when Harry Jacobson retired, Steve came on board and his
19:25
Speaker 1: research and my research. We really want everything to be
19:29
Speaker 1: grounded an application, So we have to do nerdy things
19:33
Speaker 1: like other professors, and we have to publish things in
19:36
Speaker 1: scholarly journals. UM. But what we are really interested in
19:41
Speaker 1: is research that will ultimately have an impact for wildlife
19:45
Speaker 1: managers and for hunters. UM. So we've done really applied stuff.
19:51
Speaker 1: Like we finished up research on deer impact on soybean
19:55
Speaker 1: fields in Mississippi to the soybean farmers. UM. We fin
20:00
Speaker 1: sh up. We were talking earlier guys about our our research.
20:03
Speaker 1: We just finished up on UM what we call multiple
20:07
Speaker 1: paternity or or or the reproductive success of different books
20:14
Speaker 1: in the wild. What characteristics of successful bucks have that
20:18
Speaker 1: sire A great number of fauns or not and and
20:22
Speaker 1: all those types of things. UM we worked with UM.
20:26
Speaker 1: You guys have had Jeremy Flynn on the podcast before
20:29
Speaker 1: UM if you might remember him talking about the buck
20:32
Speaker 1: score technology. We worked with Jeremy on that. So again
20:36
Speaker 1: just really applied things that UM we always hope culminates
20:41
Speaker 1: in helping people manage to your either learning about it,
20:44
Speaker 1: learning about the biology, why is this happening, and hopefully
20:48
Speaker 1: steering them in the right direction to manage more efficiently.
20:53
Speaker 1: I've got I guess before. I'm really interested in some
20:56
Speaker 1: of the research you've done, some the findings, but I
20:59
Speaker 1: also really curious about the behind the scenes, like how
21:04
Speaker 1: something like this actually happens, Like what goes into a
21:07
Speaker 1: research study around one of these things. Could you maybe
21:10
Speaker 1: pick an example, UM, and maybe one of the one
21:13
Speaker 1: of the things you just mentioned there where you could
21:14
Speaker 1: actually give us a breakdown of the actual process to
21:18
Speaker 1: you know, determine what's the thing we're going to try
21:21
Speaker 1: to look into, how do we collect the data, collecting
21:23
Speaker 1: that data, analyzing that data. UM, can you walk us
21:26
Speaker 1: through an example of how wildlife biologists in your position
21:29
Speaker 1: does that and then is able to walk away with
21:32
Speaker 1: it from it with applicable and appliable data. Yeah, you
21:36
Speaker 1: bet so. I'll give you an example we are currently
21:40
Speaker 1: going through right now. So UM, we are very fortunate
21:44
Speaker 1: in Mississippi to that our state Wildlife Agency UH, Department
21:49
Speaker 1: of Wilife, Fishers and Parks, they are very engaged in
21:52
Speaker 1: deer research and the deer lab more or less serves
21:56
Speaker 1: as their research arm and so questions that them to
22:00
Speaker 1: us from them, UM just about have to be very
22:04
Speaker 1: applied in nature because this is typically a question that
22:08
Speaker 1: hunters are giving to them. So their their staff of
22:12
Speaker 1: wildlife biologists are being presented with questions and they want
22:16
Speaker 1: some answers. So we work with the staff of of
22:19
Speaker 1: MDWF and P and we literally will will have a meeting. Hey,
22:23
Speaker 1: let's talk about this question. Let's talk about this problem.
22:26
Speaker 1: Is this Is this a question that we can answer
22:29
Speaker 1: with research? If so, how would we go about designing
22:32
Speaker 1: that that project? And then finally we have to develop
22:36
Speaker 1: of course, we have to develop a budget for that,
22:39
Speaker 1: and we determine, hey, do we have an adequate amount
22:41
Speaker 1: of funding UH to answer this question? And so UM,
22:45
Speaker 1: one of the questions most recently in Mississippi, this occurs
22:49
Speaker 1: in a lot of places. Um. But we wanted to
22:52
Speaker 1: simultaneously look at what impact are acorn crops. So like
22:58
Speaker 1: this year there were a lot of deer sightings were down.
23:01
Speaker 1: Uh in some areas, harvests were down. Um, And people
23:05
Speaker 1: want to know what's going on. Is a disease? Uh,
23:08
Speaker 1: We're not seeing as many deer and it may simply
23:11
Speaker 1: be that we had a very very good acorn crop. Simultaneously,
23:15
Speaker 1: we had a big time drought in the southeast and
23:18
Speaker 1: so when a lot of people in November and early
23:20
Speaker 1: December were used to seeing deer on food plots, there
23:23
Speaker 1: was nothing there. You know, there was nothing growing because
23:26
Speaker 1: we had the drought, and so deer sightings were down. UM.
23:29
Speaker 1: The other part, the other interest is like in a
23:33
Speaker 1: lot of places, what is hunting pressure having on deer
23:37
Speaker 1: and specifically on bucks. So what we decided to do
23:41
Speaker 1: was we were gonna put GPS callers on about fifty
23:43
Speaker 1: mature bucks and so we again worked with our state
23:48
Speaker 1: wildlife biologists to find a number of landowners. So we've
23:51
Speaker 1: got about a thirty thousand acre area where all the
23:54
Speaker 1: landowners are very cooperative, The hunting clubs are very cooperative,
23:57
Speaker 1: and they helped us with catching. You're trapping these bucks
24:01
Speaker 1: and putting GPS collars on them, and beginning this late
24:06
Speaker 1: summer and fall, we're gonna be taking a location from
24:10
Speaker 1: from all these bucks about every two to three hours
24:13
Speaker 1: all through the hunting season, and so we're gonna see
24:15
Speaker 1: how they respond to different weather events. We're also going
24:19
Speaker 1: to see how the bucks are going to respond to
24:21
Speaker 1: hunting pressure. So that was had to be a big
24:24
Speaker 1: buy in from the club. Is it's not just we're
24:26
Speaker 1: gonna monitor the deer. We want to monitor the hunters.
24:29
Speaker 1: So we want to know where this hunter went, the
24:32
Speaker 1: route that they took to their stand, the stand they
24:35
Speaker 1: hunted on, and for how long and how they left,
24:38
Speaker 1: and so it's gonna get really complicated. But we're gonna
24:40
Speaker 1: overlay all that material the hunting pressure as well as
24:44
Speaker 1: the buck movements as well as we're gonna be mapping
24:47
Speaker 1: out areas where we have hardwoods and oak trees, gauge
24:51
Speaker 1: what the mast crop is and see if we see
24:54
Speaker 1: more or less movement based on the acorn crops, and
24:59
Speaker 1: just really ultimate goal is try to provide UH deer
25:03
Speaker 1: managers and deer hunters with answers, you know, try to
25:06
Speaker 1: help explain what they're seeing and um and you see
25:10
Speaker 1: a science to answer those questions. So how do you
25:14
Speaker 1: in this type of example, you know, and I am
25:16
Speaker 1: no scientists, I am no analysts, So I am I'm
25:20
Speaker 1: coming from a very amateur standpoint. But as I as
25:22
Speaker 1: I understand these types of things, and as I try
25:24
Speaker 1: to understand types of things, right, when you're trying to
25:28
Speaker 1: establish a uh you know, and as if relationship, you know,
25:32
Speaker 1: a because of a relationship, you're trying to have to
25:35
Speaker 1: isolate a variable. Right you have to say, okay, here's
25:37
Speaker 1: a control, let's measure what's happening in the control. We
25:40
Speaker 1: have to measure then whatever that variable as we're changing,
25:43
Speaker 1: and then the impact. How do you do that in
25:46
Speaker 1: a situation like this where it sounds like you're measuring
25:48
Speaker 1: different many different variables because we're talking about hunting pressure
25:51
Speaker 1: as a variable, as I understand, we're talking about possibly
25:53
Speaker 1: whether as a variable, We're talking about food sources as
25:57
Speaker 1: a variable. I mean, how can you measure the impact
26:00
Speaker 1: of any one of those things when they all may
26:03
Speaker 1: have an interdependent reaction or um, you know, relationship within
26:08
Speaker 1: into each other. That is very very insightful That is
26:12
Speaker 1: a very good question, and that is they Uh. That
26:16
Speaker 1: is part of every analysis is you have to figure
26:20
Speaker 1: out and we have statistical tests for this. But what
26:22
Speaker 1: you just described there is are your data independence or
26:27
Speaker 1: are they linked or are they associated? So when one
26:31
Speaker 1: variable goes up, another variable automatically goes down, and because
26:36
Speaker 1: those two variables are correlated, it's hard to distinguish causation.
26:40
Speaker 1: Is it because this one went up or the other
26:42
Speaker 1: variable went down? But we have statistical techniques. One example
26:46
Speaker 1: is called analysis of variance. And when you plug in
26:49
Speaker 1: a lot of variables to movements, So it might be uh,
26:53
Speaker 1: hunting pressure, some metric of hunting pressure. It might be
26:57
Speaker 1: acorn abundance, that might be intogavaria in food plots, etcetera, etcetera. Uh,
27:03
Speaker 1: you can see which of those variables are acting independently
27:09
Speaker 1: or are acting in concert and then you know you
27:12
Speaker 1: kind of account for it once you know which is
27:15
Speaker 1: the case, and then you you with the statistical models,
27:18
Speaker 1: you can partition the variation. So what proportion of the
27:23
Speaker 1: deer movements are responsible for or excuse me, the deer
27:28
Speaker 1: are responding based on acorns? You know, thirty percent of
27:32
Speaker 1: the movements we can say is is acorn crop hunting pressure? Well,
27:38
Speaker 1: based on our model, we can say that fifty of
27:40
Speaker 1: the variation that we see in movements are based on
27:43
Speaker 1: hunting pressure. So it's really it's almost like a process
27:46
Speaker 1: of elimination. So you might start out with six or
27:50
Speaker 1: eight or ten different very plausible, biologically reasonable variables and
27:57
Speaker 1: then just kind of one by one with with the
28:00
Speaker 1: weight of evidence from your data, you either have support
28:03
Speaker 1: for some or you eliminate others. Now, are you, in
28:07
Speaker 1: this particular instance, are you going into this with a
28:10
Speaker 1: set of hypotheses. Do you have hypothesis that you're trying
28:14
Speaker 1: to prove false or true? Or are you I mean,
28:17
Speaker 1: I guess as I understand the scientific method, right, that's
28:19
Speaker 1: how it works. Or are you going into this with
28:21
Speaker 1: a blank canvas and saying what are we gonna find out? Well,
28:25
Speaker 1: it'll be it'll be a little bit of both. So, UM,
28:29
Speaker 1: we can just about guarantee from the beginning, is hunting
28:34
Speaker 1: pressure going to impact dear movements in some way? That's
28:38
Speaker 1: going to be true or false, and more than likely
28:41
Speaker 1: that's going to be true. But we also want to
28:44
Speaker 1: then measure the effect. So UM, at what point, UM
28:50
Speaker 1: we may have a little bit of hunting intensity, we
28:53
Speaker 1: have no measurable change in dear movements, or we may
28:57
Speaker 1: have this greater um hunter into in city may then
29:01
Speaker 1: impact dear movements. And we did a study like this
29:04
Speaker 1: previously in another location. The excuse me, the design was different,
29:10
Speaker 1: different setup, but but what we found was that, uh,
29:16
Speaker 1: and this is kind of bad news, but it only
29:18
Speaker 1: in this study. It only took about three to four
29:20
Speaker 1: days for the deer to adapt, So we know going
29:25
Speaker 1: in we have some preliminary data that after three or
29:28
Speaker 1: four days of hunters being in the woods and tracks
29:32
Speaker 1: and human scent and sounds kind of saturating the woods. Uh,
29:36
Speaker 1: the deer learned and they responded in about three to
29:38
Speaker 1: four days UM. And they changed their movement patterns, and
29:43
Speaker 1: it wasn't so much that they changed the total distance
29:47
Speaker 1: that they moved in a day. So let's just for
29:50
Speaker 1: easy numbers here. Let's say a deer moved a mile
29:52
Speaker 1: every day UM after hunting pressure. They still moved a
29:57
Speaker 1: mile when you added up dot to dot or point
29:59
Speaker 1: to four, but they did it in a more complex manner.
30:03
Speaker 1: So they still moved a mile, but they moved a
30:05
Speaker 1: mile in a much smaller area, which was most likely
30:09
Speaker 1: they were staying to cover. They weren't exposing themselves. That
30:15
Speaker 1: makes sense. Did you did you um in this particular instance,
30:20
Speaker 1: did you look into you know, the the Oh gosh,
30:24
Speaker 1: I don't know how the right way articulate is. But
30:26
Speaker 1: did actual core ranges change? And we always hear this
30:29
Speaker 1: when as hunters, we talked about you put pressure on
30:31
Speaker 1: deer and if you if you put too much pressure,
30:33
Speaker 1: they're gonna get out of dodge. And I've always wondered
30:36
Speaker 1: some people say, yeah, they'll completely relocate if you're in
30:39
Speaker 1: there too much, or no, they'll do as you just
30:42
Speaker 1: mentioned there, they will just being cover more or they'll
30:45
Speaker 1: be more likely to move it dark, but they're not
30:47
Speaker 1: necessarily going to be gone. We're able to see anything
30:51
Speaker 1: like that. To what degree that change happened? Is a distance?
30:54
Speaker 1: Is it just timing anything like that? Yeah? Well, with
30:58
Speaker 1: with our study now, it's not to say that in
31:01
Speaker 1: some instance they might completely get out of dodge. Um.
31:05
Speaker 1: But at that study with though with those bucks, they
31:08
Speaker 1: pretty much stayed within their their home range in their
31:12
Speaker 1: core area. They just moved less or they just move
31:14
Speaker 1: more UM more complex pattern. So we didn't have any
31:19
Speaker 1: just outright shifts of a deer getting up and moving
31:21
Speaker 1: moving out and they just didn't move as often. Yeah. Interesting.
31:27
Speaker 1: So on the this is we're about to just go
31:30
Speaker 1: crazy rapid fire and new Bronson because there's so many
31:33
Speaker 1: questions related to this that I'm intrigued and um by.
31:37
Speaker 1: But on this topic of of deer movement, We've talked
31:41
Speaker 1: about this a ton on the podcast with different guests,
31:43
Speaker 1: all the different variables that may or may not influence
31:46
Speaker 1: deer movement. Maybe that's the amount of deer movement, Maybe
31:49
Speaker 1: that's the amount of daylight movement. Maybe that's just how
31:52
Speaker 1: early in the day they move, different things like that.
31:54
Speaker 1: So we talk about what different factors could potentially influence
31:58
Speaker 1: deer movement in a way that benefits hunters. Um, there's
32:01
Speaker 1: so many theories, there's so many different hunches, there's so
32:04
Speaker 1: many different things. I think Dan and I and all
32:06
Speaker 1: of our listeners have tried putting into place too, you know,
32:08
Speaker 1: slam things a little bit in our favor. Um, as
32:11
Speaker 1: I understand it, you have participated and have been part
32:13
Speaker 1: of some research that has tried to measure some of this.
32:17
Speaker 1: A is that is that correct? And be what can
32:19
Speaker 1: you tell us based on the research you've done, Yeah,
32:22
Speaker 1: that that that's correct. Um. We did to research projects
32:26
Speaker 1: related to this. UM. The first was involved again using
32:32
Speaker 1: GPS collars. So we were looking at the movements of deer,
32:36
Speaker 1: but both does and bucks and over a couple of seasons,
32:40
Speaker 1: and we did not find any evidence whatsoever, UM, that
32:47
Speaker 1: the moon for example, changed their activity patterns. We didn't
32:51
Speaker 1: see any increases in the movement rates. We didn't see
32:55
Speaker 1: any changes uh tempoally throughout throughout the day when they
33:00
Speaker 1: are moving more, moving less. And I know, if we
33:03
Speaker 1: get a lot of scientists, we get a lot of
33:06
Speaker 1: negative feedback for that. And UM, because a lot of
33:10
Speaker 1: people and I and I really do I trust some people.
33:13
Speaker 1: There's some people I really do trust with their camera data.
33:15
Speaker 1: They see some they see some trends and and I'm
33:18
Speaker 1: not denying that, uh in that area at that time,
33:21
Speaker 1: that trend may well have occurred. But UM, over the
33:24
Speaker 1: course of you know a number of bucks and does
33:28
Speaker 1: and over uh you know, a two year study. UM,
33:32
Speaker 1: we just did not see any reliable impact uh of
33:36
Speaker 1: the moon of moon phase. UM, we did see some
33:41
Speaker 1: changes and uh when we would have temperature changes, so
33:45
Speaker 1: when we would get, you know, the front would be
33:47
Speaker 1: coming in, we might see some increased movements. But but
33:51
Speaker 1: again it wasn't that dramatic. It was always subtle. Um.
33:57
Speaker 1: The the other study we did was quick question before
34:01
Speaker 1: you get when when you say an increase in movement,
34:07
Speaker 1: do you mean total area covered or do you mean
34:10
Speaker 1: like observed movement from a tree stand for a trail
34:15
Speaker 1: camera during daylight. Yeah, but very very good point. So
34:20
Speaker 1: what we typically do is we will break the deer's
34:23
Speaker 1: day up into periods. So we might break the day
34:27
Speaker 1: up from thirty minutes before sunrise or an hour before
34:30
Speaker 1: sunrise till two hours after uh from from nine am
34:34
Speaker 1: to twelve, from twelve to three, from three to you
34:37
Speaker 1: know dark, we break the day up, and then for
34:41
Speaker 1: every single deer and every single day, we calculate, you know,
34:45
Speaker 1: what their movement rate was. And rate could be a
34:47
Speaker 1: lot of different ways. It could be total distance moved,
34:51
Speaker 1: the average distance in between points. But you know, we
34:54
Speaker 1: try to totally characterize was that dear moving more that
35:00
Speaker 1: normally does? And then we retrospectively, we go back and
35:05
Speaker 1: we look at those weather events and we try to
35:07
Speaker 1: fit Okay, we had a big change in the moon here,
35:10
Speaker 1: and we had a big change in temperature, we had
35:12
Speaker 1: a big difference in rain, and we just see if
35:16
Speaker 1: any of those environmental variables are responsible for any changes
35:21
Speaker 1: in the deer movement patterns, that's how that's how we
35:25
Speaker 1: do it here. Then. So then the outcome of that
35:28
Speaker 1: particular event was it wasn't inconclusive. It was that those
35:36
Speaker 1: weather may increase a small amount. But moon, you have
35:41
Speaker 1: found no evidence to support that the moon increases movement.
35:45
Speaker 1: We did not in the two different studies. We did not.
35:50
Speaker 1: Um So there there's kind of two things about the moon.
35:54
Speaker 1: You know, there's the moon and the position of it
35:56
Speaker 1: and is affecting just in general, uh movement rates, more
36:00
Speaker 1: movement rates in the day versus nighttime, etcetera. The other
36:05
Speaker 1: is it is the moon affecting the breeding season? Is
36:09
Speaker 1: the moon affecting the rut? And so with this one
36:13
Speaker 1: we just you know, we're just totally using does here
36:17
Speaker 1: and we we did it from our pen, from our
36:19
Speaker 1: captive facility where no, we know when these doughs are
36:23
Speaker 1: being bred. We know when these doughs are having their fawns,
36:25
Speaker 1: so we can relate you know, their their patterns, conception
36:30
Speaker 1: patterns um And then in the wild, we have a
36:33
Speaker 1: data set through the Department of Wife Fisheries and Parks
36:37
Speaker 1: called our Springtime Herd Health Evaluations where um does are
36:43
Speaker 1: killed and and that the doughs are harvested for scientific purposes,
36:48
Speaker 1: where we can extract the fetus, and based on the
36:52
Speaker 1: size of the fetus, we know when that dough was bred.
36:56
Speaker 1: We know when conception happened, the date. And so through
36:59
Speaker 1: both of those sources of data, we went back for
37:02
Speaker 1: about a decade and we looked at, Okay, the moon
37:06
Speaker 1: was this this year, or the moon was that next year,
37:08
Speaker 1: the moon was this here, and it was never correlated.
37:12
Speaker 1: There was never you never saw changes in conception dates
37:18
Speaker 1: for a population track in any way changes in the
37:22
Speaker 1: moon that was just was. There was never a relationship.
37:26
Speaker 1: Did you guys those ever look into what might influence
37:30
Speaker 1: um the breeding dates specifically in the South. I'm just
37:33
Speaker 1: curious given the fact that a lot of this, you
37:35
Speaker 1: know where you're you're down in Mississippi, you hear so
37:38
Speaker 1: much about the wonky timing of the rut down in
37:40
Speaker 1: that part of the country. Were you able ever able
37:43
Speaker 1: to look into that. Well, what we have found the
37:48
Speaker 1: most support for UM that there's a lot mark as
37:53
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, that you know, there's a lot of
37:55
Speaker 1: interacting variables that that can move breeding season forward or
37:58
Speaker 1: back a little bit. But typically what we find the
38:02
Speaker 1: strongest evidence for is UM. In the Southeast, it is
38:07
Speaker 1: so varied, so you'll have even in Mississippi, you'll have
38:10
Speaker 1: the rut occurring in some places the beginning of December
38:14
Speaker 1: all the way to the middle of February. Where I
38:16
Speaker 1: grew up in Georgia latitudinally exactly the same place where
38:20
Speaker 1: I'm at now, but it was around Thanksgiving, a whole
38:23
Speaker 1: month earlier. So it is usually related to UM, the
38:29
Speaker 1: stocking source. So it's a genetic heritage. So as you
38:34
Speaker 1: might know, all throughout the Southeast, when deer were restocked
38:38
Speaker 1: in the fifties and sixties UM, for example, in Mississippi,
38:42
Speaker 1: we had deer from Mexico, deer from Texas, we had
38:45
Speaker 1: deer from Wisconsin, dere from Ohio, deer from North Carolina.
38:49
Speaker 1: And when we find these pockets of the breeding season
38:53
Speaker 1: is a month before or a month after, you know,
38:56
Speaker 1: when we see these big changes, it usually can be
39:00
Speaker 1: trace back to what was the stocking source for that area.
39:04
Speaker 1: So that that is inherited by the mother. A mother
39:09
Speaker 1: will pass that along uh to the female pawn. She
39:13
Speaker 1: will inherit the breeding date from her mother, so that
39:18
Speaker 1: that usually sets the stage, the window, so to speak,
39:22
Speaker 1: and then environment can push it and pull it a
39:24
Speaker 1: little bit. And and the biggest thing with environment is
39:28
Speaker 1: is herd condition. And so if you've got to really
39:32
Speaker 1: either the you know, environmental conditions are poor, food conditions
39:35
Speaker 1: are poor, or you just have a really really dense
39:37
Speaker 1: deer herd, there's a lot of evidence to say that
39:41
Speaker 1: UM dose may come into estras on average a little
39:44
Speaker 1: bit later. But but the biggest thing that we've seen
39:48
Speaker 1: over time is just adult sex ratio when when you
39:52
Speaker 1: have a population where the rut is protracted over six
39:57
Speaker 1: weeks two months that you usually we don't even see
40:01
Speaker 1: that now much anymore, but usually back in in you know,
40:03
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, that was because you had such a
40:06
Speaker 1: skewed adult sex ratio where too many doves were coming
40:11
Speaker 1: into heat simultaneously that there weren't enough adult bucks in
40:15
Speaker 1: the population to breed them, and so they would go
40:18
Speaker 1: back back into heat twenty eight days later, and so
40:22
Speaker 1: you end up with this three month long rut um
40:25
Speaker 1: and it was just simply a product of sex ratio H.
40:29
Speaker 1: And that's not just specifically in the Southeast. That was
40:31
Speaker 1: something that could be the case anywhere in the country
40:34
Speaker 1: with that type of sex ratio. Correct, absolutely, yeah, absolutely
40:39
Speaker 1: so can you can you UM, and I'm not sure
40:42
Speaker 1: if you've looked into this, but can you speak to
40:45
Speaker 1: then what the implications are of other management changes as
40:50
Speaker 1: hunters we might make. So if we were to know better,
40:54
Speaker 1: try to control the dull population so we have a
40:56
Speaker 1: closer sex ratio or influence the age structure. Have you
41:00
Speaker 1: been able to see how changes like that or any
41:02
Speaker 1: others you've looked into then change behavior or UH running
41:08
Speaker 1: timing or anything else that we hunters would be interested in. UM.
41:14
Speaker 1: The biggest influence would would of course be managing your
41:18
Speaker 1: density relative to food. So it's never for for any
41:22
Speaker 1: for for reproduction, for producing UH fawns, specifically buck fawns,
41:27
Speaker 1: for producing UH you know, Boone and Crockett bucks or
41:30
Speaker 1: Pope and Young's. If you have too many deer relative
41:33
Speaker 1: to the food supply, you're never gonna win. You're right,
41:35
Speaker 1: You're you're always behind. UM. But but the other part
41:39
Speaker 1: of that, as well is is of course going to
41:41
Speaker 1: be your sex ratio. So you would never want, especially
41:46
Speaker 1: mark up in your neck of the woods. You never
41:48
Speaker 1: want to do breeding one month later than she had
41:53
Speaker 1: evolved to optimally breed in your environment. So getting getting
41:58
Speaker 1: fawns on the ground as early as possible where you're
42:01
Speaker 1: from is critically important for them to have enough body
42:05
Speaker 1: mass to survive the winter. And so if you have
42:08
Speaker 1: a skewed sex ratio and your dough was coming in
42:10
Speaker 1: on average, you know a month later now you you
42:13
Speaker 1: have put that fall on into the disadvantage and and
42:16
Speaker 1: survival rates on average are going to be lower. But
42:19
Speaker 1: mainly mark that that's primarily it keeping the herd numbers.
42:23
Speaker 1: And if you're keeping the herd numbers in check, then
42:26
Speaker 1: your sex ratio is probably going to be in check
42:28
Speaker 1: as well. Okay, so speaking of them, this topic of
42:32
Speaker 1: herd health and things like that, you know, the the
42:35
Speaker 1: other factors I think are generally talked about would be
42:38
Speaker 1: than genetics and available nutrition when it comes to you know,
42:42
Speaker 1: the the results you'll get from a deer herd. Can
42:46
Speaker 1: you talk about that? Um, what you've seen, what the
42:49
Speaker 1: influence those different things have, What does how does genetics
42:52
Speaker 1: influence things, how does nutrition influence things? UM? How does
42:56
Speaker 1: any other changes we might have? And maybe an antler
42:58
Speaker 1: growth is something you've looked into, and I think because
43:00
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of studies around measuring the impact
43:02
Speaker 1: of those couple of factors on ant or growth. But
43:05
Speaker 1: can you speak to some of those things? Yeah, you bet,
43:08
Speaker 1: you bet? UM. One point I like to emphasize is
43:13
Speaker 1: um genetics are very important for individuals and nutrition is
43:20
Speaker 1: very important for a population. So those work in concert. UM.
43:25
Speaker 1: So when you look at UM and some of this
43:28
Speaker 1: is could be on our website mark on m thiss
43:31
Speaker 1: you deer lab dot com. You might see some of
43:33
Speaker 1: these figures, but you need to think about UM. A
43:37
Speaker 1: buck heard specifically, an age class is a bell shaped curve,
43:43
Speaker 1: meaning that you're gonna have most of most of the
43:46
Speaker 1: bucks in your area are going to have an average
43:49
Speaker 1: antler size, and there's gonna be very few of them
43:52
Speaker 1: that are way below average, and there's gonna be very
43:56
Speaker 1: few of them that are way above average, meaning like
43:58
Speaker 1: Boone and Crocketts, and so in Mississippi, even when you
44:04
Speaker 1: get bucks to maturity, you're only gonna have about fifteen
44:11
Speaker 1: of your mature bucks are gonna be what most hunters
44:14
Speaker 1: would consider a trophy. Now that's genetics, That is the
44:18
Speaker 1: genetics of individuals. It doesn't matter if they had all
44:22
Speaker 1: the food they could possibly eat. If if a particular
44:25
Speaker 1: buck is programmed to be a hundred and twenty class
44:28
Speaker 1: eight pointer, then it's going to grow to be a
44:30
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty class eight pointer whether it had you know,
44:33
Speaker 1: average food or way above average food. So that is
44:36
Speaker 1: how genetics affects individuals. How nutrition affects the population is
44:43
Speaker 1: that you move the average up or down based on nutrition.
44:48
Speaker 1: So in Mississippi statewide, and then it varies from region
44:52
Speaker 1: to region, but statewide, the average mature buck is going
44:56
Speaker 1: to score about and when I say mature, I'm talking
45:00
Speaker 1: five and a half or grader, it's going to score about.
45:04
Speaker 1: Now when you go to a more fertile region, WHI
45:08
Speaker 1: should be our farm region, which is you know, going
45:10
Speaker 1: to be a characteristic or similar to the Midwest, it's
45:13
Speaker 1: it's a region that is loaded with soybeans and corn.
45:18
Speaker 1: Now you have moved to that average positively to a
45:22
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five or a hundred and thirty six,
45:25
Speaker 1: but you're still gonna have within that good region really
45:28
Speaker 1: small bucks, average bucks, and really good bucks. So I
45:34
Speaker 1: hope that makes sense. You're you're never gonna be able
45:37
Speaker 1: to manage for genetics and a free ranging herd. Genetics
45:41
Speaker 1: are they're they're more, they are more or less fixed
45:43
Speaker 1: if it's a free ranging herd. But the one thing
45:46
Speaker 1: you can do to move the herd to the right
45:49
Speaker 1: or to improve it is genetics. Now, let me fill
45:53
Speaker 1: you in on a study. This is a ten year
45:56
Speaker 1: study that we did with our state Wildlife Agency UM.
46:01
Speaker 1: So what I described was was going on in Mississippi.
46:05
Speaker 1: So all throughout the eighties and nineties and in early
46:09
Speaker 1: two thousand's, you've got a lot of hunters that sea
46:13
Speaker 1: bucks that are killed from our ag region going my gosh,
46:16
Speaker 1: they are just killing monster bucks over there, and they
46:19
Speaker 1: are killing really really you know, I mean, it's very
46:22
Speaker 1: much like a Midwestern landscape. Lots of food and really
46:27
Speaker 1: big bucks are harvested in Mississippi. There and then you
46:30
Speaker 1: had the opposite in the continuum. You have part of
46:34
Speaker 1: our state that is mainly UM devoted to forestry, uh
46:39
Speaker 1: pine production. Pine forest production, and the pine trees are
46:43
Speaker 1: not the bad guy. There's nothing wrong with the pine forest.
46:46
Speaker 1: But as a result of the way those forests are managed,
46:50
Speaker 1: you've got a landscape that's full of trees, and you
46:53
Speaker 1: have a landscape where the trees are capturing all of
46:56
Speaker 1: the sunlight, and by default, you're not producing much food
47:00
Speaker 1: on the forest floor. So you've got a region that
47:03
Speaker 1: doesn't produce much deer food. And then you've got to
47:06
Speaker 1: read a region that produces more food than the deer
47:09
Speaker 1: can eat. Well. But hunters look at that, and they're
47:14
Speaker 1: from the region of the state, the southeastern region on
47:17
Speaker 1: our coast, and they say, we want to we want
47:19
Speaker 1: to be able to kill some of those big bucks
47:21
Speaker 1: in our region like they do over in the Agg region,
47:23
Speaker 1: which is what we call the Delta, the Delta region.
47:27
Speaker 1: And it started to get a lot of um questioning,
47:32
Speaker 1: not really an outcry, but a lot of questions about
47:35
Speaker 1: why can't we just move some of those deer from
47:39
Speaker 1: the Delta region. Why can't why can't you biologists just
47:42
Speaker 1: capture some of those and turn them loose down here
47:45
Speaker 1: in the southern part of the state so we can
47:47
Speaker 1: have big deer like they have over there. And now
47:52
Speaker 1: the biologist my response, and you know, my colleagues response
47:56
Speaker 1: initially was, well, heck, if you take a big old buck,
47:59
Speaker 1: this destined to be a one fifty class in the
48:02
Speaker 1: agg region, and turn him loose in a region that
48:04
Speaker 1: has no food, he's probably gonna get really small. You know,
48:08
Speaker 1: he's not gonna be able to fulfill his genetic potential
48:10
Speaker 1: because he doesn't have any food. But we decided to
48:13
Speaker 1: conduct the experiment anyway. And I'm sorry this this is
48:17
Speaker 1: a bit long winded here, but I promise in the
48:20
Speaker 1: end it'll it'll be worth it. I'm interested. So here's
48:24
Speaker 1: what we did. So we went out and captured between
48:28
Speaker 1: thirty and forty does pregnant does from three regions, the
48:33
Speaker 1: region of high food, a region of medium food, and
48:37
Speaker 1: then the region of low food supply. Captured pregnant does,
48:42
Speaker 1: brought him back to our dear research facility and let
48:45
Speaker 1: them have their fawns. And then once the dough had
48:48
Speaker 1: their fawn, and once the dough ween the fawn, the
48:51
Speaker 1: dough now she's out of the study, completely cut out
48:54
Speaker 1: of the study. And now every one of those fawns,
48:57
Speaker 1: both bucks and does, every one of those fawns is
49:01
Speaker 1: raised on the exact same diet, exact same nutrition. Now
49:07
Speaker 1: What was surprising was that at three years of age
49:12
Speaker 1: when we started measuring from these different regions, and I remember,
49:15
Speaker 1: they were all kept separate. The deer from the Good
49:17
Speaker 1: region we're in a separate fan and the Medium region,
49:19
Speaker 1: the Low region, they were all kept separate, and at
49:22
Speaker 1: three years of age we didn't see any difference. And
49:28
Speaker 1: we're scratching our head. How can it be that this
49:32
Speaker 1: buck fawn that after weaning for for three years eight
49:38
Speaker 1: to the exact same diet as the fawns from the
49:42
Speaker 1: Good region and there's still a disparity of twenty of
49:47
Speaker 1: boone and Crockett's score in twenty to thirty pounds of
49:50
Speaker 1: body weight. How can that be? So you're saying it
49:53
Speaker 1: was the same. They all grew up and they were
49:56
Speaker 1: had the same weight, and they had the same antler size.
50:00
Speaker 1: They they had the same weight and antler size of
50:02
Speaker 1: where they came from, but not across so so within
50:06
Speaker 1: your facility though you had they were the bucks that
50:09
Speaker 1: came from the great nutrition spot, they still were bigger.
50:12
Speaker 1: The bucks that came from a lower nutrition spot, they
50:14
Speaker 1: still are smaller, even though they were raised on the
50:17
Speaker 1: same amount of food exactly, So little deer yeah, the
50:23
Speaker 1: little guys remained a little even though they ate the
50:26
Speaker 1: exact same food as the bucks from our ag region did.
50:31
Speaker 1: But here's where the magic happened. So we're scratching our
50:34
Speaker 1: heads in a wow, and you know, we're sitting and saying, Godly,
50:38
Speaker 1: maybe there is some type of you know, genetic effect.
50:40
Speaker 1: And now now you know, like maybe it's because they're restocking.
50:44
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe you know, maybe just coincidentally, some of these areas, uh,
50:48
Speaker 1: in the southern part of the state, we're stocked with
50:51
Speaker 1: the deer that you know, just have average smaller antler size.
50:55
Speaker 1: Well to keep in mind here, so that first generation,
51:00
Speaker 1: the fawns, we measured the bucks, but we also kept
51:03
Speaker 1: the dose around. So now those does were also those
51:07
Speaker 1: same dough pons that were born with the buck fawns.
51:10
Speaker 1: They were raised on good nutrition and then they were
51:14
Speaker 1: bred and then we looked at the second generation. And
51:19
Speaker 1: so the second generation was where the magic happened. And
51:23
Speaker 1: so now those little deer from the southern part of
51:26
Speaker 1: the state, the second generation of three and a half
51:29
Speaker 1: year old bucks, there was over a thirty pound difference
51:34
Speaker 1: in body weight and twenty in difference in boone Crockett's score.
51:39
Speaker 1: So they completely compensated and caught up. But it just
51:44
Speaker 1: took two generations. So here's what's really really most important
51:50
Speaker 1: is it's the mother. And so one of our little
51:54
Speaker 1: sound bites, it's not what that buck ate throughout his life,
51:57
Speaker 1: it's what his mother ate throughout her life. This what's important.
52:03
Speaker 1: And so a mother being nutritionally stressed even when she
52:07
Speaker 1: has that fawn, and even when the fawn is weaned.
52:11
Speaker 1: Um and there's a term for this, it's called epigenetics.
52:14
Speaker 1: But basically it is a process why where certain genes
52:20
Speaker 1: do not get expressed. That's a real simple way of
52:23
Speaker 1: saying it. But even though those bucks may have had
52:25
Speaker 1: genes to be a hundred and forty class dear, because
52:29
Speaker 1: that mother went through nutritional stress, it's almost like the
52:33
Speaker 1: body was saying times aren't good enough. Yet there's still
52:37
Speaker 1: a nutrition problem. You don't want to grow to be
52:40
Speaker 1: thirty pounds bigger than average because you're not going to
52:42
Speaker 1: have the food to support your body. So they stayed small.
52:47
Speaker 1: But when those dough fawns were raised up until three
52:50
Speaker 1: years of age on a really really good nutrition, those
52:54
Speaker 1: switches were flipped. It was now genetically they're offspring, their
52:59
Speaker 1: buck offspring could now truly express their genetic potential. So
53:05
Speaker 1: the first year of the study, the first generation, we
53:08
Speaker 1: saw no difference. Big deer stay big, or deer from
53:11
Speaker 1: the big region stayed, big deer from the little region
53:14
Speaker 1: stay small, And in the second region, all the way
53:18
Speaker 1: across the board they were the same. The little deer
53:20
Speaker 1: called up with a big deer, but it took a
53:23
Speaker 1: generation of mom. So mom was the most important part
53:27
Speaker 1: of this. So given that reality, then the mom is
53:29
Speaker 1: the most important. What's the action item for hunters or
53:32
Speaker 1: managers who want to better allow these deer to express
53:36
Speaker 1: those genes? Now that we know it's the female that's
53:39
Speaker 1: that's most important on that side of things, Is that
53:42
Speaker 1: that she just needs optimal nutrition at the point of
53:46
Speaker 1: winning the fonds or right when she gives birth, or
53:50
Speaker 1: what's what's the takeaway here for us from an action standpoint?
53:54
Speaker 1: It everything you said, really, um, it's a mother being
54:00
Speaker 1: and raised in an environment that is not food limited
54:03
Speaker 1: or not being nutritionally stressed. And so what we see
54:07
Speaker 1: with my colleagues that that are in Texas that do
54:10
Speaker 1: of course a lot more supplementally feeding than we do
54:13
Speaker 1: in Mississippi. But they typically always now the scientifically minded
54:18
Speaker 1: ones that are really measuring, they are really measuring how
54:22
Speaker 1: much food are we putting out? And am I getting
54:24
Speaker 1: a return on my investment? The first return on investment
54:28
Speaker 1: they ever see is at least five years away. And
54:31
Speaker 1: most of them will say, you're gonna need a good
54:33
Speaker 1: decade of a really up in the nutrition before you're
54:38
Speaker 1: really gonna start to see big impacts. And and that
54:42
Speaker 1: is simply because you need uh that mother, that mother
54:46
Speaker 1: needs to be raised on good nutrition. And then when
54:49
Speaker 1: she's starting to be a really good fawn producing age
54:53
Speaker 1: three years of age, four years of age, five years
54:55
Speaker 1: of age, you know she's lived her life with with
54:58
Speaker 1: all the foods she can eat, a high quality foods
55:00
Speaker 1: always available. And that's when you start seeing the magic happen.
55:04
Speaker 1: And that's when you see that that their buck offspring
55:08
Speaker 1: start growing above average. It's not does that so does
55:14
Speaker 1: that change year to year? So same though one year
55:18
Speaker 1: has awesome food, she's healthy, she she is bred. That
55:24
Speaker 1: buck is gonna come out. And now let's compare that
55:27
Speaker 1: buck that is born. Let's say this year right over
55:32
Speaker 1: this winner, terrible winner, right the buck the while the
55:38
Speaker 1: buck is in utero, the mom has poor nutrition. It's
55:42
Speaker 1: sending signals genetically to this buck saying, hey, we may
55:47
Speaker 1: not have enough food, so you don't need big antlers.
55:50
Speaker 1: So conditions like nutrition. If you compare those two bucks
55:57
Speaker 1: with each other, and and and we're to compe air
56:00
Speaker 1: them one year and then compare them the next year,
56:04
Speaker 1: are you seeing this same trend where he's going to
56:08
Speaker 1: have smaller antlers even though let's say they had the
56:12
Speaker 1: same mom and the same dad. Yes, that that will happen,
56:17
Speaker 1: not to the degree that we saw this experiment, but
56:20
Speaker 1: we've seen that with our our harvest data, with our
56:23
Speaker 1: wild data wild deer, free ranging deer. Is that um,
56:28
Speaker 1: we can explain anywhere from five to ten of the
56:34
Speaker 1: body size and the antler size of bucks at two
56:38
Speaker 1: years of age based on the experience, uh of the
56:44
Speaker 1: weather or the environmental severity when those bucks were in utero.
56:50
Speaker 1: So yes, so that is the trigger. That's the trigger,
56:54
Speaker 1: is the But the deer while in utero, the there
57:00
Speaker 1: is sending sending signals to that fetus telling it we're
57:04
Speaker 1: having we have a good life, or we're going we're struggling.
57:09
Speaker 1: I certainly believe so yeah, um, yeah, I wish I
57:14
Speaker 1: was more of a physiologist and I can tell you
57:16
Speaker 1: more about the pathways by which that happens. But uh,
57:19
Speaker 1: that's certainly what it appears to me to be. Yes,
57:22
Speaker 1: that that it's critical all the way from um from
57:26
Speaker 1: the time of conception to while that fetus is in
57:29
Speaker 1: utero and then and then don't forget as well, uh
57:32
Speaker 1: even after birth if environmental conditions are really bad, that
57:35
Speaker 1: affects of those lactation. And so during those early growth periods,
57:40
Speaker 1: those first couple of months or weeks of life, are
57:42
Speaker 1: they getting quality milk or not? So all that can
57:44
Speaker 1: be can have lingering effects a year or two years later. Yeah,
57:50
Speaker 1: so related to this, but a little bit more to
57:53
Speaker 1: what you're talking about a second ago. I just want
57:55
Speaker 1: to make sure to vary that we clearly articulate, um,
57:58
Speaker 1: what I think you mentioned earlier, and that is that
58:01
Speaker 1: that we as hunters and correct me if I'm wrong,
58:04
Speaker 1: But we as hunters really cannot influence the genetics of
58:07
Speaker 1: a population. So you know, fifteen years ago, you watch
58:10
Speaker 1: hunting TV shows, even more recently still, really you watch
58:14
Speaker 1: a hunting TV show and everyone's talking, well, we gotta
58:16
Speaker 1: kill call buck because we want to improve the antlers
58:19
Speaker 1: in this area. We're gonna kill this The late point
58:21
Speaker 1: all the management is that all bunch of bs or
58:24
Speaker 1: is there any is there anything really there? Or is
58:26
Speaker 1: that just old school that doesn't really work. It's old school,
58:31
Speaker 1: it doesn't really work. But here's the caveat um. If
58:36
Speaker 1: it is a free ranging deer herd. Now all you
58:40
Speaker 1: guys know that what has been done by deer breeders
58:45
Speaker 1: in in a confined environment. So when you can literally
58:51
Speaker 1: pick out this when I have a dozed pedigree and
58:55
Speaker 1: I know her buck offspring, and then I can match
58:58
Speaker 1: that dough with this buck, and I know what his
59:00
Speaker 1: antler sizes. Um, when you can manipulate mating like that,
59:06
Speaker 1: then yes you can steer genetics, um, you know, to
59:11
Speaker 1: a freakish size. And that's like deer breeders of course
59:15
Speaker 1: that um. You know, when you when you produce a
59:18
Speaker 1: two hundred or three hundred class two year old dear,
59:21
Speaker 1: you know you've manipulated genetics. But but that is the
59:24
Speaker 1: difference that is only only applicable in offense and even
59:29
Speaker 1: within a fence. It's not like it's a free ranging fence.
59:33
Speaker 1: So it's not like, hey, we've got ten thousand acres
59:35
Speaker 1: under high fence. That is when you are manipulating who
59:38
Speaker 1: is breeding who, when you have a free ranging environment,
59:43
Speaker 1: you um, it is remarkably inefficient, so inefficient that it
59:49
Speaker 1: is not even practical. And and here's the reasons why.
59:53
Speaker 1: So if I want to shoot this spike buck, Well,
59:56
Speaker 1: first of all, we know that um, I'll speak I
1:00:00
Speaker 1: won't speak for Michigan, but i'll speak for the Southeast.
1:00:03
Speaker 1: Is usually due to birthdate. They're usually just born a
1:00:06
Speaker 1: little bit later. It's usually a temporary environmental condition, is
1:00:10
Speaker 1: why they while they have a spike. So we know
1:00:12
Speaker 1: good and well that most yearling spikes are gonna grow
1:00:16
Speaker 1: into you know, an average sized mature buck if they're
1:00:20
Speaker 1: allowed to live. Um, but what we cannot do. So
1:00:25
Speaker 1: if I'm gonna shoot this buck, hey, uh, he's four
1:00:28
Speaker 1: I think he's four years of age and he only
1:00:31
Speaker 1: has six points. He is definitely lower quality. I'm going
1:00:35
Speaker 1: to remove him out of the herd for genetic purposes. Well,
1:00:39
Speaker 1: I can take him out and we'll get back to this.
1:00:42
Speaker 1: There are some good reasons to take bucks like that out,
1:00:45
Speaker 1: but it's not for genetics. But the reservoir of genetics.
1:00:49
Speaker 1: Fifty of the genetics that goes into a buck is
1:00:53
Speaker 1: from the mother. We have no way to select if
1:00:58
Speaker 1: a doe is going to produce big antlered offspring or
1:01:01
Speaker 1: small antlerd offspring. So that in and of itself, fifty
1:01:05
Speaker 1: of the equation you you can affect. And the other
1:01:10
Speaker 1: part about this is even if you could, you have
1:01:13
Speaker 1: the process of dispersal. So if on my thousand acres
1:01:17
Speaker 1: or two thousand acres or five acres, I'm doing all
1:01:20
Speaker 1: this quote, you know, culling to improve genetics. Well, the
1:01:24
Speaker 1: doose that do get bred and they have their buck fawn,
1:01:28
Speaker 1: you know, seventy of them are going to disperse off
1:01:31
Speaker 1: of my property. So there's always there's always a hole
1:01:36
Speaker 1: in the bucket. Genetics laws, genetics are always going out
1:01:40
Speaker 1: and genetics are always coming in because your neighbor's yearling
1:01:43
Speaker 1: bucks are dispersing onto your property. So when we do
1:01:48
Speaker 1: simulations and we got with livestock, cattle people to run
1:01:53
Speaker 1: because you know, they can control this type of stuff,
1:01:55
Speaker 1: and you know it's it's a very reliable system for
1:01:58
Speaker 1: them because they can control who breeds too. When we
1:02:01
Speaker 1: when we met with livestock geneticists and and their modelers
1:02:05
Speaker 1: for Hey, let's let's replicate this system for dear, and
1:02:09
Speaker 1: we use all sorts of scenarios. We're going to harvest
1:02:11
Speaker 1: you know, these call bucks, and we're going to harvest
1:02:14
Speaker 1: at a super super because it has to be intense.
1:02:16
Speaker 1: If you're gonna do anything, it's got to be really intense.
1:02:20
Speaker 1: And what we found after running our simulation model for
1:02:24
Speaker 1: twenty years of super intense selective harvest or culling, we
1:02:31
Speaker 1: didn't change antler size but maybe an inch or two,
1:02:35
Speaker 1: not even noticeable. So basically what we're getting at, Basically,
1:02:41
Speaker 1: what we're getting at is if you have a TV show,
1:02:43
Speaker 1: please stop saying I'm going to shoot this management buck
1:02:46
Speaker 1: or this call buck because you sound like an idiot. Yeah,
1:02:51
Speaker 1: and don't follow it up with, um, I'm gonna get
1:02:53
Speaker 1: this out of the gene pool, because you can't. Period,
1:02:57
Speaker 1: you can't. Those genes are embedded than that population's gene
1:03:01
Speaker 1: pool and they're just being expressed by different individuals from
1:03:04
Speaker 1: time to time. Now, is there such a thing people
1:03:07
Speaker 1: have different names they want to use. You can call
1:03:10
Speaker 1: it a management buck, you can you know what, whatever,
1:03:13
Speaker 1: I don't like, you know, not cold buck. But now
1:03:16
Speaker 1: there are very strategic reasons to remove some bucks from
1:03:21
Speaker 1: the population. But it's not from a genetic standpoint, it's
1:03:26
Speaker 1: from a food conservation standpoint. So if I'm working with
1:03:31
Speaker 1: a property or my property, I'm working with hunters and
1:03:34
Speaker 1: we are managing four you know, mature bucks, older age
1:03:37
Speaker 1: class bucks, and so we're trying to harvest you know,
1:03:40
Speaker 1: five year old bucks, six year old bucks, et cetera.
1:03:43
Speaker 1: And out walks on my food plot. Here, out walks
1:03:47
Speaker 1: this two forty pound five year old that scores. Now,
1:03:55
Speaker 1: again that's rare. To remember our bell shaped curve. You know,
1:03:58
Speaker 1: there's there's very few really really big bucks with extremely
1:04:02
Speaker 1: large antlers. There's very few that that are five years
1:04:05
Speaker 1: old with really small antlers. But they're out there. So
1:04:08
Speaker 1: if I choose to harvest that buck, I'm not doing
1:04:11
Speaker 1: anything to improve genetics. But what I did do is
1:04:15
Speaker 1: save two to three tons of deer forage on my property. Now,
1:04:22
Speaker 1: would do you follow? I do follow you? Now? Let
1:04:26
Speaker 1: me ask you this, though, I would assume that your
1:04:29
Speaker 1: impact would be much greater if you're simply trying to
1:04:32
Speaker 1: remove pressure on food by harvesting a dough or two
1:04:37
Speaker 1: doughs or whatever it might be compared to that one
1:04:39
Speaker 1: buck though, right, So I mean, yes, you can take
1:04:41
Speaker 1: that buck and you can, um, you can justify it
1:04:44
Speaker 1: by means of reducing competition for food so that the
1:04:47
Speaker 1: bucks that do have better chances of um, you know,
1:04:50
Speaker 1: having the right genetics, have a better chance of being
1:04:52
Speaker 1: able to reach that potential because of available food. You
1:04:55
Speaker 1: can achieve that just as well or better by harvesting
1:04:57
Speaker 1: a dough or still harvesting in general. Correct that that
1:05:04
Speaker 1: would be one strategy. So one strategy might mean I'm
1:05:08
Speaker 1: going to keep my dear density very very low, and
1:05:12
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna have just an adequate number of those,
1:05:14
Speaker 1: I'm going to have an adequate number of fawn recruitment,
1:05:17
Speaker 1: and I'm going to keep the dear population really really low. Um.
1:05:21
Speaker 1: And that works. That is very successful. That type of
1:05:24
Speaker 1: approach will always be successful. But another successful approach, UM
1:05:29
Speaker 1: is you've got to think about what your currency is,
1:05:32
Speaker 1: your currency for producing as many trophy bucks as possible
1:05:39
Speaker 1: as buck fawns I need I want to have. And
1:05:45
Speaker 1: I'm not guys, I'm not in any way saying you
1:05:46
Speaker 1: need to have your be overpopulated. I'm not saying that
1:05:49
Speaker 1: at all, because there's a fine balance here, but there's
1:05:53
Speaker 1: also merit for I want to carry as many dose
1:05:58
Speaker 1: as I can without sacrificing food quality, so that I
1:06:02
Speaker 1: can be pumping out every year buck fawns and recruiting
1:06:07
Speaker 1: within within my population. I want to be producing as
1:06:10
Speaker 1: many bucks as possible. And then when I start seeing
1:06:14
Speaker 1: at three years of age or at four years of age,
1:06:16
Speaker 1: if I start seeing that, hey, this buck is really
1:06:20
Speaker 1: not going to turn out to be a trophy, um,
1:06:22
Speaker 1: I'm just harvesting it. I'm just having fun. I'm harvesting
1:06:26
Speaker 1: it with my bow or with my gun, or my
1:06:28
Speaker 1: guests or my friends or whatever, you know. So there
1:06:32
Speaker 1: is there is a way that you can still manage
1:06:35
Speaker 1: four mature trophy bucks and still harvest a lot of
1:06:40
Speaker 1: bucks along the way. You just got to make sure
1:06:43
Speaker 1: which one is to pass and which one is to harvest.
1:06:46
Speaker 1: So basically what you're saying is that big mature buck
1:06:50
Speaker 1: with a small antler is occupying a spot on your farm.
1:06:55
Speaker 1: You take him out, and what that does it lets
1:06:58
Speaker 1: the next up and comer give them the opportunity to
1:07:03
Speaker 1: showcase what they're going to be. And if they don't
1:07:07
Speaker 1: if they don't produce, you take them out and it's
1:07:10
Speaker 1: basically cycling through bucks until you find one that is
1:07:14
Speaker 1: genetically to your liking and you'll be able to Okay, well,
1:07:19
Speaker 1: he's gonna make the past this year, and I'm gonna
1:07:20
Speaker 1: let him go to four. I'm gonna let him go
1:07:22
Speaker 1: to five. I'm gonna let him go to six, and uh,
1:07:24
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let him reach his full potential because he
1:07:27
Speaker 1: could be that you know that that trophy buck that
1:07:32
Speaker 1: that that's exactly right. Um. So we work with properties
1:07:36
Speaker 1: all the time that that do precisely that, and so
1:07:40
Speaker 1: that their their goal is to maximize you know, how
1:07:43
Speaker 1: do I maximize trophy bucks on my property? Well, what
1:07:46
Speaker 1: one way to do that is I need to produce
1:07:48
Speaker 1: a lot of bucks, but I also don't need to
1:07:51
Speaker 1: carry every one of those bucks at least six and
1:07:55
Speaker 1: a half years of age. By three or four years
1:07:57
Speaker 1: of age, I can tell I see going to be
1:08:00
Speaker 1: a contender. You know, is he a keeper? And ones
1:08:03
Speaker 1: that aren't keepers? This is where you get to hunt,
1:08:08
Speaker 1: you get to have fun, you still get to harvest
1:08:10
Speaker 1: a lot of bucks when you're managing for trophies. Now,
1:08:13
Speaker 1: let me qualify one thing too. You can be in
1:08:16
Speaker 1: some environments where and I'm thinking specifically my colleagues in
1:08:20
Speaker 1: South Texas. You know, we take fond recruitment here sometimes
1:08:25
Speaker 1: for granted, um, and unless you have a you know,
1:08:28
Speaker 1: a real predator problem, UM, you're gonna have fond recruitment.
1:08:32
Speaker 1: You're going to be producing bucks. Now if you're in
1:08:34
Speaker 1: an environment that's really severe, whether it be really severe
1:08:37
Speaker 1: in terms of arid or if you're in the up
1:08:40
Speaker 1: of Michigan, some of those severe environments, you know, recruitments
1:08:43
Speaker 1: not guaranteed, and so you know you have to be
1:08:47
Speaker 1: a lot more conservative about um, you know what what
1:08:50
Speaker 1: dear your harvest. At the same time, if if you're
1:08:53
Speaker 1: in some of those environments, you've gotta be real conservative
1:08:55
Speaker 1: about your dough harvests. Even though I may have a
1:08:58
Speaker 1: lot of adult does if my recruitment rate like can
1:09:02
Speaker 1: happen a lot is only it's very difficult to accumulate
1:09:07
Speaker 1: a lot of bucks over the years. So you always
1:09:10
Speaker 1: want to keep what we call the fawn factory. You
1:09:12
Speaker 1: always want to keep the fawn factory, uh, you know,
1:09:16
Speaker 1: going as strong as it possibly can. So we've talked
1:09:20
Speaker 1: a lot about antlers and managing for maybe bigger antlers
1:09:25
Speaker 1: or healthier dear trophy deer. And and that's not not
1:09:27
Speaker 1: everyone's cup of tea. Not everyone's interested and necessarily that um,
1:09:31
Speaker 1: which is which is perfectly fine. There's a whole lot
1:09:33
Speaker 1: of different flavors and types of deer hunting. We all like, um.
1:09:37
Speaker 1: But I'm curious when it comes to antlers. You alluded
1:09:39
Speaker 1: to us earlier before we talked on air here that
1:09:43
Speaker 1: you can speak a little bit to the to the
1:09:45
Speaker 1: evolutionary and ecological purpose of antlers from a from a
1:09:50
Speaker 1: deer perspective. Can you can you talk about that? Yeah, yeah,
1:09:54
Speaker 1: I'd be happy to do. This is one of the
1:09:56
Speaker 1: topics near and dear to my heart is um. Um.
1:10:00
Speaker 1: So when I'm giving presentations, you know, sometimes the hunters,
1:10:04
Speaker 1: sometimes in the general public, I've I'd always like to
1:10:06
Speaker 1: to ask the question, um and and it can just
1:10:09
Speaker 1: be a curiosity for people, But I say, why why
1:10:11
Speaker 1: the bucks have antlers? What's the purpose of it? And
1:10:15
Speaker 1: you'll typically get some people of the world er to
1:10:17
Speaker 1: run off predators, I guess, And now that's really not it. Um, Well, gosh,
1:10:24
Speaker 1: why why do bucks have antlers? I'm like, Yeah, there's
1:10:27
Speaker 1: got to be a really important purpose for this. This
1:10:31
Speaker 1: structure is very physiologically costly. It is so costly that
1:10:37
Speaker 1: during the antler growing season for a buck that they
1:10:40
Speaker 1: go through osteoporosis, they can't even garner enough phosphorus and
1:10:45
Speaker 1: calcium from their diet that they have to mobilize minerals,
1:10:49
Speaker 1: you know, from their bones to to complete antler growth.
1:10:52
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, mother nature must think these things
1:10:55
Speaker 1: are pretty darn important for them to go through that.
1:10:58
Speaker 1: And and the answer is um bucks have antlers to
1:11:02
Speaker 1: fight off other bucks. As as simple as that, I'd
1:11:07
Speaker 1: like to think of, Yes, this to to chase a
1:11:09
Speaker 1: wolf off or something like that. But but antlers serve
1:11:12
Speaker 1: as both to two things we call them, and these
1:11:14
Speaker 1: are the biological sexy terms. There are a signal in
1:11:18
Speaker 1: their weapon. So antlers serve as a signal first and
1:11:23
Speaker 1: foremost to other males. So evolutionarily, it is better for
1:11:29
Speaker 1: me to show off my age and my um dominance
1:11:35
Speaker 1: and my dominance. From a standpoint, if if I have
1:11:37
Speaker 1: a really big body, that means I was able to
1:11:39
Speaker 1: eat a lot of food, I had access the food,
1:11:42
Speaker 1: um I was able to grow large antlers. Then by
1:11:45
Speaker 1: them having that signal that tells younger bucks or subordinate bucks,
1:11:50
Speaker 1: I don't want to mess with him. I'm not going
1:11:52
Speaker 1: to jeopardize getting my eye put out or getting uh
1:11:56
Speaker 1: gored in the longer or anything like that in a fight.
1:11:59
Speaker 1: So it's a signal, So it reduces a lot of
1:12:02
Speaker 1: the fights. Um. And then secondly, yes, it is a weapon.
1:12:06
Speaker 1: So it is a what I like to say it
1:12:09
Speaker 1: is it is a structure for leverage. So go ahead,
1:12:16
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you continue with what you're saying there. Well,
1:12:21
Speaker 1: so we we really can't find you know, we we
1:12:25
Speaker 1: we really can't find where once you reach a certain
1:12:28
Speaker 1: point in antler size and configuration, we we really can't
1:12:34
Speaker 1: see that it conveys an advantage to the buck. Let
1:12:38
Speaker 1: me give you an example. You can have a very
1:12:41
Speaker 1: very competitive buck. He's five and a half years old. Uh,
1:12:45
Speaker 1: he's sixteen inches inside and he's an eight pointer and
1:12:49
Speaker 1: he scores one thirty five. That can be an absolute
1:12:54
Speaker 1: stud in terms of him being able to fight other bucks.
1:12:59
Speaker 1: So just cause he squares up with a buck that
1:13:02
Speaker 1: has ten points in his hundred fifty class or hundred
1:13:05
Speaker 1: sixty class, it doesn't in any way mean that that
1:13:09
Speaker 1: one sixty class is going to be a better fighter.
1:13:12
Speaker 1: So when you lock those antlers together again, it is
1:13:15
Speaker 1: a tool for that buck to demonstrate his power and
1:13:20
Speaker 1: his leverage. So because the fights are one, it's a
1:13:23
Speaker 1: shoven match, right, Yeah, it's not that they just clash
1:13:28
Speaker 1: and clash. I mean, it's locking up and then who
1:13:31
Speaker 1: can basically back the other one up and back him
1:13:34
Speaker 1: up to the point where he runs off. Um, And
1:13:38
Speaker 1: and so that's typically what we see. And so what
1:13:41
Speaker 1: does the average mature buck? What's the average antler size
1:13:45
Speaker 1: and the average configuration of a buck in the state
1:13:48
Speaker 1: of Mississippi, The average configuration is the eight pointer. The
1:13:54
Speaker 1: mature bucks are gonna have an eight eight points and
1:13:56
Speaker 1: then you only get on down to like or fifteen
1:14:00
Speaker 1: or sent you know, have ten or more points. So
1:14:04
Speaker 1: the way I'll look at this over mother Nature's time,
1:14:07
Speaker 1: if if really big, you know, ten and twelve point
1:14:11
Speaker 1: antlers were really important for breeding success and predominance, we
1:14:16
Speaker 1: we would see Mother nature taken us that direction. But
1:14:19
Speaker 1: but really from a dear's perspective, a buck's perspective, Um,
1:14:24
Speaker 1: what what is adequate is typically an average set of antlers.
1:14:29
Speaker 1: So here's my question. Then, So if if we understand
1:14:33
Speaker 1: the antlers are a signal and a weapon, that results
1:14:36
Speaker 1: in either a buck avoiding more fights because bucks just
1:14:39
Speaker 1: won't fight him, or he wins those fights because he's
1:14:42
Speaker 1: able to get through that ordeal, how does that get
1:14:45
Speaker 1: passed down then to sexual selection? And who how many
1:14:50
Speaker 1: times he's able to passage In the next down, is
1:14:52
Speaker 1: it that those antlers are the signal to a female too,
1:14:56
Speaker 1: or is it that simply by winning the fight he
1:14:58
Speaker 1: has access to the female, or how does that result
1:15:01
Speaker 1: in him passing the gen next more, I guess is
1:15:03
Speaker 1: my question? Okay too? That two things? So uh the
1:15:08
Speaker 1: short answer is yes, but by him breeding, by him
1:15:11
Speaker 1: breeding now, um, so he's gonna be passing on his
1:15:14
Speaker 1: his genetics there. Now, remember that is going to be blended.
1:15:19
Speaker 1: So even though pop is an eight pointer uh his genes,
1:15:23
Speaker 1: when when matched with with the those genes, he may
1:15:26
Speaker 1: produce a six pointer as as offspring, he may produce
1:15:30
Speaker 1: a one seventy class you know, as offspring. So there's
1:15:33
Speaker 1: that blending and that randomness that goes on there with
1:15:36
Speaker 1: that blending, that that that you never know for sure. Yeah,
1:15:39
Speaker 1: but but the mechanism by which you talked about for
1:15:42
Speaker 1: sexual selection. Yes, that is that is him breeding. Now
1:15:45
Speaker 1: you brought up another very very interesting point and one
1:15:49
Speaker 1: another project we just completed. We have schemed about this
1:15:52
Speaker 1: for years. Um, we wanted to look at that very choice. Mark,
1:15:58
Speaker 1: I believe you mentioned about does does the dough Does
1:16:01
Speaker 1: she have any say in the matter? Her antler is
1:16:03
Speaker 1: important to her? Well, we know in birds and and
1:16:07
Speaker 1: things like like that, it's really critically important. You know,
1:16:11
Speaker 1: the peacock's tail for example, on the best examples is
1:16:15
Speaker 1: that males really have to show off. So the female
1:16:19
Speaker 1: is picking. You know, she's gonna pick which mail she wants,
1:16:23
Speaker 1: and he's usually going to be the brightest and the
1:16:25
Speaker 1: biggest or you know, he builds the best nest or whatever. Um,
1:16:29
Speaker 1: But so does something like that occur in dear and
1:16:33
Speaker 1: we think, gosh, you know, it's it's going to be
1:16:35
Speaker 1: important to some degree because, um, when we look at
1:16:38
Speaker 1: this as biologists, we look at who's got all the
1:16:41
Speaker 1: risk involved here? Well, the dough has a lot of
1:16:44
Speaker 1: risk involved because the buck, when he completes his breeding,
1:16:47
Speaker 1: he's out of the picture. He does not help with
1:16:50
Speaker 1: parental care, He does not stay around and fend for
1:16:53
Speaker 1: that dough, you know, a few days later, much less
1:16:56
Speaker 1: a few months later. So this dough is really this
1:17:00
Speaker 1: is an important decision for her the quality of her offspring.
1:17:04
Speaker 1: So what we decided to do was to test if
1:17:07
Speaker 1: female choice can be playing a role in this. And
1:17:11
Speaker 1: so we designed to study. We met with an engineer
1:17:14
Speaker 1: on campus. Here we thought we need some way that
1:17:17
Speaker 1: we can manipulate antlers, and we manipulated this really big
1:17:24
Speaker 1: set about a hundred and fifty hundred sixty inch set
1:17:28
Speaker 1: of antlers, and then a really dinky set that the
1:17:31
Speaker 1: score about nine. And we took equivalent aged and equivalent
1:17:36
Speaker 1: body sized bucks and had them in two pens. So
1:17:43
Speaker 1: again let me emphasize, we're controlling for age or the
1:17:46
Speaker 1: same age. We're controlling for body size. We're not comparing
1:17:49
Speaker 1: pound buck to a two pound buck, same age, same
1:17:53
Speaker 1: body size. And then we put an estraus dough in
1:17:58
Speaker 1: between them. So we have three pens. On the left
1:18:01
Speaker 1: pin is a one buck with small antlers. On the
1:18:03
Speaker 1: extreme right hand side as the same age buck with
1:18:06
Speaker 1: big antlers, and then we have an estrius dough in between.
1:18:10
Speaker 1: And most of the time the estrous dough would move over.
1:18:15
Speaker 1: Now when we put her in here. She is in estris,
1:18:18
Speaker 1: she's in standing heat what we call it. She is
1:18:21
Speaker 1: ready to breathe, and and most of the time, like
1:18:24
Speaker 1: sixty to seventy percent of the time, she will hang
1:18:27
Speaker 1: out or sidle up to the buck with the largest antlers.
1:18:32
Speaker 1: So there is definitely something going on with her as well.
1:18:37
Speaker 1: You know, she is definitely using that as a cue.
1:18:40
Speaker 1: And how is that manifested? That That's that's where we're
1:18:44
Speaker 1: still scratching our head. How is that manifested? So what
1:18:47
Speaker 1: I mean by that is, hey, it really doesn't matter
1:18:50
Speaker 1: what the doe wants. If hey, here's the dominant buck
1:18:53
Speaker 1: and he's chased everybody off, you know, he's gonna he's
1:18:56
Speaker 1: gonna do the breeding. Um that brought us back to
1:18:59
Speaker 1: maybe this more pusiple paternity stuff when you know, meaning
1:19:02
Speaker 1: that um uh, a dough can breed multiple males. Remember
1:19:07
Speaker 1: I said of twins have different fathers, So maybe okay,
1:19:13
Speaker 1: So what we found in another study and again this
1:19:16
Speaker 1: is free ranging deer, not in our pens. But so
1:19:18
Speaker 1: this was right that the advent of being able to
1:19:21
Speaker 1: do some genetic sampling pretty cost effectively. And so we
1:19:25
Speaker 1: had our study population and we were looking at UM fawns.
1:19:30
Speaker 1: What we're we're taking genetic samples from everything everything in
1:19:33
Speaker 1: the herd, capturing does capturing fawns, capturing books. And what
1:19:36
Speaker 1: we found out is that UM twenty five cent of
1:19:42
Speaker 1: twin litters had different fathers. So twenty five percent of
1:19:48
Speaker 1: the time when you see a doe that has twins
1:19:51
Speaker 1: and in now in Mississippi, UM that that those twins
1:19:55
Speaker 1: had different fathers. And so it might be with this
1:19:58
Speaker 1: female choice thing, she might breathe, she might come into
1:20:02
Speaker 1: heat um with with that bug that is available, you know,
1:20:06
Speaker 1: that dominant bug that's available. But she may also allow
1:20:09
Speaker 1: the breeding, breeding a bug that maybe she prefers, you know,
1:20:12
Speaker 1: exercising her female choice. So we're about to submit a
1:20:16
Speaker 1: paper on that and we'll see what the scientific community
1:20:18
Speaker 1: scientific community thinks about it. But but that's our current
1:20:21
Speaker 1: thinking at this point. Certainly female choice is a part
1:20:24
Speaker 1: of it, not as important as as Antler's being a
1:20:27
Speaker 1: weapon for a male. But but they may also serve
1:20:30
Speaker 1: as a signal of quality to the female as well.
1:20:33
Speaker 1: So that's not so okay. So what you just said
1:20:36
Speaker 1: there is that a doe could be pregnant with twins
1:20:40
Speaker 1: by two separate bucks. So that then brings me to
1:20:44
Speaker 1: the question of how many I don't know why I
1:20:48
Speaker 1: thought this, um, but you just kind of all assume
1:20:50
Speaker 1: that a dope comes into heat, she's bread once or whatever,
1:20:54
Speaker 1: and then she's done. But how many times can a
1:20:57
Speaker 1: dobe get bread or tempted to be bred? I guess
1:21:01
Speaker 1: I mean, well, that just happened throughout as many times
1:21:04
Speaker 1: as she gets caught, and then just the one fertilization
1:21:06
Speaker 1: happens or I don't know this, maybe it's an ignorant question,
1:21:09
Speaker 1: but how many times will that actually happen? Because it
1:21:11
Speaker 1: sounds at least twice of the time it happened. Um. Well, no,
1:21:19
Speaker 1: that's a good question, and I don't really have an
1:21:22
Speaker 1: answer for you. Um. You know, so when when a
1:21:26
Speaker 1: dough again, we we call it standing heat, so for
1:21:29
Speaker 1: you know about it can be six hours, sometimes eight hours,
1:21:32
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit longer. But that's when we think
1:21:34
Speaker 1: she is receptive. And so we've all seen where a
1:21:39
Speaker 1: dough was not quite in standing heat. She's running through
1:21:41
Speaker 1: the woods and the buck is chasener as part of
1:21:43
Speaker 1: the normal courtship. Um. But then she reaches a point
1:21:46
Speaker 1: physiologically you know the hormones are right and she is
1:21:50
Speaker 1: ready to stand. Now. In your typical situation, you have
1:21:55
Speaker 1: had this one particular buck, whether he's the big dominant
1:21:59
Speaker 1: buck or heck he was just the lucky one that
1:22:01
Speaker 1: was available in the area, when she's in standing heat,
1:22:03
Speaker 1: but he will continue to court her and breed her,
1:22:06
Speaker 1: usually multiple times. You know, he's gonna copulate multiple times. Um.
1:22:12
Speaker 1: Now what we don't know with the multiple breeding with
1:22:16
Speaker 1: different sires. Um, maybe another buck enters the picture. So
1:22:22
Speaker 1: maybe the old mature buck. Uh, maybe he's meandering along
1:22:26
Speaker 1: and he detects, oh, you know, hey, there's a dough
1:22:28
Speaker 1: in estress, and maybe he comes up and runs off
1:22:31
Speaker 1: the other buck and then he mounts her and breeds
1:22:33
Speaker 1: her as well. Um, maybe that buck that that is
1:22:37
Speaker 1: breeding her. Maybe after he's copulated a few times, maybe
1:22:41
Speaker 1: he gets the scent. Oh hey, there's you know, there's
1:22:43
Speaker 1: another dough in estress, and I'm gonna start getting on
1:22:45
Speaker 1: the trail to find her. Don't don't really know, that's
1:22:48
Speaker 1: an excellent question. We we really don't know. But obviously
1:22:52
Speaker 1: there's got to be some situations where, you know, where
1:22:55
Speaker 1: where multiple bucks are are breeding the same dome. Yeah. Interesting. Okay,
1:22:59
Speaker 1: so here's the next natural question. Then one second, one second,
1:23:02
Speaker 1: on second, I want to forget what I wasn't ask,
1:23:04
Speaker 1: but what you got, make sure you write it down
1:23:07
Speaker 1: right now. Okay, So does does aggression have anything to
1:23:12
Speaker 1: play in in the breeding? You know there, I've I've
1:23:16
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in the tree stand and
1:23:18
Speaker 1: I've seen some pretty big antlerd bucks and I've seen
1:23:21
Speaker 1: some big antlerd bucks that will come into rattling. And
1:23:25
Speaker 1: I've seen some you know, big antler bucks that you know,
1:23:30
Speaker 1: if your rattle, they're gone right or you know, they
1:23:33
Speaker 1: they shy away from the fighting. At the same time,
1:23:35
Speaker 1: I've seen three year old hundred eight pointer, like you've mentioned,
1:23:40
Speaker 1: kick everybody's ass because he he was the most aggressive.
1:23:45
Speaker 1: He came into rattles, he came in you know, he
1:23:48
Speaker 1: was chasing the big mature bucks off because he was
1:23:50
Speaker 1: basically a badass. So how much does I guess personality
1:23:57
Speaker 1: play into like the actual selection during breeding. Yeah, it
1:24:04
Speaker 1: plays a big role. It plays a really big role.
1:24:06
Speaker 1: So we see disparities like that a lot in our
1:24:10
Speaker 1: research facility where you would look at this particular buck
1:24:13
Speaker 1: and you think, man, he's got to be the stud.
1:24:15
Speaker 1: Look at his body size as antlers. I mean, he's
1:24:17
Speaker 1: got to be the guy. But for whatever reason, I
1:24:21
Speaker 1: guess he's a lover not a fighter type thing. Then
1:24:23
Speaker 1: there will be this. He might be a little bit younger,
1:24:25
Speaker 1: he might be fifteen pounds less, but he is that
1:24:29
Speaker 1: kind of guy that is always looking for a fight,
1:24:33
Speaker 1: always snorting, always aggressive, even does humans. You know, we're
1:24:37
Speaker 1: bringing him food and every chance he can get, he's
1:24:39
Speaker 1: gonna lay his ears back and ram up against the
1:24:42
Speaker 1: fence and try to get at us. And yeah, so
1:24:45
Speaker 1: speaking to your point, there is absolutely um something to aggression.
1:24:50
Speaker 1: And how does that evolve over time? Um? You know,
1:24:55
Speaker 1: um it must balance out. And and something I think
1:24:58
Speaker 1: about is I under if on the average, maybe these
1:25:04
Speaker 1: more aggressive bucks they may not live as long. The
1:25:08
Speaker 1: more you engage in fights, the more risk you take,
1:25:12
Speaker 1: and sooner or later risk will catch up with you.
1:25:15
Speaker 1: So maybe you have these two different strategies that are
1:25:19
Speaker 1: successful for different bucks during different times of the year,
1:25:22
Speaker 1: different times of their life. Maybe the more docile guy,
1:25:25
Speaker 1: maybe he's just gonna sit back and say I'm not
1:25:27
Speaker 1: gonna risk of my life. I'm gonna wait for the
1:25:30
Speaker 1: opportune time, and it's always worked for me in the past.
1:25:33
Speaker 1: And I'll find a doughe in heat, and I'll pursue
1:25:36
Speaker 1: her and and spread my jeans that way. And then
1:25:39
Speaker 1: you got that other guy. Just we all know that guy,
1:25:41
Speaker 1: don't we at the bar? The guy looking for the fight?
1:25:45
Speaker 1: You know, maybe he's that guy. Maybe that Um day,
1:25:53
Speaker 1: did that? Did that answer your question? Probably not the
1:25:56
Speaker 1: best answer, but it's the best I could come up with.
1:25:58
Speaker 1: That's That's what I've always thought. Anyway, that was excellent,
1:26:02
Speaker 1: So kind of continue on that thread. Can you elaborate
1:26:06
Speaker 1: on the typical distribution of breeding success across age groups?
1:26:10
Speaker 1: Because I think I've read some stuff on this in
1:26:12
Speaker 1: the past. I think a lot of us assume that
1:26:14
Speaker 1: the big stud, the big old stud breeds all the dose.
1:26:17
Speaker 1: But I think I read somewhere that's not necessarily the case.
1:26:20
Speaker 1: Is that true? That that that is indeed the case? Um.
1:26:27
Speaker 1: The one factor that affects the distribution of breeding is
1:26:32
Speaker 1: age structure. So let's let me give you some contrasting populations. UM.
1:26:38
Speaker 1: One of our studies, one of our colleagues, was conducted
1:26:41
Speaker 1: on the Keen Branch in South Texas, so lightly very
1:26:45
Speaker 1: very lightly hunted. Heard. Uh, you can easily have half
1:26:49
Speaker 1: or more of the bucks within the population are mature,
1:26:54
Speaker 1: so heavily skewed for these very long lived mature books. Now,
1:26:58
Speaker 1: in those situations, most of the breeding will occur by
1:27:04
Speaker 1: those mature bucks because there are so many of them
1:27:08
Speaker 1: in the population. You know that that one up and
1:27:11
Speaker 1: comer yearling or that one coming two year old, he
1:27:14
Speaker 1: just cannot compete with a mature buck. So anytime there's
1:27:18
Speaker 1: a contest, whether a doze in the presence or not,
1:27:21
Speaker 1: he's gonna lose. When we contrasted that the the reproductive
1:27:26
Speaker 1: success of mature bucks there, and we compared it to
1:27:30
Speaker 1: a public land refuge, uh, national wife refuge here in Mississippi,
1:27:34
Speaker 1: where the age structure is much younger. So in this population,
1:27:39
Speaker 1: an old buck was three years of age, Okay, so
1:27:43
Speaker 1: heavy hunting pressure. Uh. First legal bucks were usually shot,
1:27:47
Speaker 1: and so you would see most of your bucks were
1:27:50
Speaker 1: either yearlings or two year olds and occasionally find a
1:27:52
Speaker 1: three year old. Well then yeah, all the breeding was
1:27:55
Speaker 1: spread across from from yearlings and two year olds in
1:27:57
Speaker 1: the three year olds. So it is it is the
1:28:01
Speaker 1: single most factor that effects who's doing the breeding is
1:28:05
Speaker 1: the composition of your male age classes? How many? How
1:28:10
Speaker 1: many does will buck? I don't know an average buck
1:28:13
Speaker 1: or an average mature buck. How many dose will buck
1:28:17
Speaker 1: impregnate in a given fall? Do you know? That? Is
1:28:20
Speaker 1: that something that's been checked in free range? I don't
1:28:25
Speaker 1: think that has ever been adequately It just be so.
1:28:30
Speaker 1: So you would have to get a genetic sample of
1:28:32
Speaker 1: just about every deer and you know, a ten square
1:28:35
Speaker 1: mile area to find that out. But I'm just gonna
1:28:38
Speaker 1: pull one out of my back pocket here. I would say, um,
1:28:42
Speaker 1: you could probably say, uh, ten to twenty well, be good.
1:28:48
Speaker 1: One buck and that's your that's your best scientific guess.
1:28:53
Speaker 1: Would would breed ten to twenty does well? If you so?
1:28:59
Speaker 1: If we were talking about um as many possible. So
1:29:04
Speaker 1: let's say he had no competition fight. You know, it's
1:29:07
Speaker 1: just I've got this population of dose and over a
1:29:11
Speaker 1: two week, three week, one month, depending on UM the
1:29:15
Speaker 1: distribution of your your conception dates. UM. But he's spending
1:29:19
Speaker 1: one or two days with the dough tending her, breeding her,
1:29:23
Speaker 1: and then she's out of heat, and then hey, I'm
1:29:25
Speaker 1: going to locate another dough spend a day with two
1:29:27
Speaker 1: of her tend her breed her. UM. So essentially you're
1:29:31
Speaker 1: saying every every two days or so, UM, he would
1:29:35
Speaker 1: he would breed a dose throughout the right throughout the
1:29:40
Speaker 1: breeding season. So again, whild guess there wild scientific guests there,
1:29:47
Speaker 1: but that that would be a maximum, I would think.
1:29:50
Speaker 1: And then the more bucks that you put into that population, uh,
1:29:54
Speaker 1: the fewer and fewer opportunities that buck's gonna have. Right,
1:29:57
Speaker 1: the more competition you have, the less he's gonna bring eaton. Yeah,
1:30:01
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. Um Dan, you've got a wild list of questions.
1:30:07
Speaker 1: Do you wanna do you want to take us in
1:30:08
Speaker 1: the new direction? Yes? I do? All right, I mean,
1:30:13
Speaker 1: I gotta this this entire list of things that um
1:30:19
Speaker 1: I have on this paper. Like Mark said, the first question,
1:30:23
Speaker 1: everybody talks about mature You know, what is a mature buck?
1:30:27
Speaker 1: From a biot, from a biology um, from a biology stamp.
1:30:30
Speaker 1: When does a buck reach full maturity? Okay it um?
1:30:38
Speaker 1: The short answer is five? Okay, five or six will
1:30:43
Speaker 1: be the short answer. Now, what what we see is
1:30:47
Speaker 1: depending on where you're at and the environment, the stability
1:30:53
Speaker 1: of the environment and the food availability, some bucks get
1:30:57
Speaker 1: there a little bit quicker. So for example, in Mississippi
1:31:01
Speaker 1: when I was talking about that agg region earlier, our
1:31:03
Speaker 1: delta region. Um, when a buck is at four or five,
1:31:08
Speaker 1: they are pretty much at one. I mean from four
1:31:12
Speaker 1: to five. They may add a few more pounds and
1:31:15
Speaker 1: a few more inches, but they've gotten there pretty quick.
1:31:19
Speaker 1: And and sure they can still get a little bit bigger.
1:31:21
Speaker 1: They can turn into you know, a big old six
1:31:23
Speaker 1: or seven year old, but we usually don't see a
1:31:26
Speaker 1: lot of games and antler at that time. Now in
1:31:29
Speaker 1: our southern part of the state, the environment is not
1:31:32
Speaker 1: as stable. Uh, food is much more limited. We usually
1:31:37
Speaker 1: think they're a year behind. And when you plot their
1:31:40
Speaker 1: growth curves from from harvest data, when you plot them,
1:31:43
Speaker 1: you'll see that really really clearly, is that you'll see
1:31:47
Speaker 1: those Agg region bucks, it'll be a curve. They'll they'll
1:31:51
Speaker 1: grow like crazy until three years of age, and then
1:31:54
Speaker 1: a little bit more at four, and then hardly anymore
1:31:57
Speaker 1: at five. Whereas deer in our southern part of the
1:32:00
Speaker 1: state food limited. You will basically see a linear line
1:32:04
Speaker 1: one to two, two to three, three to four. They
1:32:07
Speaker 1: incrementally bigger and bigger and bigger. UM. And so the
1:32:11
Speaker 1: clock is a little bit slower because resources are a
1:32:13
Speaker 1: little bit less so, but more biologically, I guess dan
1:32:20
Speaker 1: is all skeletal growth pretty much stops them. By skeletal growth,
1:32:25
Speaker 1: we mean the long bones, the scapula. You know that
1:32:29
Speaker 1: body size is usually fixed by about three and a
1:32:33
Speaker 1: half or the most four and a half, and then
1:32:35
Speaker 1: they're just adding body weight after that. So it depends
1:32:41
Speaker 1: as as as you said earlier, it depends on how
1:32:43
Speaker 1: you define it. So if you wanted to say when
1:32:46
Speaker 1: does body mass level out or when does antler growth
1:32:49
Speaker 1: level out, you'd probably be safe to say five to six. Okay, interesting, gotcha?
1:32:57
Speaker 1: Is there anything else? And we've we've talked a lot
1:33:00
Speaker 1: about um, you know, ant or growth and breeding success
1:33:05
Speaker 1: and things like that. Is there anything related to just
1:33:07
Speaker 1: the general biology of white tails or things that you've
1:33:10
Speaker 1: seen when it comes to that that we're getting wrong
1:33:13
Speaker 1: on average as far as hunters things we believe, um,
1:33:16
Speaker 1: you know, how we think dear react to things, or
1:33:18
Speaker 1: how we think dear see us or smell us or
1:33:20
Speaker 1: anything like that. Is there any like common misconceptions out
1:33:23
Speaker 1: there that through your research you've proved to be not true.
1:33:29
Speaker 1: You know, I'll be honest with you, Probably what I
1:33:33
Speaker 1: hope anyway, is is the most impactful part of our
1:33:37
Speaker 1: research is UM, it's probably this the ampler genetic stuff.
1:33:42
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we have proven that so many
1:33:46
Speaker 1: ways that UM, how to harvest, developing an appropriate harvest
1:33:51
Speaker 1: strategy for your books, UM, the purpose of harvesting a
1:33:57
Speaker 1: particular book, And the mistake that we always see, UM,
1:34:01
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, it's uh heck, eight out of every
1:34:06
Speaker 1: or nine out of every ten clubs. When when when
1:34:09
Speaker 1: they come to us and say, man, we just can't
1:34:11
Speaker 1: get over the top. We've been doing everything. We've been
1:34:15
Speaker 1: practicing management, we've food plots, we've we've kept our dear
1:34:19
Speaker 1: heart under control. We've got our dough harvest. But you know,
1:34:22
Speaker 1: on and on and on, and the problem that we
1:34:26
Speaker 1: see or or excuse me, the problem that they always
1:34:28
Speaker 1: have is they'll say, and I'm gonna use a Boone
1:34:31
Speaker 1: and Crockett score relative to my area. So in my
1:34:34
Speaker 1: area here in Mississippi, say we get bucks up to
1:34:37
Speaker 1: you know, four or five years of Asian, we can't
1:34:39
Speaker 1: get them over a hundred and thirty. We we just
1:34:42
Speaker 1: cannot break through this hundred and thirty. Why why why
1:34:45
Speaker 1: aren't we killing one fifty class dear, one sixty class, dear,
1:34:49
Speaker 1: and we work with them, and we go back and
1:34:51
Speaker 1: ask the type of bucks that were harvesting that they
1:34:54
Speaker 1: are harvesting, and we look at their harvest data. And
1:34:56
Speaker 1: the biggest problem where people shoot themselves in the foot
1:35:00
Speaker 1: more often than not, is they shoot the wrong bucks
1:35:06
Speaker 1: when they're middle aged. So, for example, when you see, um,
1:35:14
Speaker 1: this one hundred and thirty class, dear, oh my god,
1:35:18
Speaker 1: you know hey, you know hey, his bow season right
1:35:20
Speaker 1: is archery. I got a new bow of my hands.
1:35:23
Speaker 1: And at thirty yards away there's this hundred and thirty class, dear.
1:35:26
Speaker 1: Now at a three year old, dear that scores one thirty,
1:35:31
Speaker 1: it's probably going to be a one sixty. A three
1:35:36
Speaker 1: year old one class, it's probably going to grow at
1:35:39
Speaker 1: maturity to be a one fifty class, etcetera. And so
1:35:42
Speaker 1: what we see over time is that exceptional bucks are
1:35:48
Speaker 1: harvested when they're three years of age, and that's why
1:35:52
Speaker 1: they can never break through to shooting one and one
1:35:55
Speaker 1: sixty class. So it is the very opposite, remember or
1:36:00
Speaker 1: earlier we were talking about when you see these older
1:36:03
Speaker 1: bucks that are obviously not going to be the trophy,
1:36:06
Speaker 1: not going to be the buck you're really managing for
1:36:08
Speaker 1: and hoping for, you know, go ahead and harvest it.
1:36:11
Speaker 1: You know, that's a good source of dear meat for you,
1:36:13
Speaker 1: and it'll save a lot of fords for other deer.
1:36:16
Speaker 1: These people are doing just the opposite. So they're seeing
1:36:19
Speaker 1: that one hundred and thirty one and thirty five in
1:36:23
Speaker 1: three year old and harvesting it, and they just um
1:36:28
Speaker 1: eliminated the possibility of them shooting a one fifty or
1:36:32
Speaker 1: a one sixty two years later, right and keep them
1:36:38
Speaker 1: You took the up and comer ount and you got
1:36:40
Speaker 1: to keep this in mind. One sixty and one seventy
1:36:43
Speaker 1: class bucks are anomalies. They're rare, very very rare. And
1:36:49
Speaker 1: so you saw that rare buck when it was three
1:36:51
Speaker 1: years of age and you harvested it two years early.
1:36:55
Speaker 1: We we have some really uh good hunting clubs along
1:36:58
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River, very very uh intense agg region, very
1:37:03
Speaker 1: fertile soil, etcetera. And you're seeing some of these people,
1:37:07
Speaker 1: some of these hunters killing two year olds or to
1:37:09
Speaker 1: scoring you know in the one teams and one twinnies,
1:37:14
Speaker 1: and those are bucks that would have been that would
1:37:16
Speaker 1: have grown in to be if they had followed your
1:37:18
Speaker 1: normal growth curves, they would have end up being booming crocketts,
1:37:21
Speaker 1: but they were harvested too early. So the composition of
1:37:26
Speaker 1: your buck harvest is so critical. And what I tell
1:37:30
Speaker 1: hunters in my workshops is the single most valuable asset
1:37:35
Speaker 1: you have on your property are high quality young bucks.
1:37:39
Speaker 1: You got to do everything you possibly can to protect
1:37:42
Speaker 1: those high quality young bucks. And so I know a
1:37:45
Speaker 1: lot of your listeners do do this. We do. We
1:37:47
Speaker 1: do it as well as your preseason camera survey. You know,
1:37:51
Speaker 1: if you're part of a hunting club, especially, we have
1:37:53
Speaker 1: a collection of people is saturate the woods with those
1:37:57
Speaker 1: cameras and we identified the up and bummers and say
1:38:00
Speaker 1: hands off, do not harvest this buck whatsoever. And then
1:38:05
Speaker 1: by default you might have this other three or four
1:38:07
Speaker 1: year old this below averages say you know, you can
1:38:10
Speaker 1: harvest this one, but this is a buck we're protecting.
1:38:13
Speaker 1: And when you see clubs year after year systematically do that,
1:38:17
Speaker 1: then that's when they start reaching their potential, and that's
1:38:20
Speaker 1: when they start harvesting those um really really high quality
1:38:24
Speaker 1: sixty and above. Interesting makes sense, It comes down that's
1:38:28
Speaker 1: the single biggest thing I see. Yeah, those levers. We
1:38:31
Speaker 1: can push as a hunter, you roll as a manager
1:38:34
Speaker 1: or harun't it. You can push the food lever, you
1:38:36
Speaker 1: can increase nutrition. But probably that that very most like
1:38:39
Speaker 1: you said, that most important lever is the trigger. Whether
1:38:42
Speaker 1: you choose to pull the trigger or not pull the
1:38:44
Speaker 1: trigger is is the ultimate, the ultimate decision that will
1:38:49
Speaker 1: lead to results down the road. Now, I want to
1:38:52
Speaker 1: jump to something else really quick, if you don't mind,
1:38:54
Speaker 1: I imagine. I imagine down in the part of the
1:38:56
Speaker 1: country we're at, in the in the southern part of
1:38:58
Speaker 1: the country, another limiting factor because of its impacts on nutrition,
1:39:02
Speaker 1: I assume and for to understand, one of those limiting
1:39:05
Speaker 1: factors might be competition from hogs. And that's something we've
1:39:08
Speaker 1: never talked about on the podcast before, but I know
1:39:11
Speaker 1: a lot of people deal with and as I understand it,
1:39:14
Speaker 1: you've done some researcher looking into that. Can you tell
1:39:16
Speaker 1: us about what you're doing on that front? Yeah, absolutely so. Um,
1:39:23
Speaker 1: maybe a little more than you want to know here.
1:39:25
Speaker 1: But when I took this job in two thousand six,
1:39:27
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm a I'm a dear biologist. For
1:39:29
Speaker 1: crying out loud, I'm just my my whole program was
1:39:32
Speaker 1: going to be focused on deer and helping people and
1:39:34
Speaker 1: and working with food plots and forest management and a
1:39:37
Speaker 1: whole program. And then I started getting phone calls first
1:39:40
Speaker 1: week on the job, Um man, I've got hogs on
1:39:43
Speaker 1: my property. What can I do about these hogs? And
1:39:45
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh my god. You know, I had
1:39:48
Speaker 1: lived in Mississippi for a decade and I knew we
1:39:50
Speaker 1: had a lot of hogs, but I wasn't in a
1:39:52
Speaker 1: position to where I was interacting with the hunting public
1:39:55
Speaker 1: and with landowners to how big of an issue it was.
1:39:58
Speaker 1: So we started develop lopping educational programs, workshops and seminars,
1:40:03
Speaker 1: and over the years have just met with thousands of
1:40:05
Speaker 1: people landowners that um are struggling. I mean that absolutely
1:40:12
Speaker 1: hate hogs from from a hunting club standpoint, from destruction
1:40:17
Speaker 1: of roads, from destruction of food plots, from competition. I
1:40:21
Speaker 1: mean this this is anecdotal. I will admit this is anecdotal,
1:40:26
Speaker 1: but there's enough smoke. I'm beginning to believe there's fire.
1:40:30
Speaker 1: Is so many hunters that I trust say, once we
1:40:34
Speaker 1: started getting so many hogs on our property, we just
1:40:36
Speaker 1: don't see near as many deer anymore, and um, probably
1:40:40
Speaker 1: due to food competition. And so you guys know this.
1:40:45
Speaker 1: You don't have to be a biologist if there is
1:40:48
Speaker 1: a limited resource on your property. So let's use that
1:40:52
Speaker 1: white oak or that that grove of white oaks, and
1:40:55
Speaker 1: the white oaks are dropping in this that place where
1:40:58
Speaker 1: you can always go see deer. And now you've got
1:41:01
Speaker 1: a sounder of hogs competing with deer for those white oaks.
1:41:05
Speaker 1: Who's gonna win? I guess they're all always gonna win.
1:41:12
Speaker 1: A deer is never going to outcompete a hog. A
1:41:16
Speaker 1: hog is always gonna win. And so we start seeing
1:41:19
Speaker 1: all these most valuable resources going into a hog's belly
1:41:23
Speaker 1: rather than to a deer's belly. Um, we're even starting
1:41:27
Speaker 1: to see with more more kind of real scientific trail
1:41:31
Speaker 1: camera surveys, with these types of statistical modeling you can
1:41:35
Speaker 1: do with that. But that in places where you get
1:41:38
Speaker 1: more photographs of hogs, you get less photographs of deer.
1:41:42
Speaker 1: I mean statistically that has been proven in a lot
1:41:45
Speaker 1: of areas. In places where you see a lot of deer,
1:41:47
Speaker 1: you're not seeing a lot of hogs. So when hogs
1:41:49
Speaker 1: and deer are on in the same space on the
1:41:52
Speaker 1: same property or landscape. You know, hogs are having an
1:41:56
Speaker 1: impact on your deer. Now that's just the hunters, now
1:42:01
Speaker 1: the farmers. I mean, we were on a property of
1:42:05
Speaker 1: part of my study area earlier this year. Um. I
1:42:08
Speaker 1: don't know if y'all have ever seen um hog rooting
1:42:12
Speaker 1: in the corn field. And most people when I show
1:42:15
Speaker 1: them a picture or slide, they when I say, hey, hey,
1:42:19
Speaker 1: take a look at this field. Can you tell that
1:42:21
Speaker 1: it's been completely destroyed by hog? And they'll say, what
1:42:25
Speaker 1: do you mean? I don't. I don't see a single
1:42:27
Speaker 1: stalk of corn. That's exactly right, because of the night.
1:42:31
Speaker 1: The very night the farmer put that seed in the ground,
1:42:37
Speaker 1: a hog or hogs went up and down every single
1:42:41
Speaker 1: row in a twenty acre, thirty acre, forty acre, eighty
1:42:44
Speaker 1: acre field and rooted up every sea of corn. I mean, yeah,
1:42:50
Speaker 1: it's precision. You know, we've got precision agg it's precision rooting.
1:42:54
Speaker 1: They they will literally every single row where that where
1:42:58
Speaker 1: that planter has cut the ground and put that corn seed,
1:43:01
Speaker 1: they will root there and just destroyed the whole crop,
1:43:04
Speaker 1: you know, in one night. So they are a nightmare.
1:43:09
Speaker 1: And there a nightmare. I've I've I've never met um.
1:43:13
Speaker 1: And here's the story. I get a lot. I'll be
1:43:15
Speaker 1: doing a seminar workshop and you'll see the guy or
1:43:19
Speaker 1: gal or couple will come up and they go cudly.
1:43:22
Speaker 1: I wish we had been at the seminar five years ago, because,
1:43:26
Speaker 1: you know, we thought it was gonna be kind of cool.
1:43:28
Speaker 1: We thought that when hogs came onto our property and
1:43:31
Speaker 1: and during deer season, we'd shoot a couple of them,
1:43:34
Speaker 1: and hey, we thought, you know, during the off season,
1:43:36
Speaker 1: we'd have some fun on our property shooting some more hogs.
1:43:40
Speaker 1: And then fast forward five years and they can't get
1:43:43
Speaker 1: a food plot out of the ground. Say, man, I
1:43:46
Speaker 1: wish we had gotten on top of this a lot earlier.
1:43:49
Speaker 1: So just make no mistake, this is this is a
1:43:52
Speaker 1: species you can't play with. Um. You're literally literally you're
1:43:56
Speaker 1: playing with fire. In terms of their effects. They just
1:43:59
Speaker 1: caused so much destruction. And sure they are fun to hunt,
1:44:03
Speaker 1: There's no doubt about it. The hogs are fun to hunt, uh,
1:44:06
Speaker 1: and they taste good. But but I've never worked with
1:44:09
Speaker 1: a property that was interested in ducks, deer or turkey.
1:44:16
Speaker 1: And then ever say to me, I am so glad
1:44:18
Speaker 1: we have hogs on our property, never, not once, every
1:44:22
Speaker 1: one of them now is literally spending thousands and thousands
1:44:26
Speaker 1: of dollars every single year to try to get rid
1:44:29
Speaker 1: of them. So, um, they're they're just completely bad news
1:44:34
Speaker 1: and a bad idea. So what's the solution right now?
1:44:41
Speaker 1: The best thing you can do is um what we
1:44:44
Speaker 1: call strategic trapping and and you can be you can
1:44:48
Speaker 1: you can make a lot of progress um with with
1:44:52
Speaker 1: the right kind of trapping. And it's not just going
1:44:56
Speaker 1: out and putting up what we call a little cage trap,
1:44:58
Speaker 1: like a little box trap where you might catch one
1:45:01
Speaker 1: or two hogs. You have to use a trap that
1:45:03
Speaker 1: we call a corral trap. And if you go to
1:45:07
Speaker 1: our website wild pig info dot com, uh, you'll see
1:45:12
Speaker 1: an example of this. And so these are big uh
1:45:16
Speaker 1: corral traps. Why don't we call it a corral trap
1:45:18
Speaker 1: because you're building a corral. You're building a corral anywhere
1:45:22
Speaker 1: from twenty to forty ft across and you have a
1:45:25
Speaker 1: big door on it. And what you do is you
1:45:28
Speaker 1: pre bait these hogs. You get them um addicted so
1:45:32
Speaker 1: to speak, to coming into your trap to eat your bait.
1:45:35
Speaker 1: Most often that's corn and you can be really really sophisticated.
1:45:40
Speaker 1: You know, we use the electronic trap doors, so every
1:45:44
Speaker 1: time an animal goes into that trap, it trips a
1:45:47
Speaker 1: sensor and we can look on our smartphone and yep,
1:45:50
Speaker 1: all right, all the pigs are in the trap. There's
1:45:52
Speaker 1: fourteen of them, or hey, all nineteen. You know, pigs
1:45:55
Speaker 1: are in the trap. Drop the door, and a cell
1:45:58
Speaker 1: signal us into the trap and it drops the door.
1:46:00
Speaker 1: And so you can be super super efficient, you know,
1:46:03
Speaker 1: trapping pigs when you're catching them ten to twenty at
1:46:06
Speaker 1: a time. So right now, that is the most efficient way.
1:46:09
Speaker 1: Some people love night shooting, and that can certainly play
1:46:14
Speaker 1: a role, you know, with the night vision gear and
1:46:15
Speaker 1: all that. Um, but but you're you usually not going
1:46:19
Speaker 1: to be near as efficient, you know, shooting single animals
1:46:23
Speaker 1: at the time. Um, you're never gonna be as efficient
1:46:26
Speaker 1: as when you're using a trapping a good trapping program.
1:46:30
Speaker 1: And then also, guys, depending on where you're at in
1:46:32
Speaker 1: the country. You know, it's very popular in Texas, and
1:46:34
Speaker 1: we do some of this in Mississippi. If you have
1:46:36
Speaker 1: the landscape forward is aerial gunning and so through our
1:46:41
Speaker 1: U S Department of Agriculture, our Wildlife Services. UH. Landowners
1:46:45
Speaker 1: can get a contract with U S d A and
1:46:47
Speaker 1: they'll bring the helicopter over and they will aerial gun
1:46:50
Speaker 1: the property, you know, try to kill us as many
1:46:53
Speaker 1: hogs as they can. So the amount of money, when
1:46:56
Speaker 1: you think about your tax dollars, but that is your
1:46:59
Speaker 1: tax dollar they're paying for a helicopter and aerial gunning. UM.
1:47:04
Speaker 1: So we're just seeing populations explode and now we're having
1:47:07
Speaker 1: to spend our tax dollars to control them. And so
1:47:11
Speaker 1: I just would not encourage any of your listeners. You
1:47:14
Speaker 1: don't want hogs on your property. If you see a hog,
1:47:17
Speaker 1: started trapping program and get rid of them as soon
1:47:20
Speaker 1: as possible. And and again we've got all the resources
1:47:23
Speaker 1: you need on wild pig info dot com. UH. It's
1:47:27
Speaker 1: a it's a it's an issue in a situation that's
1:47:29
Speaker 1: just very foreign to me because I've never hunted um
1:47:32
Speaker 1: or even lived anywhere where hogs have been an issue.
1:47:35
Speaker 1: So it's, you know, the idea of some of these
1:47:37
Speaker 1: things sounds like whoa you know to me just in
1:47:39
Speaker 1: my own personal life. But I totally understand that it's
1:47:43
Speaker 1: a huge issue in parts of the country. And I
1:47:45
Speaker 1: think you know, at least when I think about it,
1:47:48
Speaker 1: I think about, you know, some animals, you know, let's
1:47:50
Speaker 1: like predators in different parts of the country. At least
1:47:53
Speaker 1: from my perspective, right, there's a there's a well, there's
1:47:57
Speaker 1: a time and a place the need to manage those
1:48:00
Speaker 1: to maintain balance and the population. Um. And I think
1:48:03
Speaker 1: that they, at least from my perspective, there's a place
1:48:05
Speaker 1: where predators on the landscape as a as a natural
1:48:07
Speaker 1: part of that ecosystem. Um. But I think when it
1:48:10
Speaker 1: comes to hoggs, right, that's an introduced species, is an
1:48:14
Speaker 1: invasive species, Correct me if I'm wrong. But Hoggs in
1:48:18
Speaker 1: the form that they're and now, we're not supposed to
1:48:20
Speaker 1: be down there where they're at now, and because of that,
1:48:22
Speaker 1: they're they're really screwing up the balance um. And in
1:48:25
Speaker 1: those cases it seems like, you know, extreme action is necessary, right,
1:48:30
Speaker 1: You are precisely right, Yeah, you are precisely right. Now,
1:48:34
Speaker 1: if we were in Germany, we would be approaching this
1:48:37
Speaker 1: problem completely different as they are in Germany and in
1:48:40
Speaker 1: Europe and Russia. It's the game species, you know, it's
1:48:43
Speaker 1: from that area, that's that's that's where that animal is
1:48:46
Speaker 1: supposed to be, but it's not in North America, and
1:48:50
Speaker 1: so it can outcompete a lot of our game species.
1:48:53
Speaker 1: And um, you know, for example, we do diet studies too.
1:48:57
Speaker 1: We look at what they eat and I guess you
1:49:00
Speaker 1: have to see it for it really to sink in.
1:49:02
Speaker 1: But anything that lives on the ground a hog is
1:49:06
Speaker 1: going to consume. And just think about that. Anything that
1:49:10
Speaker 1: a pig, any type of animal that resides on the ground,
1:49:14
Speaker 1: and if a pig can get his mouth on it
1:49:16
Speaker 1: and eat it, it's going to So when we open
1:49:18
Speaker 1: them up, we see we see uh, eggs, we see
1:49:22
Speaker 1: reptile eggs, we see frogs, we see salamanders, we see snakes.
1:49:25
Speaker 1: We found an armadillo for crying out loud. Um, we've
1:49:30
Speaker 1: you know, fawns. I mean, what's it gonna do? You know?
1:49:33
Speaker 1: If you've got a hand turkey nesting and a hog
1:49:35
Speaker 1: or a sounder of hogs come up, I mean absolutely
1:49:38
Speaker 1: it's going to consume those eggs. There's no reason to
1:49:40
Speaker 1: think you wouldn't. So um when you and if you
1:49:44
Speaker 1: just have one or two hogs across your property, it's
1:49:46
Speaker 1: not going to be that big of an impact. But
1:49:49
Speaker 1: but the danger is thinking, hey, I just got a
1:49:51
Speaker 1: couple of hogs, because five years later, instead of having
1:49:53
Speaker 1: a couple hogs, you might have thirty hogs or fifty hogs.
1:49:57
Speaker 1: And then you start noticing, like some of these other
1:49:59
Speaker 1: hunting clubs man deer quality, we don't we don't see
1:50:01
Speaker 1: them any dear anymore. Uh, you know, they just start
1:50:04
Speaker 1: out convening our our native wildlife, and so they just
1:50:07
Speaker 1: are again. You know, don't take my word for it.
1:50:11
Speaker 1: Take every single hunting club or landowner I've ever met,
1:50:16
Speaker 1: um that we're interested again. They are interested in hunting
1:50:20
Speaker 1: in terms of primarily deer, but also turkey and ducks.
1:50:24
Speaker 1: They have never said, I'm so glad we have hogs
1:50:27
Speaker 1: on our property. They always say it, usually with with
1:50:31
Speaker 1: you know, disgusted on their face, just sickness on their
1:50:35
Speaker 1: face because they have to devote so much time and
1:50:37
Speaker 1: money for their control. It definitely sounds like something it's
1:50:43
Speaker 1: not a fun thing to deal with them. I'm I'm
1:50:45
Speaker 1: glad that um selfishly, it hasn't hasn't become an issue
1:50:48
Speaker 1: up in my neck of the woods, and I hope
1:50:50
Speaker 1: it doesn't. But you keep you here about these occasional,
1:50:53
Speaker 1: you know, bursts of it in some random areas sometimes,
1:50:56
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's something that you have to be
1:50:57
Speaker 1: aware of in a you know, keep your eyes open
1:51:00
Speaker 1: to it seems like and you've got them all around you,
1:51:04
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're they're creeping your way. Now here's
1:51:07
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter. How are those How are
1:51:10
Speaker 1: those wild hogs getting to you? Mark? I think, well,
1:51:14
Speaker 1: everything I've heard of, it's been escaping from cap from captivity.
1:51:17
Speaker 1: So people that have a game farm or fenced and
1:51:20
Speaker 1: hunting area around them and something getting out. Is that
1:51:23
Speaker 1: that's right? Yep, yep, that is exactly right there, evening
1:51:27
Speaker 1: either escaping from a captive facility or people just literally
1:51:33
Speaker 1: hauling them and turning them loose. Yikes. So that that yeah,
1:51:37
Speaker 1: So right now with within the pig management community are
1:51:41
Speaker 1: our biggest issues are trying to catch people in the
1:51:45
Speaker 1: act of transportation. And so yeah, we we urge anybody
1:51:49
Speaker 1: if you ever see something suspicious, what in the world
1:51:51
Speaker 1: are you doing with um it looks like a bunch
1:51:53
Speaker 1: of wild pigs or wild hogs in the back of
1:51:55
Speaker 1: somebody strailer called, call a conservation officer or game warden,
1:52:01
Speaker 1: let them know, let them check these people out, because
1:52:04
Speaker 1: that's how it happens. Uh, you open a trailer door
1:52:08
Speaker 1: on a wildlife refuge and and the next thing you know,
1:52:10
Speaker 1: five years down the road, you got a big problem.
1:52:13
Speaker 1: So we gotta address the the issue, um, the reason
1:52:18
Speaker 1: for their expansion. You know that they expand on their
1:52:21
Speaker 1: own locally, like any wildlife population does. They grow and
1:52:24
Speaker 1: reproduce and expand. But you know, all of a sudden
1:52:29
Speaker 1: hog population showing up in Manitoba or showing up in
1:52:33
Speaker 1: Michigan or Ohio or Indiana, that's from people moving them around. Yeah,
1:52:38
Speaker 1: definitely got to keep an eye on for that kind
1:52:41
Speaker 1: of thing. You don't need. There's enough issues and challenges
1:52:43
Speaker 1: and things popping up naturally not to don't want to
1:52:46
Speaker 1: deal with anything new added to the to the festival,
1:52:50
Speaker 1: that's for sure. That's right. So Bronson, we are we
1:52:55
Speaker 1: are coming up on time here. Um, but I'm curious,
1:52:58
Speaker 1: do you have any I don't pet issue or passion
1:53:02
Speaker 1: project or part of your research that we haven't talked
1:53:05
Speaker 1: about that you really want to make sure we do
1:53:07
Speaker 1: touch on here in that kind of our final final thoughts? Uh?
1:53:12
Speaker 1: Sure do? UM. I would just urge people if if
1:53:16
Speaker 1: they're more interested in the kind of stuff, we do,
1:53:19
Speaker 1: the research we do um our website, it's M s
1:53:23
Speaker 1: U Deer Lab dot com. M s U Deer Lab
1:53:26
Speaker 1: dot com. Go there and check us out, Uh see
1:53:29
Speaker 1: what we do. And one thing I'm really excited about
1:53:33
Speaker 1: Mark is we are jumping into the podcast world ourselves.
1:53:37
Speaker 1: And so yeah, we recorded our first one last week.
1:53:41
Speaker 1: I'm not a pro like you, so I've I've got
1:53:43
Speaker 1: a steep learning curve. UM. But it's gonna be the
1:53:48
Speaker 1: title of it is Dear University or we're gonna go
1:53:51
Speaker 1: Dear University or Dear you for short. And we'll have
1:53:54
Speaker 1: all the episodes on our on our website, the M
1:53:57
Speaker 1: s U. Deer Lab website. But it's it's gonna be
1:54:00
Speaker 1: all about deer management and dear science. And so what
1:54:03
Speaker 1: we hope to do with with every episode is um
1:54:07
Speaker 1: attack something that is would be of interest to both
1:54:12
Speaker 1: hunters and to wildlife managers. So what's the hot topic
1:54:17
Speaker 1: with disease? So we'll spend an issue talking about the
1:54:20
Speaker 1: you know, the physiology of a v HD or blue
1:54:23
Speaker 1: tongue or chronic wasting disease. We'll talk about antlers, the
1:54:26
Speaker 1: physiology of antlers and what can you do we'll talk
1:54:30
Speaker 1: about habitat management, food plot management, but but just topics
1:54:35
Speaker 1: like that based on research that that we've conducted and
1:54:39
Speaker 1: we hope to have UM hope to have that up
1:54:41
Speaker 1: and running in a month or two. So if your
1:54:44
Speaker 1: listeners don't mind, just checked to our website and um
1:54:48
Speaker 1: downloaded and give it a listen when we get it
1:54:51
Speaker 1: up and running. That's awesome. Well, selfishly, I hope I
1:54:55
Speaker 1: can get you back on this podcast to talk about
1:54:57
Speaker 1: some of these issues some more too, because I feel
1:54:58
Speaker 1: like there's so many things we have got to talk about,
1:55:00
Speaker 1: Like we haven't got to talk about much about habitat
1:55:02
Speaker 1: or food plots or um gosh, I'm sure there's a
1:55:06
Speaker 1: disease is another topic that I'd be interested. So we
1:55:09
Speaker 1: might need to have a part to Bronson, if you're
1:55:11
Speaker 1: up for it at some point here soon, just just
1:55:14
Speaker 1: give me a date if I'm available, we'll do it.
1:55:16
Speaker 1: Be happy to awesome. Well, I'm excited to check out
1:55:20
Speaker 1: the podcast that you guys are working on when that
1:55:22
Speaker 1: comes out, and I'll be sure to continue following everything
1:55:26
Speaker 1: on the website too. I've seen you know, you guys
1:55:28
Speaker 1: are always sending out different things that are featured in
1:55:30
Speaker 1: magazines or different places. It seems like you're doing some really,
1:55:34
Speaker 1: really interesting and helpful work. So so thank you Bronson
1:55:37
Speaker 1: for the good work you're doing, and thank you for
1:55:39
Speaker 1: joining us. Thank you very much. I really appreciate the opportunity.
1:55:43
Speaker 1: It was an honor. Yeah, this is a lot of fun.
1:55:45
Speaker 1: And and and Dan had to drop off, as he occasionally
1:55:48
Speaker 1: has to do to attend to family things, but I
1:55:51
Speaker 1: know he had to. He had a good time too,
1:55:52
Speaker 1: So thanks Bronson. Yeah, yeah, anytime. Thanks so much. And that,
1:55:58
Speaker 1: Ladies and Gentlemen, is this week's podcast. I hope you
1:56:01
Speaker 1: enjoyed that one as much as I did. I found
1:56:04
Speaker 1: it just fascinating. And I think based on how much
1:56:08
Speaker 1: I enjoyed this, I think we're gonna have to have
1:56:09
Speaker 1: Bronson on again, like I said a couple of seconds ago,
1:56:11
Speaker 1: and and maybe some new bio, just some other faces
1:56:14
Speaker 1: in this world too, because there's just so there's so
1:56:18
Speaker 1: much going on here at a deeper level when it
1:56:21
Speaker 1: comes to what dear do, why they do it, how
1:56:24
Speaker 1: they do it that I think his deer hunt is
1:56:26
Speaker 1: just endlessly fascinating. So we're gonna keep on digging into it.
1:56:29
Speaker 1: And uh and I hope you enjoyed that too, So
1:56:31
Speaker 1: before we wrap it up, I do want to thank
1:56:33
Speaker 1: our partners who have helped keep this podcast going. I
1:56:36
Speaker 1: want to give a big thank you too. Sick of
1:56:38
Speaker 1: gear Yetie Cooler's Osonics, Redneck Blinds, maybe an optics, white Tail,
1:56:42
Speaker 1: Institute of North America, Carbon Express and hunt Terra Maps,
1:56:46
Speaker 1: and of course thank you for listening and thank you
1:56:50
Speaker 1: for staying while you're to hunt