Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #161: Wildlife Biologist Marcus Lashley On Deer Habitat, Mineral Stumps, the Moon & More

Transcript

Wired To Hunt Podcast #161: Wildlife Biologist Marcus Lashley On Deer Habitat, Mineral Stumps, the Moon & More · 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 six
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: one Tayni show. We are joined by Marcus Lashly, a
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: wildlife biologist and assistant professor at Mississippi State University, and
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking all sorts of things related to
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: white tailed deer, habitat, mineral stumps, predators, and the moon's
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: potential impact on deer. All right, welcome to the Wired
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sick Gear. And
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: today in the show, we are going to be joined
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: by Marcus Lashly, a wildlife biologist and assistant professor at
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Mississippi State University. And Mark works within the Deer Lab
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: at Mississippi State and you might remember hearing about that
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: on a past episode when we had Bronson Strickland on
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: here earlier this year. But basically what this means that
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Marcus has been and is involved in a whole lot
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: of fascinating research projects related to white tailed deer, and
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: in particular, Marcus has looked a lot into things related
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: to white tailed deer habitat. So today the plan is
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: to pick Marcus's brain all about deer habitat and what
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: they need in their habitat, how we can improve it,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: and um a whole bunch of stuff related to that,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: but then also some things related to hunting to UM.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: In particular, he's done some really interesting research related to
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: the moon and its impacts on deer. So I want
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to ask Marcus about all those things and more. It's
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: going to be an interesting conversation. But before we bring
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Marcus on the line, and this is for the seven
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: of you who enjoy our long and winding introductions. Right,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: how are you taking? Seven? Seven of us? Right, Jim
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: John on, how you doing? I think there's seven people
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: like al right, I love this section, So this is
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: for for those seven. How are you man? I'm good you,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I'm very well. I'm very well. Had a a busy
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: deer related weekend and busy preparing for an exciting week ahead. Yeah.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Uh sounds to me like you got a big buck
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: spotted in Michigan, right, Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, that's for sure.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Since so you know, when we talked UM last time
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: we record the podcast, I told you that I've gotten
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: like a tip about a big buck in the general
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: area of one of my hunting properties. UM, and I
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: was gonna go check it out that night. While I
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: did go check it out that night, and they weren't kidding.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I saw a really nice Michigan buck. Um. Definitely one
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: of the better bucks I've seen in that general area.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: UM and all the time I've been hunting down around there. So, UM,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: four year old. Yeah, at least four at least four UM.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Hard to say if he's older than that, but definitely
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: four older. UM. And I'm kind of you know, based
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: on where he's at right now with growth, I wouldn't
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: be surprised if this buck makes it into the one fifties. UM.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: So he's I mean, that's a Michigan stud I've never
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think here, um, on any of my
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Michigan properties that I can hunt, I have not had
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: a buck that big that was on my property on
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: a proper decord hunt during the hunting season. So I
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: have seen deer this big during the summer in the
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: general area, but I've yet to have one that big
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: that's stuck around for hunting seasons. So we'll see. Maybe
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: this is one that does stick around on one of
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the spots I can hunt, and um, you know, he'd
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: be a nice constellation prize if holy Field never shows.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: So that's that that that for sure. It is not
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: holy Field though, right, yeah, it's it's not holy Field. Um,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: it is in the same general area. Um. So you know,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: like I said, if holy Fields not around, this buck
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: could potentially fill that gap. Um. But no word on
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: holy Field yet. I've been driving around a lot in
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: this area looking for things looking for him, and nothing
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: in the bean fields yet. But um, this is a
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: heck of a deer and I'm excited about that. So
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: did that, and then have been out a few more
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: nights looking for deer. And then over the weekend I
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: hung three news stands, um and put a fake scrape
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: tree in one of my food plots and moved a
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: hay bail blind to a new area. Um. So I
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: been doing a whole bunch of stuff over the weekend,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: just getting things the final prep situated. And I just
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: have a few little like I gotta put one more
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: fake scrape tree up, I gotta move a couple of
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: cameras and then I'm done until the hunting season for
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: that spot for this general area. So right, and then
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: what about because you mentioned you were going to be
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: doing some publicly and scouting as well. Yeah, so I can't.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Oh you know, I think I meant and that I
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: was going to tell you about the public land scouting
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: i'd done. Um, this is like two weeks ago. Now,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I spent a good amount of time on some land
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: down um, down this neck of the woods. And long
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: story short, it looks really good. Um it's there's some
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: big country. It's kind of gnarrowly. It's not like the
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: easy stuff you can just walk into a hundred yards
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: off the side of the road. And um, you know,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: being deer, I think that I found some places that
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: are tough enough to access for the average guy, that
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: I might be able to find some little pockets of
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: deer that feel comfortable in. Particularly found once about there's
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: a bunch of swampy stuff, and I found an island
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: of high ground in the middle of that swamp. And
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: there's just like one little bridge of high ground that
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: connects it to it, and that little funnel connecting the
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: island to the main high stuff was just littered with
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: old rubs and trails coming in and out of there
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: and I found some what looked like for sure a
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: buck bed down at the end of the point on
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: the island, in a few dough bedding areas, UM, maybe
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: fifty two hundred yards away from that. So like some
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: very promising stuff. UM. And then I was out actually
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: scouting in the evening, checking out some bean fields that
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: were adjacent to that public And this was just maybe
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: two or three nights ago. I saw a pretty nice
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: buck right next to the public land. UM. Not a giant,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: but at least a three year old um and something
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: i'd be pretty pumped about to get on some Michigan
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: public So so yeah, that was good, Like I'm excited,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: like these final pieces are all coming together. And now
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I realized that I leave a week from tomorrow and
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I don't come back un till hunting season. So it's nuts.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: So you're going to Montana just to chill the rest
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: of the summer, and then you're gonna be doing an
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: antelope punt, an elk hunt, and a North Dakota mules
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: your hunt. You're kind of you're kind of off on
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: all of it. Okay, Well that's why that's because I
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: don't talk to you enough. Mark, I thought we were friends.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I know that you're you're kind of close. Um, so
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be sort of hanging out in color Otto, Wyoming,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: in Montana for the next month six weeks or so,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: five weeks um as far As Hunts Montana and Lo Hunt,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: then Montana whitetail Hunt, then in the North Dakota whitetail on.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: No elk hunt this year. No, I'll come this year, Okay, Okay,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: just trying to. I think I'm gonna try to, you know,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: like you've been talking about, just trying to wreck up
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: some points until I can go to a slightly better
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: area because where we went it just seems like the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: pressure keeps on building there. Yeah, most definitely. Yeah, I'll
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: tell you what I'm Obviously this year I finally had
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: to call it, you know, and say I'm not going
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: to be able to go on my elk hunt this year. No, yep,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: So you know I don't. I don't want to. I
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: don't want to be that dad who something happens and
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: he's like literally and if I were up in the
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: mountain to the time it would take me to walk
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: back to my car truck and then drive home would
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: be over twenty four hours, and I would be I
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: would just feel horrible for the rest of my life
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: if I missed my son's birth. You know what I mean.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: And I don't want to be that guy. And uh,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: but next year I will be doing some out of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: state hunting. You mark my words. Good. You need that
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: adventure in your life, Dan, I definitely need that adventure
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: in my life. I feel like I'm in a cage
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: right now. You told me this called mensco. You wake
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: up every morning, you don't know where you are. What's
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: going on in my life? I could be Alzeimer's to Um,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: can you push your ELK trip earlier? Could you do
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: like an early ELK trip, like first week in September? Um, well,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: I could go. Well, it is the first week right
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: sons later we'll see September one is on like a
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Friday or Saturday this year, so it's the first week.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: But the opener of that ELK season is the last
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: week in August. Now I could go if I wanted to,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: But the group of guys, I'm going with a group
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: of guys, so they all have scheduled already to go
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: that first week of September. So I would have to
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: be i'd be running solo and where where we had
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: planned ongoing. You need some experience to go up there,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: and probably experience with someone who knows what they're doing. Um,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: it's really steep and it's in Colorado, so it's it's
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: it is high country. Will probably be close to twelve thousand. Yeah, well, um,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: tend to twelve Yeah. If you want to drive out
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: to Montana and hunt antelope with me for a couple
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: of days, when's that, uh, the last couple of days
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: of August before because it will be a period of
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: time between when my wife is gonna leave. She's gonna
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: beet up with a friend I think, and take off
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: like the last day of hours or something, and then
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: I'll have like a two or three days before the
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: white tail season opens up that I was gonna hunt
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: antelope and scout for white tails. Um, you might be
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: a still draw tag m. Let's talk after the show,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: my friend. I mean, you know, I can I can't
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: handle Dan not being able to have a little bit
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: of Western adventure in his life. But check this out right,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: So I restructured my vacation hours at work and I
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: don't have my phone with me. Well, I just wait
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: one second, let me let me tell you something real quick. Okay. July, August, September, October, November.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: So right now, I at at work. I have accepted
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: an approved vacation from November six to November is Thanksgiving,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: so I get those off anyway, So I have three
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: straight weeks off of work. Now that is good news. Right.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: So the goal is on November six to shoot my
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: buck and then that would be nice, right, don't have
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: to grind it out again, and then maybe go to
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Nebraska to do what our meal the hunt. It would
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: be one or the other. I'd be able to shoot both.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: I get one tag. But that's just daydreaming at this point.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: I like where your heads that though those sand hills
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: they're calling to your aren't the man? Ever since I've
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: ever since I went out there, I think about that
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: place every day. It's crazy. Well, when we started talking
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: about it last summer, about me potentially going out with
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: you for for some type hunt, that got me like
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: all obsessing about it and thinking about it, and uh man,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of opportunity out there, and you know
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: this is this is exactly the kind of stuff that
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about in just a couple of
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: days at our live podcast recording, which is gonna be
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: pretty awesome. And I just want to remind everyone listening, um,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: if you're listening to this on the day it comes out,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: So this is Thursday July that this podcast is coming out. UM,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: if you're listening to that now, Tomorrow Friday, July, Dan
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: and I are going to be a New Orleans at
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the Quality Deer Management Association National Convention recording a live
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: episode of this podcast in front of the audience, and
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: you guys can be there. All you need to do
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: is go to cut May dot com to get the details.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: It's am on the twenty one. We're gonna be doing that,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: talking all about d I Y hunting trips. And we've
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: got a friend of mine who have wanted to have
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: on the podcast for a long time. He's gonna be
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: joining us as well. He's gonna have some really great
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: insight to share on this topic. It's it's gonna be
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: top notch. So I'm pumped about that. And then just
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: another reminder that evening Friday, July eight pm, we're gonna
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: have a Wired to Hunt meet up in downtown New Orleans. UM,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to get some intel from guys that are
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: on the ground there right now as far as where
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: we should meet, but some kind of like bar grill
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: or something like that, some kind of bar down there
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: that's large enough for some people to hang out. Eight pm.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: And as soon as we picked that location, I'm gonna
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: be talking about it on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I'll
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: put out the announcement then probably the next anytime now,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I'll have that announcement out, So look for that. If
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: you're in the area and you want to meet up
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: with us, say hi, meet some other wire hunt listeners.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: That's eight pm Friday, July. So are you excited about that? Dan,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm really excited. Now. It's hot in New Orleans,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: my friend, I'm excited for it, but it's hot down there. Yeah,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I I haven't looked at the weather yet, but I'm
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: sure it's going to be Have you have you looked
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: at the weather? I really don't care. I mean, I'm
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: I'm I sweat when it's forty degrees out, So I'm
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: that guy I believe that. Well, it's gonna be a
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: good time. So hopefully we're gonna see some of you
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: guys that you're listening right now. Hopefully we'll see you
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: in in just a short day or so. But um,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: we need to we need to shut this intro down, Dan,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: because our guest is ready to join us. So let's
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: take a quick second to think our partners at Sitka
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Gear and then we'll be back with Marcus Lashly For
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: this week's Sitka story, we're joined by Sitka Ambassador Ed Grahams,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: who tells us about a surprise elk encounter on a
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: public land haunt in Montana. Back in some other sitdown,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Bassadors and I were were artreal c counting in southern
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: southern Montana, and after days of rain and twelve inches
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: of snow, we finally got in on the elk the
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: bodyline and I saw her elk and we were trying
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to get to him. We some
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: heard them, but didn't know where they were, so we
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: ended up just hiking up the mountain trying to get
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: to where we last saw Will did we know after
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: walking through an opening we were right in the middle
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: of a herd about twenty elk. They had to have
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: seen us, but they didn't know what we were. We're
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: in our open country gear walking right through the middle
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: of a clearing, and unfortunately we didn't harvest one. The
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: big bowl came out slipped behind a tree at about
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: twenty yards and one of the funerals. The funerals changed
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: and the college busted and they took off. But it
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: was definitely the closest encounter I've ever had with her
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: milk on edge hunt. He was wearing Sitka's timberline pants
• 15:02
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• 15:04
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• 15:07
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• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Alright with us, Now on the line is Marcus Lashly.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being here with us. Oh really
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: glad to be here. Yeah, I UM. I think I
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: first heard about you when the Quality Deer Management Association
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: published a YouTube video of you a handful of years
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: ago talking about some of your studies that you've done
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: related to the deer and related to the moon and deer,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: and I found that pretty fascinating, and since then I
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: followed some of your work through various studies and research
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: projects you've been doing, and it just seems like you
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: constantly have your hands in some interesting stuff. So we're
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: excited to Yeah, we're excited to try to hear more
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, can you give us just a little
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: bit of an introduction, um to who you are and
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: what is you're doing? Sure, so again, I'm Marcus Lashly.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: I'm a country boy from Alabama and uh had to
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: have had an intense curiosity my entire life, and that's
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: led me to down this path. Grew up hunting and
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: fishing and basically have followed that path all the way
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: into a career now in academia, and I work here
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: at Mississippi State University in the ms U Deer Lab
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: and study primarily habitat relationships with a lot of different
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: species and and one of the ones I'm most interested
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: in of course, as dear, definitely, Now, you had quite
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: a path to get to this point. I think you
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: were NC State for a while, and can you walk
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: us through like what you're what that journey looked like,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: and all the different things you kind of worked on
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: up to this point. So I got a bachelor's degree
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: actually here at Mississippi State, and most people don't get
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a degree at the same place they end up um
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: for a you know, in an academic job so that's
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: a little bit unusual. But I did get my bachelor's
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: degree here in forestry with the option of wildlife management,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and I fell in love with with habitat at that
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: point and working on habitat, and I went and worked
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: with Craig Harper at the University of Tennessee and he
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: trained me during my master's again habitat related work with
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: civil culture, so basically different force management practices within without fire,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: how they affected deer forge availability and quality and those
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: sorts of things. And then I worked in a couple
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: of different jobs with some different agencies, worked in West
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Mississippi all the way up to the outer banks of
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: North Carolina and even down in Florida as a biologist,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: And then went back to get my pH d at
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: NC State where I worked again on fire and force
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: management how related to deer habitat quality and predator prey
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: interactions between deer and coyotes. So, and I also got
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: a post doc there at NC State working in that
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: same long leaf pine ecosystem with with deer and coyotes
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: in fire. It sounds like you've been pretty busy. Have
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: you still got some honey, tim In? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: I find plenty of time, you know, at Fort Bragg
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: when I was doing my research there, I didn't get
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the hunt very much for deer. But I'm also an
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: avid turkey hunter, and uh, it turns out the schedule
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: of trying to catch deer all night and then going
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: turkey hunting all morning and then sleeping you know, from
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: from noon to about six or seven in the evening
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: and doing it all over again with a pretty good
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: schedule for me. So I got plenty of hunting in.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: You know, you have to find time to do it.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: So whatever that schedule is, you you work around it.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: I feel like Dan had a similar schedule, being up
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: all night and sleep until six next day, but it
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: wasn't for turkey hunting, it was it was something else.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: In college. Well yeah, yeah, college, yeah, college story. I
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: thought you were talking recently. Well now, I guess as kids, right. Well,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: you know, when I when I was growing up, I
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: worked on a catfish farm as a night man, and
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: uh got to work all night, you know, during my
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: teenage year. So I was already used to that kind
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: of schedule for for work purposes, but also have had
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: some leisure activities that drive me in that way as well.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: So of all these different I mean, you listed off
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: a handful of different topics and studies that you've been
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: involved in that I'm sure I've all been really interesting
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to you. But of everything you've worked on, what single
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: project or you know, particular topic have you like really
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: clicked with the most, like which specific aspect just like
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: fascinated you above all else? Well, uh, from a science
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: geeky standpoint, we would call it indirect effects. So basically,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: if you think about the systems, they're all food we ups,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: and that way up has a whole bunch of different
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: lines connecting lots of species together. And it's really intriguing
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: to me that you know, things like fire could change plants,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: which change the way that dear behave, which is also
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: affecting how predators behave, and they you know, the predator
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: changes the way that the prey behave, and you know,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: you you start trying to figure out who's affecting who
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: when you get in this web and realize that they're
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: all connected, and you know there are all these caveats
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: in the system, and that really has become the heart
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: of what I love. Ecology is really cool, and you know,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: you don't understand until you really get into the weeds
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: that that all these things are connected, and it becomes
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: really interesting, especially when you start thinking about it from
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: a hunting perspective, because as a hunter, you're the predator
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and you're affecting how the deer is acting in the
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: environment and how they affect plants, and you know it,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: just those things get me really excited, and that has
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: really become a thrust of of my research program now,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: is to really understand how things are affecting one another
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: and how we can use that information to manage them better.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I can, I can certainly see how that'd be interesting.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Can you give us a specific example of this, Like
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: you kind of mentioned some of the connection points, but
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I'd be really interested. You know what, like X variable,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: if you change that, how does that then trickle down
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: through the chain? Sure? So h for just as an example, Um,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I've studied fire and I'm a pyromaniac, so I'm mentioned
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: fire all the time. I'm always always go back to
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: fire because I really like fire, and most people don't
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: realize how important fire has been in the the ecology
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: of the systems, especially in the Eastern and Southeastern United States.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: You know, it's been a critical part of the way
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: that these systems work. So just as an example, uh,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: the timing of fire is pretty cool, and we haven't
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: we've sort of overlooked that. It seems like a lot
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: of people have measured different response variables. And depending on
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: what you measure, you know, sort of okay, growing season
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: for is best, or dormant season's best, you know, late
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: late season. You know, different times are better for different
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: things depending on what you're looking at. But when when
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: you start thinking about deer and when lactation really peaks,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: you know, the demands of a deer really peak best
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the summer. And one of the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: research projects that have been involved with and we're attempting
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: to publish the data currently, show that the phonology of fires,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: in other words, which month fire is set in changes
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the way that it makes the nutrients available to deer.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: And if you actually mimic lightning, when lightning would set
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: things on fire, the nutrient paul send the vegetation coincides
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: with antler growth or or lactation, which are the two
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: you know, depending on whether you're male or not or female,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: those are the most nutritionally demanding. So the timing is
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: critical to make those nutrients available. But to take that
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: a step further, if you start thinking about the predator
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: in the system, which is coyote in this case, so
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: that coyote is also trying to eat so. Uh. One
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: thing I thought was particularly interesting is is mice and
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: rabbits and things like that that coyotes eat are also
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: more abundant after you burn. So coyotes sometimes in some
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: cases will actually seek out fire, so they're not doing
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: it necessarily to get deer or that they obviously eat deer,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: But because they seek out fire, then deer sometimes will
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: avoid fire. So it looks like they're avoiding this nutrient
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: pulse when they're actually avoiding a predator that's not even
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: trying to eat them, you know. So you start getting
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: into this really crazy food web, and animals are doing
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: things that you don't think they should. But when you
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: start taking a larger look at the system, it makes sense. Uh.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: So that's just one really convoluted example. I guess I
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: love it. I love it. How long How long after
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: a fire takes place do you do we start to
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: see the results of that change, Like the the nutrients
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: are you talking about? Well, the nutrients or the animal behavior. Okay, well,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: uh so just to give you another example on it
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: on a different species. We we burned in May this
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: past May, and we have cameras that were monitoring the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: use by lots of species, and northern bob white and
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: turkeys were in the burned area seeking out the things
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: that were made available by fire. Less than twelve hours
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: after the fire is put out, they can respond pretty
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: quickly and they and they know what's going on. It's
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: like they're sitting up in a firetower watching for smoke
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: and they're going to you know, they know what's going on.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: So it's pretty amazing that deer is a little bit
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: delayed because there you know, when when foods are being
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: made available to a deer, it's through vegetation, so they're
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: eating leaves and it has a little bit of lag
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: time before those plants start to respond again. But I
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: would say within two or three weeks that they are
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: really heavily using those nutrients that are being made available
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: by the fire. Now, I know that fire is something
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: that's very well understood within the community of pretty serious
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: habitat managers um, but for people that are you know,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: just getting started, maybe they've gotten to the point where,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: like I want to try food plot that kind of thing,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: but they haven't gotten to the point of doing some
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: of this, um it's more natural forage type of work.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Can you just explain why or how it is that
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: fire makes a difference in this way, like why it's
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: the actual mechanism that's that's producing all this great forage. So, uh, so,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the fire is doing several things. One one thing that
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: it does is it warms up the seed that so
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: the soil, so it removes bo mass that's above ground
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: obviously when it's burning it, and it exposes mineral soil
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: and also warms it up and releases nutrients back into it.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: And the combination of those things make some plants grow
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: really well. So annual forbes, which we typically think of
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: as the high quality deer forages, those they're actually adapted
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: to respond to that that situation that's created by fire,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: So you end up with with a lot of forbs
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: that respond to it. And that's one part of it.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: But we also have another mechanism, which is something I've
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: been studying quite a bit, and that's plants that are
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: that are perennial, so they last year after year it
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: free as a perennial plant. For instance, those have especially
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: hardwoods have adapted to deal with fire by re sprouting
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: from their stomps after their top kieled. So that's really interesting.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I think we're probably going to get into it anyway,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: that fire is essentially causing the mineral stomps, which some
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: of the listeners may have seen videos that we have
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: online about that, and that that plant tissue is really
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: high quality because it's trying to get back into the
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: canopy position where it can get sunlight. And while it's
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: doing that, it's making a really abundant amount of nu
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: trans available to your deer. So with with fire, how
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: what what I guess Number one, is there somewhere we
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: can go or resource if we're going to try utilizing
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: fire in our management plan, what would you recommend as
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: far as plowing that off in a safe manner, in
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: the right manner to improve dear habitat or wildlife habitat. Sure, Well,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: you know I preach about fire, and one of the
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: reasons is it's becoming harder and harder to use because
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: you know, we have to deal with where smoke goes,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: and and there's there's a perceived liability associated with fire
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: if it gets on your neighbor's property or you know,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: something like that. And we actually in every state agency
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: they have a program that is actually like Mississippi for instance,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: as the the Prescribed Fire Program that trains people to
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: be a Mississippi Prescribed Burn Manager and that that's providing
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: you training to get that UM to get that title
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: so that you can then pull a burn permit yourself,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: and you would actually go through the Forestry Commission and
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: get a permit. You have to write a management plan
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: for that fire that you you send to them, and
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: then you have to follow that that uh, that plan
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: with your permit, and as long as you do that,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: it provides you protection from from the liability. So it's
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: designed to protect the landowner to encourage burning because we
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: know now that it's so important. So that's one way
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: that you can get the training to to get you
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: started on how to use it. Another thing that you
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: can do is contracted out, so there there are contractors
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: that specialize in burning and you can hire them to
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: do that. Uh. They're also in some state agencies there
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: they have a private lands program and they will have
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: wildlife biologists who will work with private landowners and can
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: work with you on getting that plan set up and
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: even in some cases pull the permit for you and
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: and help you burn it. And like our our state
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: has an active program where we do that. Uh. Most
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: states also have an extension program through the university, the
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: land grant institutions, and they have specialists on staff that
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: are also there to helpline donors with this type of thing.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: So there are lots of different options, although fire is
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: one of the more difficult things to use, just because
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: there's that perceived liability there. Yeah, yeah, definitely a lot
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: of a lot of planning. Yeah, it seems like there's
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: there's a little more to it. But to your point,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: into your noted obsession with it, it is such an
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: important it's such an important piece of what's happening out there.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: And correct me if I'm wrong, But you know, over
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: the last hundred years or so, we have largely limited
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: the benefits of fire because we perceived it as a
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: threat and we try to control fire completely for a
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: long period of time, which has resulted in a lot
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: of you know, unnatural um habitat stuff where we're not
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: getting things set back, where we're getting tremendous amounts of
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: just mature growth and we're lacking the understory or we're
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: fuel loading big force out west, and then that's resulting
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: in these massive wildfires because we're not letting the smaller,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: usual natural fires happened. I mean, is that that? Yeah,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: you're right on point that. You know, in the early
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, there were there were bands of people who
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: were going around telling people fire was bad and we
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: were trying to get it, get rid of it. And
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: then it wasn't until we started seeing some effects of
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: that we realized that was a bad idea. And you know,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: we've had some like like, for instance, Smokey the Bear
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: for a long time that was you may have noticed
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: when when you were younger, the message was only you
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: can prevent fire, and now it's only you can prevent wildfire.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: So they've changed uh their message a little bit to
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: avoid that negative connotation associated with fire, because we like fire.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Fire is a good thing, but you know when an
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: arson arsonists satisfire, then it's destructive. So you know, they're
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: trying to make that distinction there. We actually need fire
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and need to use it to make some of these
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: systems function correctly. And uh, you know, people don't realize that,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people grew up thinking fire was
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: bad and now you know, we're trying to change that message. Well,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: it seems like your crusades is working. More and more
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: people seem to be seem to be making it part
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: of their management program. At least it seems like over
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: the years I've been you know, monitoring this field and
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: learning it myself, there's been a consistent, consistent trend of
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: people talking about that, and it's one of those things
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: that is a little intimidating if you don't have experience
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: with it, but the benefits of yeah, when you know,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: when you don't have fire in the system, the way
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: that nutrient cycle through the system is a little bit different.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: And just just to make this relevant to the average
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: person who wants their does to be able to wan
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: their phones or their bucks to grow maximum antler growth,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: the time when those things are are most demanding is
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: actually a time when vegetation starting to decline in nutrient quality,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: and the fire, especially when it's time to properly, extends
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: that nutrient pulse and actually increases it dramatically during the
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: times that they need those nutrients. So the deer essentially
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: have adapted, especially in the southeast, to take advantage of
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: that that resource pulse created by fire. So you know,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: without fire in the system, you end up with his
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: gap and it's called the late summer stress period, and
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: you end up with a gap in that quality. And
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: that's a problem when the deer trying to express their
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: their antler quality or wan a phone. So we're talking
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: late summer and like you said, those are are trying
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: to lactate, trying to feed those fonts and bucks are
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: you know, finishing up their antler growth. And that's the
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: time obviously a lot of nutritional need. But you're you're
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: saying that the native vegetation at that time, a lot
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: of that stuff is losing some of its nutritional punch.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Is that it starts declining. Uh, you know, we don't
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: realize it because it looks like it's green still outside,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: But the quality of the leaves on the vegetation outside
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: right now is much lower than it was in late May.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: For instance, the same leaf is much lower quality. And
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: fire provided you know, it's set back that succession, so
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: the leaves are still young at this time, and that's
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: where you get that now a lot of landowners aren't
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: in a situation where burning is a possibility, or you
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: may be a hunter that's leasing land and fire is
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: not a possibility, And that's where you can start to
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: get into things like a supplemental food butt program or
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the mineral stump uh application, those could become really important
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: because of this natural cycle of vegetation when fire isn't
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: in the system. Yeah, let's talk about those two pieces
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: right there. And that mineral stump um idea is one
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: that's been particularly interesting. I heard you talk about this
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: on the Deer University podcast a few weeks or a
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: month ago or something. Could you explain what that is,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: why that's something we we might want to consider using
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: his hunters and managers. Absolutely so, Uh, that same cycle
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: that I was talking about with fire, you can actually
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: cause that to happen with a chainsaw or or a
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: hatchet or you know something to cut down a tree. Uh.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Basically you take a mid story hardwood, so it could
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: be black gum or red and maple or you know,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: an oak, whatever you want to cut down. I normally
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: target species that don't have much timber value, and you
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: basically cut that that tree down and it's remember I
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: was talking about it earlier. They're adapted to respond to
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: that by re sprouting and growing rapidly to get back
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: into the position they were, so that the plant is
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: mobilizing nutrients from its roots up into the leaves to
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: grow very quickly. And when it when it's trying to
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: regulate that balance, sometimes you can see a five and
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: some nutrients. I've even seen an eightfold increase from the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: leaf quality before and after you cut it down, So
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: we're talking about a substantial change in the quality, and
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: that's a plant physiological response. Especially in fire adapted systems
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: like the Southeast, those things respond really aggressively to it.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: So you've you've made the vegetation really high quality and
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: us all in the reach of deer. So you're literally
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: just taking a chainsaw and cutting a tree down and
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: you're timing it so that it produces those stump sprouts
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: when deer needed the most, which would be primarily in
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: July for most of your listeners. And that's a good
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: substitute for fire. You. Yeah, so deer or designed to
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: extract nutrients from leaves, and if you're going to provide nutrients,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: that is the best way to do it is through vegetation,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: which you know your food plots are vegetation as well,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: So that's those are good ways to deliver it in
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the way that it's the deer is designed to extract it.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: So to what what level or what scale? I guess
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: what I'm asking my scale? What kind of scale do
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: you need to make a some kind of noticeable impact
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: in a localized area with this type of method. Um,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: you know you can burn an acre, maybe you burn
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: tent acres and you get a certain amount of food
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: out of that. How many trees do you need to
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: cut in this fashion to get a similar impact with
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: the mineral stone? So so that's something that I've been
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: working on. I'm trying to figure out at what scale
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: could you start benefiting a population And the answers you
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: probably have to do it at a larger scale than
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: you would want to to really impact the nutrition, but
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: it still can be a supplement just like your food plot.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: And based on our preliminary data where we're estimating how
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: many trees would we have to cut down? So if
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: you took a tree, just a maybe a five or
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: six inch diameter tree, so we're talking about most people
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: could reach around the tree with both hands. Uh. So
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: a tree that size, if you cut down about a
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: hundred of them, it would equal the new trient production
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: of a common warm season food plot. M. But it's
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: not really that many it uh just to put that
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: into perspective, My my graduate student that's been working with
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: me on this Dawn Chance and I went out, um
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: maybe last week or two weeks ago and cut down
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: some trees around a stand that we wanted to make
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: a really high quality boastand and I think it took
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: us fifteen minutes to cut down twelve trees around that
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: boastand or something like that. So not much time commitment
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: for the amount of forage you're getting. And you know,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: you can use it in a lot of different ways.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: One one thing, as you're cutting down those trees and
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: making lanes to shoot your bow if you're a bow hunter, uh,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: you're also making it the bow the area much more
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: attractive because that vegetation continues to be produced all the
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: way into bow season. And on top of that, we
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: took all of the the trees that we cut down
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: and would drag them and sort of make a land
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: to to make the deer walk through and the way
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: that we wanted to wanted them to. So you know,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: it has a lot of different purposes and it's a
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: really easy way to enhance nutrition, deliver nutrients and the
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: way that they are designed to eat it during that
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: important time, but also has some carryover effects to improve
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: your bow stamp. Now here's a question what if the
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: what if you're doing this in an area with a
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: thick canopy above it and so that stump isn't going
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: to get a lot of sunlight, is it still going
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: to have those quick shoots full of nutrition? Still? Oh? Yeah.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: We the initial experiment that we did with the red naples,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: so that that was the video that you were referencing earlier. Uh,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: those were primarily and clothes cannopy forest. Okay, so there
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: was not much like getting to those. Now when it
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: when it does have some sun like getting to the ground,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: you're you're getting two things. One, you'll get some some
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: more plants that are that needs sun like you know
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: forbes to respond to that. But also the stump does
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: seem to do better when it has some sunlight to respond.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Now another thing you mentioned and you you kind of
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: touched on this a little bit, but when I've heard
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: you speak about this previously. Um, you talked about, for example,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the maple tree, and you talked about how that's not
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: necessarily something that deer would select for in a lot
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: of situations, doesn't have a huge nutritional punch. But then
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: after you cut it off because of that tree, trying
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: to balance out from the from the roots up to
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: what's above ground. You you you talked about specifics in
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: regards to protein and other nutrients in those new, newly
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: sprouted leaves. Can you give us the details on that?
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, how substantial the difference are we getting after
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: we're cutting these trees in the new sprouts. I mean,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: this is like super concentrated punches nutrition in these new leaves, right,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: m so red maple uh just as an example, is
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: is generally in the low teams at the peak quality,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: which would be you know, late April or May, and
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: then by the time deer would need it for growing
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: antlers or or what have you, uh is declined down
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: to normally around ten. So that's not very good. UH
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: normally for pea collactation or antler growth. We're thinking about
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: more like a sixtent crew protein for uh. So the
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: only thing by that time without fire in the system.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: We're doing what we're talking about with the mineral stumps
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: the only things in the landscape really that consistently meet
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: that requirement or forbes, So you know a lot of
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: our brows would already have declined in quality by that time.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: So when you cut down this lessly red maple that
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: was ten crew protein before you cut it, and then
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: you have that re sprouting vegetation for a two or
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: three months period after that. We had some that got
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: up to even thirty, but on average they're up around
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: So we've exceeded now what what the requirement is of
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: the deer, and it's on par with the average ford
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: that they're like to eat on the landscape. So we've
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: taken a plant that's not very high quality and changed it,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: transformed it into something that's extremely high quality. And if
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: you look at the nutrients like phosphorus was the example
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: of was giving in the videos because it's so important
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: for antler growth and lactation. That one was actually a
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: fivefold increase roughly in in the plants. So, uh, most
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: of the time it's it's at least three threefold, and
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: some times it's up to eight fold. But on average
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: is somewhere around fivefold increase. And that's what we've got
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: me really excited about it because it was actually double
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: the average for on the landscape to include things you
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: would plant in your food plots. So that was that's
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: a substantial change in the quality of a you know,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: a red maple that that's not high quality on the landscape.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Typically we've transformed into something that is the highest quality
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: thing around on the landscape. Yeah. So that the other
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: thing you you mentioned was about the the diet preference
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: for dear. That's one thing has also been amazing to me.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: We we typically think of these different plants species as
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: being sort of a stagnant you know, deer either like
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: it or they don't like it, or they you know,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: they they weed it, but but they're not seeking for it.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: You know. We think of those things as being stagnant,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: like green brower is always great, uh, sweet gums always terrible.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: You know. We we sort of label these different species.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: But what I've learned from this experiment some of the
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: other ones, is this that is as far from the
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: truth as it could be. The the diet selection of
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: the deer for plant species is completely dependent on how
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: you change the nutrients within that plant, and which the
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: nutrients are limiting on the landscape. You know, all these
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: different things are influencing it. The deer are smart, you know,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: they're they're adjusting their diet to take advantage of wherever
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: they need. So if you change the content of nutrients
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: and the leaves of a plant, you're going to change
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: the preference of that plant for deer. So I think
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: you might have mentioned it, but I want to make
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: sure that I am interpreting this correctly. How long does
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: the benefit last? So you cut down this tree, how
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: long are we going to get this um you know,
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: disproportionately high nutritional value from those shoots. So the primary
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: response where you have that sort of that peak in
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: quality generally last for about six weeks and then it
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: starts declining. But the ones that we cut in June
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: last year, we're still substantially higher quality than the leaves
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: on the same species that we're not cut down in
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: late September, so we're talking about several months out. We
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: still had a noticeable nutritional gain from from doing that.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: And then how high up are we should be cutting
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: these trees down? I mean, as we cut them right
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: towards the ground. Is it three ft high and is
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: it a straight cut across or you know, what's the
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: specifics of executing this well, Uh, I don't know what
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: in terms of making it sprout best, if there's a
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: good technique. The generally the more of the tree you leave,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: the more sights it has to generate those those uh
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: stump sprouts. But the taller you leave at the quicker
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: it is out of the reach of deer. So we
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: have been cutting them down to about ankle high and
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: that's been working really well. And you've got to think again,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: these the reason these trees are responding like that is
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: because they're adapted to deal with fire, which would be
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: killing it all the way at the ground level. So
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: you know, they can handle it as as close as
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: you can get to the ground. Uh. You know, if
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: we do it about ankle high, we don't have any
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: trouble with hitting hitting the ground with our chainsaw, enduing
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: the blade or something like that. So you know, that's
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: that's what we've been sticking with and we're getting a
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: really great response with a lot of different species. Now
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: when you when you kind of going back to fire,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: you know, we we often think you burn a crp
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: field or a grass field for for fire. Are there
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: ever any instances where you would burn let's say a
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: timber or a grove of trees? Absolutely? Yeah. That most
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: of my research is that's actually enforested systems. And most
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: people want realize that a pine tree that the reason
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: it has that thick, corky bark on it is to
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: protect it from fire. So you know that historically all
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: of like the long leaf pine ecosystem is an imperiled
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: ecosystem and the you know, in the southern coastal plain
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: and without fire, it goes it changes into a different community,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: like the longly pine goes away. So it's sexually perpetuated
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: by fire love loly pine. Same thing they are adapted
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: to fire. Uh. Even more interesting to me is a
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: lot of basically all of our upland oak forests are
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: also adapted to fire. So you know, you can burn
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: and up when oak stands and not harm those oaks.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: They're actually adapted to deal with it. So you know,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: you have to take into account your firing techniques and
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: you know you don't want to run a crown fire
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: through them obviously, but uh, you know, low intensity fires
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: they are adapted to deal with it, and it's absolutely
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: beneficial to wildlife, especially some of them that you want
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: to hunt. So it sounds to me like fire before
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: humans even you know, started working the land or anything
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: like that, has been a part of the evolutionary system
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: of trees, plants, animals, everything. Yep, yep. That's that's one
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: of the reasons that I've been so interested in it,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: because it doesn't matter where you look in the southern
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: ecosystems outside of you know, floodplains or you know, places
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: that obviously wouldn't burn because of water. Uh, when you
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: get outside of those, it's amazing the list of adaptations
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: that almost every species you look at have to deal
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: with it. It really is amazing. And that that's why
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: I focus on it so much, because I just you know,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: it's a huge part of every system almost and even
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: even streams, and you know, some of our aquatic ecosystems
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: are actually you know, have links to the uplands around
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: it that burned, and you know, a lot of the
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: nutrient dynamics and how they move through the systems from
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: from the terrestrial to the aquatic or even influenced by fire.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it really really has been eye opening for
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: me over the past ten or fifteen years learning how
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: integral this process was to all these systems. It is fascinating.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: And then it's interesting how you can then apply that
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: understanding to helping you understand why a mineral stump or
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: why I cut down tree reacts the way it does
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: because it's it's basically simulating its response to fire, which
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: is which is pretty interesting. I want to make sure
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: I emphasize one of the things you mentioned. It makes
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: sense that you utilize in the mineral stump or the
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: or the fire idea to just improve the natural forage
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: available for a nutritional standpoint. That makes a lot of sense.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: But I think another fascinating opportunity in the very short
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: term for people listening still right now, is how you
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: can use these as a targeted hunting tool. Um. You know,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: we talk a lot on the podcast about ways to
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: try to sweeten the pot at each individual tree stand.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: So you know, for example, I've got a tree stand,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: I've I've put a mock scrape in front of it,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: I've got a little water hole in front of it. Maybe,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: like you mentioned, we've got a few down trees that
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: help manipulate a little bit of deer movement. Well, it's
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: not like this is another way to almost introduce like
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: a micro food plot type effect, but instead of planting something,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: you cut a cluster of trees in within shooting range
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: of your tree stand, and you time it so that
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: when you're in there hunting, there's now these fresh shout
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: or shoots of new growth out of those stumps that
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: are super nutritious and they're gonna be attracting deer um.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: It was exactly right. Uh, I'll use In fact, I
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: talked about it on the Deer lab or Deer University podcast. Uh.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: You know when I first started thinking about the mineral
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: stump I did, I was sitting on a tree stand
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: where I had cut down some trees around it and
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: was wondering why they were you know, there were deer
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: in there annihilating these plants that I don't think of
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: as high quality plants. And you know, I've been using
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: that for years and finally have done a research project
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: on it to try to figure out why the why
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: the deer were doing that. But you're exactly right. It
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: absolutely can enhance the available nutrition around your stand, and
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: you can target that to improve your hunting experience around
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: those stands. Yeah, I mean what an easy quick thing
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: like everyone could go do like this week is like
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: gribate chainsaw cut down like five four to six inch
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: diamuter trees within range of your tree to a couple
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: of your eastends, and right there you've got a little
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: special food source that these deer are gonna be hitting
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: in October or November or whatever it might be. And
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: do you said July is is like ideal time frame?
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: But can we even go into August? Yeah, the the
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: ideal time frame for the deer to take advantage of it,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: to wean a fawn or grow antler would be in
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: June for most people, depending it depends on when you know,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: it's a little bit different depending on when the phones
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: are being born and that sort of thing. But uh, yeah,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: you basically a month before whenever the peak and antler
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: growth or the peak and lactation occur would be ideal
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: for them to get the most out of it from
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: a nutritional perspective. But we've cut them down all the
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: way into early September and still have the trees respond.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: They did not respond as vigorously at that point, but uh,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: any time leading up to both season is a good
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: time to do that because you do get some some
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: flush and vegetation from that stomp, and it is attractive
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: to the deer, especially when there's not much else to eat,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: you know, around the stands. That's great. That's a really
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: cool idea simple way that you can, like, anyone can
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: go and utilize this on their property. Um and how
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: many how many times have you gotten in a tree
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: standing there like, man, there's there's something blocking my shot
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: right there. You know, it would be really nice if
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: I could shoot thirty yards in this direction. You know,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: you could use that as an opportunity to clean out
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: a couple of good lanes and also put a really
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: nice little food source in that lane. I think it's
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: terrific idea. Uh, I might need to do a little
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: cutting myself here in the next few days. I would
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: encourage you to do so. Yeah. So before we move on,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: we need to pause briefly for word from our partners
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: at White Tail Properties. And today we've got a great
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: segment on a topic really related to what we've been
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: talking about here with Marcus Spencer. New Earth will take
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: it from here this week with white Tail Properties, we're
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: joined by Tom James, a lance by Swiss out of
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: Central Indiana, and Tom is going to be telling us
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: about what the very first habitat improvements should be for
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: a land manager. Good question. Um. Some of the first
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: key things the fundamentals if you want to think about,
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: is when you think in terms of what a deer requires,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: the food, security, covering, water and the q d m
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: A has a great analogy of the thinking about the
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: lowest hole on the bucket that you need to plug
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: up to keep the water from leaking out. So what
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: could be missing on your property that the surrounding land
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: may have, and so you want to do a quick assessment.
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's food, Maybe it's water. Maybe if you can
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: maybe it's cover. If you can look through your woods
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: and see two hundred yards, then you've got an issue
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: with with too much shade, not enough sunlight creating new
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: potential brows and cover for your deer. So maybe it's
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: a timber, a timber either stand improvement or a harvest
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: or a combination of two that's gonna allow some more
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: new growth to come in and picking up your property.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's as simple as you're not leaving an area
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: alone as a sanctuary. If you're trapesing all over forty
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: acres and pushing deer off every time you go, then
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: that's that's obviously an issue. So maybe just an adjustment
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: in the way that you move around and hunt the
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: property and approach things. Uh. If food is your lacking
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: ingredient or your lowest hole in the bucket, then even
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: in timber, it takes some work, but you can certainly
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: clear out some openings and plant food. Um and I
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: would suggest considering both perennial food and annual food stuff
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: that you can leave in like clover and chicory as
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: a perennial coming back every year and do some fall
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: planted cereal grains and brassicas for the fall time, so
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: you've got a year round program going on. And typically
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: it's not an issue in the Midwest. But if if
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: water is a lacking ingredient, then maybe you can create
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: a water hole or even some of the new systems
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: like the banks water watering tanks that you can set
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: up that are mobile and fill up and provide water
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: sources for your deer so that they don't have to
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: leave the property to water. Again, that's fairly rare, but
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: that could be a consideration. If you'd like to learn
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: more and to see the properties that Tom currently has
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: listed for sale, visit whitetail properties dot com. Backslash James,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: that's j A. M. E. S. So, so we you
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: mentioned the two tools here, UM mineral stump as of
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: or mineral or fire is something we can fill in
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: this gap of nutrition in late summer. But then he
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: also mentioned supplemental food plots. Um. People talk about food
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: plots all the time. I mean there's lots of quote
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: unquote food plot experts UM who talk about, you know,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: how to plan them to improve your hunting, and what
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: shape and what size and such and such as best
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: What do you think that hunters are missing when it
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: comes to food plots or or the experts when they're
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: telling us about what we should be doing from a
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: food plot perspective? Who's where are we? Where's the gap?
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: What are we not hearing that we need to better understand?
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: That's not being you know, shared in the popular media. Well,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: I think that the majority of the messages that are
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: readily available to the average person are about enhancing the
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: hunting experience directly by you know, making deer easier to
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: see and that's great. I think it's a fantastic tool.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: You know, it's great to get children involved in hunting,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: fantastic opportunity if you're a bird watcher, even plant things
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: to watch birds. You know, they can be used for
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: a lot of good reasons and and that's a great message.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: What you probably miss is we keep saying supplemental food
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: plot for a reason. They are a great tool to
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: supplement the diet of deer. And you're picking. You can
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: pick fourages specifically to fill in gaps. So we normally
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: have two gaps, two major gaps, and the nutrition of
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: deer in there, you know their habitat that that would
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: be the late summer stress period that I was talking about.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: That occurs because you have this natural decline in native
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: forages and you haven't you don't have mass starting to
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: fall yet, so you have this gap and available nutrition,
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: and on the front end of that gap, they have
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: a really intense need for nutrients. So that's one gap
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: you can you can use supplemental food plots to help
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: with the other gap, and it's more important in the
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: northern part of the deer range than the southern. The
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: other gap is in the late winter so you know,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: the bucks are past the rut the winter, especially in
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: the north, that's pretty intense, and they don't have much
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: to eat on the landscape. So when I'm thinking about
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: food pots, I'm talking I'm thinking about enhancing the nutrition,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: especially in those two gaps when they need it. Okay,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: So that that's the message. I think it's lost more
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: than any of them. Okay. So what you know at
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: a high level utilizing supplemental food plots, how would you
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: you know what type of food plot program or specific
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: forage or anything that would you recommend as far as
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: trying to fill those gaps. So that's a great question.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: The the thing that is most commonly overlooked as the
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: importance of summer nutrition and and how intense, especially in
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: the South, that gap and native vegetation is all of
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: our well pretty much all of the things you could
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: plant in a warm season plot fill that gap really well.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: So you can extend that available nutrition through the summer,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: especially if you're you know, a landowner or a a
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: leaser that can't use fire or some of these other
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: techniques we've been talking about. You know, that food plot
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: maybe your only chance to provide nutrition during that time.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: So almost all of the warm season plants that that
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: you would you would consider, do that pretty well. But
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: most people do not engage in summer food plots. No,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: speaking of summer food plots, this is something I always
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: wondered about myself. What if we're up here in the
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: corn belt the Midwest, and you've got hundreds and hundreds
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: of acres of being fields all around your property, So
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: as I would as I would assume there's tremendous summer
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: nutrition all around me with all these being being fields everywhere,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: do I need to be worried about increasing summer nutrition
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: when you're in an area like that, with the agg
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: community providing so much of that essentially a massive warm
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: season food plot. I think in that situation, if you
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: already have soy beans planet all around you, you probably
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: should focus less on a summer food plot program and
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: more on enhancing some of the native vegetation. Especially in
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: in your situation. Cover is probably a more important factor
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: in the summer, and you can implement some of these
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: force management strategies to really enhance cover and help those ponds,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: you know, avoid predation and and uh, you know, help
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: that buck hide from from predators. So I think, uh,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: in some cases that may be more important. And that's
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: certainly one that that it may be. If you are
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: going to plant food pots, who probably ought to plant
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: something other than the the uh, the local agriculture. So
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: if they're planning soybeans, you probably ought to try something
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: different than soybeans, just uh. You know, all these plants
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: have different nutrients within them at different levels, So if
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: you use other types of plants in that scenario, you
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: may enhance the availability of of a nutrient that the
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: soybeans aren't providing very well. Okay, that makes sense. And
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: then to your earlier point, if if you've got it
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: covered in the summer because of the surrounding egg, there
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: might still be an opportunity to fill the gap in
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the late winter. So in my situation, all these harvested fields,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: especially these days, people are the farming quick. It's so
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: much more efficient. There's not a lot of waste screen
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: in these fields anymore. So that certainly seems like up
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: by me, there's a huge gap there in that late
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: winter time period. That and we have a more intense
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: winner there. So you're right that that's probably a more
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: important stress period for you to to target to your point, though,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: it's important to understand, right, it's different in every different location.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: So trying to understand what it is for you down
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: in Mississippi versus Michigan, or Iowa versus Georgia or New York.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: And I think we're all we all have different challenges
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: that are our deer and our habitats are facing. So
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: it's kind of a matter of trying to understand what's
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: happening here in this region. And I imagine, imagine a
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: lot of state game departments have biologists, are different people
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: who can help you better understand in your area. Yeah,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: you absolutely do. Uh. You have a couple of different
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: resources that are great, and most of them have an
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: extension wild like uh professional hours is is a Bronson
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: strict one who you had a few weeks ago on
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: the program. So uh yeah, almost every state has one
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: of those, uh, through the university extension. Okay, that's great.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: I want to I want to rewind us a little
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: bit to the native forage aspect of things, and UM,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: right now, some parts of the country specifically kind of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: like where you are, Dan over there in Iowa, southern Iowa, UM,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of areas are experiencing some drought right now.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: And I know you worked on a study related to
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: the impact of drought on native forage and the nutrition
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: it provides and then how deer react to that. Can
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about what you found
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: from that study? Sure, yeah, I and so I was
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: working during my masters with Craig Harper on that project
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: in Tennessee and and too. I think it was two
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: thousand and seven. Just so happened we had the worst
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: drought and on record in the state. So I thought
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: that was a great opportunity to see if that impacted
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: dear nutrition and deer diet selection. So I took an
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: advantage of that situation. I collected plants during that drought
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: year and compared them two years that were normal and rainfall,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: and it had a pretty big impact on on the
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: nutrients within the plant and dear behavior. So the main
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: impact that it had on the forage was it decreased
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: the amount of crewe protein in the plant. And also
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: that the plant goes through accelerated maturation, So basically that
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: means that it tries to grow really fast and produce
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: seed before it dies, so it's really stressed and the
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: plant starts speeding up all the processes. So that decline
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: that we've been talking about, uh for the last a
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: few minutes, that that that happens quicker during a drought year.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: The plants are are just accelerated, so that decline in
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: nutritional quality of those plants as is happening way before
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: the deer really needed. So with that being said, there
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: are some forages on the landscape that maintain a high
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: quality even during that drought. Their lower quality than they
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: usually would be, but they're still relatively high quality in
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: terms of what the deer needs. So what what we
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: saw in that experiment was that deer actually change their
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: diet selection to focus on only a few species that
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: maintained that high quality. So, uh, really interesting that, you know,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: just in that short time period, the deer apparently realized
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: that it's a drought and everything's low quality, I need
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: to pick the few plants that are good. So that
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: makes sense. Now bringing things full circle, what about if
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: we're in that situation right now. Let's say what we're
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: experiencing some drought, it's midsummer, and we're we're thinking, okay,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: how can we help supplement the deer because maybe my
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: maybe I did plant food plots, but the drought has
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: just knocked him out and not getting great production there. Um,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: we know that the natural forage is being reduced in
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: quality because of the things you just mentioned. There is
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: this a situation where mineral stumps could be like our
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: our emergency methodology for trying to boost that drought kind
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: of help deal with them. I'm glad that you brought
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: that up, because yes, so the drought is doing several things.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: One thing you have to think about from the from
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: nature's point of view, when is the fire best going
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: to be lit by lightning during drought? So fire would
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: have been prevalent on the landscape naturally during that time,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: which would have been a natural supplement uh for deer,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: But that's not the case in most instances. Now food
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: plots can become a problem because if it is a drought,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: they may fail. So uh, the mineral stomps could be
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: a really important They still respond really well. That tree
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: has so much invested in the roots system. You know,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: it's so well developed that it can still respond really well,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: and it should be able to do that because nature
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: would have burned it during drought more frequently. So you know,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: it all makes sense when you start thinking about this
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: from an adaptation standpoint. So, yes, the mineral stomps could
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: be very important during drought, and the plants are still
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: adapted to deal with it because that's when they would
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: have been burned naturally anyway. So Danna, are you gonna
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: get a chansaw here pretty soon? Probably? Not like I've
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: been selling a bunch of chainsaws for somebody. You really
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: should be getting some kind of conversation that discount or
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: sponsored by somebody. Yeah, it seems like maybe maybe you know,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: they could fund some research to show how good chainsalls are.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: So Dan, where are you at all this stuff on
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: a habitat? I know you you don't get to do
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: as much habitat work in the places you hunt, since
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: you don't own land or have exclusive access to anything,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: but anything on this habitat side of things that you
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: want to know more about. Yes, and this is kind
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: of you can answer it vaguely if you want. But
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: you know, when we talk about habitat for whitetail, we
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: everybody says food cover water, And I didn't know, do
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: you have any research that shows that a deer will
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: travel longer distances to a food to U Let's say
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: a food source, whether that is a field um to
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: spend most of his day in the an optimal cover
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: or do they sacrifice cover to be closer to optimal
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: food and water. That that that's a really great question
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: and has been a source of tension among several deer researchers,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: I think, because we don't always agree. But in my
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: from my perspective and the research that I've done, and
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: I've followed a lot of deer around and watch this happen,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: and I'm also an avid deer hunter and have have
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: watched deer for a long time and actually designed my
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: own hunting strategy around this idea. The cover is much
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: more important to the deer, and you have to think
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: of from a deer's perspective. Normally cover is actually something
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: that's also edible, so it's plants. So in my experience,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: the deer ranks cover over other things. So if you
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: have poor cover and really great food, you're not going
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: to hold the deer like you would if you had
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: really great cover and maybe poorer food. And let's just
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: think about that from an adaptation standpoint for just a second.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: It's much more important for a deer to avoid being
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: eaten than it is for it to get its next meal,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: which makes a lot of sense in terms of a
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: fitness consequence to the deer. If it gets eaten one time,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: it doesn't produce any offspring, but it can miss some
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: meals and it's gonna be science. Yeah, so we're really
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: breaking this down to the nuts and bolts here. The
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: deer has to survive first, and then if it survives
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: and then has good nutrition, it can produce offspring. But
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: the precursor to that is it must survive to do
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: either of the other ones. So that's my perspective. One
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: of the deer will choose cover over food, so they're
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: they're willing further to find it, right And do you
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: feel that's the same way with water as well? Uh, well,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: that one's another interesting question. They do drink water, obviously,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: but they get a lot of their water in a
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: way that's called it's called preformed water. So basically that
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: means the water is bound up in something else. And
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: the plants that they're eating have a lot you know,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: some of them are nine water actually, so some of
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: them are are really high water, and they get a
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: lot of their water from the forages that they're eating.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: So a lot of people don't realize that. Uh you know,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know what percentage of the water, but a
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: large portion of it can be obtained from the plants
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: that they're eating. In fact, you know, deer really uh
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: attracted to salt during the summer. And if you I
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: don't know if how much you'll know or your listeners
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: know about salt and what function it serves in the
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: body that has a lot of them, but one of
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: the things that does is helped regulate water. And if
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: they get this really big flush and vegetation that they
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: almost water down their blood by eating all of it,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: and the salt can be pretty important to help them
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: regulate that the balance of water in their blood. So
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting, uh physiological tidbits huh, speaking of getting eaten,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: you mentioned you mentioned their second the importance of cover
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: and the fact that NAT is very important. This is
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: definitely something that UM is related to coyote populations expanding
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: across the country, and I know you've done some work
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: looking into this, the impact of coyotes some habitat considerations
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: related to that. Can you expand on that a bit?
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: Tell us what you found on that front. UM well,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: so the primary thing that we found and so I
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: guess somebody back up for a minute. One thing that
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: we did during that study with collared adult female deer
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: and then followed them until they had phones, and then
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: followed the phones. We also caught coyotes and collar does
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: and followed the coyotes at the same time. So we're
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: getting a pretty good look at how they're interacting and
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: and who's eating what, and you know that sort of thing,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: how the how the coyotes are impacting them. And in
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: our study, a large portion of the phones died. I
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: think we had about fourteen percent survival, which is one
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: of the lowest survivals on it that's ever been reported.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Was on that study, and the line share of those
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: were directly caused by coyotes. So at face value, it
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: looked like coyotes are a big issue in that system.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: But we also were following the nutrition of those animals
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: and and uh, you know what was going on in
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: the system at a broader scale. And one of the
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: things I thought was particularly interesting that we noticed we
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: we would go to find some of these phones and
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: occasionally we would walk in on a phone and it
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: would bleat when it heard a step on a stick
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: or something, and without fail, everyone that we ever heard
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: bleat starved to death. So that was pretty interesting to me.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: And being a habitat guy was thinking, well, what is
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: a what is a coyote gonna do when it hears
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: a phone bleat? It's gonna go over there and eat it.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: So we actually may have seen coyotes eating a large
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: portion of our phones because we have a habitat problem,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: and that makes it harder for them to hide and
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: harder for mom to feed them. And then the phone
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: is responding to not being fed well by bleeding, which
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: makes it easier to find. Again, the habitat becomes a yeah,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: it becomes a compounding effect, and then we're you know,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: we we were associating to blame with coyotes when in
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: reality it actually was a habitat problem. And you know,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: they changed the habitat management program there and have have
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: started to see a real nice response from what I
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: can tell from the camera data that we're getting from it,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: it looks like, you know, they're getting a response from
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: from improving the habitat. So you know, habitat is really
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: important because it provid us all of the different things
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: that there need. You know, if you trap coyotes, that's
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: only providing one thing that they need, which is a
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: you know, making it easier potentially to avoid coyotes. But
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: if you improve habitat, you improve their nutrition and the
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: ability to hide from a predator. You know, it's just
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: a compounding effect and it's normally easier. Another thing that
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: was really interesting in that study, and and UH I
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: worked with several other researchers chrisp Warming and Christophernum culture
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: chip would on this. Uh one thing that we were
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: shocked about when we started looking at the coyotes their
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: movement behavior. They're all over the board. They're all individuals
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: and they all do their own things. But we had
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: coyotes and in different age classes and both sexes do this.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: We would call collar the coyote on the study area,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: and then some of them moved hundreds of miles and
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: only a couple of months period from that study area.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: So in one in one case we actually it was
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: so shocking. We actually tracked from point to point the
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: entire path that the coyote. Coyote made it in about
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: two month period and it was nine d something miles
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: like that. That is unbelievad You know my point of
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: bringing that up. One thing is shocking. The other thing
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: is if you were going to implement a trapping program
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: to try to improve phone UH survival, if you trap
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: a coyote, first of all, yesterday, it could have been
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: in the state over from you. Second of all, tomorrow
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: you may have another coyote in its place from a
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: state over to UH. You know, the trapping has to
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: be at such a large scale and so intense and
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: timed right before the phones are being born, that you
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: know it, it really becomes a situation where it's almost
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: not reasonable to implement. It makes people feel good to
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: kill that one coyote, but in reality, that's all it did.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: Was it made a big difference to that one coyote obviously,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: but in terms of your phone, your phone recruitment, it
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: probably didn't make any difference. Yeah, so it's okay. So
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: if it sounds like really the best way to handle
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: predation issue with coyotes is to just improve habitat, I've
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: read a lot of stuff on this, but I'm curious,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: from what you've seen, what is the best way, what's
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: the best habitat prescription to deal with predation to improve
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: that phone recruitment. Well, uh, let's think about that and
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: a couple of the tools that we've talked about. So
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: food plots don't provide very good phone cover for the
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: most part. Uh, when we're talking about phone cover, we're
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: talking about things that are less than waste. We're talking
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: about plants, primarily that are less than waist tall. So
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: if you have a forest that's really thick and you
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: don't want to walk through it, but you can kneel
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: down and see really well through it. So that's pretty
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: typical in the southeast with like a ten year old
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: pine plantation. It looks like it's a huge block of cover,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: but actually it's really poor because if you get down
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: to the level of a fawn and a coyote, you
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: know it's it's uh, just not obstructed. So things the
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: things that are most important to improve that habitat, or
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: to increase sunlight to getting to the ground if it's limiting.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: So if you're in a field, it's not a limiting factor.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: If you're in a forest, it might be. So breaking
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: up the canopy and allowing some sunlight to the ground
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: is the most important thing. Light is the most important
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: limit here of plant growth. So that's the first thing.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: The second thing fire or uh you know it, even
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: the mineral stump idea hinge cutting, anything to get you know,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: more vegetation from waist high and down. You know, the
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: more vegetation you can get at that level, the better. Okay,
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: an old field you know, you know I talked about
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: food plus an old field, so you know it just
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: has a diversity of different plants species in it. And
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: I'm not talking about said forming grasses. I'm talking about
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: like some of the native plants that you would have
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: in an old field. Those provide excellent cover for a phone.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: I read somewhere and I packed this could be the paper,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: the study you're working. I cannot remember who to attribute
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: this to, UM, but I read somewhere that they also
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: found that the increased amount of edge within a habitat
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: is better for funding. UM. So lots of different changes
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: in habitat. Is that something that you found too? UM? Yeah,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: that's ah. That was actually I believe will gouls Be
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: from Auburn that lead that paper, and he took several
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: different sites across the East and looked at what things
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: were contributing to phone survival and that's the same thing
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: that I've I've found that that edge is creating several things. One,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: it's diversity. Uh, you know, you have several different plant
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: communities coming together at an edge, and that structural diversity
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: makes camouflage really effective. So that will fawn has a
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: spot pattern and counter shading because it camouflages it. So
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: those edges coming together are important for that. And the
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: more of that you have, the you know, you imagine
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: that fawn. First of all, it's in really good area
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: to use its camouflage, but then if you have a
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of area for a coyote to search on
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: top of that, both of those things would improve the
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: survive of that. It's just amazing how fragile and resilient
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: nature can be all at the same time. You know,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: everything is That's that's why I'm here. I just think
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: it's fascinating that everything is so connected and you just
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: you start moving things around in that food web a
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: little bit, and you know, things start to not work
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: correctly and then they become fragile. You're exactly right, yeah, alright, well,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: real quick, before we move on and with habitat still
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: on our minds here, let's pause for a real quick
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: second to talk about food again, as Spencer new Heart
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: is bringing us a quick word from our partners at
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: the white Tail Institute of North America. This week with
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: white Tail Institute, we're talking to consultant John Cooner about
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: their special blend of Imperial white Tail Fusion, which is
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: super popular with dear and even more popular with hunters
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: based on the product's outstanding reviews. Fusing is sort of
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: an unusual product for us because it's in part one
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: of our oldest products that we have kept updating and
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: in part because we have ended up changing it so
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: much that we ended up changing the name by continuing
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: to improve it. The main parts are still the same
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: as Imperial white Tail. Clover is the main forage component UH.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: Doctor Dr Hannah, our Plant Genetics has finished breeding our
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: newest clover variety of a couple of years ago, and
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: so that has been added added to uh to Fusion
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: in place of the clover we've had before that. Also,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: we've increased the amount of the chickery that we put
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: in there. UH. The protein level is a little bit
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: higher uh than it was. It gives up to the
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: product we had before was called chickery plus. And with
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: all those changes, and the fact that that we found
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: chickery plus fusing because it led folks to believe it
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: was more chickery than clover, we said we might as
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: well go ahead it it's time to change the name
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: now because we've made those other uh continuing improvements to it. Impure.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: White tail clover is number one food plot planning in
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: the world. It's made for a good boisture holding bottomland
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: soil UH and it's just it. It is our number
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: one flagship products. Into that there has been a small amount,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: say ten percent, maybe a little more of the chickery
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: UH infusion, and that brings the total protein UH provided
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: up to about If you'd like more info on White
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: Tail Institute's forage products, check out white Tail Institute dot com,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: where they also carry some of the top supplements, attractants,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: and herbicides available. Okay, So, continuing on the topic of
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: how certain factors influenced deer let's shift from habitat to
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: the favorite conspiracy theory of the deer hunting world, which
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: is the moon. And it's so much, so many question,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: just so much debate about the moon. I know you've
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: done some work on that. Could you could you give
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: us the end of the details of how you did
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: that study and then what you filmed. Yeah, so you
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: remember the study in North Carolina. We we collared those
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: females there and the video that you saw from the
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: q d m A was actually right after presented that
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: at the Southeast Dear study group that was based on
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: only that that group of does which you know I had.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: I don't remember how many were collared at that point,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: but you know, uh, quite a few deer. And on
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: that site there was a clear response of deer, especially
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: on some moon phases. I believe it was the late
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: the the late quarter, why I forgetting the name of
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: the late happening third quarter or whatever. So there was
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: a big peak, especially near dusk during that moon phase.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: And when I added more d or two it after
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: the fact from that site, same thing. Most of the
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: movements that were influenced by the moon we're actually at night,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: so you know they wouldn't impact your hunting, but some
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: of the response was during hunting hours, so that was
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: pretty exciting and actually contacted a number of of deer
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: researchers from across the Eastern Seaboard. I wanted to expand
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: that and and look at this at a at a
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: higher level. And I got a couple of data sets
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: from Steve ditch Cough at Auburn, a couple of data
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: sets from Lisa Mueller and Craig Harper at the University
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: of Tennessee, and UH a couple of other data sets
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: all the way up to Maryland, UM with with the
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: Mark Connor up there. So Sarah, you know, I think
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: there were maybe six data sets total from bucksandos across
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: several states, and I wanted to look at what, you know,
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: are they bonding similarly to the moon phase across all
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: these sites and across sexes? And what I found was
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Some of the sites there was no effect
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: of the moon or not one that we detected. Some
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: sites females or males responded and the other one didn't.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: Some sites both sexes responded in a strong way, but
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: in the sites that they both responded in a strong way,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: they weren't similar across sites. So then I was, you know, basically,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: when you get to a point like this in a
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: research project and you don't have anything clear to talk about,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: you know, so it's like it it becomes pretty hard
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: to publish something like that because you know, we we
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: can see varying effects. Uh, and sometimes it works and
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. But when it does work, it doesn't
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: work the same in different places. So yeah, well it
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: wasn't inconclusive once I started digging on it. Uh. What
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: I basically came to the conclusion about was the responsive
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: dear to the moon were largely dictated by what type
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: of predator they had in the system and how intense
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: hunting pressure was and that sort of thing. And we
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: were seeing some responses on some sites when they had
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: as coyote as the main predator. That was different than
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: when humans were the primary predator or when bobcats were
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: the primary predator. It was changing based on that that predator,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: and that makes a lot of sense when you start
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: thinking about the hunting strategy of that predator and how
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: it might be best to evade being eaten by. So yeah, So, uh,
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: for instance, coyotes or what's called a coursing predator, so
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: that basically the same as wolves. They basically are are
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: trotting around the landscape visually hunting, and of course they
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: have a good nose, but a lot of you know,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: they're seeing prey. So a good way to avoid being
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: eaten by that type of predator is to avoid being seen.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: So you might avoid times that it's really easy to see,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: so that you may avoid moving a lot during the
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: night when it's a full moon, for instance, if you
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: are avoiding predation from a sitting weight predator, which would
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: be like your bobcat or a lot of human hunters,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: it's good to avoid places that's easy for that predator
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: to hide from you so that it can ambush you.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: So a lot of what I was seeing seemed to
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: be and and again I haven't published this data, but
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: uh that that's what it seemed to be going on,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: is when when you had certain types of predators, they
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: would drive a little bit of different response and you know, uh,
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: they're adapting to you know, to not be an eaten.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: You know, they're trying to not be eating. So they're
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: they're changing their strategy based on that, and I think
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: that's why they're This is sort of like that I
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: forgot how you put it. I thought it was nicely
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: put the way you did, But it's one of those
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: things that goes around and everybody argues over all the
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: hunters are always arguing some think that the moon's affecting movement,
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: others don't. Well, they're probably there's a lot of truth
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: behind any of those arguments, depending on where you are
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: and you know, how you're what you're hunting strategy is,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: and what kind of predator densities you have, and what
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: those predators are, and how good the habitat is, you know,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: just on and on. You probably are having different responses
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: from deer based on all those things. And that's why
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: it's so hard to detangle because they're they're so adaptive there.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: They are just doing what suits them. Another just a
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: little tidbit. Another really interesting thing that I found, uh
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: in that study, and I didn't have enough data really
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: to explore it further, but I did find some literature that,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: like even in humans, but the best literature is in mice.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: Some of your your bodily functions are influenced by the moon.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: So you'll have things that you know, like melitonin will
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: will spike in certain moon phases at certain times. And
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: one of the things that I thought was pretty interesting
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: is one of those hormone spikes at the same time
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: as as some of the deer would be moving in
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: mice during that moon phase and those things. The one
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: that I really keyed in on was one that makes
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: you hungry, so in mice that it's linked to how
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: much how actively they're trying to eat. So it started
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: making a lot of sense that actually something related to
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: the way the moon influences us through you know, gravity
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: and and uh light actually could influence how hungry we are.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: Which you know, that's that's starting to get really crazy,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: and you know that the work that it would take
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: to to show something like that would be pretty incredible,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: But uh, that's same. That's find some pretty interesting linkages.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: And again there there's literature even showing that the moon
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: is affecting human behavior. So it's perfectly reasonable to think
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: that some of those biological things could be going on
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: with here. Uh you know that we don't really understand
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: h So so you did this study down the original study,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: and then you collected additional deaths that some were all
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: across the country, and then from there it got a
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: little more cloudy. Now that sitting where you are now
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: today looking back and all of it, is there any
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: is there any takeaway that you actually utilize yourself, Like
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: if you looked at all that and you try to
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: apply it to your own hunting situation. In regards to
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: the moon, is there anything that you can say to
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: yourself at least okay, well, at least send no X
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: that I can use or find helpful. Yes, the best
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: take home message that I could give people is to
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: hunt when you can. Uh that the moon phase it
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: probably does influence der behavior in some cases and maybe
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: not in others. And who knows whether or not you're
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: in one of those situations or whether or not it's
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: changing over time. So while the moon could influence behavior, AH,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: is probably too complicated at this point for us to understand.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: So I would suggest hunting when you're able, if you
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: have good conditions and you can get through your day
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: off work or you know, you have that good Saturday
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: lined up. Uh, you know, go honey, dear. You know
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: one thing about And just to back up a little bit,
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: when we look at the data and I'm talking about
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: the moon influencing behavior, I'm just talking about increasing how
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: much they're moving at different times. Yeah, it's not it's
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: not like in some moon phases they're not moving at all.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: They're always moving, you know, they're always eating. So uh,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: the best way to take advantage of the moon is
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: just not worry about it and hunt when you can,
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: and sometimes you may line up with one as best.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, things like the rut, they're not
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: influenced by the moon phase. Uh. You know, we showed
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: that over and over again. Things that you could key
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: in on like that where we know bucks are on
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: their feet and moving a lot more, those things aren't
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: aren't affected by the moon. So unfortunately, I know that's
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: not what people like to hear, but that's the best
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: take on message at this point that I have from it.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: Fair enough. It's uh, endlessly interesting to try to piece
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: that stuff out. But like you said, there's there's not
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: a whole lot of really slid research they can point
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: to there being any type of something anything we can
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: really latch onto and say is is obvious correlation? I mean,
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: there's you know, well, you know there there have been
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: several data sets presented, uh in different outlets, and you know,
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: sometimes they have a really strong case for one thing,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: and then the other ones there's nothing, and then in
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: other cases that showing something the opposite. And I think
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: when I gathered all those data sets and saw it
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: for myself across all these different places, it became pretty
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: clear to me that there probably is something going on,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: but it's changing obviously across the landscape, and I don't
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: know how best to predict how it's going to change yet,
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: and I don't know if we ever will. Have you
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: have you, um, I know there's been a lot of
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: different things and research looking into us. I I don't
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: know if you personally have. Have you spent any time
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: looking into other factors that increase or decrease deer activity
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: and movement that you can point to and say, yes,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: for sure X variable an increased dear movement that we
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: can key in on his hunters. Well, I do have
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: a little bit of experience looking at different weather variables
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: for instance. Uh, my primary experience has been looking at
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: how coyotes are. You know, different kinds of predators influence movements,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: but they do shift and tend to shift their behavior,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: you know, during the daytime when it's extremely cold at night.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: Uh so that's one thing obviously people probably already do that.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: There there are variable effects of different kinds of fronts
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: that could cause them to move more than than other times.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: But you know, again, uh, these depending on where you
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: do these studies, you find something different, and uh, I
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: think that a lot of it has to go by
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: local knowledge. You know, everybody has their own strategy that
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: they have developed over time from the places that they hunt,
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know they're probably get good data. Now
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: one thing, just a short plug one one thing that
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: we're trying to do through the Deer Lab. We haven't
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: a hunting app, and uh, Bronson strict one was the
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: one responsible primarily, and Stephen maris also I'm coming in
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: after the fact after they've already made that. But uh,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: that app is designed to help us gather some data
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: from hunters all over the place, so that goes into
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: a repository that we could actually then look at some
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: of these types of things like you know there's some
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: sort of weather event or know the moon phase or
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: that that sort of stuff. Is there actually are things
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: changing when hunters are seeing deer and when they're successful.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: So really that that will that will be one of
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: the best data sets, assuming that hunters use it and
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: are truthful when they're presenting the data. Obviously, we were
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: not gonna you know, we're not gonna sharing the data
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: with people that could go steal your hunting stand or something.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: But uh, you know that platform is designed to help
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: us inform questions like this because the the methods that
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: we've been using with coloring animals in particular or just
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: not providing really consistent results across the range of deer.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: So you know that tool if we get thousands and
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: thousands of hunters reporting to us when they're seeing deer. Uh.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: Of course, the app is not designed that. The app
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: is designed to help you with your own hunting and
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: manage your own stand locations and and for you to
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: generate reports to see where you're seeing deer. So that's
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: what the apps for. But it's being stored in a
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: way that we could use it to look and see
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: if the moon phases affecting when hunters are seeing deer
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: in in general. So uh, you know that I think
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: that will be a pretty good resource for the Deer
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: Lab to explore in the future and hopefully we'll have
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: a load. Um. But so it's if you go to
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: M s U Deer Lab website, there's a link on there.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: It's called the the Deer Hunt App, I believe, yeah,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: And it's a free app. It's free for anybody to
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: download and use as they please. And it has a
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: lot of really interesting features in it. Uh. You can
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: manage stand you can manage like a hunt club, so
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: everybody could see stands that you have on the hunt
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: club and you can see whether or not somebody's occupying
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: the stand, those sorts of things. But you can also
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: create a side hunt club for your own stands where
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: the rest of the people in the Hunt club can't
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: see them. So you have some privacy options in it
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: too to do that kind of thing. Um. So a
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: lot of a lot of really cool things in that
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: app that you could use. And this is a again
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: available on on you know an idos or an Android.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: So really cool app and and it will help us
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: it's called it's called the Deer Hunt app. Uh, it'll
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: help us answer some of these questions. Hopefully we can,
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: you know, give you a more straight forward answer on
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: how the moon affects deer or or what weather patterns
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: affect dear behavior. That can help you harvest that big
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: But there you go some citizens Science opportunity there for
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: all of us to contribute a little bit. Yeah, we
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: actually want to do a couple of different things with
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: the Citizens Science. So we also were trying to figure
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: out a nice protocol to allow hunters to do mineral
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: stomps and then uh, you know, send us some data
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: that we can then make available to hunters at a
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: broad scale. So, yeah, we actually have several opportunities like that,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: hopefully that that the deer can help us inform or
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: the hunters can help us inform them about their deer. Yeah. Yeah, well, hey,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: whenever those opportunities are available, definitely let us know. I'll
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: be sure to share that with our listeners, because I
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: think anytime we can help contribute to that kind of thing,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: it's a good idea and it eventually will come around
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: and help us too, I think with us final absolutely,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: that's the whole point of this is we're trying to
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: learn so that we can share it with the the
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: other people. So, so, you've spent so many years studying
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: white tails and other wildlife and habitat all these different things.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: What piece of research or what study or what aspect
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: of what you've looked into has actually changed how you
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: hunt the most? Like, what's been the most impactful insight
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: you've garnered over the years that actually impacts your hunting? Yeah,
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: that that's a a great question, and it would. So
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: there there are two that are really impacting my hunting.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: One is the mineral stumps, and it's been impacting my
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: hunting for years and I just now know why. So
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: I've been doing that around my bow stands and have
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: been quite successful for a number of years, both hunting
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: by cut those trees down and having that natural source
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: of vegetation right near my stand. So that's one thing
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: that has really impacted my bow hunting. The other thing,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: and I primarily bow hunt, so it can be important
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: for you know, that rifle hunter as well, but that's
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: what that's what I'm using it for. Uh. The other
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: thing is actually impacting my my bow hunting also, especially
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: on my own property. And I followed while I was
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: in Tennessee working with Craig. I followed acorn production of
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: white oaks for a number of years and it was
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting to look at individual oaks and follow them
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: over time, and it turns out about fifty percent of
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: oaks will produce almost no mask. So I thought that
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: was really interesting. And the reason it's impacting my hunting
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: now is actually marked trees based on their production potential
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: on my property and then cut all the rest of
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: them down, so that that fanning basically released all of
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: my excellent producers and now they produce an ungodly amount
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: of mask and I love sitting next to one of
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: them with a you know, archery equipment. It has might
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: there a little bit harder to find though, because we
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: have a lot of great cover with these awesome producers
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: spread out within that cover. So uh, you know, it's
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: improved the habitat dramatically. But but that that oak mass
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: production has just been unbelievable and that's definitely impacted my
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: hunting a great amount. So how how can someone go
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: about really figuring that out for their own oak trees?
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: Because I feel like a lot of us, like we
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: go out there in the summer and we see, oh, yeah,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: this tree seems to be producing. If I don't, I
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: mean a lot of people don't pay attention to that
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: at all. But people that do pay pay attention to oaks,
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: imagine that might be the extent of it, is that
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: is this tree producer or not this year? And you know,
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: will I hunt near How could we well determine whether
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: or not this is an old tree to keep or
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: an old tree to get rid of? When I was
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: looking at that study. I was trying to figure out
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: is there a characteristic of the trees that would predict
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: whether or not it's going to be a good producer.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: And the short answer that is no. It seems to
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: be a genetic um predisposition of that tree. It's either
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: good genetics to produce a lot of acorns or it doesn't.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: So if it doesn't, it doesn't matter what you do.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: You can release that tree, you can fertilize it. You know,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. It's never going to produce a lot
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: of masks. The excellent producer, on the other hand, is
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: always going to produce a lot of masks no matter
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: what you do. So you can enhance that, particularly by
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: releasing it by cutting trees around it down and letting
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: its can at the Expand so with that being said,
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: to determine whether or not it's a good producer, you
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: need to follow whether or not that that tree has
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: produced for a couple of a couple or three years.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: And particularly if you follow it for three years, with
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: about nine certainty, you can estimate which ones are excellent
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: producers and which ones are poor. So that's pretty that's
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: a pretty big deal. If you were going to try
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: to thin a stand. And you know a lot of
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: people don't want to thin their oaks stand because they
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: don't want to cut down any oaks that are going
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: to produce masks. Well, this is the sort of that
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: that silver lining where you could actually cut down about
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: half of your oaks and actually improve mass production because
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: you cut down only oaks that didn't produce anything. So
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: they could be a very useful tool. Uh So if
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: you follow them for a few years, especially if you
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: follow them three years, and of course the better, the better,
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: the the data will be the longer that you follow
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: the tree. But if you follow it for three years
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: and it produces an acorn out two out of those
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: three years, then it's probably in the excellent category. And
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: then when you cut those trees down, then you can
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: and on taking advantage of the mineral stump that season
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: two right, yeah, yeah, yeah, and uh just so you
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: set for that season. Just just one note, I have
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: cut down mineral stumps that are five years old now
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: and the deer still just crushing them. So the deer
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: actually will help you keep that thing producing for several
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: years in some cases, and so you might you might
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: get several years out of it, out of the mineral
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: stomps around those trees that you've released that are also
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: producing you know, a ton of masks, and so we
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: keep circling back to the mineral stumps here. But it
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: is an interesting idea. So I'm thinking, if I'm interpreting
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: this correctly, these mineral stumps could last years if there's
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: enough browse pressure, so there's enough deer to keep that
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: knocked down so it doesn't grow to reach maturity again.
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: Because because the process is right, that that tree is
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: trying to balance itself from what belowground, the root system belowground,
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: to what's above ground. So as long as what's above
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: ground is is not substantial, as long as a deer
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: keep it knocked down, it'll keep being a mineral stump
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: and producing the superfood. Right. Yeah, I don't know biologically
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: it should still be a superfood. I have not collected
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: the data on the nutrient content of any of them
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: that have been going more than a year yet, but
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: I will say in terms of the dear behavioral response
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: to it, yes, they will continue to come back and
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: hit that thing over and over again. And if the
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: brows pressure is substantial enough, well, if it's if it's
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: too there's sort of a balance there. If it's too intense,
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: it'll just kill the plant. But you know, if it's
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: not intense enough, the plant will grow out of it.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: I wonder to grow out of the ridge. So there's
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: sort of a you know, a mid range there where
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: you want a lot of brows pressure on it, but
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: not so much that they just kill the plant. So, uh, yeah,
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: in some cases I feel I've actually it seems like
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: that would be hard to hit that range. But most
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: of the time, when I've cut ten or twelve of
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: these things down, the deer will keep it at the
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: right height to keep utilizing it for a couple of
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: seasons normally. So is there could could we manufacture that
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: same um mechanism? So let's say we're in a situation
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: where there's not enough brows pressure to keep it knocked down.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: So after you're one, I can tell it's it's going
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: to be growing too much. What if I go and
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: prune it. What if I trim it every year to
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: keep it down in that sweet spot? Could I kind
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: of artificially maintain then yeah, you can for a few
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: years at least. Eventually the plant will run out of resources,
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: and based on that fact, you'd probably expect that the
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: the huge bumping quality you get from the first time
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: may not happen the next time because the trees already
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: used some of its resources. Uh again, I don't have
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: date on that, but intuitively that's what I think would happen.
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: So the short answers, Yes, you could continually cut the
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: same one down to make it available to deer, but
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: at some point it will just die because it won't
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: have enough resources to keep responding to that. So uh yeah.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: In short, you could if you if you cut a
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: bunch of them down and some of them, some of
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: them get out of the reach of deer, you could
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: go come down again. All right? Well, Dan, do you
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: have any final questions for Marcus here? What kind of
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: change saw do I need to buy? Well? Uh, whatever
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: you can effectively cut a tree down with. Um. Yeah,
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: I've used a variety of different kinds of chainsaws and
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: even use an axe and a hatchet. Uh. You know,
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: it all works, So all right, find something on sale
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: at trackers splayed in We'll do all right, Well, anything
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: else that you want to leave our listeners with, Marcus?
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: Is there any point that we haven't gotten to or
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: any kind of pet project you want to make sure
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: that people know about. No, just I'm I'm glad everybody
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: has been listening and and thanks for having me on
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: the show. And you know, I always encourage the listeners
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: to come check out our Facebook page and social media.
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: Uh m s you Deer Lab web page, great resources
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: and and keep listening to your podcast. You've got great information.
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate you having me on. Well, thank you, Marcus.
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: Absolutely same back to you as well, and we'll make
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: sure to have links to the Deer Lab website and
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: Facebook page and the Deer University podcast. You guys are
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: putting out lots of great information. Um that that I've
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: definitely been able to learn some stuff from two. So
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: thank you Marcus. We appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, thank you.
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: And that's going to do it for us today. Thank
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: you so much for tuning in for this one. Before
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: we go, they'll just want to you have a big
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: thank you to our partners at Sick Gear, Yetie Cooler's,
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: Matthew's Archery, Maven Optics, The White Tail in Student of
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: North America, Trophy Ridge and hunt Terra Maps, and of
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: course thank you again for listening. I hope you have
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: a great weekend, a great week I hope we're gonna
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: see some of you on the twenty one of July
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen. Are live recording Friday morning AM at
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: the q d M A National Convention and uh that's
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of fun. Hopeful we'll see you
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: later that night as well, eight pm. Location is tb D.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: We'll be posting on our Facebook page, Twitter or Instagram.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: So thanks again, have a great day and stay wired
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: to hunt.