Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 746: Hornography

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Ep. 746: Hornography · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening past, you
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict anything brought to you by first Light. When
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: no compromise, gear that keeps me in the field longer,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: first light dot com. That's f I R S T
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: L I t E dot com. Kevin Monteeth is here today,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: second podcast appearance. You're one of the top favorite UH
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: guests we've ever had. You're just saying that to be nice.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I'm telling people love that show, dude. That was a
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: big show. Over the years, we've had some big shows
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: that people really liked and just gen RD a lot
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: of stuff. That was a big show. That was episode one,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: six two and it was called Landscape of Fear. Now
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: we're all the way up on episode seven five, so
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: lots changed. Randall's hair has grown like that and been
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: cut back. That was just dozens of times since then.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Just a few weeks before Karin and I started, I
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: think so.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Phil was just getting out of high school. Kevin
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: is here, So Kevin is the Professor of Natural Resource
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Sciences at the University of Wyoming's hob Hob School of
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Zoology and Physiology. He
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: is the leader of the Monteeth Shop. He is here
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: to dispel almost everything you think in fact about deer,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: about deer, about deer and elk, about antlers. He dispelled
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: it before and he'll dispel it again in a new way.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Puzzle other things. All I do now when I'm talking
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: every time, And I had to do this the other day.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: I had to do this the other day. Who did
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I do it to? I'm trying to think, Oh, Morgan Potter,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: a professional hunter in Africa. He was laying on me
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the whole genetics. Oh, this area doesn't have good deer.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: This you know, not laying it on me. I don't
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: mean to, like, you know, he's a buddy of mine,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the whole, like Letteria doesn't have good genetics. And I
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: had to lay on him the whole. Not so fast.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: There's a lot more to the picture.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: To see him stiffen up there.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Like like to get into it. Oh not that I said, Yeah,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: lot goes into it.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: I think it might have also been a reaction to
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: some of.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: The listen, this isn't a this isn't a weapon. This
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: is an antique. I'll explain it in a second, because
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: it's relevant to my life right now, relevant to your life. Yeah,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: not really. For instance, just to just to give you
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: a pre titillation about what's going to happen, Kevin's just
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: showing me a picture of a buck, a mual to
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: your buck. Anyone on the planet. Anyone on the planet
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: would look at this buck and declare it to be
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: a classic year and a half old buck, a classic
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: first rack, like a spiky little buck with little offshoots.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: You'd be like, that's a year and a half old buck.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Every guy would say that. I would tell my kids
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: if they'd be like, is it a big one? If
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: they got it, I'd be like, that's a year and
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: a half old buck. It ain't. It's two and a
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: half years old. At three and a half, you look
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: at it and be like, eah, probably not a year
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: and a half old, but still looks like that. A
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: buck that'll be a runt for the rest of his life.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Not because he's from an area with bad genetics. It's
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: because his mom was an piss poor shape when she
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: was pregnant with him. Correct, that's right. We're gonna get
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: into all that and a lot more. Lots of good research,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: lots of good research. For first tell, we were just
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: talking about how you call your place your outfit, which
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: is kind of funny. You call it the monteeth shop,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: and we're talking about it in like in the trades.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: You know, you meet at the shop. I don't care
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: if you're a tree surgeon, whatever, Millwright, you go meet
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: at the shop. Then you go off to your job site.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: And it's funny that you called your scientific lab your shop. Yeah,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: because there's work going on there. There's there's work going
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: on there. Yeah, And we definitely catch him flak for
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: it because, yeah, because it doesn't sound official enough, doesn't
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: fit right.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, if you're going to be a I don't know,
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: a scientist or a group that does science, the typical
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: reference is a lab. And I think that's at least
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: in the in the academic world, that's that's the norm.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: And I think despite working in an academic world, I
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: don't think I've ever I don't think I've ever fit
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: the mold. I don't think I necessarily have a desire
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: to fit the mold, and so in thinking about what
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: it meant for us over time and who we were
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: to be referenced as in that way. To me, what
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: made more sense if we're going to be data generators,
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: hands dirty in the field, and you know, being able
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: to do the work that puts us in as close
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: proximity the animals that we do. To me, what made
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: sense is a shop something that's more that associated more
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: with the trades, or like a mechanic shop for example.
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: I often maybe reference us as like diagnostic mechanics, working
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: to hands dirty in there, working to figure out what's
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: going on with any you know, particular animal population and
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: working to understand them better. So and I think, I
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: don't know, I guess like my upbringing and who I
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: am at heart, it fits a lot better than being
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: referenced as as a lab.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: So despite the flack that we get for it, we
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: stuck with it. Oh yeah, I wouldn't pay attention to
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: that before. Before I explain this this year knife I'm home. Uh,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: you got a mon Teeth shop shirt on that has
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: what I thought was a bigfoot guy pumping iron. You
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: did not. You did think that, and it's not that correct. Okay,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: what is it, Because this is something I hadn't heard of.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I'm embarrassed to have not as much as I hear
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: you talk about Beaver as he's got a picture on
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: his shirt of a bigfoot pumping iron lifting a stick,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: except except it's not. Yeah.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: It actually reminds me of the the sand creatures in
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: Star Wars when they shake their Yeah, the Tuesking Raiders
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: when they shake their things at one another.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: That's good. That's good. Thanks. Speaking of which we're trying
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: to I'm trying to license a song right now that
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: has a line. We did a couple of favors for
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: a guy who looked like a Tusk and Raider. M No,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: we did a couple of favors for some guys who
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: look like Tusk and Raiders.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Is based on a true story.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I doubt it, Okay, go on.
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: So it's a beaver holding up a stick, and part
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: of that is the artwork was done by one of
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: our former team members, ran In, jacobek In. We just
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: started doing some work on Beaver's here over the past
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: couple of years and sort of yeah became we became
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: aware of this behavior, and it's a behavior often that's
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: very rarely seen in beavers, but there's a scientific paper
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: on it, and if you if you google stick display
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: in beavers, there is a YouTube video demonstrating them doing it.
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: But amidst like territory holders are at the edge kind
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: of the fringes of potential territories. That's sort of antagonistic behavior.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: They'll they'll pick up a stick and just go up
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: and down and up and down with that, with displaying
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: that stick. And I don't know, I think it's kind
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: of funny too, given that, you know, most of our
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: work is on big ungulates, and we've done a good
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: bit of work on horns and antlers and those sorts
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: of things. Then what they're used as is weapons and
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: forms of intimidation and display. And beavers don't have antlers
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: or horns on their heads, but perhaps picking up a
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: stick it does some.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Sort of has some sort of intimidation element. He's getting
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: pumped exactly. No, that's exactly right.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: Our stickers have that saying underneath it speaks offten and
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: carry a big stick.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's either you know, if you really dug into it,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: is it uh like a fitness display? You know? Is
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: like is it like hey man, like this is a
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: hard thing to pull off, right, what we were at
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: this when I was just in in Africa, We're hanging
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: out these MASSI dudes and they like they have there's
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: this traditional dance in Messiah culture where it's trying like
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: young men and young women. And in this dance there's
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: like a couple. There's like a display, an athletic display
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: of men, which is just a flat footed jump m
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: again and again like a spring like from a flat
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: footed stance that you just jump again and again and
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: again and like get some impressive height, dude. Especially when
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I when I was like, let me give it away,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I was like impressive height. And then the right it's
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: just a asking like what is it all about. It's
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: just like showing game. Yeah, a flat footed jump, you know.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: And then for the women, it's kind of like a
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: you put this disc around your neck and it's like
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: a I rating move to make the disc shiver. All right,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: it's just showing what you got. So that beaver could.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: Be like exactly balance strength, yeah saying I'm gonnahoop you
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: with this.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: Stick, or it's like this is the kind of stuff
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: we got around here.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: You know, you know I had a beaver. I had
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: a beaver interaction their day of my my my boys. Uh,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: his buddy's family. They had Beaver's plugging up their irrigation
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: crop irrigation system. And I'm went over to advise him.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to get rid of them. And I made
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: some cast or mound sets just I took Beaver's case.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: It seemed like just one beaver kind of like doing
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: his deal put castor out. He just left. I like,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I can't prove this. I feel like
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: he had like a oh ship, someone's already here and
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: like left. I'm telling you he left. He's gone. We
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: keep checking he's gone. That's wild. He had these little
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: dams in this, you know, in an irrigation deal. Yeah,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: he had these little dams. He had a couple of
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: little ship and cast or mounds the size of a
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: cell phone. You know what I mean. We put like
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: a big old cat, two big old caster mounts. Dude,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I'm not kidding that dude moved out, which could be
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: like something interesting to develop for like sort of like
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: non lethal non lethal deal is get after him early
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: and just like sorry boys, making sorry boys, there's already
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: a bad mobile in town. Man. You better go find
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: a new spot to hang out. So he and it
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: did him good because he's alive. He lived to tell
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: the tale. Yeah, oh, this knife. So how they do
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: villas in town? Ak Moosey. I screwed up in my
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: head and I didn't think that she would be here.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: She could be hanging out right now, but I just
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: didn't think about it. I didn't think andy by the
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: time I invited her. We started, We're recording at nine.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Occurred to me at eight forty two. Invite her. She
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: wasn't able to make it shooting pistols. But I'm going
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: to have her fix this because she's a leather sower.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: My old man brought this home from North Africa and whiskey.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Whiskey too. That's like gotta be elephant ivory. Yeah, take
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: a look at that. Oh yeah, that's awesome. It's gotta
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: be elephant. I don't know what the hell. I don't
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: know what kind of ivory it is.
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: It looks exactly like some of this stuff that I
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: have from my grandmother that was from China.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: So from China, mm hmm, it's from North Africa. No,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: I'm just saying, like a little Confucius statue carved in irony.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, I thought, you mean, you're accusing my dad of
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: bringing home some kind of souvenir knockoff defense just like that.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Where's the stick? Yeah? He So he was real like
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: whatever it was, he was. I still remember what he
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: told me about it. He was real particular about it though.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: And this she is a weird leather. Look at that leather.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I've had some people say maybe ostrich, but you can't
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: see a lot of times an ostrich leather. You can
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: see there, you can see the follicle for the feather.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I need to have it stitch back up. That was
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: unstitched when I was born. Oh so it's been that
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: way it was. So you know what I just did.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I took mineral oil. I put that. I took that
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: sheath and put mineral oil a little a couple of
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: tablespoons of mineral oil in a vac bag and stuck
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: that sheath in there and vac sealed it. Which I'm
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: gonna patent as a way to like bring leather back
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: to like picture what I'm talking about. It's good. Patent
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: it so no one else can do it. Let's say
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: check with me. Take like an old whatever old leather belt, whatever,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: it's kind of played out, Put oil in a bag,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: vac seal it in that bag. Then let it sit
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: on your work bench for a couple of days and
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: open it up, and that sucker is rejuvenated. Now. Let
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: guy might tell me that there's a reason that that's
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: dumb or not a good idea, but I don't know.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: Or he might tell you that people are already doing that.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: You could tell me that. You could tell me, yeah,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: don't be surprised when he pulled something out and I
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: fell apart. I don't know, but I think I'm onto something.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: But I need to have it stitch back up. But
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: isn't that something I want to you know, like those
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: antique road show things? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, like what is
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: up with this thing? Randall wanted to know if he
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: came home from the war and it had crowd blood
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: all over it. But I don't know that he uh,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: I told him already cleaned it all off. Randall's got
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: back from Germany so much to Steve chagrin. Yeah, I
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: don't like that one bit. So you're glad that I'm back. No,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you're back, But I felt I was nervous
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the whole time you're over there that things might break
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: out again. Norm McDonald used to talk about that. Yeah,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: everybody's always worried about like, uh, North Russia. He's like,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: why are they not worried about the Germans? We've already
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: wars with them? Do you think it's over now?
• 15:14
  Speaker 6: Uh?
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh one other quick thing. I don't want to
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: take up too much of our time. But you know
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: how like I'm bad on sports. I'm bad on like
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: just generally very ignorant about athletics. I was getting my haircut.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I get my haircut VI I p barbershop, which is great.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: You gotta call ahead, but it's great. And one thing
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I like about it is they always playing sports with
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: the volume off, which I was better you know that way.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: And because it like during the during the Summer Olympics,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: it was cool because you just watched these people run
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: around the track but you can't hear what's going on.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I thought it was very soothing. I'm in there the
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: other day and like the big Old there's a huge
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: TV screen. It's the only thing in there. They they
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: don't really it's not really like mega decorated, but there's
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: a huge TV screen, and so normally you sit, like
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: when you're getting your haircut, you're looking at the screen,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: but when you're waiting, your backs to the screen. But
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: the other wall is a giant mirror, and I'm just
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: kind of lost in my thoughts half watching a baseball game,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: but it's in a mirror, okay, which I didn't think about.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: And every time a guy hits.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: The ball, he'd.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Run the other way, and I'm like, sitting there. I'm
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: honestly guy sitting there, Like when did they change that?
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: I swear, I swear I was almost gonna ask captain
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the barber. I was almost gonna be like, why do
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: these dudes take off running like the other way that
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: what you normally would run. All of a sudden it
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: occur to me. I'm like, oh, it's reversed.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well you're probably excited because he thought he's that boy.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: The prevalency of left handers is really going up in professional.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Sports, I felt. I was so. I was like, so,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: I was so ready to open my mouth and like, hey,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: why are they? Yeah, could have been majorly embarrassed. Yeah,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: a couple quick news bits here. Let me look here
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: a minute. Oh, movie's coming out I can't believe I
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: hadn't heard about this before. There's a movie coming out
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: where Bamby goes and seeks revenge. Have you heard about this?
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: It's called The Reckoning bamb be the Reckoning. Well, everybody
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: says Bamby. But isn't it like Bamby's kid. How does
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: it work? No, no, bam Bamby's dad gets killed. Yeah,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: the mom.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah that's who gets killed.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Right, No, this is his old man, Yeah there is. Yeah,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: remember Spencer tried to work up how many inches of antler?
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah he Bamby and his dad had the
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: buck does get killed.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: But I feel like Bambi is also an orphan, right,
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: so maybe there's Yeah, they call it in a while
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: to be honest, it's a CE tier creature feature.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: I guess that means poor graphics.
• 18:15
  Speaker 6: It's it's made by the same studio that made a
• 18:17
  Speaker 6: bunch of Winnie the Pooh horror films as well. It's
• 18:21
  Speaker 6: like as soon as they enter a certain form of
• 18:22
  Speaker 6: public domain, they just go buck wild on these things.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, So the story is like it it drinks some
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: toxic something or other and then it becomes monsterized and
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: it has like a million.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Just like Ninja Turtles, the grieving deer decides to take
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: a sip of the nefarious chemical that local corporation Wilburg's.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: It's always there's always a lot of these movies. There's
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: the animal movies. Is usually a bad corporation.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: There's a strand of anti capitalism and all of these.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, my kids in this little My kids in
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: this little song and dance up right now for a week,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: like just to keeping busy, my little one, just keeping
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: busy before we go to Alaska, you know. And he's
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: coming home singing. They're teaching them a song. It's like
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: a it's like a it's like a flat out like
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: anti capitalist song. He comes home every night and practice.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Is it the one from the Loraxe?
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: Is it?
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: My kids at that same song and dance club. Yeah,
• 19:22
  Speaker 6: oh what's his name? I've got two I've got two
• 19:24
  Speaker 6: kids in in there right now. I think Yanni's daughters
• 19:26
  Speaker 6: have done it as well.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you think your kid and my kid are
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: in the same song and dance.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: It's very it's very well. He's he's not doing the
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Lorax song.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Comrades.
• 19:36
  Speaker 6: Now there's different age groups and it's not like the
• 19:39
  Speaker 6: lore Ax was a book written decades ago the exact
• 19:43
  Speaker 6: anti capitalist sentiment, and.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: So it has nothing to do with the Lorax book.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: It's a guy with corporate attorneys. It's like, has nothing
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: to do with the Lorax book.
• 19:51
  Speaker 6: Well, yeah, but it's a it's about him cutting down
• 19:54
  Speaker 6: the trees to make the needs and and he's draining
• 19:57
  Speaker 6: the resources dry without a thought of the planet or.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: No, that's not in the song. I invite you to
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: look at the songs.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Is it the one that says how how bad can
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: I be?
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like he's like talking about his corporate attorneys
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: are denying. Yeah, it's like this whole either way.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: So next week it'll be the International that one land.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: It's over my head.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I don't get it. What's the joke?
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: That's the old isn't it the old socialist anthem?
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Sorry, Kevin, you got you got stomach
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: for one more news bit? Yeah?
• 20:44
  Speaker 7: Yeah, coming Baby movie is coming out where Bambi becomes
• 20:49
  Speaker 7: a fanged, bloodthirsty monster who will stop at nothing to
• 20:56
  Speaker 7: attack his prey.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: And uh, there is prey humans or we don't know.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: Assuming there's a lot of blue collar men.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Yea, well, driving around in Like there's a whole genre
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: of these movies, like like animated animal movies. There's a
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: whole genre where the bad guy is a Southern, a
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Southerner who hunts. You know. I've talked about this one
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: show a bunch of times. There's a show my kids
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: used to like, I I didn't like. I'm watching it
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: and there's like a couple of there's like rotating cast
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: of bad guys. One of the bad guys was a
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: wild Game chef. One of the bad guys was like
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: a very yeah. He was a very like effeminate urban nite. Yeah.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: And one was like a Southern chef. H the villains, Okay,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show This is news Ish.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: We've talked about on the show and demonstrated in various
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: video projects. We've done the process called ek g MA.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: You familiar it's a fish dispatch method. Oh no, uh.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: My first introduction to EKGM was not by it's a
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Japanese word. My first introduction to ekg MA was not
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: having anything to do with the Japanese and not having
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: anything to do with fish. But it was demonstrated to
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: me in South America with a a giant river turtle,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: which is a seighti species. But these native dudes had
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: a net and they were using the net to catch fish,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: and this big turtle gets wrapped up in their net,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: a giant river turtle, and we're in a camp together.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: They take the turtle. We weren't able to film this
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: because they explaining to us that, like, it's kind of
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: a no no, but the turtle got in the nets,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: so there's what could they do about it? Even though
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: they could let either way, They go get it. They
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: go and cut a switch like a big slender stick
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: and peel the bark off it and basically make like
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: a what would look like a like a like a
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: hot dog roasting skewer, okay, or like a marshmallow stretch mellow,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: and take the turtle and flop cut his head off. Now,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: when I used to process turtles, we would cut their
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: head off. Then you hang them up by the tail
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: and it would be hours hours before you could pull
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: his leg and his leg didn't suck back into his
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: shell right, you'd like you'd hold out a pair of
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: channel locks. This is how my dad taught me to
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: do it. It's kind of gruesome. It's just how a Scofia
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: explains it in Legee cue lan Air. But you hold
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: out a pair of channel locks, so the turtle grabs
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: the channels, grabs onto it, and you pull out and
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: decapitate them, just like you're cutting head off a chicken.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: This is just how it was demonstrated me as a child.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: And then you hang the turtle up and eventually you
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: pull his leg and it doesn't pull back, and then
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: it's time to clean the turtle. These guys in South America,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: they took a machete fuck and then took that long
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: skewer and inserted it into the spine and ran that
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: skewer all the way down that spine till it was
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: in its tail, and that turtle melted, I mean melted.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: It was just like after they cut the head off.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Immediately immediately cut the head off, ran that skewer yu
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: and there wasn't because like a turtle is a I
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: don't know what's going on the nerve.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Like you know, like disrupting all the nerves.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like think of the expression like running around like
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: a chicken when its head cut off, which I demonstrate,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: which I mentioned to my kids all the time when
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: we're hunting, Like they'll hit something and it'll kind of
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: do a little mad dash and they feel real bad
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: for it, and I'll be like, well, you know, think
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: about it, like someone cuts the chicken's head off, it
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: runs all over hell, right, it's like dead but not dead.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: So it just like it melted the turtle. I never
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: seen anything like.
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: It.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Turns out this is a common fish dispatching method in Japan,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: and I've gone with a friend of mine. She was koreaeing,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: but still, uh we would. She would catch a fish
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: and immediately cut its tail, just cut through the cut
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: through the cut through the tail to sever the backbone
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the spine at the tail point right, and then you
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: kind of cock the tail so it's still connected by skin,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: but it's now cocked back, folded over. And then she
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: take this brass wire. She had copper wire maybe whatever
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: the hell it was, copper wire. She take this copper
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: wire and just in that in that spine, you follow
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: me the spinal core, they're basically going, and that fish
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: just again just is like done. You know, you think
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: of a fish flopping for a long time whatever, you know,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: and like and it influences how that fish goes through rigor,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: and it's just like the fish is just dead or
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: and dead.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: This guy here, there's this company, Shinkle Systems. They've built
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: a robot that uses the Japanese ekg MA method of
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: killing fish, which they regard as the most humane way
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: to harvest the animal while producing the best quality meat.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: The process involves inserting I forgot this part. It's kind
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: of like a ancillary part of the things. You put
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: a spike in the fish's brain first. So the process
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: involves inserting a spike into the fish's brains. Who that
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: or is caught killing it instantly, reducing distress that can
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: cause the fish to spoil more quickly. Oh, oh, he's
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: not talking about what that's what he's talking about. Not
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: running the hold Cranky Randall anyone. Their machine isn't the
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: spine reaming machine. Their machine is just a spike to
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: the head machine. Do you need a machine that seems
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: that seems a lot easier.
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: To make it stuns the fish to help humans do
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: that method.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: So it's a robot that stuns a fish. Yes, this
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: is what you get for talking about news articles you
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: haven't read, do you know what I mean? Like people
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: are always saying like, why an article this morning? And
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I always go like, eh, you know, I
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: don't really read it. I mean I saw it. Oh,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: but the guy says a weird thing. So he's talking
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: about how he's what huh okay, well making the subsequent
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: cuts in seven seconds? Is he reaming the spines or not?
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: The human does it? The machine stuns them.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Shinkles okay. Shinkle's refrigerator size machine called Poseidon is his operational.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Steve reads news so you don't have to.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: It's operational on three fishing vessels off the US West Coast.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: The fish is inserted into the robot, which then uses
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: computer vision to identify the speed. And it's anatomical information
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: spiking the brain and making the subsequent cuts in seven seconds.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: It might be that the bad this is a bad
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: writer who wrote what I'm reading.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: Clearly subsequent cuts makes me think that it's doing more
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: than did.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: It's reem and the spine. This guy raised twenty two
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: billion bucks for this thing. You know what really turns
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: me off though it is one of his co quotes.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: He's got a quote that I think is indefensible. Where
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: is this quote? Oh, here's a quote from this guy
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: who builds himself is not builds himself former SpaceX engineer.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: But I don't see SpaceX engineer and think fisheries primarily
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: because they're very interested in Mars and there ain't no
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: life on Mars. Like I don't want to go there.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: You know. He says, we've been fishing for forty thousand
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: years and the tools haven't really changed.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: A little bit of his oversimplification.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, are you all aware of a thing called sonar
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: guided bottom trawling? I mean, holy cow, he's saying that,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: like nothing's changed in forty thousand years, But now we
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: have a robot that can poke a hole in the
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: fish's head, and this is like the right this is
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: the right direction. I'm like, nothing's changed in forty thousand
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: years of fishing.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, good lilastics, internal combustion engines.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Sonar guided bottom trolls which can literally which can literally
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: scrape underwater spires. Whatever. There's another big article about lab
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: grown meat and fish, which Krinn put in here and
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: then out and another back in here again.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: We don't have to cover it.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: No, we're not could cover it. Okay, I don't care
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: if everybody eats it.
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: I don't want it well, this was more on the
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: lab lab grown fish that it's you know, making its uh,
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: it's getting into some good restaurants or I don't know
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: if restaurants in Portland. And there are seven states that
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: made it illegal, and the news bit is that last
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: month Texas was the seventh or eighth state.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Our own, our own great state made it illegal. Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Tennessee, Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Nebraska have done various things to like prevent or slow
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: down or ban cultured cell cultured meat. Texas just did
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: it in June. Yeah, I thought they maybe that's a
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: little bit bit, that's a little bit big brother for
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: my likings. But like I can't get worked up about
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: it because that is I'm kind of grossed out by
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: by lab grown meat. But krinn By saying good restaurants,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: think about what you're saying. Though, the articles point out
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: how a Haitian restaurant in Portland is serving lab grown salmon.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Now I haven't been to like Haitia recently, but is
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: there is there like a lot of big Haiti What
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: did I call it? Tells you how long I've.
• 32:18
  Speaker 7: There?
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Like salmon is a part of Haitian cuisine.
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: A good the chef is, you know, Wan in a
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: James Beard Awards, So I think that that puts him
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: at some kind of level.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: I've been nominated for James Beard Awards, and I don't
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: feel like I'm at any level. Okay, you ready to
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: dig in? Sure? All right? How do we start? Because
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: you guys, you guys do so much work. Man, Can
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: we start with a recap? We do whatever?
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: Let me start with the recap. What kind of recap
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: do you want? Can you recap for? Can you recap
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: for for us and our listeners?
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Just kind of like I'm sure you give the spiel
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: all the time, the spiel about when we see an
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: area that we declare like bad genetics or Bucks don't
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: get big there. You know that area has got big
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Bucks because it's got good genetics. What is that shorthand for?
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like like like what are
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: some of the things that actually in your mind? And
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: it could include genetics, but like what are the sort
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: of hidden factors that are driving whether you're seeing big
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: giant Bucks and you're part of the state you know, Yeah, well,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: I mean there's not too big of a question. No, No,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: you're good.
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: I'm just trying to figure out how to lean into
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: the age genetics and nutrition effect anly size. Tell me again,
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: age genetics nutrition cut and much of our focus for
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: a long time, and certainly within you know, hunting communities
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: as well, we tend to off addly and frequently refer
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: to genetics.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: It's hard to it's hard to open up a magazine
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: and see an article written, you know, about some big
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: buck or big bowl that somebody harvested, and inevitably it's like, man,
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: the genetics in this area are just fantastic. You know,
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: sure large antlers, and there's an aspect of that that
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: is that is true, like to to grow you know,
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: a substantial set of antlers horns, you need to have
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: genetics that support that. Right, But we also we also
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: get ourselves in this situation, as we frequently refer to that,
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: and I think I think where some of that's come
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: from is we we've called it our our hornographic culture,
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: where we're so fork focused on horns, antlers, their size, Like,
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: we're so drawn into that all we can think about
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: is males and the crap that's growing on their head.
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: And so we've we've referenced that as our our honographic culture.
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: And there's elements of that that are good.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: That doesn't all the greatest shirt dude, pornography hornography.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: We got to can you check someone right away for
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: someone steals this idea this is going on. It's yeah,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: a buck mounting a dough and it says hornography a
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: big buck and proceeds going, and then yeah, and and
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: and yes, that's perfect protease, proceeds go directly to me.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Proceeds shot. Is that fair? Yeah? One hundred You don't
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: care if we steal that. I didn't clear that well, yeah,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: but he said.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: I just sort of threw it out there.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, that's how we're gonna do it. I think. No,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: that's how we're definitely gonna do it. We just stole
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: it flat out from the guy, and it recorded.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: We've used that term in a scientific paper, in two
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: scientific papers. I mean we laid it out in a
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: in a scientific.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Paper, so so it exists. Can we do the thing,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: and then if we do, proceeds go to you guys. Yeah,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent horniography.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: That's I know, I know when I see it.
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: Sorry, continue, I just got so damn excited, so I think,
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: but I think what that does is in and of course,
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: like when we when you take that scenario where we're
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: focused on the males, and then we think about like
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: what has happened, for example, in places like Texas. We
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: we often think like Texas and line breeding and the
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: various things that they do to get males to grow
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: these just ridiculous sized antlers at a very young age.
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: And there is a genetic element to that. But I
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: think that's part of what's just translated to us is well,
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: of course, if there's big antlers in this area and
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: not in this area, there's better genetics over here for antlers,
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: then there is over over in this other area. So
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: what what we did to better understand what what aspects
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: of genetics versus nutrition go into producing large antlers is
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: I think it's fortunately like one of the most I
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: think elegant experiments that I've ever been able to be
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: a part of, and that is some work we did
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: in South Dakota. And with that work, we had animals
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: in the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota, which had
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: historically been known to grow some impressively large white tail deer.
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: A number of Bars and Custer and other places that
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: have just stupid big white tail deer, but more recently
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: in the past number of decades, they're all very small,
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: like we just don't grow big deer in that region anymore,
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: versus in eastern South Dakota, where we can grow impressively
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: big animals as little as three to four years of age.
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: And so the looming question with that, and it presented
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: the situation to evaluate what you reference directly, and that is,
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: are those animals in southwestern South Dakota and the Black
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: Hill is just genetically different than animals from eastern South Dakota.
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: So we did what we call a common garden experiment,
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: brought those animals into captivity as new born fawns. So
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: we captured animals from the Black Hills in eastern South
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: Dakota as newborn fawns, fed them, put them on a
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: high nutritional plane. So we we bottle raised them as fawns,
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: put them on a high nutritional plane, so we basically
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: maxed out nutrition. Nutrition wasn't limiting in any way, and
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: then raise those animals all the.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Way up to adulthood.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: And ad adulthood animals from on average, so once they
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: hit peak body mass antler size animals from the Black Hills.
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: Males from the Black Hills were seventy pounds smaller than
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: males from eastern South Dakota and had forty inches of
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: less antler than animals from eastern South.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: Because of bad genetics.
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: Because of bad genetics, right, and so rate surface level right, Well,
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: they've been on good nutrition since the day that they
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: were born, and so clearly that that supports a genetic explanation.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Then at that point.
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: Case clothes which then we then took that one step
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: further and looked at the next generation of animals born
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: in captivity. So we had Black Hills males and females,
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: allowed them to breed males and females from eastern South Dakota.
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: So no local bucks jumping over the fence, no local
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: bucks jumping over the fence. No, we allowed them to
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: breed within their groups from all the animals that we'd
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: raised since newborns, and then raised that second generation of
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: animals all the way up to adulthood. And so once
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: that second generation of animals were raised all the way
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: up to adulthood, if we just consider the Black Hills animals,
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: those sons born to those Black Hills males that I
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: was just talking about. Those sons were had thirty inch
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: more antlers than their fathers and were fifty pounds heavier
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: than their fathers, indicating they made up over seventy percent
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: of the difference that occurred between the first generation animals
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: that we brought into captivity. We didn't do anything genetically
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: genetics from those those two groups of animals. What was
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: different was the mothers from the animals that were now
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: born in captivity, that second generation of animals, those mothers
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: are on a high nutritional plane. Now, if we go
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: back to the wild scenario, when we originally got those animals,
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: the mothers in the Black Hills were on a poor
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: nutritional plane. Ponderosa Pine dominated for us crappy understory, just
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: on a poor nutritional plane. So that what that means
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: is called the negative maternal effect. What that means is
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: that those animals that we originally got as newborns.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: From the Black Hills.
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: Carried the nutritional signature of mom who was living in
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: the Black Hills, and now our new animals that are
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: born in captivity, they're now carrying the nutritional signature of
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: the moms that they're born to in captivity and those
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: moms are on a high nutritional plane and there's there's
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: almost no I mean, when you think about that level
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: of difference, I mean, we're talking fifty pounds difference in
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: body mass, thirty inches of antler Like, it's it's it's
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: pretty wild to think that we could, through some genetic
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: manipulation in a natural setting, obtain that level of difference.
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: And here we're talking over a single generation of animals,
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: those massive increases in both body size and antlers that
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: are attributed exclusively to nutrition of mom while those young
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: were in utero.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: And even like there's been a number of studies that
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: have been done in Texas from some colleagues of mind
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: down there where they've you know, gone to great links
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: to manipulate genetics by within enclosures, by taking you know,
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: helicopter catching males and then and then calling males that
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: weren't meeting the level of size that they were working
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: to obtain and are basically unable to obtain like a
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: positive change in antler growth time through that level of
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: very directive, very selective calling. So when you think about that,
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: when we translate that to like one area to the next.
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: Then what that what that can mean is that and
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: there's two sides of it. One, each set of these
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: animals is adapted to their local environment. Not every environment
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: has has or offers supreme nutrition. Right, So if we
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: consider placing the arid desert to you know, a migratory
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: meald deer populations that's running up into the high alpine
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: and you know, eating tall forb, tall forbes all summer long.
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: So all these animals and or you know, in the
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: arid system, maybe their winters aren't so bad so that
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: it doesn't take it much for them to persist through winter,
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: versus the animals that are in the more temperate systems
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: in the in the mountains, like it's harder for them
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: to persist through winter. And so even if you just
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: consider that at the surface level, not not all of
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: those animals can and just operate and do the same thing.
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: The way in which they operate, their way in which
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: they obtain and allocate resources has to be adapted to
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: that local environment. So there's a side of that that's
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: influencing antler size that we see from one place to
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: the next, But it's also a reflection of that local
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: adaptation to nutrition they have present there, and their ability
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: to allocate resources to antler development versus other things. So
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: certainly when you consider like males in one region to
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: the next, or males in a harvest from one area
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: to the next. Like if we're going to compare apples
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: to apples and say there's bigger males here, smaller males here,
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: we first need to of course consider what age classes
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: of males are there. Right, If they're mostly two and
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: three year olds versus over here, you know there's less
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: harvest and they're mostly being harvested at four to four
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: to seven, we're going to see differences in antler size.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: But once we've accounted for that, nutrition in what we
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: see from one place to the next is going to
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: play a much bigger role than genetics from one place
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: to the next, And most of that nutrition and what
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: dictates what a male is going to be for the
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: rest of his life is mom and Mom's condition, the
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: condition you yep, So I think what's fascinating about that
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: is then what we see and even as we see
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: from one year to the next, well, we can see
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: fluctuations in antler size given environmental potential from one year
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: to the next food growth, spring condition, summer conditions, winter
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: conditions for that matter, from one year to the next.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: The greatest marker of what a male carries with him
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: actually came before he was even dropped on the ground.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's a buddy mine in Wyoming, a guy that's
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: very very shrewd on wildlife and like a lifetime observer
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: of wildlife he was. I didn't get into it with him,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: but he's talking about, uh, it's a wet spring, right,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: anticipating good antler growth. He's not wrong though, right. I
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: mean that's that is that is helpful. But you could
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: also like a thing you wouldn't hear from a guy,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: is a guy wouldn't come and say to you two
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: springs ago, correct? Would not? I saw a lot of fat,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: does yep? So I'm hoping to draw a tag this
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: year in order to reap the benefits of that great
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: nutritional season that those dolls were enjoying some time ago.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: It's just not like part of the lingo, correct. Yeah.
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: So, which is also important for us to be mindful
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: of as hunters and even as conservationists when what we
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: what we see today, for example, from yield of males
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: or even size of males within a population in many
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: instances isn't a reflection of what happened then or what
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: happened over the past couple of years. It's actually a
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: reflection of what happened maybe five years ago. And it's
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: in part, and it's in large part because of the
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: conditions that those males experienced from their mom while they
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: were while they were in utero, and those and it's
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: called it, it's called a cohort effect as well, where
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: we may have years where that were just poor years
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: or worse winters where moms were struggling in utero and
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: they didn't they lack the ability to give their young
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: the silver spoon right out of the gate. And so
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: that signal even if conditions improve later on in life,
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: just like our example with the common garden experiment, even
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: if condition for that male gets better after that spring
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: and summer, he's still going to carry the mark of
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: mom mom's nutritional signature with him for his entire life.
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: So when that cohort of males gets to six years old,
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: they're going to carry that signature.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: And so especially when we see I wasn't thinking it's
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: even more delayed, it's even more delayed and so as
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: we consider even ups and downs and fluctuations within populations,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: For example, we see reductions in density and we can
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: talk about to with like bad winters, and then we
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: see nutritional recovery within a population, meaning we have a
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: bunch of fat moms that are able to you know,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: to plug into their offspring.
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: I think what's really interesting is oftentimes in periods of
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: population growth, will then see you know, in a few
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: year lag behind that is when we'll see a number
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: of very large males being harvested.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't It wasn't that again was the timeline.
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: So if we if we see a dramatic reduction in
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: a population, for example, and so that reduction is then
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: tied to reduce competition for food, so nutrition, a big
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: winter kill yep, so nutrition improofs for everybody else that remains.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: So does a big winter kill yep. Wipes out all
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: the deer? Yeah, the twenty percent that are still stand
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: and have gravy now yep, because they got all the
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: good betting areas, they got the good feeding areas, Yeah,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: all to themselves.
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: That's competition for space and food. So nutritionally they're far
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: better off, which means they're they're meeting their needs, and
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: then those females are able to invest allocate more resources
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: to their offspring. So those offspring and we see this,
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: see this in our in our work born bager grow
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: quickly and then they're carrying that positive nutritional signature with them. Right,
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: We're not going to realize that positive nutritional signature from
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: a male harvest perspective until maybe four years down the road.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Right, So that's the thing in my little point I
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: was making that it wasn't even accounting for That's correct,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: you'd have to be I'm excited about this year, yeah,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: because four years ago, Yeah, yep, there was some big
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: some big fad do and then there's exactly right.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: There's kind of like two like countervailing forces then with
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: a bagged winner, because I think like the traditional understanding
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: is like there's a bad winner and then you have
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: to wait for the bucks to backfill, Like so the
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: three year old deer, the old bucks die, the three
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: year old deer become four year old deer, become five
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: year old deer, and you see that sort of but
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: then in a bad winter that those bucks that are
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: born after the bad winner are going to have that
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: limited potential for the rest of their life, but then
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: the bucks born after that are going to have much
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: better potential than the ones that died in the winter.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: So there's like a there's like a a stunned generation
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: right before that generation that's enjoying the more food at
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: the trot that kind of thing.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: So we try to animate what Randall just said, I'll
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: get yeah, sure, well, like like I'm not I know,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: because you're a very smart person.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: Thing.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: I know that you're right, I just don't understand what
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: you're saying.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: We should have a chalkboard in here.
• 49:38
  Speaker 8: That'd be great, no, Like, you know, like the traditional
• 49:41
  Speaker 8: I think, like the traditional very simplistic like logic about
• 49:46
  Speaker 8: winter kill is that old bucks with worn down teeth
• 49:50
  Speaker 8: are going to die and then that unit, if you're
• 49:54
  Speaker 8: just talking about like a unit, you're saying, like, okay,
• 49:56
  Speaker 8: that unit will be back on its feet by the
• 49:58
  Speaker 8: time the younger.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Bucks get to that age. And so it's sort of
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: this like linear like backfilling. But once those bucks get
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: to that age, then you have the generation that we're
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: still in mom during that bad winter, So that generation
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: is going to drop, and then the ones from the
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: generations after that then they're going to have even more
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: food than anyone. So there's almost like a delayed on set.
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: There's like a drop in potential and then a skyrocketing
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: potential in terms of those cohorts.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: Does that make you think he's sitting on a publication here.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: I don't think that it's nearly sophisticated enough to make
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: make it a montieth shot paper.
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: Well, so let's let me I can essentially describe that
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: with what we with what we observe with.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get out my markers the second time.
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: With what we observed in the Wyoming Range, and so
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: we'll say I want to say before I get into that,
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: like I mean, so we've been working in the Wyoming
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: Range now since twenty thirteen.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: But can I can I a quick question I want
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: to hear all about the wild Range. There's one thing
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: I want to clarify. Yep, because you kind of got
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: at it, but I just want to make sure you
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: get at it. Yep. Your job is not producing. Your
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: job is your mandate is not to help hunters kill
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: a huge box. Nah. Okay, so let's clarify like that.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, like what is your sort of what
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: gets you up in the morning. It's not like guaranteeing
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: hunters bigger bucks. Yeah no, okay, yeah, yeah, okay.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: Also, let's sidestep and get some of those things and
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: then I'll swoop back to our deer work.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: In so.
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: Our motto is advancing science and management, one day at
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: one data point at a time. And so that even
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: ties back to like the reference to our name and
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: that our aim is to want advance science, which means
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: I'm One way to think about that is our goal
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: is to better understand what makes these animals tick, how
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: they make a living within the world that they that
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: they do, and then take that one from just like
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: an ecological standpoint, better understand them, and then too, what
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: does it mean for us from a management or conservation perspective.
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: The reference to one data point as a time is
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: we often joke like the amount of effort will put
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: into one single data point because our work, our work
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: is typically if we can pull it off, is long
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: term and its individual base, and so that is we're
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: working to monitor individual animals for as long as we can.
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: So a lot of studies like toss a collar on
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: an animal, you know, monitor for a year or two
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: and that's it. Well, yes, we're using callers, but we're
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: monitoring them for as long as we can, and we're
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: collecting a whole suite of other information.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: On them, generations of deal we are. Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: And so to do that, and so for example, like
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: one animal in particular, it may take a lot lot
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: of money and a lot of effort on our side
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: of things from a field perspective to monitor that one animal,
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: to collect the data point from that one animal. But
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: sometimes that one animal is such a critical data point
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: to better understanding how what makes those animals tick. And
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: then if you take a whole bunch of those individual
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: data points from animals and you pull them together, it
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: allows you know, patterns to emerge for us as to
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: what it means for those animals, notably, I mean, I
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: get to I'm very fortunate to get to be the
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: spokesperson to talk about our work a fair bit, but
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: there's so much that happens behind the scenes that I mean,
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: I shouldn't get any of the credit our funding sources.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: We can't do what we do for free.
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: And so like I'm we're also constantly raising money to
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: make to make that possible. But Wyomen Game of Fish
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: Commission in particular has had a lot of foresight to
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: support us in some of these long term studies. Groups
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: like Merely Fanatic Foundation and Wildlife Natural Resource Trust and
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: many others that have been the backbone that make it
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: possible to do what we do. And then all of
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: the fielder and now especially with the wym Game Fish Department,
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: our central to our ability to be successful and support
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: us in the field. And then I work with an
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: amazing team of people in the shop, grad students, research
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: scientists that pour their heart and their soul into the
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: work we do the data collection that make all this possible.
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: So I want to be able to at least give
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: credit where credit is due. And then if any if
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: I say anything stupid through the course of this, it's
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: totally on me.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: All the good things that are said, they should all
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: get the credit for.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: And to put a finer point on this, like when
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: you say one data point at a time, what you're
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: doing is catching animals by the dozen, and every single
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: one of them. You're taking temperature, you're measuring fat, you're
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: swabbing the nasal passages, you're ultrasounding for pregnancy, you're measuring
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: the size of the fetus. You're I know I'm missing
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: stuff there, but yeah, like I've gone on collaring or
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: I guess to check in and collaring thing, and it's
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's hands on and it's very specific. It's
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: like how much does this animal weigh on this day
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: of the year. So yeah, like I think just to
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: bring it to a more concrete level, like you're you're
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: measuring deer and handling deer the same deer in some
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: cases for years.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, it be like a thing if you
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: go back to the landscape of fear and will move
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: on from the old times, we'll talk about new ship.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: But if you go back to the landscape of fear,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: you Kevin explained that you put a collar on a dough,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: You put a collar on her fawon. Yep, you track
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: her fawn through her whole life, put a collar on
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: her phone. You're starting to get a picture of where
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: did that dough ever go? Where does the fawn ever go?
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: That's right, does the fon go to new places or
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: the same places? When? What are what are the movement patterns?
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: What are their sort of relative fitnesses? Because you're able
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: to look at like how fit was do a what's
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: the condition of herfon? What's the condition of herfon? Yep? Right,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: it paints like an amazing picture. Yes, when you compare
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: it to a different style of biology, might be like
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: we flew it with a helicopter and did a count. Right,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: it's just different. And I'm not dogging on that kind
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: of work. There's probably great work, but like to go like, well,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: let's look at like a lineage, like let's look at
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: these like specific animals over a long period of time,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: and what can we tell about those specific animals that
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: might inform what you're seeing when you fly over a
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: helicopter and count. That's right, right, exactly, It's like you're
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: adding a really important piece to a that can plug
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: in or inform all these other methodologies. Yep, that's exactly right.
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: Like when I went with you, I mean it's your
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: students are your team members are like twenty thirty people
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: all sleeping in the same forest service cabin, like rallying
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: out into the field every day, resting, no drinking rule,
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: wrestling deer and at night at night like someone's making
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: spaghetti and someone's uh whatever you call it. When you
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: spin the blood vile around.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Centerfuge, centerfuge.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like it's literally for a service cabin and someone's
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: making spaghetti and someone's centerfuging meal.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: Deer blood and uh.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: And then everybody wakes up at five in the morning
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: and rallies out again and a long day like in
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: February and Wyoming just like someone's got a clipboard and
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: someone's measuring deer and someone's someone's sampling stuff, and it's
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: just like it's a it's an impressive operation.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: Well, I and I think like even as you describe
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: Steve the ability to see to connect those pieces together,
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: which I hope is like more from like a mechanistic perspective,
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: like how are these things happening?
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Why are these.
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: Animals doing what they're doing, the sort of the getting
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: under the hood perspective as to what what it makes
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: for each one of those animals to tick, and then
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: as we see ailed that up, what that means for
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: understanding what's going on within the population. And that can't
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: happen with like a two year study, right, We're talking
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: many many years to be able to put that together
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: in some of our goals with our work in the
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: Wyoming range. So we've been fortunate to work there since
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: twenty thirteen.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk. Let's let's set that up. We'll talk.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about a specific place. That's right. So
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: do you mind what is the Wyoming Range? Where are
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: we talking about?
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so Wyoming Salt River Range, Western Wyoming. And it's uh,
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: it's home to what either is or has been one
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: of the largest meal deer populations in the world, Region G.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: Region G. Yeah, like you might, and if you hang
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: out on meal deer forums, yep, there's a lot of
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: talk about Region G and a lot of to talk about.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: Region G is a county speculating about its future, yes,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: talking about its challenges, anticipating what are going to be
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: the good years the bad years. It's a very Yeah,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: it is a very discussed unit. One of the reasons
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: that's probably true is because it's like a unit that
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: sort of occupies a distinct geographical feature. Yes, right, It's
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: like when you say Region G, you're kind of talking
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: about like a range, you know. It's very elegant. Yes,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: and it is a probably in the top three or
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: four mule deer spots that get discussed, like the Kaibab.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of the Henry Mountains in Utah,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: people like talk a lot about the agent G gets
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: talked about and mourned, celebrated. Yes, yes, for sure, all
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: of those.
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and so that that population I mean is numbered
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: a thought to have numbered, you know, beyond fifty thousand year,
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: you know, once once upon.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: A time.
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: And then kind of leaning into the ninety two ninety
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: three winter was a time when they were thought to
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: be well over fifty thousand deer within that herd. There
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: was a lot of female harvest that was happening at
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: that point in time to work to bring densities down
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: because they were over over what game inficion define as
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: the herd unit objective. The ninety two ninety three winter
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: hit and the population crashed, and then since then it's
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: kind of fluctuated. I don't know if we whether numbers
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: matter or not, but maybe like thirty to forty thousand
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: is somewhere somewhere in there and on the high end, yeah,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: and hasn't risen to those levels previously and.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: What would be a low end since ninety two. So
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: if let's just let's just accept I know you're saying
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: like maybe fifty thousand, Yeah, if we accept like around
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand, ninety two low end since then, yeah, like
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: it hasn't hit that height again. So the new high
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: end since then has been thirty forty.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, probably mid mid thirties. What park has been like
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: a low end the bottom. So I'm going to get
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: to that eleven eleven thousand.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: So we started in twenty thirteen doing the things that
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: we do is Randell describe to work to understand nutritional
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: dynamics in the herd and then simultaneously just better learn
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: more things about deer that we haven't learned previously. From
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: twenty thirteen, and this was out a time when maybe
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: I forget the exact numbers, were probably bouncing around in
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: the upper thirties, maybe around forty thousand. And from twenty
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: thirteen to twenty sixteen, what we saw each year was
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: just a general decline in body fat of females, both
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: in March and in December, so autumn and spring body fat.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: It just declined from thirteen all the way up until
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: twenty sixteen, and then in twenty sixteen seventeen we had
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: a bad winter. We lost thirty percent thirty percent of
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: our adult females pretty much all of our radio marked fawns,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: and so in going into the going into that winter,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: autumn fat at going into that winter was around seven percent.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: So think remember seven percent body fat. We lost thirty
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: percent that year. Population rebounded began to rebound after that.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: Body fat of level levels of female shot way up.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: And then we had another bad winter in eighteen nineteen,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: lost thirty percent of our adult females again, and twenty nineteen,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: twenty eighteen nineteen. So the eighteen nineteen winter eight nineteen.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: Sorry, we're working on a history product now, we're thinking
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: across centuries, right.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: So say the dates again. I'm sorry I was dumb.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: So you aad so win eighteen twenty nineteen. Yeah, so
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: winter's overlap calendar years, right, So sixteen seventeen winter, eighteen
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: nineteen winter, two bad winters, roughly thirty percent of adult females.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: After each one of those years, we see upticks in
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: nutritional condition following that, so body fat of females shoots up.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: After that, productivity eventually returns. There's always a lag in
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: a year because what ends up happening. This goes back
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: to what you were referencing, Randall. So in those bad
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: winters fawns because they're they're their their metal demands are different.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: They're some of the smallest animals on the landscape and
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: they don't come into winter with much body fat. And
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: this all comes down to allocation related principles, right, And
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: so as a fawn, the energy you obtain is mostly
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: going to grow. You don't have a bunch of extra
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: energy to put in body fat. Versus females. Adult females
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: are done growing and whatever extra energy they have they
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: can put into body fat.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: Or males.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: Part of the reason why we see age related dynamics
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: and antler size or horn growth that we do goes
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: to the same principle up until they reach a symptotic
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: body mass and so are thus basically done growing in
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: body size. We don't see peak antler size until after that,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: and that's all principle of allocation.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Their first prioritizing.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: Body growth and then so even those age related dynamics,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: yes it's age, but it's founded in nutritional principles and
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: how the resources they have and how they allocate energy.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: So even that's driven by nutrition.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: I want to restate that point for people that are
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: at work and they're only half paying attention yeah. For
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: me driving down the road listening to something. I'm listening
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: to Clay's Water, which an episode right now, which is fascinating.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: But I only catch half what he's talking. Monks, I'm driving,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: So if you're driving and you're not, you're only half listening.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: This is good. When the buck throws his I never
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: thought about this far. When a buck throws his biggest antlers,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: he's at a point where he's seeing the least amount
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: of body size growth year over year. That's right. So
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: he's like growing his body grown, his body grown, his
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: body grown, his body boom. He's kind of what he is.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: And then he gets serious about antlers. That's right, exactly,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: that's right. Yep.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: So you can get back to work now, all right,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: all right, you're getting so after after those winters, we
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: see that, we see that up ticking body fat that
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: occurred there after. But during those winters we lose almost
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: all the funds. The females are in poor condition as
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: they exit winter. And then what we see our spikes
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: and stillborns after those bad winters. And yep, and we
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: see suppressed birth mass after those bad winters as well,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: which again, yes, I'll say this over and over again.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: But that has nutritional underpinnings as well for a mom.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: For these long lived iteroparous animals, which just simply means
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: they live a long time and they reproduce multiple times
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: through their lives, their best strategy is to have the
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: opportunity to reproduce multiple times, as opposed to take one
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: instance and pour all into reproduction, because then they're likely
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: to die. If they die, then they lose out on
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 4: all those other opportunities to reproduce. So what that means
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: for females that are in poor shape, it's better for
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: them to survive and for their offspring to die than
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: it is for them to pour everything they have into
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: their offspring and then compromise their own survival.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: So that's part of why we see if she lives,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: she might crank out three more or whatever.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: Conditional will get better next number of years, and she's
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: gonna have the opportunity to try again. So we see
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: increased still rates of still borning UH suppressed birth mass.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: Birth mass plays a huge role in whether or not
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: they survive thereafter, and so what that means is you
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: have high rates of still borning. In fact, in some
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: of those years it's like the leading cause of fund
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: mortality after those bad winters, and so.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: And and that and that, just because like that fetus
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: isn't just it's not getting fed, malnourished, essentially malnourished in
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: the womb dies in the womb of malnourishment. Yeah, that's
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: exactly right. And they're born dead. That's north I never do.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: It makes total sense. It just never really thought about that.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: That has never thought about the fact that a dole
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: would like get pregnant but then not have a fun right.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, no, for sure. And I think to to
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: sort of sidestep. I think it's also important to point
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: out for deer in particular, both white till deer and mule.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Deer, they very early abort, so they will.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: Typically once they're pregnant, they will carry they will almost
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: always carry it to term, but then they may drop
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: stillborn's for example, in those in those years with those
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: those bad conditions we have when it's gotten really really
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: bad in those bad winters, we have seen a couple
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: of premature abortions that have occurred, but it's very rare
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: and deer.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so she she birds it, she burns at the
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: right time.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: Yep, but it's still born, it's dead, and so deer
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: strategy is to typically carry the term, so they're almost
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: always pregnant. Twinning is very common, and then they'll typically
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: make those sort of like nutritional decisions of if they
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: can do it once the young have hit the ground.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: And so that's why we see that versus creators like
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: prong horn or moose for example, where if things get
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: really bad they may just they're more likely to just
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: abort on the way, or for creators like maybe elk
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: well moose, elk sheep, we see nutritional signs is more
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 4: strongly tied to like how fat they are and whether
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: or not they're going to be pregnant. So those those
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: those things are evident along along the way regardless. What
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: that means is we're almost missing two cohorts of young.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: In those instances we lost the we lost the fawns
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: in the bad winter. We lose a vast majority of
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: the fawns that are born after the bad winter because
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 4: of that nutritional suppression that has occurred. So there's basically
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: two cohorts. And so if you think, you know, from
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: a hunting perspective, two cohorts, then that once those cohorts
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: would have been four to six years of age. There's
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 4: not going to be a lot of animals in those
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: age ranges because few of them actually made it through,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: and anyone that made it through, especially after the bad winter,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 4: when females are in such poor shape, they're going to
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: carry that nutritional signature of mom barely surviving through that
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 4: bad winter, and so they're going to be small regardless
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: one they once they hit that age.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: Then, dude, I got it. I'm sorry, man, I got it.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: I got two questions. Okay. I I have to try
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: to remember where I was. I don't lose track. But no, no, no,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: I ask your questions. Write them down and write them down. Okay, Okay,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: now I feel like it just derailed you. I don't know.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: I just got to write them down. Okay, okay, right now,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: not joking. I'm joking. Don't me keep going and wait
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: to ride them there? Uh? Okay, right now, the.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 6: Lamb, it's almost as compelling as you're reading news stories
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 6: for the first.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, there's off to Phil. Yeah, dude, listen, it's just
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: that what you're telling me is so interesting to me. Okay,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: we'll continue on, all right, all right, so after after
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: the bad.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: Winners, there's of course, there's the there's the flushing in well, actually,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: let me said stuff a bit. After those two bad winners,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: we had enough data where we can look at what
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: determines whether or not female do you or survive bad winters.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: And there's a few factors that are critical. Yes, the
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: worse the winter is the lower probability to have to
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: survive the winter. That's intuitive, right. The more the better food,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: so like sage brush growth on their winter range, and
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 4: in this in this range in sage brush is critical
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: the core of their diet through winter. So more and
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: better sage brush growth on their winter range helps them survive.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: Their ability to freely move on their winter ranges and
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: just be able to move and access food on their
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: winter range plays a role.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: Is that a function of snow?
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, in part a function of snow yep. And then
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: we also see very strong age dependent relationships, So old
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: females and so especially in a bad winter, we're going
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: to lose old females and then some of the very
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: youngest ones. But otherwise, like that sort of prime age
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: from say three to seven or so are pretty solid
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: from an age perspective. But the other driving factor, in
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 4: the most profound factor, is how fat they were going
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: into that winter. Okay, So I think what's important to
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: considering that and the reason why it happens this way
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 4: is if you consider why animals die on a winter
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: and a bad winter, and you can you can almost
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: translate this to like any sort of like environmental event
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: that challenges them nutritionally, and that's what a bad winter does.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: And for an animal to persist through the winter, it
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: just needs to meet its energetic requirements through the course
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: of the winter. And so as you pile up snow,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: that's going to increase their nutritional deficit. Pile up snow
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: and cold, right, so thermal regulate, cost to thermal regulate,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: maintain body temperature, cost to locomotion, wade through snow, and
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: access food. And it's also restricting food. It's reducing their
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 4: ability to access the food.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: So all of those.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: Things hamper their ability to meet their daily energy requirements.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: What fat does is it's basically it's as if they
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 4: packed groceries on their back from summer range. And so
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 4: if and if that's one of the most profound factors
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: that influences over winter survival, what it means is that
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: over winter survival is largely dictated by what they experienced
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 4: on a completely different range that could be one hundred
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: miles away, and the food that they had access to
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: there months earlier, and they're bringing that with them to
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: winter range and that's helping ensure their survival over winter.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: That's a fact you don't consider.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: Either, not like how on the on a loan and
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: some of these survival reality television shows, the contestants try
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: to just pack on weight before they go out there.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: Got it, that's my that's mine. They're going to take situation.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you got to bring your reserves.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah I ain't ready.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: Okay, So after and I think one one significant piece
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: here is after those bad winters, we see the we
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: see the upticks in in body fat that's tied to
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: that added precipitation. But those upticks in body fat stay
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: even after that first year. It stays for a couple
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: of different reasons. One reason is reduction in density, so
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 4: fewer miles on the landscape, and that signature is profound
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: within our data, and some many people don't like to
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: hear that, especially when it comes to deer. They may
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: argue like, oh, density doesn't doesn't matter. We don't want
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: to hear that, But it's true. The more miles that
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: are on the landscape, the increase competition for food and
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: that's gonna have that's going to result in lower body fat.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: And who doesn't want to hear that?
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 4: It depends well, so it depends upon the context of
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: what it means for who doesn't want to hear that.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: What the potential implications are of it is that And
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: I guess we'll either get to this now or more
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: so later. But more is not always better. And much
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: of our publics, for example, want more dear. We always
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: want more deer, But more isn't always better when you
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: consider it from a nutritional perspective of what's happening within
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 4: a population and so and that that has been very
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: evident within within the wyoming range with our data there
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: and so increased precip fewer miles on the landscape, lower competition.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: What's also interesting, and this this goes all the way
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: back to our conversation of why we see, for example,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: even different antler capabilities of size from one place to
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: the next from a nutritional perspective, But what we what
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: we see after animals have gone through those bad winters.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: We evaluated what factors influence their gain and fat over
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: the summer. And it's all the things I mentioned. It's
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: it's habitat, it's pre sip, it's density of density of
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: deer on the landscape, it's age, it's whether or not
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: you recruited, whether or not you lactated and recruited young.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: But the other thing is if you've experienced a bad
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 4: winter and so in the past. Yeah, and so the
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 4: animals that live through bad winters, we what we see
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: within them is this slight shift and how they allocate
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: their their body reserves over time.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: You're kidding me, No, I'm not.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: I'm not at all, and to the point where they learn, Yeah,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: and not to not to like anti promorphized too much
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: because it's like it took it's a physiological component. But
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 4: what it is is, yeah, it's an adaptation associated with
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 4: this like subtle preprogramming, pre programming within the animals.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: That's a slight shift.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 4: And we call it ressensitive reproductive allocation where the risk
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: they allocate resources to reproduction in a risk sensitive way, right,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: and that risk is associated with what they're going to
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: experience there after. And again if they invest too much
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: into reproduction, they're risking their own survival, right, because they
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: need reserves to survive. We have a bad winter that's
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: like life threatening and they barely make it. We see
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: that shift in resensitive allocation to the level where there's
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 4: slight increases in body fat that we see if animals
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: had experienced bad winter past, even after we've accounted for
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 4: all all the other factors that are there.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: And it's not like you know what I said, like
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: they learn. It's not that it's not that they're like,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: hey man, when when the weather gets bad, I got
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: a little move. Yeah, rog ou don to old man
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: Lawrence's haystat right. It's not that.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: No, it's it's like it's physiological and I think what
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 4: can also Maybe that sounds crazy, it's not. There's been
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: some very elegant work and so so that work of
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: mine was led by Taylor Lashar, and we drew from
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: some prior work when we decided to investigate that idea
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: from Board Barton, who was able to take semi domesticated
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 4: reindeer in Norway and ones that were supplementally fed through
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: the winter and ones that were not, and just by
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: way of shifting them taking the supplementally fed ones and
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: going to a natural pasture, or taking the ones that
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: were from the natural pastor and going to supplemental feeding.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: Animals carried their signature of the range that they were
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: on and how they allocated resources to reproduction, with the
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: exception of those that went from supplemental feeding to the
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: natural pasture, they instantly dropped how they allocated resources to
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: reproduction because it was the potential it was a potentially
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: compromising their ability to maintain themselves, which is which is
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: the priority. So I liken it to like winter PTSD,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: these animals had this life threatening experience and there's this
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 4: subtle shift within their preprogramming and to support that further,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 4: and I worked with captive deer for almost a decade.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: You can have captive white tailed deer, any any captive
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: ungulate for that matter, except for maybe domestic animals, and
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: supplementally feed them the entire year, so they're on the
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: best nutrition all year round, and we still see cycles
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: in their diet how much they eat in their body
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 4: fat and body masks through the entire year, when technically,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: like they're supplementally fed, it could just be constant through
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 4: the whole year, but it's not We see these natural rhythms,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 4: and so they voluntarily through the winter reduce metabolic rate,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: reduce appetite and how much they're eating to go through
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: those sites. And so I think the most I mean,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: maybe it's like, Okay, that's cool, so deer slightly reprogrammed
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: after a bad winter. But I think what it also
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 4: tells us is that animals are adapted to the local
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: environment within the ranges, in the conditions that they experience,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: to the point where even within an environment like that,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 4: when we see this huge, huge shock to the system,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: we see animals adapting accordingly, and so that should help
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: convince us that when we go from one range to
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 4: the next, these animals are operating in ways that correspond
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: with that range, so that they're locally adapted, which is
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: the same reason we see antlers the way in which
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 4: we do females doing what they do. For example, females
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: in the Wyoming range are not going to gain fat
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: the same way that female deer in southeast Montana are
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: going to different range, different environmental conditions, they need different
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: things to be able to persist within that environment. So
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 4: to go one step further, all these things happening with
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: body fat, the reduction in density within the herd. Then
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 4: we begin to enter into the twenty two to twenty
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: three winter, which this is like, I don't know, one
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 4: hundred plus year winter, like while this winter that we've
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: seen for decades within that country, we lost seventy percent
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 4: of our adult females, all of our radio marked fams
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: six all of them just all gone sixty five percent
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 4: of our adult males. So man, yeah, that dropped the
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: population to eleven roughly eleven thousand animals through the course
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 4: of that winter. And I mean it was like animals
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: were sort of like got so concentrated on the south
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: facing slope in places where there's like juniper but no food,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 4: the hedgeline, the brows line, and the juniper was like
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: almost as tall as me, where they just all they
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: would do is just walk these trails around around juniper,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: just eating whatever they could, sage brush, any sagebrush that
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 4: was exposed, like the twigs, everything was eaten to the
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 4: to the snow line. I mean, it was it was
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: a very sad experiment experience in an incredibly, incredibly devastating
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 4: winter in that regard for that deer population.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: I had as it's probably connected to you, but a
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: buddy mine has a property in Wyhoming and he was
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: there were some researches that we're doing little collaring work
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: on his place. Or it feels he might even been
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: talking about your outfit. It's a Western Whoming. Anyways, he
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: was playing. He was telling me how this guy was
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: telling him that during that winter. He's like, it was
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: that there'd be moments, Yes, yeah, there'd be moments when
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: the mortality signals were like bing bing bing bing bing. Yep.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: So like within this broad time of like really heard
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: of prolonged period of intense hardship, there'd be like killing.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 4: Moments, yes, yeah, yeah, And so can you explain that
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 4: a little bit?
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 4: So again, this goes back to what we also talked
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 4: about before, and that animals simply need to meet their
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: daily energy requirements and fat helps with that during that winter.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 4: And I think this is just a really striking example
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 4: of this. For females that entered winter, that entered that
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 4: winter over fifteen percent that entered winter under fifteen percent
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: body fat, we began losing them on February fifteenth, a
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 4: female deer that entered winter over fifteen percent body fat,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: we did not start losing them till March fifteenth, a
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: month later, which, like if you could just distill a
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 4: bunch of data in a very simple manner, that's incredibly
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 4: telling to just be able to say that. So what
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 4: that meant is that animals were very much on the
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: nutritional edge and so they're barely getting by. They're barely
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 4: meeting their daily energy requirements. And so as we would
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 4: go through that winter, and that winter was very very
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 4: cold as well, when we'd see storms come in or
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: significant drops in temperature for a couple of days, we
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 4: just see spikes in mortality. And that's because what it's
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: done is they're barely meeting their daily energy requirements. We
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 4: see those those drops in temperature, their energy requirements go
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: up because they're needing to meet basal metabolic demands through
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 4: the winter in that day and they just can't do it,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: and so they die. And so that's where those spikes
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 4: and mortality came from during that period of time. Now,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: what I think is very also very important and incredibly
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 4: revealing to the work that we've done there specifically with
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: regards to bad winters. And if we go back to
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 4: the sixteen seventeen winter, the eighteen nineteen winter, the recovery,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 4: the recovery in nutritional condition, so body fat that occurred thereafter,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: and in part again because of the signals of the
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: bad winter, but also the reduction and density on the
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 4: landscape so fewer mouths to feed. We entered the twenty
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 4: two to twenty three winter at over twelve percent body fat.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: So if you remember, do you remember what we entered
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: the sixteen seventeen winter, seven percent, So that's a that's
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: a huge difference. Entered seven percent during the sixteen seventeen winner,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 4: we lost thirty percent of our females. Twenty two twenty
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: three winter way way worse than the sixteen seventeen winter.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: We ran Taylor ran our survival models for the twenty
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: two to twenty three winter based on a seven percent
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: body fat level. So had we started at seven percent
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 4: going into the twenty two twenty three winter, we would
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 4: have lost over ninety percent of our deer population. No
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: kid meaning yeah, yeah, we go back to sixteen seventeen
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 4: eighteen nineteen. The reductions in deer density, the recovery and
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 4: body fat that occurred thereafter those winters saved us in
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 4: the twenty two to twenty three winter. Had we come
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 4: into the twenty two twenty three winter at those lower
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 4: levels that we were experiencing previously, prior to those former
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 4: bad winters, we probably would have lost essentially everything. Meaning
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: if we go back to the more is not always
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 4: better perspective, especially in that I mean, that's the very
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 4: clear demonstration of more is not necessarily always better from
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: a nutritional perspective.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: In that way.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you if you had more deer going into
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: that winner, it's not the case that more deer would die,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: but it would be proportional. You'd actually have a higher proportion.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: If you had more deer on the landscape, you'd have
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: a higher proportion that would die. That's correct than if
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: you had fewer deer going into it.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. Hmm, God's great, man, I
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: mean it's bad. It's interesting when I say great, I
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: mean it's great. What happened to the deer saying it's
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: a great Oh yeah, yeah, with the input of information,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know, just like understanding.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot of power in that. Just like
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 4: that scenario and how it played out for us. I mean,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 4: the winters, the winter's basically presented to us a huge
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: experiment or treatment effect essentially based on like the severe
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 4: the severe nutritional limitation and then the massive reduction and
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: see that occurred with that.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, we were doing the work that we were when
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: we were doing it.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 4: Otherwise we'd still just we'd still be talking about like
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 4: how bad winters are, and they are bad, but what
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: does it mean for the population? And even this notion
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: that like you know what happens on a winter range,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 4: we see it, right, It's very evident to us these
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 4: animals die on winter range. But at the same time,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 4: one of the major reasons why they're dying is because
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 4: of what they experienced during the summer and if whether
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 4: or not they brought enough reserves with them from summer range.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: And I just thought about, sorry, go ahead, I was
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 3: gonna say, and all that stuff would be invisible unless
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: you had those very individual, that's correct data points, right,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: Like you're not going to pick that up from not
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: to poke at the helicopter people, but you're not going
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: to pick that up from an aerial survey, like it's
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: a very intimate knowledge of specific animals.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're going to I mean, you're going to
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: see the level of loss.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: Right, but you're not going to see the underlying.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 4: No, and to be able, you know, for our ability
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 4: to be able to do that, Like we know how
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 4: old each animal is, we know the fact that they
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: brought with them this from summer range, we know where
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 4: they lived on summer range, and we can connect and
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 4: build all those pieces together, which also not only allows
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: us to tell those stories, but tell a number of
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 4: our other stories associated with how.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: Animals learn to migrate. What does it mean for them?
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 4: What does it mean for the reproductive chronology and their
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 4: cycle through the year, and those sorts of things. Unless
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 4: we have those repeated samples and the things that we're measuring,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 4: we lack the ability to be able to paint that picture.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: And so that deer that you talked about at the beginning,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 4: that really small male, he was born. He was born
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: in twenty seventeen, so he was born after the sixteen
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: seventeen winter. And yeah, all day long, in fact, I
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 4: mean even as for the potential of antler growth that
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 4: exists within the Wyoming range, I mean.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: All day long.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 4: When he was three years old, I mean, I would
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 4: have said, and I think that's kind of what you're
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 4: referencing to Steve. I would have called him he's either
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 4: a large yearling or a small.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: Two year old. I would have said it in a
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: declarative fashion. And he's three, and he's three three and
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: a half years old, and I would have also said,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: I can tell you what he is now. My abilities
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: fall apart when they get up to be like four
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: or five six years old, but one hundred percent what
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: you're looking at right.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely absolutely, Okay, can is it time now?
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: Because this is the benefit of being the host, get
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: the indulgent a series of very fast questions. I want
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: to more information, Okay, hot tip. Yeah, you should start
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: a tag service where it's predictive modeling and you sell
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: to people tips.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 4: Be like, I would be looking very seriously X in
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 4: four years. I think meat eaters should just hire us
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 4: and meat eater should offer that service thing.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called the Monteith Labs or monte Text Meat Eater. Okay,
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: we'll do that. Okay, okay, not a quick question, yeap.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: Theod Amy and my boy are driving down the road,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: my older boy, and there's all these sirens and paramedics
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: running around, and we stopped well shy by take my
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: binoculars and look, and I see something quite startling. There's
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: a wrecked motorcycle. There's seven firefighters and paramedics working on
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: a man who's like splayed out on the road. And
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: there's a demolished fawn. I don't know, no idea the
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: guy lived or not tried to miss a fawn hit
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: The fawn was a mess on the road. Two days later,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: we drove down that road and there's a dough still
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: standing there, like one hundred yards away, but looking agitated.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: Three o'clock in the afternoon, she's still on her feet,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: looking like agitated, down in the ditch. When you with
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: your are you able to ever able to pull out
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: of your data sets? What that relationship's like? Like she
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: has a stillborn? Does she still hang around? Does she
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: immediately walk away? Do you know what I mean? When
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: she loses a fond what is the sort of there's
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: no way to measure grief. Yeah, but like when does
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: she go like huh, I guess it's time to move on? Yeah?
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 4: Interesting question and highly variable from one individual to the next.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 4: In most instances with stillborns, though we can suspect even
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 4: just via their GPS data around the birth event, whether
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 4: or not they had stillborns, because they tend to peace.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: Out pretty quickly. She knows what happened. Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: And also many females like they if they lose one
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 4: of their young later on to whatever reason, rarely do
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 4: they stick around.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: They will often leave.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 4: However, there are a handful of females that are just
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 4: their motherly nature, whatever that is, may may be there
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 4: and even defending the carcass. Still when when we arrive
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 4: very typically within twenty four hours by the time when
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 4: we're working to get in there, but quicker than that, Yeah, yeah,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 4: they're gone by the time when we get in there.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: Yep, got it, yep, exactly. Uh, here's an observation when
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: you're talking about this this thing of like gaming out,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: how much energy am I going to put into this offspring?
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: Uh it's implied, but but just to point to an
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: example of something entirely different, Like think about a Pacific
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: salmon when they go they're going, Yeah, I mean, John,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: I mean like like kings can kind of delay, a
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: king salmon can delay. He doesn't have to stay to
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: a set schedule, you know, he can whatever his body
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: will make a decision like, nope, not going to go.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: That's why you get huge kings, right, that's why you
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: get you could get a seventy pound king because for
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: whatever reason, for a number of years it didn't click
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: on and it didn't run. But these other sam of
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: around a set schedule. It's like I'm going, buddy, I
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: hope the river's right. I hope the river's right because
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: it's happening. Question if I took a deer, If I
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: took a buck from Iowa, Okay one hundred and eighty
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: inch white tail from Iowa two hundred plus pounds, one
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: hundred and eighty inch handlers, and I brought him down
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: and put them in Who's dear country? And Sonora, does
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: he just die?
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 4: Cus deer country? And scenario probably die. He just dies
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 4: because his pattern Cou's deer. Did you say I'll fight
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 4: you over it?
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: Because his groove his like sister, the yeah just isn't
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: going to translate. That's right, Okay, that's right. Yep. Uh.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: This one's controversial to what you need to answer. Yeah,
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: they look in your face. I just wonder about like
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: is it even possible, Like what if you went and
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: looked at human fitness, human physical fitness. Does some of
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: the stuff is some of the stuff relevant. People don't
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: like to do that kind of stuff, but.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's there's a substantial amount. And of
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 4: course I don't nutrition. Oh yeah, okay, there's lots of
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 4: evidence within human human medicine associated with maternal nutrition. Yes,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 4: that ties that translates over a generation. Yeah, absolutely, God,
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 4: that's all my questions and humans as well.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's all my questions.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 4: Maybe a couple a couple other things related related to
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 4: some of these ideas. One of them, okay, So the
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 4: other thing that we saw after a couple of those
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 4: bad winters is on winter range, we tried to keep
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 4: our same animal distribution over time, roughly, so if we
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 4: lose animals, we work to go back in and recatch
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 4: adult females from that same general area.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: To keep the same number cooking.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 4: Yep, yeah, exactly, roughly seventy adult females is part of
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 4: that is what is with that study. As we were
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 4: going back to some of the areas where we had
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 4: routinely caught deer in the past and wanted to replace them,
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 4: we couldn't find any. There was none in there. After
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 4: those two bad winters, and so it got us scratching
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 4: our heads. Okay, what does that mean? Did those bad
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: winters just cause animals to like, yeah, I'm not living
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 4: here anymore and shift out of that country when they
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 4: were pushed by the bad winter because of snow conditions.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 4: Did they then find a new place that was better
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 4: and then stay there or did they just die and
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 4: they're not there anymore? So we evaluated that question. And
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 4: while certainly there are signals, you know, animals can be
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 4: displaced a bit by a bad winter, which also interesting though,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 4: is a stronger signal of that displacement is if animals
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 4: had a bad winter the prior year, and so again
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 4: it's like this win this winter PTSD. The shift from
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 4: where they had lived previously tends to occur after the
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 4: bad winter, as opposed to during the bad winter. So
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 4: it's like the memory of the bad winter results in
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 4: a shift from when they would normally winter because because Meal.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: And they're like, but I'm sticking it out, but next
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: year I'm going somewhere else.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 4: That's that's exactly right, because Meal they're incredibly faithful. They're
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 4: incredibly faithful to the winter range, to their summer range,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 4: into their migratory route do the same thing year after
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 4: year as adults, and so they they they they shift
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 4: the winter PTSD shift after the bad winters. But what
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 4: we learned from that work in particular, was that the
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 4: reason why we ended up with these vacant holes on
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 4: winter range was because animals died and we lost them.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 4: And remember, one of the key factors that influences whether
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 4: or not they live or die through winter is how
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 4: fat they were. So what that means means is what
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 4: we observe on a winter range with regards to population distribution.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 4: For example, Yes, it's influenced by what happens there during winter,
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 4: but it again is dictated by what happens during summer.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 4: So summer nutrition, where animals go and their summer nutrition
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 4: plays a huge influence in winter distribution of animals.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: But they're making like that, they're making a mistake. What
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: do you mean they're making a mistake. They're not not
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: the hack on them, They're not thinking it through. They shouldn't. Okay,
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: what's the what's the thinking they're blaming? What would you do? No, No,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not I'm joking. I'm not joking. Yeah, it's summer range.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: It's like it has a poor experience on summer range,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: goes into a season with low body fat six percent,
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: goes to winter range, has a terrible winter on winter range.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: Its response could possibly be I need to find a
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: new summer range. Oh yeah, but it's blaming the winter range.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 4: You did this on purpose, beautiful segue. So they don't
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 4: find a new summer range. These animals are These animals
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 4: are incredibly faithful to their world as adults, and so
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 4: they don't go find a new summer range. They just
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 4: they go back up and do the same thing year
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 4: after year. So then what that then relates to, I
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 4: have two things I need to get to make sure
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 4: I get to. One is reproductive chronology. The other the
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 4: other is what it means across generation of animals. So
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 4: what that means in that scenario and how that plays
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 4: out is why did that animal end up with that
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 4: summer range and why did it end up with that
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 4: migratory route. We know and have known for a bit
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 4: now that once once they have their routes as adults,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 4: that it's functionally a trade of the animal that it possesses,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 4: kind of like even even saying that this animal is
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 4: really dark colored, Well, this animal has a forty five
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 4: mile migration at Summer's in Deer Creek and it winters
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 4: down in Nugget Canyon. Like it's practically a trade of
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 4: the animal because that's what it does. So then the
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 4: question is how did it get there? Why did that
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 4: animal end up with that? And so the other thing
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 4: we've been working on doing is understanding the only way
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 4: to get to that is to start from day one
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 4: from an animal when the day it was born, and
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 4: then follow it alongside mom as you were describing early on.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 4: And so we've been working to do that to test
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 4: this question of ontogeny migration or like how do they
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 4: learn to migrate? Where does it come from? And so,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 4: which is also very hard when you have so many
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 4: bad winters because it wipes out all your young animals
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 4: that you've been trying to monitor alongside mom. But we've
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 4: at least gotten to the point despite the bad winters
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 4: that we've had sixteen mother daughter pairs that we've been
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 4: able to monitor from daughters growing up to be three
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 4: years of age to the point where they're reproductively active.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 4: Of those sixteen, eleven of them adopted Mom's migratory route,
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 4: so they basic do the exact.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: Same thing that mom does.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 4: Five however, and this sort of gets back to what
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 4: you were alluding to. Five however, changed things up and
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 4: did something differently. What's interesting in that is that those
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 4: there's almost there's not even really like a continuous gradient
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 4: of like this one definitely did like rate on top
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 4: of Mom's route, and then you know, weekends, weekends, weekends,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 4: And then we have some that basically don't adopt Mom's route.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 4: It's either like you do the vast majority of it,
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 4: or you don't at all got it. And so there
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 4: are a handful of young females that disperse and do
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 4: something differently. They find a different migratory route, and so
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 4: there are a number of them that do things differently,
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 4: but not as adults. Adults is pretty fixed. The young animals,
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 4: a few do it, but the ones that do change
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 4: it seems like whatever they do during their yearling year,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 4: so when they turn one year of eight is what
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 4: they then end up doing for the rest of their lives.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 4: Like that's what establishes it. What's also really interesting and
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 4: is not what I would have expected, which again, our
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 4: sample size is only sixteen.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: We have more to go here to be able to
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: get there to do this.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 4: But the ones that adopted a different migratory route, much
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 4: to my surprise, they largely clung to what where they
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 4: lived on summer range, but then migrated to a different
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 4: winter range. And I would have thought it would have
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 4: been the opposite, especially with regards to what you just said,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 4: we'll go somewhere else to summer. The majority of them
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 4: are still residing close to their natal range where they
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 4: were born, but they adopt a different migratory route and
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 4: go to a different winter range, which I'm not entirely
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 4: sure what to make of that yet, but that's that's
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 4: what we've seen.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 3: So you're saying, at sort of the yearlink stage, that's
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 3: the pattern that they adopt for the rest of their lives.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: Are they.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 3: Is there any correlation to like if the mother dies
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 3: before they turn one, you know, like yep, are more
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 3: of those deer likely to be these sort of pathfinders
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 3: or what's the relationship there?
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 4: Very good question, which we're only looking at sixteen at
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 4: the moment, But in looking at those sixteen there seems
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 4: to be no relationship to whether or not mom dies
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 4: or mom lives. That seems to not play a role
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 4: at least as of as of yet. But to then
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 4: take that to the level of like why we see
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 4: deer where we do, how they get there, all of
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 4: these pieces with which determines why animals live where they
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 4: do and the success that they have for deer anyway,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 4: it all starts such early in life. It's a cross
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 4: generational process. Clearly that we need to be able to
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 4: document document from them. And one, maintaining migration is clearly
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 4: something that translates across generation as young learned from mom.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 4: But two and so that means we're you know, we're
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 4: also conserving memory on a landscape. But two also I
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 4: think the few animals that did something different maybe is
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 4: like a glimmer of hope that you know, when things
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 4: are lost. So if we lose certain migratory routes, how
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 4: do we get them back? Is the question, because if
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 4: everybody's faithful to what they know, then nobody's going to
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 4: go back there. And I firmly believe with what we've
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 4: been able to learn about meal deer over the past
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 4: fifteen or so years, that something that is hampering us,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 4: or has hampered us from the past to the present
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 4: is when we've lost certain animals across the landscape that
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 4: migrated into certain places before. I mean, there's you know,
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 4: many people can say, man, there used to be deer
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 4: all over this ridgeline, and I just don't see deer
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 4: here anymore. And they may reference a number of reasons
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 4: why they think that is. They may reference it as
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 4: an elkhole. Now it's full of elk, or whatever the
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 4: case may be. But the reason why they potentially don't
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 4: come back is because the only way to get that
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 4: backfilled is for animals to be pioneers and venture out
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 4: into new range, which adults tend not to do. And
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 4: so we're relying on the small proportion a few yearlings
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 4: to potentially regain that space. And if we lose this
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 4: is that you know, vacant space Randall. We've you know,
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 4: talked about a bunch as well. If we lose occupancy
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 4: of those places on the landscape over time, for whatever reason,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 4: we lose memory to those places. What that's doing is
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 4: it's functionally reducing the carrying capacity of the range. If
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 4: you don't have animals using it, it technically doesn't matter,
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 4: and maybe viable habitat that's there, but for it to
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 4: matter to the population, somebody needs to be using it
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 4: and integrating that food into the into the population.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: That's so interesting because you look at places like that
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: and you're like, what is it about it that that's
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: not Why don't they like it? That's right?
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's what we think. Yeah, why aren't they
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 4: going here? Well, nobody knows to go there, and so
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 4: how do you get them? How do you get them
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 4: back in there?
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: You know, salm and there's a sorry randall and salmon.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: Some percentage of a run I always say they screw up,
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: but it's some some percentage of it. Run doesn't go
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: back to the natal stream. They screw up end up
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: somewhere else. But think about the implications of it. Yeah,
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: because river systems change. I mean, there could be a
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: river that doesn't have suitable spawning gravel and then a
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: flood whatever landslide on something and all of a sudden boom,
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: it's great, some number of fish, some fish is gonna
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: like some number are going to screw up and go
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: up that thing and then it could be could be
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: something gold mine. It's a portfolio, just place a sweet
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: portfolio effect. And also you create a new right and
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: think about like the thing I always want to think
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: about that too, is like as as climate changes, Yeah,
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of salmon rivers that would be great
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: salmon rivers, but there too far. North's too cold, right,
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: So as because you had that dispersal mechanism, things could
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: just suddenly become kind of right, that's right, and some
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: fish is going to take a left when he should
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: have taken it right and wind up finding a new exactly.
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: It takes two but you follow me, yeah, just yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: I got a technical question for you if I see it.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: Let's say a fellow sees a nice buck on the
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: last day of season, Say it's November night of fellas,
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: he's a nice buck on November twenty fourth, so you know,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: no one got him. He could die from other stuff.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: But the next year, on November twenty fourth, in your mind,
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: how far is that dear from where he was the
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: year before, based on your based on your research, all
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: depends it does. Yeah, but he's already an adult, he's
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: already set in his.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 4: Ways so best. So we're working on understanding those aspects
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 4: of males as well. Male dispersal from their natal range,
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 4: how faithful they are to their seasonal ranges as well,
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 4: and yeah, I mean in general, as you as you noted,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 4: they're living within their within their range, right, and so
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 4: I think that the certainly not that far from there. He
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 4: lived up in that country, right. The only wild card
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 4: within that is during a hunting season, as males get
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 4: potentially pushed around, he may have been in a non
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 4: normal place than what he often is the one year
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 4: that he's seen versus versus the next year. But certainly, yeah,
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 4: I could have generally he was in a spy he
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 4: don't want to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's exactly right.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 4: But otherwise he you know, he lives in that country,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 4: so yeah, they're there.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, when you're talking about re restoring a lost migration
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 3: corridor on this habitat, like because you're it's a it
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 3: would be a yearling of yearling with some wander lust
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 3: that takes off down a new ridge or whatever else.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 3: There aren't going to be any other deal that then
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: convert to that range. It's all going to come from
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 3: that deer's offspring, correct.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: Most likely.
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's a long to cross generation you're talking about,
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 3: but multiple multiple generations before you have like a herd
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 3: of deer using that.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 4: That's right, which reinforces the importance of maintaining what you
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 4: have because you are maintaining and protecting memory on the landscape.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 4: And if once we lose it, especially for a such
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 4: a faithful animal like a deer, we don't we don't
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 4: necessarily get it back, just like that versus elk, where
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 4: they'll just go go anywhere, they'll take advantage of whatever
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 4: happens to be there. But for deer, their memory is
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 4: like their fence around their world of what they do.
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 4: And I think another thing that I think, I think
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 4: this is just super interesting and I think speaks to
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 4: the level of intimacy between animal, female deer and their
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 4: environment is that if you consider mule deer, who all
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 4: share a common winter range, Okay, some migrate ten miles,
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 4: some grade one hundred and twenty miles. The one that
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 4: my rates one hundred and twenty miles is typically often
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 4: going to be going to higher elevation, potentially traversing a
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 4: lot of country, dealing with snow conditions and spring stuff
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 4: like that in an ideal world. And for meal deer,
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 4: they want to go back and give birth to the
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 4: range they typically give birth in. We've literally had female
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 4: deer give birth in the exact same bedsite one year
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 4: after the next. I mean, they're very faithful to their
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 4: birth sits. So then the question is, well, what does
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 4: that mean for them to time birth to coincide with
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 4: when food is available on their summer range and for
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 4: their ability to get to their summer range to give birth.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 4: And so we looked at that in as we talked earlier,
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 4: we not only see animals on the day they're bone,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 4: but we also see them in utero. So when we
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 4: recatch females in March, we see the fetuses in utero
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 4: and we measure their eye diameter, which gives us an
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 4: indication of how far along in gestation they are. So
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 4: we've been able to put those pieces together to look
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 4: at what factors influence eye diameter in March, so that
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 4: gestational progression, what determines where they are in March, and
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 4: then what does that mean thereafter Because one of the
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 4: strongest signals that determines when animals give birth is how
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 4: far along they were in gestation in March, So we
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 4: can use fetal eye diameter. In fact, we use it
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 4: to help guide our planning in the spring when we're
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 4: going to catch mule, deer fonds or bigcorn sheep lambs.
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 4: The anticipation of who's going to give birth when we
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 4: use fetal eye diameter that we measured in March.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: But that's like fine tuning within a pretty narrow window.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 4: Though to some degree for sheep it can be pretty broad.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 4: But for deer, yes, it's fine tuning within a narrow window.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 4: That said what we so we then looked at so
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 4: since fetal eye diameter plays such a major role in
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 4: when they give birth, we looked at factors that influence
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 4: fetal eye diameter. Uh and I think one of the
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 4: most fascinating aspects that influence fetal eye diameter is how
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 4: far they migrate. So animals that migrate further have smaller
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 4: eye diameter in March than those that migrate short distances,
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 4: if that may. So the ones that migrate short distances
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 4: are further along in gestation in March, which means they're
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 4: going to give birth sooner to be that's right. That's right,
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 4: and greenup is going to happen faster on that range
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 4: than the range that's way up in the mountains. So
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 4: in it the influence is roughly for every ten miles
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 4: migration migrated. Based on our models, for every ten miles migrated,
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 4: that's one day behind in gestation. So for an animal
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 4: that basically hardly migrates to an animal that migrates one
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 4: hundred miles, can be ten days expected differences based on
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 4: their feetal eye diameter from when they're going to give birth.
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 4: That animal that migrates one hundred miles is going to
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 4: give birth ten days later. Now to take that one
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 4: step further, and this happened, I forget the exact year.
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 4: It is twenty twenty. On June second, I was with
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 4: one of my team members, Ran and Jacobak and we
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 4: went into deer ninety six, up into where she gave
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 4: birth that morning, collared her twin fawns, and then we
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 4: went on and did other work the rest of the day,
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 4: and then we got a birth notification from a vagineal
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 4: implant transmitter later that evening. We were about two hours
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 4: before before dark and we're looking at it and the
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 4: animal that we just got a birth notification from was
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 4: about three hundred yards down from where we had just
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 4: been that morning collaring twin fonns from ninety six, And
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 4: I'm like, man, wouldn't be cool to hustle in there
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 4: to see if we can call her. Like, two animals
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 4: give birth on the same day that live in the
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 4: same place, So we hustled in there and then collared
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 4: the single fond from that female on that same day.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 4: So which makes sense, right, animals living in this same
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 4: area giving birth on the same day. So ninety six
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 4: was the one that was up the ridge, and then
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 4: it was MFO that was down.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: Below the ridge.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 4: Now we had three years earlier, in spring of twenty seventeen,
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 4: we had collared mfoh who had just been born to
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 4: ninety six in that same place on June third, So I.
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 3: Got lost, mom and grandma are giving mom and daughter.
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 4: So MFO who we went in that afternoon to call
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 4: her fone was ninety six's.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: Daughter from three years prior.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 4: Oh, really really ninety six's daughter from three years prior,
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 4: giving birth on the exact same day on June second, and.
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: Three hundred yards down the hill.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly same place, same birth date. And also she
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 4: had been born one day difference in the calendar three
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 4: years prior. So and while that's like seemingly an anecdote,
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 4: we've seen it and had it happen multiple times. Within
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 4: these family groups, which indicates to us that not only
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 4: are is space on the landscape, migratory routes on the
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 4: landscape inherited across generational time, but even their reproductive synchrony,
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 4: the reproductive chronology is inherited across generational time. Like that's
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 4: how in sync they are with their environment. And now
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 4: I think what's also equally facinating if you consider how
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 4: the mule deer rut happens, not all of it, but
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 4: a lot of it happens down to winter range, right,
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 4: they migrate down to winter range, and so on winter range,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 4: we have all these animals with all these different migratory
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 4: tactics that are showing up on winter range, and they're
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 4: all rutting in this same place. And then but what
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 4: it means is what's happening is Gladys over here, who
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 4: migrates ten miles, she you know, she comes into Estris
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 4: on November twentieth. But then Jennifer over here, who migrates
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 4: one hundred miles, she doesn't come into Estris until ten
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 4: days later on December first. Right, even though they're on
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 4: the same winter range in the same place, their estra
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 4: cycle is tied to actually where they go during the
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 4: summer and it has virtually nothing to do with where
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 4: they're at on that day on winter range.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: Damn. Yeah. Besides seeing a lot of stuff that dudes say,
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: do you see things that state game agencies are doing
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: or the way they're thinking about these issues? And management?
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: Do you see things that you're like that just doesn't
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: make any sense. You're you're wanting me to like step
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: on a landline? Yeah, I would like that.
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 3: How far? How long does it take for the management
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 3: to catch up with the science?
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: And are you a communication with everybody? Well?
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 4: So, no matter there's one challenge with all of this, right,
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 4: no matter what, we're all we're all people, and we've
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 4: all we've all done things a number of different ways,
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 4: and we've just accepted them to be true over time
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 4: without necessarily pausing and saying, wait, why do I think that?
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 4: Where did that come from? What evidence support it?
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: And it just do I think the screaming my kids
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: all the time? Yeah? Yeah, is helping. That's exactly right,
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: and help with me.
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 4: I mean, so a fascinating example that like when I
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 4: grew up in I mean grew up in northeastern South
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 4: Dakota and we hunted deer every year, white tail deer
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 4: every year, just locally there to feed our family. And
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 4: my dad and my grandpa always used to say, like, man,
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 4: the deer fat this year. I guess we're going to
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 4: have a bad winter. Like they would say that.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: Over and over again.
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 4: And I mean I remember as a kid thinking, wait,
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 4: how do they know it's going to be a bad winter?
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 4: How do they know to prepare for a bad winter?
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 4: And the thing is we know now like they don't
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 4: like that that is is technically not the case, although
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 4: if you consider it relative to local adaptation and then
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 4: the example that we just talked about with this pre
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 4: programming and allocation of reserves after experiencing a bad winter,
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 4: there's simultaneously some truth to that because it's tied to
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 4: what animals have experience. Maybe less so of knowing they're
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 4: going to experience something, but it's it's a social it
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 4: was happened in the past, and so I think there's
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 4: just many things that we operate within that we just
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 4: we generally don't question. This is just how we do things,
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 4: and so that's that's where we go. That's where we go.
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 4: And so there's there's always there's always some you know
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 4: some challenges in rethinking where we have been and being
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 4: willing to reconsider new information.
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: I think that's hard.
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 4: That's hard for anybody, being diplomatic probably, And the thing you.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: Sometimes look at management strategies and management practices and think
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: to yourself, it just doesn't make any sense.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 4: Well, sure, okay, sure, But I can also like there
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 4: there's also and I mean with full respect for my
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 4: for my colleagues with management agencies, like, we're also stuck
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 4: in this difficult position where it's not necessarily difficult position,
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 4: but they manage a while resources in trust right fundamental
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 4: aspect of the North American model. We're all owners of it,
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 4: but it's managing it as a trust on behalf of
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 4: the public. And so what that means is they don't
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 4: get to just sit in a room and just say, well,
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 4: here's what we're going to do because biologically this is
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 4: the best thing to do.
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: They also have to consider.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 4: What the public wants, social pressures, and so it can
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 4: be an incredibly difficult balance at times. And so oftentimes
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 4: I view it as, yes, we need to as we
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 4: learn things, what can that mean for us in updating
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 4: how we think about various management practices? For sure, that's
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 4: like maybe that's like, you know, baseline level of what
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 4: does it mean for us as we consider management practices,
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 4: But then we don't you know, to then take that
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 4: the next step. We don't necessarily get the opportunity to say, hey,
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 4: we're going to change this. We need to be able
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 4: to bring that information to the public, which is also
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 4: what's so incredibly valuable, like of your platform here in
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 4: ability to be able to speak about these things is like,
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 4: what's critical is that we can bring this information to
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 4: the public because there are a lot of things that
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 4: were just stuck on that have happened for a really
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 4: really long time that oh, this is a solution, this
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 4: is this is what we need to do. But it's
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 4: not as simple as that. So being able to communicate
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 4: it and in meaningful ways that connects with people and
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 4: maybe change their perspective on things is sort of like
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 4: ground zero for helping institute management change.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: Would you ever have the time and appetite to take
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: your data sets from your box and take a look
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: at lunar phase stuff with the rent? Does this interest
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: you at all?
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 4: Well, so I have just that with movement, Yeah, yeah, movement,
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 4: we certainly could we absolutely could. And you're talking from
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 4: like a ret perspective because there's so much focus on
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 4: or are you talking like during the hunting season.
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: Just the idea, just it would be the I mean,
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: you could go down a million rabbit holes, which is
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: generally that deer are moving at different times, moving in
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: different places, different feeding patterns. According to Moonface, we absolutely could,
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: and you could take because you have so much data,
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: someone could go in and look at what you got
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: and map it out to twenty eight day lunar cycles
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: and say like, uh lo and behold, they do seem
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: to be they do seem to behave differently according to
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: the lunar or you'd be like, we can't find it.
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: You know, that would be that would be very helpful
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: to me. But yes, thank you for doing that. So
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: we need to with our T shirt proceeds. Should we
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: like in dow a absolutely like research center for studies.
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: There is a center for I'm just taking an intern
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: crunching some numbers.
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 5: I already talked to someone the other day about that
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 5: we might have them on the show. Totally debunks that.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: He debunked, Well, maybe he can. Can you have to
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: lend your data sets out is that.
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 4: Anything in collaboration. Yeah, it all depends, but in collaboration. Yeah. Uh,
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 4: here's my next question for you. Okay, what what things.
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: Are you that you haven't been able to do besides
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: lunar phase work? Like what do you what do you
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: want to be doing, Jimmy, Like what do you want
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: to be doing next? Like what are the what things
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: do you look at? And you're like, uh, I'm inspired
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: by it and I think I can see a way
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: that we might find some answers, like with this deer
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: work in particular, kind of any kind of your work. Yeah,
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean like you got to have fifty ideas, right,
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: but then in the end you can only do one
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: or two at a time or whatever. I don't know
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: what the numbers are, Yeah for sure.
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean one of the one of the things
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 4: which we talked about a little bit is we really
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 4: need to be able to evaluate the rose pedal hypothesis,
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 4: which I think we've talked maybe a little bit more so.
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 4: The rose pedal hypothesis ties to uh, deer in particular
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 4: about how they occupy space on a landscape, and the
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 4: reference to a rose is that you have a matriarchal
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 4: female that forms maybe the central pedal on the rose,
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 4: and then you have her daughters that set up shop
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 4: around her, and then her granddaughters, and so what you
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 4: end up with is this natural lineal line of related
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 4: females that occupy space on the landscape. They've evaluated this
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 4: in white tail deer. It's where the idea came from initially.
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 4: So for white tail deer, it's been used to implement
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 4: management practices to reduce agricultural depredation related issues. So we're
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 4: deer getting into crops and that sort of thing. And
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 4: the idea is that just reducing removing a handful of
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 4: deer from the area won't alleviate the problem because you
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 4: still have other females that are living there, and then
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 4: their daughters and granddaughters are just going to repopulate it.
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 4: So the notion is, if you want no deer there,
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 4: you need to wipe out the entire rows and then
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 4: you'll create vacant space and there won't be any deer
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 4: there and your problem will go away. Well, so as
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 4: I've thought about one, migration, you know, migration is central
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 4: to our ability to maintain larger bus populations. And then
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 4: like as adult deer are incredibly faithful to their environment
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 4: or does it come from anyway, And so we talked
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 4: about ontouching migration, but then taking that one step further,
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 4: what does that mean for how females occupy space on
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 4: a landscape in particular their natal range, Like, do they
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 4: even though they're they're migratory, do they similarly adopt space
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 4: for mom on their summer range? So do we end
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 4: up with these then matrilineal lines of occupied space on
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 4: a summer range? And that's what determines why we have
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 4: animals where we do. And that again, which we we
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 4: kind of alluded to a bit, but that's central to
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 4: our ability to maintain an abundance of deer because if
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 4: we lose roses, we create vacant space and.
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: There they're not there anymore. And we need we need like.
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 4: A firm answer of that to understand what that means
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 4: across generational time to one both be able to look
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 4: forward to what it can mean for management conservation now,
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 4: but also I think.
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: What's equally as of value is to be able.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 4: To look backwards in time to what it means means
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 4: for us in the past from what we've seen how
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 4: the landscape has changed and what we see today and
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 4: relevant to even just the Wyoming range. When we lose
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 4: seventy percent of our deer population, we inevitably lost roses
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 4: on the landscape. I mean we had family groups of
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 4: our radio marke deer that were just completely wiped out.
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 4: So at that level of loss, like it inevitably happened.
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 4: So what does that mean for that vacant space over time?
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: And if you like when you when you're somewhere when
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: you're glassing, and you like hunt same place over a
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: few years and you're like, there's always like a little
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: pocket of activity yep in whatever, a little spot yep,
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: you could just yep, gone gone. Why aren't they there anymore?
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: What happened? You know?
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 4: Did they get pushed out of there? Well no, necessarily,
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 4: they probably just all died, And so.
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: No one's got no one's backfield, that's right.
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 4: And so what that could mean, you know, we've had
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 4: we've had a number of which there's a lot of
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 4: challenges that mild your face. But if you think this
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 4: applies to basically like any population of ungulate, if if
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 4: animals are not using space, then a population may grow
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 4: back up but reach a new abundance where they don't
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 4: grow anymore, because if they're not using all that other
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 4: forage and space on the landscape, it's not functionally part
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 4: of their caring capacity. It's like they it's like having
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 4: a pasture, running cattle on a pasture. And you have
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 4: a thousand acre pasture and you split it down the
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 4: middle with a fence and you run cattle on the
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 4: southern half of it. Are you going to run the
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 4: number of cattle that you have for the thousand acre pasture?
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 4: Are you going to run the number of cattle that
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 4: you have for the five hundred acres that they have
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 4: access to? And you're going to run it on the
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 4: five hundred acres not the thousand. And so when it
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 4: comes to even as we think about, you know, nutrition
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 4: density within any population, and you know, I hear this
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 4: a lot like, man, how could nutrition be limiting on
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 4: summer range?
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: Look at these mountains.
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 4: There's some food everywhere. There's no way that that could matter. Again,
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 4: you like, you have to remember what it means for
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 4: the animals themselves and the spaces that they live and
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 4: occupy on that landscape, because they just don't go willy
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 4: nilly wander around unless you're an elk and.
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: Just access all of all of those foods.
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 3: So you're talking about I mean basically habitat loss, like
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 3: you were losing meal to your habitat, even though the
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 3: habitat looks the same.
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's exactly right. Yeah, it's way a good way
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: of putting it. Yeah. Yeah, it's so interesting. You think
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: about like spots, You're like, why are they not here? Yeah? Yeah,
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: and when are they going to come back? Man? You
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: know where maybe you're already doing work here, you know where.
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's so much personal bias applied to
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: any conversation around ungilate density and predation. Right, you got
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: people who the first thing they want to do anytime
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: there's no deer around, they want to tell you about
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: the predators. You got people who basically want to tell
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: you that predators egrass makes no difference.
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: You got these two camps. They're generally not talking about
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: what they regard to be the truth. They're talking about
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: what they wish was the truth, or how they've been
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: brought up or trained. Right, the two these two wildly
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: different perspectives. Do you have, Like are you do you
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: consider are there ways to be to maybe freshen up
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: that conversation about what is going on? Yeah, what do Kyle, like,
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: what do coyote numbers mean for deer populations over time?
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: What do coyote numbers mean for distribution? Yeah? Right? Do
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: you wait on this? Yeah?
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So I actually sent some of my initial predator
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 4: related work with as it translates to on your population
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 4: was actually some of the work I did on meal
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 4: deer in the Sierra Nevada and California.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: And then I read that work, did you Yeah?
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 4: I didn't know as you Oh yeah, really, I did
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 4: a whole bunch of work on nutrition predation on deer
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 4: in the eastern Sierra.
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: Oh you're you know what, you know what? You're right,
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: because you're even not not. I mean, you know you're right.
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: But I think I saw you now that you're saying this.
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: I saw you cited. Your work is cited in the
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: bear California's bear Management proposal. You're here in Nevada, works
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: outside of there is I just read that and left
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: my mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I saw your name there. Yeah.
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 4: So, and then of course we've done a number of
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 4: good bit of predation related work in Wyoming as well.
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 4: The to sort of like, look at a big picture
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 4: relative to the two camps that that you reference.
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: In which camp is right. Well, here's the thing. The
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: problem is neither camp is right. I had a suspicions, yeah,
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: and anybody.
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 4: The problem is is the moment anybody wants to say
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 4: predators don't matter because all mortality is compensatory, or predators matter. Basically,
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 4: if a canine is on the landscape and it's killing
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 4: a deer, if that canine wasn't there, we'd have the
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 4: deer back. Both of those camps are wrong. The fact
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 4: that there's even camps is wrong, and it's wrong in
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 4: part because of the way the way in which we
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 4: think about it, and and part of the challenge has
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 4: been like how do we understand what predation means within populations?
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 4: And where we have to go back to, regardless first
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 4: is is where what makes what makes a population and
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 4: it and what makes a population is everything we've talked about,
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 4: and it's food and access to the landscape. And so
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 4: the bottom line is unless animals have access to the
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 4: food in their basic requirements food, water, cover than it
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 4: than it doesn't matter. And so for example, if we're
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 4: if we're in a place where animals are at the
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 4: capacity of their landscape no matter what. Basically, any any
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 4: younger of the population is going to attempt to grow
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 4: more young each year than they can actually sustain within
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 4: the population typically, and so what that means is a
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 4: number need to die and hence compensatory and if we're
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 4: at that point, one dies and alleviates some level of
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 4: competition for the others that remain, and so we end
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 4: up with this feedback.
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: So that's real.
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 4: And also we can have this situation where predators can
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 4: play a role, as in, we have the capacity to
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 4: grow more animals based on the food that is here,
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 4: but predators are keeping it from growing. So we first
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 4: have to consider food and we can quibble and argue, oh,
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 4: this level of coyote population, this level of lion population,
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 4: whatever the case may be. At the end of the day,
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 4: you can't interpret anything from that. It actually doesn't mean
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 4: anything because even for those predators, like they may have
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 4: alternative prey that's available to them. Where it matters how
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 4: we understand how predators affect a prey population is actually
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 4: to understand the prey population and the nutrition and capacity
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 4: they have to grow before we can actually interpret it.
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 4: What the predators matter or mean at all. And the
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 4: other reason why I say both camps are wrong or
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 4: that the very notion, like the moment you hear somebody
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 4: toss something into the camp, you already know they're wrong.
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 4: And it's because we can be in a situation in
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 4: one single population and during one period of time predators
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 4: are limiting growth, and during another period of time they
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 4: don't matter at all because they're so nutritionally limited that
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 4: they make no difference. And so you have yes here
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 4: and you have no over here. Yeah, and then imagine
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 4: the whole gradient in between. And I've worked in two
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 4: systems now as an example, in the Sierras in the
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 4: Eastern Sierra, where predation mattered for one migratory segment didn't
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 4: matter at all for the other. And then also looking
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 4: at it from a time period of there was a
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 4: window of time where predation mattered and then a window
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 4: of time where it didn't matter at all. And I've
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 4: seen we've seen the same thing in Wyoming as well,
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 4: same picture within the Wyoming range. Prior to the bad winners,
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 4: predators really didn't matter because we didn't have the nutritional
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 4: capacity to grow more deer in anyway we were there,
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 4: so losing some of the predators really was going to
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 4: be a washing didn't matter. Now that we've dropped to
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 4: the level that we have now and our females are fat, robust,
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 4: we have the capacity to grow. Now we're in a
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 4: different situation where predators can have a limiting factor and
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 4: reduce the ability for the population to grow. But then still,
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 4: at the end of the day, well, what does that
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 4: mean for us? Should we control predators? Should we have
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 4: controlled predators over here? Should we not? Like it's the
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 4: sort of like. It all depends what are the objectives.
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 4: Just because your remove predators from a system doesn't mean
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 4: you're going to get more more dear pack, Yeah.
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: Dude, you should be the only guest we ever have
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: on you'd get so bored. No, it's be a weekly
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: show where I ask you questions. I like it. I
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: like it because we're never going to get through it all.
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: We got to wrap up, Randall, got to do this
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: whole stupid thing we're doing.
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 2: It's the audio.
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 3: We haven't even talked about. Kevin's fascinating other interests tax
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 3: dermist hunter.
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 4: Maybe maybe we should there layers, I know, let's not
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 4: wait five seven years again.
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know how whenever it was we did, we
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: got to schedule the next round because we got to
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: wrap up. Dude, it's really like, you guys are doing
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 1: super cool work. I wasn't trying to hack on fishing
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: game agencies, man, I was just trying to express this.
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 1: I was trying to express this, like like I just
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: hope there's not a lot of bottlenecks and and and
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: inefficiencies and and and like being able to take the
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: research you're doing, and and and being able to go
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: and say like I can't tell you anything, but there's
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: a I'm it really looks like this is going on.
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: Are we considering this? I mean like, like, is the flow? No?
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: I get this is the flow? Good? And I'm only
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: saying that because, like you know, I've spent my whole
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: life talking about wildlife, right, thinking about wildlife, talking about wildlife.
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: I hang out with peopleho are obsessed with wildlife, and
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: we routinely traffic and stuff that just isn't backed up,
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 1: and we say it like fact absolutely, and the guys
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: that are doing management are the are my guys are peers.
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: It's like people are operating under assumptions that like aren't
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: as accurate, you know, and sort of looking at like
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: like looking at lower deer numbers and we're like, wow,
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: the reason it's that way is because of whatever. And
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: then you go look at the man, dude, it's just
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: a different There's there's more to what's going on. It's
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: a longer story. It's not like you can't just everything
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: isn't just looking at what just happened. Correct, Absolutely, you
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: know you got you gotta dig back. Oftentimes you got
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: to dig back right now and so and trying to
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: correct a situation, you might be correcting the wrong inputs. Yes,
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: oh absolutely, right, yep, for sure.
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 4: And and I think the other the other side of
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 4: that as well is you know a number of things
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 4: that we talked about, some of the things we can't
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 4: necessarily change. We can't necessarily change the weather and those
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 4: sorts of things, but which I think can become a
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 4: bit dissatisfying sometimes when like pre sip or snowpack or
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 4: those sorts of things are such play such a driving role.
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 4: We can manage density and other things like that to
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 4: help moderate those things. But I also think what's really
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 4: important is our ability to simply manage our expectations as well,
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 4: what does it mean for us? Which is kind of dissatisfying,
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 4: right when you can't say we'll do this because I
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 4: want this. Well, maybe we can't get that, but here's
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 4: the reasons why, and we need you to understand that
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 4: so we can all be we can all be at
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 4: the same table with the same information, be like, Okay,
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 4: here's what we're wrestling with. What is this going to
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 4: mean for us going forward with whatever the situation may
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 4: may be, from how we use habitat to our presence
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 4: on the landscape, to how we manage hunting seasons.
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, love it. M Now you got to come
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: back on happily. No, you're not too terribly far away. Now,
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: last time we went to you, remember you did you did?
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: We have to hang out for a bit. Yeah, yeah,
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: it's great. Hmmm, we gotta go a little. Me and
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: Randall's thing is actually kind of interesting. I don't want
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: to talk bad about it. I just it's very similar
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: in a way, trying to find out what happened, what happened?
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: What did happen? I know, I feel like you were
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: very into it.
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 3: I feel like you were very into that project up
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 3: until this morning and now that it's dimmed, you know
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 3: it's dimmed.
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: We're doing very similar work. Yeah, I like it. We're
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: looking at wow, yeah, like what did happen all the
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: buffalo nice? And why? And what little micro things might
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: have been different that would have led to a different outcome.
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: We toy with all this mm hmm.
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 3: We toy with all this, good man, And but we
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 3: don't have the data that you have.
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: It's just differ kind of work. Yeah, and we dispel,
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: we dispel things. So yeah, it's important to be like, well,
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: what happened was this? Oh yeah kind of but also
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: this nice you know, I look forward to that. Bison
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: are fascinating. Yeah, I think you'll. I think you'll dig it.
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: It's got all the all the normal gross stuff that
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: we like to put in there too. Of course I
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: would anticipate nothing. Yes, we like it to be that
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: you get kind of grossed out, but also you learn
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: something you have to have that flare wouldn't come from you. Yeah,
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: you gotta have that that cade and something you being
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: like oh, then you're like, oh, can we clip that
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: person sounding back? Splice that in, yeah, back and forth.
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: All right, thank you for coming on the monteeth shop,
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: University of Wyoming. Send your resumes. You're looking for resumes
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: right now? Oh man, you drowning the resumes. Yeah, don't
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: send your resu I'm always looking for supporters, if anybody's interested.
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: If you're looking to support something great, and I think
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: it was demonstrated here today. If you're looking to support
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: if you love wildlife, if you love the West, if
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: you love wildlife, if you love these like majestic landscapes,
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: and you really want to put your money, your conservation
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: dollars to knowledge, this is a great place to put them.
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: If you want to drive knowledge. It's not lobbying, which
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: is important. It's not like on the ground, on the
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: ground habitat improvement, rolling up old fences, getting rid of junipers,
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 1: which is important. It's not that. If you want to
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: contribute to acquisition of knowledge that can then be extended
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: out into management. Uh, I say the Montieth lab is
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: money well spent shop. What was that shop? Oh? What?
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: I just call it lab? Well that's what they ought
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: to call it. Yeah, you think about it. I think
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: that's where we started. More I think about it, it.
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 3: Doesn't bode well for a recording session later.
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: The Montee Shop damn it. Thank you, Kevin my pleasure.
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.