Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 545: The Science Behind CWD, Fawn Mortality, and Mature Buck Movement with Mike Chamberlain

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Ep. 545: The Science Behind CWD, Fawn Mortality, and Mature Buck Movement with Mike Chamberlain · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: modern whitetail hunter and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: to the Wire to Hunt podcast. I'm your guest host
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Tony Peterson, and today I'm speaking with wildlife biologist Michael Chamberlain.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: All Right, folks, welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: which is brought to you by First Light. You might
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: notice that this is not the voice of Mr Mark Kenyon.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Mark shot me a text last week and said he
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: was off to a Segue Polo championship where his team,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the Swinging Rollers, were bound to bring home the hardware.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Then he used a bunch of fist
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: bumpy mode geez, which is how he ends all of
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: his text So I guess good luck to Mark with
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: a sport. I'm pretty sure he made up anyway. Today
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Dr Michael Chamberlain, who is most well
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: known for his wild turkey research. Seriously, this guy knows
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: more about wild turkey behavior than just about anyone, but
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: he's also studied a bunch of other animals, including white tales.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Topics throughout this episode range from currency to b a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: d researched fond mortality from black bears and other predators,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: as well as research into mature buck behavior and how
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: they are so good at avoiding you and I throughout
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: the fall. This podcast goes all over the place, but
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: it is just rooted in white tail research and so interesting. Michael,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Not
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: a problem. I'm glad. I'm glad to be here. You
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: have you been on the Meat Eater podcast. You've been
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: on a whole bunch, and you are You're and I
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: don't think this is crazy to say, but you're most
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: all known for blowing people's minds. As far as turkey research, Yeah,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: i'd say that's that's probably accurate. Yeah, I'll do a
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: lot of work with turkeys and have been my entar career.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I would say if anybody thinks they know a lot
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: about turkeys, they should just find some of the stuff
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: that you've put out and listened to it because it's fascinating.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: And I know this is a dear podcast, but I
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: want to ask you one thing. This came up um
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: earlier in the spring. I was I was out with
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: one of my ten year old daughters and we were
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: scouting birds and we were just sitting kind of glassing
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: waiting to photograph a little bit. And we where I live,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the Mississippi River is only about ten miles away, and
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the Rum River and a couple of other rivers are
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: really close. So we have a lot of bald eagles,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: and those bald eagles will fly over those birds, you know,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the turkeys out in the field. The turkey's go nuts
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: and they start making a bunch of noise and run
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: for cover. And my daughter asked me, She's like, they must,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: you know, eagles must eat turkeys once in a while.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, I have no idea, honey, but I
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: bet I know the guy who's gonna tell me they do. Yeah,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: and they all, I mean, they'll attack and harass turkeys
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: quite a bit. Um. It's hard to it's hard to
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: quantify predation by eagles, um because most of the a
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: lot of the sites I work on, we don't we
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: don't have bald eagles, and if we do, it's they're
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: they're not common, right, so Um, But they do absolutely
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: occasionally prey on birds, and they certainly they certainly harass birds.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I've seen them harass birds several times. Yeah, I mean
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: that's kind of I gave her more of a weasel
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: word answer because I wasn't sure. But we did see
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: an eagle up at the lake one time, grab a
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: grab a goose, which was traumatizing for some of the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: kids because it was it was pretty rough. But I
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: told her, I was like, you know, if they get
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: the chance, they're gonna take us wipe. Yeah, you know, yeah,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: the one, the one eagle we know is pretty efficient
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: at killing turkey's as golden eagles. Yeah, they they'll they'll
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: crush a bird and they're so big and they're so fast,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: and they the way they hunt and you know, the
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: height that they come down from, you know, turkeys don't
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, they don't stand a chance really. Um by
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the time the eagles there and the bird, you know,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: bird realizes, oh you know, they're going you know, over
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: a hundred miles an hour, so it's, uh, it's lights
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: out for the bird. So they'll do a dive like
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: a falcon. They'll get way high and then come down
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: just smoking some Yeah. Sometimes that their flight speed is ridiculous. Um,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: So from a turkey's perspective, you know what I mean,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: you know, those turkeys they use their vision to be
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: able to avoid predation. That's the primary line of defense.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: And if you've got an animal that's above you, you know,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: that's different than if it's on the same playing field
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: as you. You know, turkeys have that periscope head. And
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: if what I've noticed in areas where turkeys are dealing
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: with a lot of aerial predation or just harassment, they
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: constantly look up. You'll see them, you know, constantly glancing up.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Whereas here, like in the southeast where I live, in
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the in the forested areas, you don't see that a lot.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: You don't see birds that are constantly glancing up in
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: the air because they're not used to seeing danger from
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: from above. But like I've I've watched Miriam's a number
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: of times out west that they almost constantly glance up
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: in the sky um at times, which to me just
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: says there's a concern, you know, for the bird. They
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: know danger it could be above and not just on
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: the ground. You know. I wonder, I know we're way
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: off topic here, but I wonder if there's a similar
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: parallel between trout that live in you know, maybe maybe
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: a river that meanders through open ground versus you know,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: maybe a smaller stream in wooded territory if they're more
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: spooky out in the you know, more open where there's
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: a better chance for aerial predation. Yeah, I mean maybe,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I mean turkeys are you know, what we've seen is
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: from a predation standpoint, they you know, they they have
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a suite of things that harass and attack and you know,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: so they I mean, that's that's one of the reasons
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: turkeys are so weary, is they there's so many things
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: that want to eat them, including us, that they they're
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: hyper vigilant. You know, they're constantly vigilant of the of
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: their surroundings. And um, that's why, I mean, predation is
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: structured the bird that we love, the chase, and the
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: reason they're so fond to hunt in many ways, it's
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: because of the predators that they've interacted with for you know,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: for eons. Yeah, all right, let's let's I could talk
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: to you for about turkeys for a long time, but
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: we should talk about dear Can you can you just
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: give the listeners, uh, you know, kind of a summary
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: of what where you came from and what you're doing
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: for research right now? Yeah, So I grew up in Virginia.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: I was a I was a suburban kid got to
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: hunt on the weekends with my dad. Add Um. I
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: went to college at Virginia Tech major and wilife science,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: and then I ended up getting an opportunity to go
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: to graduate school at Mississippi State. I did my master's
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: research on on wild turkeys there and um volunteered with
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: some with some other students and was able to get
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: involved in dear research actually a little bit. And then
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: I went to UH. I stayed there and did my
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: PhD degree, which also involved turkeys, but also uh dealt
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: with predators. I actually radio mark turkey's at the same
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: time as bobcats, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, and I tracked them
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: all simultaneously to see how they were interacting with each other.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: And then when I graduated with my doctorate, I was
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: hired at l s U Louisiana State University, and when
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: I went there, I started studying literally everything uh UM.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: I was fortunate to be supported by agencies that putting
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: me under, you know, on contracts to do research, so
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: I literally I studied. I started studying deer, I continue
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: to study turkeys. I did wolf research, kayak research, raccoon research.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: I mean just a bunch of different things, and um,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: but as I've as I've gone through my career, I've
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: been fortunate enough to be able to kind of specialize
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: now and the work I have now is only basically
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: turkey work, except for one large deer project that we
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: we have in Arkansas right now. UM, looking at at
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: c w D and some of the impacts of that
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: disease on that on that population. So so yeah, he's
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: that ongoing right now. Yeah, we're in our second field season.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: What's the goal of that study. We're actually we're looking
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: at um differences in behavior of CWD positive versus presume
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: negative animals. We're looking to see what in fluences the
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: disease may have on fond survival. We're looking at how
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: these animals are interacting with each other, because we have
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: positive animals that were that are we're GPS monitoring, and
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: we have animals that are negative when we catch them
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: the first time and then at some point they become positive.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: So we're tracking this to to see how these animals
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: change their behavior so that we can inform the agency
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: as to what the future looks like for you know,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: how is this disease spread? We know it, we know
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: in a general sense, how it's spread, but what does
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: that look like from a movement perspective. We're estimating deer
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: density in the in the area, trying to tell the
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: agency how many deer out there, uh, And then ultimately
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: what we're going to do is is model what this
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: population is going to look like five years, twenty years,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: fifty years down the road, so that the agency can
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: understand what the fields going to look like as this
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: disease progresses. Because you know, we all know, you know,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: in areas where it's prevalent, and it's very prevalent in
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: northwest Arkansas, these the cw D zones tend to get
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: bigger and bigger and bigger. Not in all cases, but
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: in many cases they do, and the agencies have to
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: continue to expand the zones and the and we want
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: to be able to inform the agency what that's going
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: to look like in the future. And so you're just building,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, and you're you're taking something that wasn't probably
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: possible that long ago. You're monitoring healthy deer and infected
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: deer and watching how they interact, how many points of
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: contact they have, the density, and just to see like
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: what does this tell us about the future of what
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: this is going to turn into. Yeah, exactly, did I
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: scare you? Um? In some ways? Yes? And I you know,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: as a deer hunter first and foremost, you know, I've
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: seen what's happened two deer populations and in areas where
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: with a high prevalence. One only need to go to
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: where we're trapping to see the area of the zoom
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: that we're trapping in that has the highest prevalence. Deer
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: density is very very low, um, and there's there's obvious
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: reason for that. This is a you know, a fatal
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: disease every time. So as a deer hunter, that really
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: i'd say it it very much concerns me. You know,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I hunt deer and in a number of states, but
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: my you know, the two states that I hunt the
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: most in would be Georgia here where I live in Louisiana,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: where I've been in a camp for for many many years.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: And c w D has not been detected yet in Georgia,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: but it was recently detected in Louisiana, and that changes everything,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: as you know, when that disease is encountered, Uh, everything
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: changes from that forward, you know, that point forward, um,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: when you when you talk about there being a lower
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: density in those the high c w D areas. Let's
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about that a little bit because
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I think it's like very easy for for the general
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: hunting population to kind of be dismissive of CTWD because
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: you go, Okay, well it's not gonna kill it till
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: seven and a half years old or six and a
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: half years old or whatever. And you know, most of
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: the deer we're hunting are way younger than that. But
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: there has to be you know, not only the like
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: you said, it's fatal, but are you seeing you know,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: CWD infected deer when they hit a certain age, Uh,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: you know, the fecundity of the of the entire herd
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: drops a little bit. Like I mean, are they producing
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: as many fonds as healthy deer? Probably not right. That's well,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: that's one thing we're trying to learn. We're trying to
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: figure out what this research, what that looks like. Um.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: And you know, there's obviously from a logical perspective, you
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: would think, yes that there there would be some impacts.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: But but that's one thing we're trying to quantify for sure. Yeah,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: so you you assume that, but you're you're waiting for
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the data to show you that it's true. Yeah, never
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: assume anything. I can assume it. Um, I've learned my
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: lesson with assumptions. They're fraught with with getting your butt
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: in a sling. So you know, I wait until I
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: have silent information in hand for sure. How many years
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: are you doing this study before you will be able
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: to sort of model out, you know, into the distant future.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: And we have four field seasons plan, so we're in
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: our second field season now, so we'll trap two more
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: years and then you know, there's a there's a PhD
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: on student on the project now, he'll finish up two
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: years from now, and a post doctoral researcher will come
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: on and kind of wrap the study up and we'll
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: start disseminating information, you know, probably actually next year because
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: the student will have some information that we can start publishing.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: And uh, I'm really interested in what work. I mean,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: I've I've kind of get bits of what we're seeing,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: you know, Um, but it will be really interesting once
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: we have the data crunchton we can explain it to people.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Is this the most Uh, I don't know if comprehensive
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: is the right word. Is it the most advanced study
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: on CDWD in that in that capacity that's going on
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: right now in the South. In the South, is somebody
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: up north doing it. There's been you know, there's been
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: ongoing CWD research in other areas for years. Um, it's
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: just not you know, in the southern US, there just
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: hasn't been you know, until very recently. If you just
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: look the number of states that have reported detections in
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the South within the past few years, it's it's pretty dramatic.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: So so I think there are some agencies that are
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: looking at this study with a keen eye because we
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: we will not only provide Arkansas Game and Fish with
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: information it's relevant obviously to them, but other states will
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: be able to benefit from the same information, particularly states
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: that are have recently detected CWD and they're trying to
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: understand what what is it that's going to look like,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: what's it going to look like five years from now,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: ten years from now. And you know, a couple of
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the states that have have recently documented detections are also
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: seeing pretty high prevalence rates, you know, like you see
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: in northwest Arkansas. So I think there are a number
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: of states that are looking at it's the study and
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: and hoping that it's going to provide relevant information to them,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: and that's that's ultimately our goal is to not just
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: benefit the agency that's funding the work, but also other
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: agencies that are dealing with the same problem. Yeah, well this, this,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: this work that's going on there in Arkansas, is this
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: going to be a way to kind of Uh, there's
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: an argument made often amongst hunters. It's like CWT has
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: always been here, it's always been on the landscape, and
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: we're only just finding it now because we're testing for it.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Will this kind of be the nail in the coffin
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: to that argument? Uh? No, No, because, like you and
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: I talked about before we got on air, Uh, you'll
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: never put a nail in any coffin um in our society,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I don't think at this point, because there are naysayers
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: regardless of what topic you come up with. Even when
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: science provides answers, there's always the argument that, well, what if,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: what if? This? What if? That? In science is not
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: absolute and we change things change I mean from a
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: scientific perspective. You know, I've published work myself that discounted
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: work I did previously. That's I mean that's just part
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: of being a scientist. And so I don't I don't
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: ever look at what I do is and think that's
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: that's it. That's we're shutting the door on that because
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: it's just not reality dealing with people and in dealing
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: with natural systems where there's a lot of there's a
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: lot of chaos. You know, we work in outside and
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of things going on and and the
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: you know, in the environment, that creates noise in our data.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: So we're constantly learning new things or determining that we
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: didn't know what we thought we knew, and that creates skepticism,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: as you know, with with people in the public, despite
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: the fact that you know, from the start, we're simply
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: trying to provide information under the recognition that sometimes that
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: information contradicts other pieces of information. That's the way science works. Yeah,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: there's a the problem with the system is science is
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: you know, science in and of itself is to prove
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: things wrong, and it's going to prove previous science wrong.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: And that gives that gives people sort of an out
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: for taking it seriously because they can look at and goal, you,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: you did this wrong. For it's like we're just leveling
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: up information a little bit at a time and learning
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: more and more stuff. And it's you know, it is
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: really inexact, but it's it's so interesting to see, you know,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: when I I'm pretty fortunate to get to talk to
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: people like you quite often who work in you know,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: dear science and deer research and wildlife biology, and when
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: c w D comes up, there's always a different feel
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: to the conversation with somebody who's studying it versus somebody
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: you know who who is whatever they are in their
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: life and just likes to deer hunt. There's a big
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: gap there, and I don't know, you know, I just
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: look at this issue and I I'm like, man, we
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: better learn as much as we can about it. Yeah,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: because that's important. It's a polarizing, contentious topic. And I
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: think part of that goes back to the way that
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: agencies typically react to c w D. You know, there
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: have been somebody and sees that liberalized deer harvest. There
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: have been, um, you know, the way that this disease
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: is handled creates in many ways contention, you know, And
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: and I get it. I understand as a deer hunter,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: I understand, like we were talking about when I when
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: I got a text saying, you know, c w D
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: has been detected in this parish in Louisiana, I thought, oh, damn,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, my heart sink. I was like, well,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: that's it. You know that everything changes today. Um. And
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of hunters feel like like that,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: and they they're like, oh, you know, the the sky
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: is falling in it. And I get that because it's
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: hard not to think like that given how serious this
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: disease is. Um. If you don't believe that, you just
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: have to understand that deer don't survive this disease. I mean,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: it's it's like Alzheimer's and you know in humans. I
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: mean I watched my father deal with Alzheimer's for years
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: and it's just unbelievable. So you have this disease that's
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: out there that they do not survive. Period. Uh. Anyone
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: that can look at that and not think that's problematic
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: to me, that's that's a that's an odd point of view. Frankly, Well,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: I mean I think part of the part of that
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: issue is, you know, a lot of the current hunters
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: have only known really pretty good times with white tails,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, like We've been just really really lucky,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I'm I'm forty one, and you know,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: I can remember starting hunting when I was twelve in
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Minnesota and there weren't as many deer then, but we
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: could still go out and see deer and just you know,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: we it wasn't very long before we had a lot
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: of deer and we could shoot you know, four doors
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: in a season, and it was, you know, kind of
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: unprecedented times. And that's happened in a lot of places,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean bigwood stuff, and you know, our
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: North different story. Uh, but so many, so many people
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: out there who are into this don't really know any
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: different than those deer are always gonna be there and
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: we're always going to have him to hunt, right Yeah.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm fifty and I remember talking to my
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: dad when he was in his sixties and we broth.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: We both grew up in Virginia, and I can remember
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: him telling me that it was front page news when
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: he was a kid to see a deer track. And
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I was born in ninety one and I
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: remember as a as a child how special it was
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: to see a deer if you went to hunt. I mean,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I can remember sitting for days and not seeing an animal,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: and much less killing one. I also remember many many
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: seasons where if I killed one deer, I was that
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: was it. I was tickled. And now you know, on
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: most weekends I averaged one. I mean, it's between shooting
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: dose and killing bucks. It's I mean, shooting a deer
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: is It's just commonplace now. So I've I've seen it
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: from both perspectives, and the thought of going back to
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: what I grew up doing, which was not seeing dear.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know how I continued to be a deer hunter, frankly,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: because it was hard to get through a season and
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: and I can remember several years killing a deer on
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the last day of a long deer season and just
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: being relieved, almost relieved. You know that I did it,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: You know I did it. I finally got one, and
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: I hunted a lot. It's not like I went three
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: or four times, you know, days and days and days.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: And I think back to if I were trying to
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: take a kid and recruit that person into the hunting
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: ranks and make them as passionate as I am about
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: deer hunting, and they didn't see dear. It's a tough sell. Yep,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: that's a that's a tough sell. So so yeah, I
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: see I see it through both lenses. Yeah, I mean
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: that that not just the promise or the optimism that
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: you'll see, dear is worth so much to a hunter
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: and going out, you know, I go hunt, uh the
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: big woods in Wisconsin quite a bit. In northern Wisconsin.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: The deer population is low and the predator population is high,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: and it's you know, the same story in a lot
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: of places. And you know, it's I might go a
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: week without seeing a deer or two weeks without seeing
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: a deer, or sometimes I'll go over there and I've
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: got a dough tag and I'm like, I'm gonna, you know,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: do in a buck tag. I'll be like, the next
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: one that comes down the trail, I'm gonna shoot. And
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: it might take me weeks to make that happen. And
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: I look at that and I go, Man, if you know,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: there's an awful lot of people who don't have the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: time and the you know, the abilities that I do
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: to get out there like that, that would go no way,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: this is so not worth it, because it's just it
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: is not that much fun when you go out there
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: and you're like, I'm probably not going to see anything today.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: I'm certainly probably not gonna have anything come within range.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: It's a tough thing. Yeah, alas sure is. You know,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: at this point in my hunting career, you know, the
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: harvest is is one thing. It's much less important than
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: it used to be when I was young. A perfect
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: hunt for me, honestly, and this is this is no
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: this is no joke. I've said this before. Getting in
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: a stand and just being snowed in with deer all afternoon,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: you know, looking over a green field or something and
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: just having deer act like deer um and being able
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: to get out of the stand in the dark, not
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: have to clean a deer, go and have a beer
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: and turn the grill on. That's a perfect afternoon of hunting,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: seeing lots of animals and just being able to sit
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: there and relax and watch them beat themselves. That's that's
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: awesome for me. And I just from remember back when
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: I was a kid, I never had that possibility and
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: and like I said, it's a wonder that I continued
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: to to deer hunt because it was tough, you know,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: and when my when my kids were growing up, you know,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: they were fortunate to have access to two really good properties.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: We're seeing deer. It was just I mean you they
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: were going to see deer every single hunt, I mean period,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: and sometimes they'd see a lot of deer. And you know,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: it's it's a lot easier to get a kid hooked
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: on the you know, the experience and and let their
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: passion flourish if they know they're going to be successful.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Um And talking about c w D. You know, for instance,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: some of these some of these folks that are hunting
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: and in our study area in northwest Arkansas, they they're
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: ready to quit. They aren't seeing dear and then when
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: they do see deer and they harvest bucks, they're all positive.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: They all they all test positive. And you know that's
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: really frustrating. One you you're you're trying to see animals,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: you finally see animals, you kill an animal, and then
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: you can't consume it. Um. You know, there have been
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: a number of hunters expressed, have expressed to us that
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: they're just ready to put their hands up. Uh, and
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: I understand that very frustrating. Do you think, I mean,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: I know this is I know, you don't want to
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: make assumptions but I'm gonna ask you to anyway. Is
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: there is there a way out of the c w
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: D thing? Is there is there any way you see
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: that this works out, where we figure something out that
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: we can kind of end this thing or or lock
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: it up a little bit. Um, You're probably asking the
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: wrong person. I'm an eternal pessimist, UM, and I don't
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I don't say that lightly. UM. I tend to be very,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: very skeptical of of everything in life these days. And
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: this is just a an impossible situation. It really is. UM.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: In areas where the prevalence has gotten as high as
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: it is in some areas, it is a tough, tough situation.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I don't think there's going to be a light bulb
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: that turns on. No. I think this is something that
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: we're going to have to deal with. I'll be long
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: gone and we'll still be dealing with it. Agencies will
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: be dealing with it, Hunters will be dealing with it.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I hope that it is less impactful than I think
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: it's going to be. But the pessimist in me UM
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: is concerned about what my passion is going to look
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: like ten years from now, twenty years yikes. I But
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: I get it, man. Uh, let's let's switch topics here
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: to something less less heavy. It's morbid, yea, yeah, maybe
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: a little more hopeful. Yeah, let's do something that's that's
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: more lighthearted. Your research, your dear research, it seems to
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: almost all take place, or probably has all taken place, uh,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: in the South and Southeast primarily. Is that just because
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: that's where you live and you grew up and you're like, well,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: that's where I want to be, or did you recognize
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: a hole in the research game somewhere and go, you know,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: those northern deer have been studied enough, let's figure out
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: the southern deer. No, it's just opportunity. I've just had
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the opportunities where I've been housed the work in Arkansas,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: you know, that's the That's the only dear study that
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: I've done that I've been involved with that was outside
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: of of my home state. I mean, I did the
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: work that I sent you that we did in Louisiana.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: I was technically here in Georgia, but you know, I've
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time in Louisiana. I'm very
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: familiar with with that state and the deer herds that
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: are there. So no, it's just been a thing of opportunity. Yeah,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: just just it is what it is. Uh, let's can
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: we talk about the fawns and the bears in Louisiana. Yeah,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: because you know, I hunt two places or two states
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: with you know, Minnesota where I hunt, has a decent
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: bear population in some of the spots, but Wisconsin where
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: I hunt, has a real high bear population. And I
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: know I'm probably gonna totally miss quote this, but the
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: d n R there did a fawn mortality study in
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: one of the counties that I hunt quite a bit.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: This was probably eight or ten years ago now, but
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: I remember looking at it and the the mortality rate
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: for fawns was up to eleven months old. So all
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: the fonds that hit the landscape, you know, nine out
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: of every town of them died before they made it
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: past eleven months, so basically a year. And the number
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: one predator was black bears. And you know, this is
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: this is an area with wolves, bobcats, coyotes. You know,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: we run trail cameras over there, and it's like a
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: one to one ratio of deer to predators. I mean
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: that you get, you know, and I know that's totally anecdotal,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: But it's just I just say that because it's a
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: it's a predator dense region. Uh. And people when you
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: tell people that about the bears, they go, no, way,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: like not when you have wolves and coyotes and stuff.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: And I think people underestimate how good bears are at
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: at at snatching up fawns. Yeah, and that that work
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: we did in Louisiana that was a that was a
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: bottom lane of hardwood forest. Uh. For people that are
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: listening that are not familiar with what that means, it's wet,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: wet soils, hardwood, all hardwoods, mature forest interspersed with agricultural
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: fields and regenerating forest areas. UM. And it has superproductive
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: deer herds. And in that part of the world, the
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: deer herds are very very productive. They produce a lot
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: of faons. But in that particular study, UM, bears are
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: very very common in that part of Louisiana. UM. We
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: actually had three predators at eight fawns in that study.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: We lost fawns to bears. Of course, we lost fawns
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: to coyotes, and we lost fawns to bobcats. And by far,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: bears were the most common predator of a fawn. They
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: took about half of the fawnds that that died were
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: killed by bears um and we what we ended up
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: seeing is that most of that predation was very very
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: early after the fall and hit the ground. You know,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: at that point, Mom's off somewhere, other fawn is is
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: hanging out making decisions on its own. And that's something
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of people don't think through is you know,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: she's not standing there saying don't move, don't move. You know,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: those fallings, they get up and they move around on
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: their own. They may not move far. And we saw
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: that's when the bears got them, was you know, that
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: first handful of days after they were born. And a
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: lot of the predation occurred in areas where it looked
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: to us like bears were actually foraging on other stuff,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: soft mass that was available, fruits, you know, berries and
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: that was really good fawning cover. And those dose were
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: you know, those were putting fawns in those areas, and
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: then bears were just meandering through there. And you know,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: bears have an exceptional sense of smell and it's not
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: difficult for a bear to catch a fawn. I mean,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: they're they're walking along. They you know, people think, well
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: they're there's big lumbering kind of you know thing. No,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: when they decide they're going to attack something, they go
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: and they were they were a primary predator fawns in
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: that study. And um, we actually have seen that in
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: other work. There's some ongoing work here in Georgia also
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: showing that bears are taking fawns as well. So they're
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're an efficient faon predator. So I had
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: always assumed that, you know, with the bear's nose and
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: I had always just assumed they were they were focusing
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: in on fawning grounds and they were coursing back and
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: forth until they ran across funds. But you're saying that
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of the faun predation from bears is just
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: sort of you know, right place at the right time
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: for the bear and just an incidental encounter. No, I
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: think there's probably truth to both both lines. That you know,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: fawns are that's a rich price source. I mean, if
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: you it's a huge protein pack, and you know, bears
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: are in the summer, they're breeding, you know, and females
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: that have cubs with them are lactating and there I
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: mean they need energy. So I think in our case,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: it was a combination of a lot of the good
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: fawning cover happened to be in areas that bears were
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: also foraging in, and that just happened to put fawns
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: in places where they were very likely to be, you know,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: interacting with a with a bear. Of course they're going
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: to lose um our, falln survival rate. And that study
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: was about twenty seven so you know, more than almost yeah,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: seventy plus percent mortality, which is pretty consistent frankly with
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: what we're seeing and a lot of studies in the South.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: You know, it's it's tough being a fawn for sure,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: in these predator rich communities like what you described were.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: You know up north, you know you have a not
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: only do you have a lot of different types of
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: things that eat fawns, but you have a high density
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: of those animals as well. And that's what we saw
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: in Louisiana and that study you reference. We not only
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: did we have three primary predators, but the density of
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: those predators was high. Yeah. Yeah, and up where where
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I was talking, you also have but once every five years,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: you have a winner that's really really working hard, to
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: set them set the overall herd back to and I
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: have to imagine that has a pretty big effect on
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: it as well, as far as you know, maybe having
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: singles versus twins, and you know overall fin production as well. Sure. Yeah,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: And and in our part of the world, at least
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: in Louisiana, it's obviously it's not a winner issue. As
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: far as snow and cold water is is the biggie
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: um are super wet springs where we have a lot
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: of flooding, and that's been very common the past decade,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: um much more common than it has been historically, and
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: those deer herds. Flooding during the spring and summer can
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: can really negatively impact falling production UM through a variety
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: of mechanisms, ranging from just condition of the dose too.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: You know, those fawns being dropped in areas where either
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: there's very little fawning cover and everything's concentrated, separdation rates increase,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: so it's it's not it's not really winter in the
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: in that part of the world, it's actually spring and
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: summer that can be really problematic for falls. I was
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: I was wondering about that when you were talking about
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the water. Is there you know, I had a I
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: had a lesson in that when I hunted. I hunted
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: white tails in Florida one time, and you know, it
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: was it was first week August and it was pouring rain.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: You know that that monsoon rolls in every day at
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: three o'clock and you get you know, it feels like
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: four inches of rain in an hour and it's done
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: and gets super hot. But what it was what made
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: it so miserable was the high ground where we were hunting.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Everything was there, all the bugs, all the snakes, you know.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: And is is there a component of that with the
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: that you see in the Louisiana fons too, because I
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: have to imagine it probably concentrates ticks and stuff as
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: well or not. Oh, it concentrates everything, yeah, I mean,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: and it's just such a cumulative effect of floodwaters like
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: that one. You know, mosquitoes are absolutely insane. Um during
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: those flood years like that, you've concentrated everything on small
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: patches of ground. You have stressed. Everything that's there is stressed.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: So from a deer's perspective, their stress hormones are off
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: the charts. Um. You know, at at fawning time, you know,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: does are designed to go be alone and drop those fawns,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: and they space themselves in a way where they're not
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: hanging around with other does. And when flood waters concentrate animals,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: they can't do that, so their entire ecology breaks down
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: during these flood events. And what we've seen, what I've
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: seen anecdotally on my own on my own camp property, uh,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: is you know we want I can tell you right
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: out of the box. If we have a prolonged flood
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: event in the spring and summer and fawning there is
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: in August, late July and August. If we have flooding
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: into early in midsummer, our fonds take an absolute hammer. Um,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: it gets really really bad. And you know what you mentioned,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: you know, your winner events up north. What that does,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: other than just kill a bunch of faons that year,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: is that age cohort progresses through time. So in other words, okay,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: well this year we lose, let's just say our fond
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: survival was ten. Well, next year we're going to have
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: a dramatically lower percentage of year and a half old
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: doze and bucks then we're normally supposed to have. And
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: now when they get to be two and a half
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and those does start becoming more productive. There's fewer of them,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: and then that age cohort goes through time and by
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: the time they reach four or five or six years old,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: you know at the point where at least from a
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: quote unquote trophy deer management perspective, you know, you start
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: harvesting some of these animals, there aren't any there's very
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: few in the population, and so these effects are not
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: just a one year effect there. You know, these they
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: become a cumulative it's through time and um and that's
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: really tough from a management scenario, you know, a management perspective,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: it creates some challenges because you're trying to think out
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: what's this hard going to look like years down the
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: road that you know up here where I live. The
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: the age class situation comes up most often with fish management,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: right like walleyes. Uh, you know, big topic here and
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: you know the perch to some extent some of the
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: other game fish, but you hear that a lot where
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, a poor spring or a poor spawn sucks.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: But where you really start to get hit is when
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: those fish should be like prime spawning age and there's
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: a big gap in the year classes there and you
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: see it stretch out. It's it's such a good reminder
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: of how difficult game management really is when you when
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: you talk about just the whims of mother nature and
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: the weather that you're gonna get, and you know, you
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: get three of those real wet years in a row,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: like the challenge to manage that, you know, three years
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: beyond that or five years beyond that. He's really tough.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people have short memories, so they think,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: why don't I have these deer now, or why don't
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: I have these walleyes now when you're when you're wrestling
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: with what happened, you know, half a decade ago. Yeah, yeah,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: And it's really frustrating for for landowners, you know, and
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: managers as well, because you do everything right and then
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: mother nature bite you and there's absolutely nothing you can
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: do about it. And you know, again, I'm I'm speaking
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: specifically about my experiences in Louisiana, but it's um it
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: can happen anywhere, you know, like here in my backyard
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: this winter, for instance, we had a very poor mass
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: crop and what that did was obvious to our dear herd.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: I harvested a buck about it was the second weekend
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: of November, no, first week in in November. And he
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: was way way underweight compared to what he should have been.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: And he was a six year old. And of course
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: I was tickled to kill him. But when I stood
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: there and looked at him on the ground, I thought
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: to myself, this guy would have been in trouble come
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: late winter, um because and and we our body weights
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: were down uniformly, they were down, and and that matters,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: you know. So it may not be a catastrophic event
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: like a flood, but even these subtle environmental changes they
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: change your management because they alter the herd in ways.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: It may not be very dramatic. They're more subtle, you know.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: But a deer going into winter fifteen pounds lighter than
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: he should be, that's a problem. Yeah, let's maybe there's
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: a weird jump here, but that that's what always amazes
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: me when you get to observe, uh, you know, deer
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: on a food plot somewhere. You know, my my experience
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: is more up here. I've hunted down south a little bit,
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: but I hunted up north a lot. And you see
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: sometimes if you have like a little kill plot, you'll
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: see one great big doll sort of claimant and she's
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: fighting everybody that comes in. I mean, she's she's swinging
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: hooves at everybody. And it's so it's it's a behavior
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: that you like, you're not you don't witness very often, right,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: and you look at it and you go, it's the
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: same thing with turkeys, especially fall turkeys. Like you see
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: how territorial they get over a food source, and you're like, yeah,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: that's because they need every freaking calorie they can get,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: because if they don't get it, you know, and they
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: go into the winter in the wrong condition, it's over
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: for them. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's you know, they're
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: wired to reproduce and survive. That's what these animals are
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: wired to do. And um, surviving is is calories and predation,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: you know, So you have to forge and you have
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: to be successful, and when times get lean, you have
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: take matters in your own hands. Like what you just
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: you know with turkeys is really obvious because you can
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: just see them fight each other constantly when they encounter
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: prey in the in the fall and winter, and and
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: dear do the same thing. Obviously. What I've noticed is
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: on larger you know, on smaller plots, which I try
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: not to even plant, but on larger plots, you'll often
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: see these matriarchal groups kind of separate themselves. You'll have
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: a you know, a doe and and her last year's
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: fawn and then this year's fawn. They'll come in over here,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: and another group will come in over on the other side,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: and they'll kind of they'll kind of keep their distance
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: from each other in a way that, um, they avoid strife,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: you know, they And that's that's one reason I actually
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: try to encourage people that I've worked with that, you know,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: if you have the capability of planning larger plots, do it. Um. One,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: you'll attract more animals, But to you, you end up,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: I've experienced, you end up with a lot calmer animals.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Um if you can kind of separate everybody and let
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: let them do their thing, and it's a lot of
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: fun if you can sit there and watch you know,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: four or five different groups, those that are that are foraging,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: rather than one that comes in a tiny, a little
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: plot and when her buddy shows up, she runs off,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: and that type of thing, and it's not as enjoyable.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: I've never ever thought about that from the perspective of
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: how you could how you could calm your deer down
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: a little bit by giving them some more space to
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: self segregate and you know, not not be as on
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: edge and competitive all the time. Yeah, and you can
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: see this, I mean, you you see this. You know,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: there's another contentious topic, but hunting over bait for instance, well,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: trapping over baits the same thing. I mean, we trap
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: over We trapped turkeys and deer with bait. And there
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: is no question that if you have a food source
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: there in times or lean, when one animal decides he
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: or she's going to come in there, if they're socially
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: dominant it over another animal, they're going to displace that animal.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: That's just the way it is. So when you've got
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: a praise source, that's that's local laws and it's just
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: right here, that's that's what I'm using, then you should
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: expect to see that displacement. Whereas if that praise source
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: is stretched across five acres, for instance, that you don't
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: see that social strife. That's what I've noticed in my
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: in my own hunting experience. Well, you see that with bears,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: you know, when when you're baiting black bears, you see that.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think The best example though, is that
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: fall Turkey. If you figure out where you know a
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: group of hens and poults are gonna feed every day,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: and you go in there and put one single feeding
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: hen decoy in there, he starts squawking away. You see
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: hen behavior that's wild, and they they get so in
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: and that the groups of tom's doing the fall as well.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: But you see it's it's almost it's more striking when
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: you see hens come in like strutting, a chest bumping,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: and you know, I've arrowed birds in the fall that
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: go tip over and then the other ones go stand
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: out here and stop here, just like the times doing
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: the spring, and it's it's just pure dominance. Man. Yeah, yeah,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: it's pretty that's pretty cool behavior. Yeah it is. Let's
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: talk I know everybody wants to hear about this. Uh,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: let's talk that Louisiana study on mature buck movement. Yeah.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: So what we did there is that was actually the
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: same study site that we did the fawn work that
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: where we saw the bare predation, but that other aspect
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: of the study as we captured bucks and we put
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: GPS collars on them and we collected locations so that
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: we could obviously describe, you know, how they were moving.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: And on that study site, we we had the luxury
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: or the fourth fortune, I guess, of having an area
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: that was that was very very lightly hunted. This was
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: public land, uh, a section that was essentially a sanctuary basically, um.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: And then the rest of the area was open access.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: So we were we were able to see how pressure
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: influenced buck behave of yours, which was cool and just anecdotally,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: we were able to observe some really cool behaviors. For instance,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: you know bucks that took excursions and we're gone for
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: four or five months and then came back. Bucks that
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: maintained two different home ranges each year. You know, they
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: had a fall winter home range and then they had
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: a spring summer home range, and literally they were miles
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: apart from each other. So we yeah, we we've had
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: some cool data that we got out of that study.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: And you know, as hunters that really you know, the
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: fawn predation stuff that's obviously important, but the data on bucks,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: you know, just people eat it up, you know, and
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: I get it. I did too. I look at them like,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: oh wow, that's that's really cool. UM. We also saw
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of individual variation in behavior across bucks, irrespective
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: of age, and that's something that we're seeing in turkeys
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: as an aside, and a lot of studies are seeing
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: it with with other species, that there's no such thing
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: as an average deer. They all they all have behaviors
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: that are that are kind of individual which, you know,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: kind kind of makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense. It's
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: intuitively makes perfect sense. It's just harder for us to
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: sort of wrap our brain around because we'd like to
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: just generalize. Oh sure, yeah, it's like, yeah, of course,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: hey that Yeah, there's only two kinds of bucks. The
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: way to kill this one is to do this, and
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: the way to kill the other one is to do that,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: And in reality that's not the way they function. So
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: with with the the deer that had to home ranges,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: those those bucks where you're saying, okay, they got fall
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: winter and they got spring summer. Not not all the
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: bucks have that, right, No, that was just a handful.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: What what do you think that is? Why do you
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: think some bucks are like I'm gonna light out, you know,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: eight miles away, and I'm gonna spend my springing my
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: summer there, and I'm gonna come back in the fall
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: of this spot. But some of them are like, no way,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: I honestly have no idea. We we speculated that, you know,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: maybe there was there was some genetic you know, this
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: animal was from animals that had made similar behaviors before.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: But who knows? And what was really crazy with those
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: the two in particular, I can remember where they went
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: when they left to go to a different home range.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Didn't look anything different than where they left from. Like
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: I just, um, it just didn't really make any sense.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: It was almost as if they pulled the you know,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: the the vacation card, if you will, like I'm just
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: going to go over here and hang out. And they
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: did it multiple years. It's not they didn't just do
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: this once. Uh. In fact, one of these bucks he
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: did that every year. He went to the exact same
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: spot when he left his one home range he went,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: I mean took him about a day and a half
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: and he went over to the other range, so he
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: knew exactly where he was going, and he walked straight
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: over there to that spot and then hung out there
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: all spring and summer. Um, no idea why that is there?
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: From a you know, an ecological perspective, there there's some
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: mechanisms that may be going on there, you know, animals
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: that we think maybe they're prospecting for other areas. Maybe
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: the fact that bucks did that outside of the rut
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: kind of destroys that theory, because what are they prospecting
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: if they're not, if they're not taking these excursions during
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: the rut, which most of them were not during the rut,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: then seeing does well that that argument shot, you know, well,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: is he going somewhere that has some abundant resource you
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: know that he can't get where he was? Well, in
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: our case, the answer was no, he left the bottom
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: land four that had agriculture and he walked over to
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: another bottom land forest that had agriculture. And you know,
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: we were kind of dumbfounded, to be honest with you,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: um and you know stuff like that. Honestly, Tony, we'll
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: never we'll never know, we'll never understand some of that.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: And that's good. That's I think it's kind of cool,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: as like, you know, I don't honestly know what the
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: answer to that is and maybe I never will, And
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: that's okay. I think that stuff's fascinating when you so
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: when you say that and you go, okay, the the
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: dough availability of dose same in both spots, the abundance
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: of food same in both spots. So you just think,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: all right, is that a genetic carryover where at one
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: point it was beneficial for some deer or some of
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: the deer's ancestors to move, you know, to where they
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: were born or some some other spot for half of
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the year. And some of them still carry that and
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: it's still expressed in their genes, and some of them don't.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: And then you're like, okay, well, if that's the case,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: what is it, like, where did that come from? Maybe
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: he was born there, you know, Maybe these bucks were
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: born years ago and they you know, and and one
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: of these older one of these bucks was was an
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: older guy. Um, for all we know, maybe he was
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: fawned over eight miles away, and when he dispersed as
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: a year and a half old buck, he dispersed to
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: where we ended up catching him, and for whatever reason,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: he was just predisposed to go home each each summer
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: and go back to an area that he was his
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: natal area. The problem is we obviously we would have
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: to catch them as fawns and then track them for
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: a number of years to be able to determine that
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: and you and we couldn't in that study, but that's
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: a plausible hypothesis, is that he was he was born there.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: How often in your research in your career do you
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: just just have those moments where you go, there, there's
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: so much left for us to learn every day, every
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: single day. Uh, And that in some ways is is maddening. Uh,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: And in some ways it it's Uh it makes me
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: smile because there will be work to do long after
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I'm gone. Um. I would say probably most days I
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: think more about, Okay, I just we just learned this. Um, well,
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: now that we know that, we now don't know this,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: this and this or I can't explain what we just observed.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: What's it going to take to get an answer to that? Well,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: I'm going to need to do this, this and this
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: and this, this and this is going to take two
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: years and just every day it's like we just know
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: so little, and as we learn things, we create more
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: questions than answers in a lot of cases. And that's
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: what I see with with with a lot of my
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Turkey work right now, is we just everything we learn
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: it's good And you're like, oh, that's that's interesting. I'm
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: you know, and then you sit back and think, why
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: is that? And that doesn't make any sense? So let
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: me think through that. And then I think through it
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: for a week or and I come to the conclusion that, uh,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: I don't have an explanation for that, and to get one,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: it's going to take more information. Okay, well I can
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: get more information, but that takes time. So you're in
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: this catch twenty two where you're constantly learning things and
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: questioning things, and you realize the solution to to some
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: of these questions is just time and data. And we
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: are an instant gratification society. You know. We want answers now,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: we want answers yesterday, and that's just not the way
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: my line of work, you know, functions. But what I
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: what I love about it when you talk about those
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: bucks in the in the you know, the two different
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: home ranges, or I had I had John McRoberts on
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: here talking about that Missouri buck that that went like
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: a hundred eighty miles that they had collared, you know,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: and it makes me it's this is probably sounds super weird,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: but I sort of feel like the deer are just
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: throwing up a pair of middle fingers at us and
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: They're like, you're never gonna know what we're doing. Like,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: you're never gonna know, no matter how many cell cameras
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: you have, no matter how many different ways, like we
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: get to tip the odds in our favor where there's
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: still so much we're just never gonna know. Yeah, and
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: that's the way it probably should be. Yeah, you know,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: I think about you know, dear, I'm a fanatical I'd
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: say I'm I'm a passionate turkey hunter. I'm a fanatical
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: deer hunter. I mean, when it gets to be September,
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: my my mind goes to places that my wife will
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: tell you. She's like, oh, you know, Christ, he's he's
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: about to go into his crazy place. Um. And I
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: just love the deer hunt, and I loved I love
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: the challenge of finding a buck or an area that
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: that I know I'm got I've got a good chance
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: for encountering a mature deer. The the chase to kill
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: that animal is is it just fuels me in the fall.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: That's why I get up in the morning. I think
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: about it all the time. And I have run across
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: bucks as you have that I think are just they're
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: not killed, They're just I tried every possible thing across
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: a number of years to kill them, and I just didn't.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: Now a lot of times I've been successful and killed
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: animals I was after, but I've also gotten my my
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: ass kick too. And that's honestly now in my life,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: is as much, if not more fun than harvesting one,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: because they show me that I just know so little.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: You know, even though I know everything, I you know,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: I think I know enough to get him. I did,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: I still didn't. In fact, I give you an example.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: This was at my camp in Louisiana. We had a
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: deer on camera. This was years ago, a beautiful, beautiful
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: ten point, just a gorgeous hundred you know, hundred sixty animal.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: Had him on camera in October, and man, he was
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: my he was my guy. I was like, Okay, I'm
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: going to hunt that deer and I'll kill him. It
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: may take me all season, but I'll kill him. Nobody
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: ever saw that, dear um cameras everywhere, you know, hunters everywhere.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: There's about ten of us that hunt the property routinely.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: A deer was shot twelve miles away, and I thought
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: to myself, I wasted a lot of time hunting a ghost.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: He wasn't even there, and I don't know where he
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: had been. I don't know how he got to where
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: he went, and I don't even know when he did it.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: Maybe he left the day after we got pictures of him.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: For all I know, I was hunting an animal that
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: didn't exist, and it made, you know, at the time
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: I got you know, I was frustrated. I was like, man,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: I can't believe I waste all this time. And then
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, you didn't waste a minute, you know.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: You you were out there doing what you love and
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: and I saw a lot of things that year. I
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: didn't obviously kill him, but I ended up killing a
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: really nice buck that year that was about the size
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: of that dear um. So I was I had to
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: step back and remind myself that I was fortunate to
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: be in the game regardless of who I was chasing. Yeah, well,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: and what do you do? I mean, even yeah, when
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: you when you make that decision. I mean the buck
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: that taught me that I used to be really cocky
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: about this and be like, every year is killable, every
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: year is going to give you a chance. And I
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: ran into a buck on a farm in Southeastern Minnesota.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: I just had permission on it's just dairy farm. They
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: let a lot of people in there. It gets hunted
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: really hard and shotgun season pretty hard in both season,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: and but you know, hunted a long time and I
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: found this buck that when I when I first saw him,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: I was glassing with a buddy of mine and he
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: came out with a bachelor group and he was like
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: a one sixty, which is a big, big deer, and
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: he had a really unique look to him. He looked
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: like a mule deer. He was high and tight kind
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: of you know. And I followed that deer for several
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: seasons and hung multiple cameras, multiple stand sets, and that
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: deer what was so frustrating about him was he was
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: very predictable as far as like how he'd come into
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: this valley to bed and how he'd leave it. Like
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: I could get pictures of him all the time, but
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: it would always be an hour after dark and an
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: hour or two before first light, and I never saw
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: him no matter how much I crept in there, I'd
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: never get him on certain cameras. And it was just
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: like this dear knows what he's doing so well that
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: he's just got me beat like, I don't I got
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: I got nothing left, and I think I don't know
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: this for sure. I'm I'm about sure. He got hit
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: by a car after I had chased him for like
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: three years, because he was crossing this county road quite
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: a bit, and I heard the one of the neighboring
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: landowners was in tears when he found a buck on
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: the side of the road, and I think it was
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: probably him, but you know, and you know that that's
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: sort of being facetious, but maybe not, because that's what
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: that's what the story I was given. But anyway, they
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: they do teach you that like you do when you
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: spend enough time out there, you're like, man, yeah, you
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: think you're pretty hot ship and then you started dealing
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: with one. I mean I just as an example, I
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: had a doll one time on a property that I
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: had permission to hunt here in the Twin Cities, and
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: she was just real dominant, real aggressive and big old
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: dough and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill that because every time if I make
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: a mistake with her, she busts me and she lets
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: everybody know. And I hunted that dough super hard, and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: she beat me every time. You know, I have a
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: Partiley Pieball dough on a property here in Georgia that
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: is now five. And I saw her when she was
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: a year and a half and I saw her when
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: she was two and a half and since then, I've
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: tried to kill this dough for two seasons. Now, I
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: have thousands of pictures of her. I've not laid eyes
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: on her except coming back to my truck to go
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: retrieve another animal. She was standing about eight yards from
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: my truck one afternoon. That dough has. The pictures of
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: her are every single night. She has not moved at
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: all from where I saw her when she was a
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: year and a half old. And she's now five, and
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: I've never laid eyes on her. And I've intentionally been
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: trying to kill this dear because I want to tan
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: her high. She's she's beautiful, and that just goes to
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: show you she's living right under my nose and she
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: but she knows what I'm doing. She knows when I
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: get in there, she knows when I show up. She's
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: got some strategy that I don't understand that allows her
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: to figure out when she's being hunted, and she she
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: goes completely nocturnal, whereas before the season I get pictures
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: of her in the daylight all the time, and I
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: never get daylight pictures of her after the season starts. Ever,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: I had I had a deer in Louisiana. I called
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: him slick that this deer. I hunted him twelve different times.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: I'm I hunted this animal, and I had pictures of
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: him twice of the twelve hunts. The two pictures I
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: got of him were between hunts when I did not
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: go to hunt him, and both of those times they
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: were like four o'clock in the afternoon. He was on
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: he was walking by the camera. That deer knew exactly
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: what I was doing. And I ended up killing him
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: on the hunt. And the only reason I did is
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: I was I had decided I was going to go
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: in midday, and I had been leaving around ten ish,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: ten thirty ish and coming back if the wind was right,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: uh for an afternoon, you know, two o'clock or whatever,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: because we usually have a lot going on at my
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: camp during the middle of the day. Well, I was
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: by myself, so there was nothing going on. I laid
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: down in the bed to take a you know, try
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: to nap for a little while, and I just couldn't.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't. It was like twelve fifteen. I was like,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: the pastor's there, he's there. So I got up, I
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: put my clothes on, and I went out to where
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: I was. I thought about parking, and I was like,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: you know what, this deers bedding right here. I'm gonna
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: have to walk farther. So I took all my clothes off,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: down to literally long underwear, put all my stuff in
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: my backpack, and started walking. And no kidding, when I
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: got to the base of the stand, he crossed the
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: right away in front of me, climbed up in the stand,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: put my clothes on really quick, got situated in Twenty
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: minutes later, I killed him. And the only reason I
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: killed him is he was chasing a dough and I'm
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: convinced that he was. He had been betting to where
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: I could not get to that stand or another stand
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: that's nearby, on either wind. I could not get there
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: without him knowing that I was there. He was betting
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: in a tiny little sliver of cover, and he had
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: a strategy, and that strategy was there's no way to
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: get in here without me knowing that there's danger, and
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: that day he was not there. He was off chasing
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: that dough, and he was a little farther north than
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: he had been the previous twelve hunts. And I'm convinced
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: that's the only reason I killed him. It's just because
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: he made a mistake. He had my number. If he
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: had not, if he had been betted there where he
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: had been, I would never have killed that deer, because
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: there's no way you couldn't get to him. Yeah, I
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: think we I think one of the biggest things we
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: underestimate about deer and their abilities is how how even
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: as good as we think we are, how many clues
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: we give them that we're there and we were there,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: and how quickly they get in tune to that, you know.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: And I mean we talk about this all the time,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: but I think we just really underestimate how good they
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: are at just knowing us so well in our patterns
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: and just going and reacting to them in a way
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: that we really have a hard time beating. Oh sure, yeah, man,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: we we do so many things to tip our hand,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: you know. And I do it all the time, and
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: I don't try to. I try to avoid everything, you know.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: I'm fanatical about scent. Uh my my kids have UM,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: we'll tell you. You know, when you walk behind me,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, put your foot right where my
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: foot hit. You know. I try to do everything to
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: be as quiet as I can. I don't talk and
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: I stand. I turned my phone off off. I just
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: sit there motionless. Um. I literally was sit in a
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: standing like a statue. I just sit there and I
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: do everything. Yet I had to get to the stand. Well,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: I just tipped off somebody, whether they blew at you
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: or you saw him or heard him or not, you
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: tipped off somebody. Uh. You know, I had to drive
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: to the you know, I had to drive to where
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: I was I was going to hunt. Well, that gravel
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: roads clicking, clicking, clicking click. You know, there's gravel clicking.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: There's all these things that we do that are accused
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: to them that tips our hand and there I think
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: there's just some animal. I know, there's just some animals that,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: uh that you're not going to kill. We had a
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: turkey like this years ago on a study that turkey
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: spent his entire spring season within a hundred yards of
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: the primary access trail used by hunters on that site.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: Hundreds of people walked by this bird, and I have
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: no idea how he how he did it, but he
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: did it. He just stayed there, he dealt with the pressure.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: Did he squat down and let us walk by? I
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: have no idea, but all I know is that bird
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: survived in immense pressure and he had a strategy to
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: do it. And deer are the same way. There are
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: just some animals that they have a strategy like that
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: pob all do. I will very likely never kill her,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: and that's okay, um, but I'm gonna try some different
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: tricks next year and see, but she'll probably win. Well.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: What's what's really cool about that in the in the
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: in the Turkey too that you're talking about is we
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: we tend to think, Okay, you know, I hunt tons
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: of public land, right like I go, I wait till
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: hunt public land in a bunch of different states every year,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: and you know, the goal is kind of treated like
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: an elk hunt, right like get to the spot, however
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: far you gotta go, how much work you gotta do
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: to get to the spot. People don't go that's where
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: the deer will be. And sometimes it works, and sometimes
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: you find those concentrations of deer sign right by the
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: parking lot and you start hunting there and you realize
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: like there's to survive strategies, kind of like a bass
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: fish a lot. And you notice some bass, especially bigger
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: beast tend seemed like they're ambushers, right they get in
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: the shadow of that stump, there's waiting for food to come.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: But then you see these little wolf packs of the
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: fourteen fifteen inches, they're out hunting, you know, like they're
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: they're not just you know what I mean, like, and
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: it's two different strategies. And then you look at the
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: white tails and you go, Okay, some of them are
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: finding those places where people are just ignoring them because
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: they gotta you know, climb up to get them across
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: a river or something. The other ones are just like,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: you know what, you guys are so predictable. I'm just
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: gonna use that to my advantage. I'm gonna let you
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: walk right by me, and because I know how you're
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: gonna come in, I know when you're gonna come in,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: I know where you're gonna leave. And they just use
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: that to their advantage until you throw them for a
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: loop or like you said on that one deer, you know,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: the dough gets the best of him for just a
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: little bit and you get that edge. Yeah. Yeah, And
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: research has shown that, you know, GPS work on bucks
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: has shown that, you know, some of them have certain strategies.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: For instance, during the rut, you know certain some bucks
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: do a certain thing and others do something else. And
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: but then when you when you look at these behaviors
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: or these strategies, you also see that how one buck
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: does it is not identical to how another buck does it.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: So they may have the same broader strategy of well
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: maybe i'll move more, I'll course through my range, I'll
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: try to find as many those as I can, But
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: how they do that looks a little different by you know,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: by individual. Just speaking to that that you know, variation
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: across these guys and and how they behave and um,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: you know, and again research is showing this on all
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: sorts of species. Now you know these behavioral strategies, elk, wolves, coyotes,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, they all have these strategies, but there's a
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: lot of variation within those strategies. Yea, yeah, you kind
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: of have to. I mean, so we we we filmed
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: a project last year called One Week in November and
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: one of the places they hunted as a farm in
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: southwestern Minnesota. It was my first story of south western Wisconsin.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: It was my first year hunting this place. You know,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: I scouted it quite a bit, and it's bluffy stuff,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: so there's really nice pinch points and funnels and you know,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: pretty this stuff. I grew up hunting, so I was like,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: you know, I got this. And after hunting there and
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: seeing how some of those bucks crews and how they
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: use the highway and some of these places where I
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: was like, you know, this is gonna be almost a
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: non factor. It just makes it makes you realize when
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: you do that stuff, you're like, man, they even though
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: like there is that individual variability, like you said, with
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: all these deer and all these animals, they just have
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: these tendencies that a lot of times we don't we're
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: either not aware of or we just kind of like
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: downplay it because we want to sit somewhere, like we
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: want to sit where we can see or we you know,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: like we don't want to be on that hillside right
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: over the county road. And those deer they're playing that
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: game where they know us so well and they know
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: where they're visible from the roads they know where they
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: feed in those fields, or you know, the does are
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: responding to that, and the bucks are responding to that,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: and they're they're up reading on a level that's so
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: freaking cool that way, Yeah, which makes hunting them fun.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons it's you know, we're from
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: fanatics about doing it is the uncertainty, you know, if
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: it if I kind of see this, and I've talked
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: with other people that I hunt with about this. You know,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: at some level, we're supposed to lose most of these battles,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean, we we have so many tools
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: now available to us to help us be more efficient
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: hunters and more effective, but at the end of the day,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: we're not supposed to win more often than we lose.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: And and so losing and failing is that's part of hunting.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: In fact, I believe that's one of the most important
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: aspects of hunting is failure, is failing at at the
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: hunt and learning from the experiences that you have. I've
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: said this on other podcasts. People have asked me, you
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: know what, what's an important take on is like fail
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: failing is a is a good thing. Failing get in
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: your ass kicked over and over and over can be
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: impactful if you let it be, if you let it
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: drive you um to think more, to be more reflective,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: to be more introspective about what you're doing, how you're
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: doing it. Failure becomes the seed of of passion, I think,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: and I think that was the case with me. I lost.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I grew up. I didn't have a
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: lot of animals to hunt that, you know, But I
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: kept going. I kept going. I kept going. Finally, you know,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: I'd started being more successful, and then I started creating
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: opportunities for myself because I was a better hunter. I was.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: I was a student of the animal, not just killing
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: the animal, but learning about the animal and their ecology
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: and their behavior. And that made me a better hunter.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: And then as I became a better hunter, success was
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: not so fleeting that I was concerned about it anymore.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: I knew I was going to be successful at some point.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: Joy the experience. Now, get out there and learn as
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: much as you can and just relax and let things
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: come to you. And I've told some quite a few
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: younger hunters that I've interacted with in my life that
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: that's that's my hunting philosophy and the nutshells. Don't push it.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: Just let things happen as they're going to happen. Be smart,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: you know, like we're talking about dear the winds wrong,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: don't hunt him, don't go there. If if you don't
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: feel like you're comfortable accessing a place, don't go in there.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: Figure out a better way to do it. Um understand
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: that your first hunt is often your best shot. So
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: if you're after a particular animal, sometimes you need that
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: first hunt to be the the odds need to be
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: tipped in your favor that first time after him. So
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: sometimes that takes being patient and not going to a
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: you know, to hunt a certain animal. That's what I've
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: done in my in my career, uh is just try
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: to slow down sometimes, try to try to let the
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: process work out and be patient. And if you have
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: time to hunt, and I'm lucky enough I have, you know,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: I will often have a few days in a row
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: or a week in a row at at a particular
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: spot that I can hunt. I can I can afford
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: to be patient. When I'm not, That's when I usually
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: screw up when I when I'm not, when I'm trying
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: to force the issue that's when I usually make a mistake.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: And then I stepped back and go, you know, Mike,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: damn it, you knew better than that. You did it anyway,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: you know, so try to try to slow down. If
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: you don't have that happen to you about three thousand
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: times in your career, you'll never be a good deer hunter. Yeah.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: I did it this this last year too, and um,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: this past year season was quite a challenge for me.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: Um in a lot of ways. But but I screwed
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: up one hunt and and I just thought to myself,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: I was like, what are you doing? Like, what are
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: you doing? Why did you even go to this stand?
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: Like you shouldn't even be sitting here? What were you
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: thinking to do this? And I even had a friend
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: of mine text me and say where you at? And
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: I told him to stand that I was on. He goes,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: the hell are you doing? And I was like, yeah,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: I just realized that. You know, He's like, man, that's
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: You're smarter than that. It's just I had it in
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: my head I was going to force the issue and
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: and I have terrible hunt and I probably ended up
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: educating the deer I was after. And as an aside,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: he wasn't he was not killed last season by anyone,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: maybe because of me. Well that that's what happens man.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: Uh so so so many words of wisdom there, Michael.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: Let's let's wrap this sucker up. Um. I really appreciate
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: you coming on, and I hope you had a nice
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: little break from talking turkeys and talking deer today. But
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: it was a pleasure, men. Yeah, no, I was. I
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: was glad to join. It's it's uh, it's good to
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: talk about deer during the middle of spring turkey season. Uh.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: I've certainly been talking about turkeys a lot, so I'm sure. Well,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: thank you. Not a problem, not a problem. That's it
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: for this show, folks. Be sure to tune in next
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: week for more white tail talk. This has been Where
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: to Hunt, and I'm your guest host, Tony Peterson. As always,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for your support, for listening
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: and for checking out our other white tail content, which
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: is available at the meat eater dot com slash wired,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: where you can see a bunch of articles by Mark
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: myself and a bunch of white tail addicts, or on
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: our YouTube channel, the wire to Hunt YouTube channel, where
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: we post weekly how to videos.