Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the Whitetail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Matt Ross of the National
Speaker 2: Deer Association to discuss the evolution of deer science and
Speaker 2: management over the last ten years. All right, welcome to
Speaker 2: the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyon,
Speaker 2: and we are brought to you by First Light. And
Speaker 2: if you don't know, First Light's got the Spector Whitetail
Speaker 2: cameo pattern, and with every purchase of our Spector Whitetail Pattern,
Speaker 2: a portion of those proceeds get donated to our pals
Speaker 2: over at the National Deer Association. That's relevant today because
Speaker 2: our guest is the director of Conservation for the National
Speaker 2: Dear Association. My friend, great deer hunter, wildlife biologist, all
Speaker 2: around good dude, Matt Ross. And we're kind of continuing
Speaker 2: this by accident theme of a look back at the
Speaker 2: last ten years. You know, I mentioned a while back
Speaker 2: that Dan and I listened to our first podcast episode
Speaker 2: ten years ago or so, and have you know started
Speaker 2: exploring what's been going on over that time period. And
Speaker 2: I thought it'd be interesting to take that same theme
Speaker 2: and apply it to what we know about deer, the science,
Speaker 2: the research, the many different projects that folks are doing
Speaker 2: across the country to help us better understand dear behavior,
Speaker 2: dear habitat the impacts of hunting, management strategies, disease, all
Speaker 2: these different things. And Matt, you know, being involved with
Speaker 2: the National Deer Association and the Quality Deer Management Association
Speaker 2: before that, in his position, in his role, he has
Speaker 2: a really unique view of all of this information and
Speaker 2: research that's been coming to light. So my question to him,
Speaker 2: and the reason why I wanted to have this podcast
Speaker 2: was what do we know now that we didn't know
Speaker 2: when the Wired Hunt podcast started? How have things changed?
Speaker 2: What kind of Aha moments have we as a collective
Speaker 2: deer community received over this past decade. What were some
Speaker 2: of the things we had wrong back in twenty oh
Speaker 2: nine or twenty ten or twenty twelve. Where have we
Speaker 2: seen the most progress? What is it that we as
Speaker 2: deer hunters today really need to make sure we know
Speaker 2: about because of these advances in science and research and
Speaker 2: data collection. That was our main topic of conversation today
Speaker 2: with Matt, and some really interesting stuff related to management
Speaker 2: practices when it comes to you know, trigger management, choosing
Speaker 2: what deer to harvest, when it comes to the habitat,
Speaker 2: work we might want to do, when it comes to
Speaker 2: the impact of our hunting decisions. All of that gets
Speaker 2: discussed today, and we also talk about an evolution in
Speaker 2: the organization that Matt works for, the National Deer Association,
Speaker 2: and a big piece of that has been some really
Speaker 2: exciting new work that they're doing related to public lands,
Speaker 2: making some really significant investments in time and energy and
Speaker 2: resources in helping improve public land habitat for deer and
Speaker 2: deer hunters. And we get to cover that, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of you will be interested and excited
Speaker 2: to hear about what's happening. We're talking big time scale
Speaker 2: projects that are going to improve the places that you
Speaker 2: and I can go hunt for free public land owned
Speaker 2: by us that is being improved because of the work
Speaker 2: that Matt's doing and the NDA, and we also talk
Speaker 2: about three different projects coming up that you can actually
Speaker 2: get out there and be involved in alongside me and Matt.
Speaker 2: We've got three of my working for Wildlife tour events
Speaker 2: that are in collaboration with the NBA and their Public
Speaker 2: Lands Initiative, and I'm really hoping to see some of
Speaker 2: you guys out there on the ground doing some of
Speaker 2: this work with us. It's gonna be a good time,
Speaker 2: but we'll cover that at the end. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: let's kick this sucker off. This is a great conversation
Speaker 2: with Matt Ross. We learn a lot. If you are
Speaker 2: interested in dear behavior, dear management, dear science, if you
Speaker 2: are a dear nerd like me and Matt are, you're
Speaker 2: gonna like this one. So let's get to it all.
Speaker 1: Right with me.
Speaker 2: Now on the line for one of several return appearances
Speaker 2: is my longtime friend now mister Matt Ross. Welcome back
Speaker 2: to the show. Matt.
Speaker 3: Hey, Mark, I am thrilled to be back. Always enjoy
Speaker 3: speaking with you, and I'm not sure how many times
Speaker 3: I've been on the show, but it's always it's always
Speaker 3: been a pleasure to talk about deer in life and
Speaker 3: all the things we get into. So yeah, looking forward
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right right back at you, man. We were just
Speaker 2: talking off air about how you know how long this
Speaker 2: all has been going on, you know, the podcast being
Speaker 2: around ten years, Wired Hunt fifteen, and I think given
Speaker 2: all that, then you and I have known each other
Speaker 2: for almost fifteen years then, because it was pretty early
Speaker 2: on with Wired Hunt when I first kind of got
Speaker 2: connected with you guys and started, you know, getting to
Speaker 2: know you guys. And I went to that very first
Speaker 2: Deer Steward course that was probably not the first course
Speaker 2: for you guys, but the first one for me, which
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe it was like twenty ten, maybe too,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe like thirteen years ago maybe something like that.
Speaker 2: So it's been a ride. It's it's been a while.
Speaker 3: That sounds about right in terms of timing. Let me guess,
Speaker 3: was that in Missouri when we first met?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Was it at Grant Woods's farm?
Speaker 2: That was the one?
Speaker 3: Yep, I remember it. I remember talking to you and
Speaker 3: learning a little bit about this crazy guy that left
Speaker 3: a job to Actually at that point you hadn't started,
Speaker 3: you hadn't left, you were just developing it all. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I do remember meeting you. I remember that course. It's
Speaker 3: amazing that, you know, memories that you retain versus the
Speaker 3: ones that you lose, but uh, that was a great
Speaker 3: class and that series is that course that we put
Speaker 3: on every year has always been great. And I've met
Speaker 3: some longtime friends like you at those. So yeah, it's
Speaker 3: been You're You've been quite on on quite the journey, honestly,
Speaker 3: I mean, and developed a national communication platform to talk
Speaker 3: about deer lot. I love everything you've done. Applaud the
Speaker 3: look back, you know, honestly, and you you really give
Speaker 3: a voice to a lot of a lot of folks
Speaker 3: out there, and I think you've done an amazing job.
Speaker 2: Mark thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. And uh,
Speaker 2: you know, we can pat each other's backs a little
Speaker 2: more here now because I have to thank you guys.
Speaker 2: I mean, all those early opportunities, like the Dear Story course.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember this, but I mean
Speaker 2: I was a kid right out of college. I didn't
Speaker 2: have a lot of money. I was definitely like bootstrapping it.
Speaker 2: And you guys actually provide a scholarship for me to
Speaker 2: go to that Dear Story course. I applied for a
Speaker 2: scholarship and then got it. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have
Speaker 2: gone because it seemed like a lot of money and
Speaker 2: traveled to get there and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So that was like a formative early experience for me,
Speaker 2: building kind of my knowledge and foundation when it came
Speaker 2: to Whitetails and then the network that came out of that.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so long story short, thank you to you
Speaker 2: guys too, and it all is I guess this is
Speaker 2: a perfect way to kind of open this conversation, Matt,
Speaker 2: because this kind of theme of the month happened by accident.
Speaker 2: I actually didn't have a plan for really where the
Speaker 2: podcast were going to go this month, but we kind
Speaker 2: of stumbled into this realization that this is the tenth
Speaker 2: season of the podcast, and that got me and Dan
Speaker 2: a few weeks ago reflecting on how far we've come
Speaker 2: and how things have changed, and YadA, YadA, YadA. I
Speaker 2: had a similar conversation last week with Tony Peterson about that,
Speaker 2: and then I got to thinking, you know, things haven't
Speaker 2: just been evolving with me or with other hunters. Things
Speaker 2: have been evolving when it comes to this entire community
Speaker 2: of folks obsessed with deer, learning about deer, researching deer,
Speaker 2: and developing the science and the data around what we
Speaker 2: think we know and understand about these critics that were
Speaker 2: so infatuated with So this is a long winded way
Speaker 2: of saying, Matt that my hope today is to kind
Speaker 2: of grill you on where the science of deer and
Speaker 2: deer hunting has gone over this past decade. So that's
Speaker 2: my hope. Is that something you're game for?
Speaker 3: Oh totally. I love deer, you know, deer hunter through
Speaker 3: and through. That's why I do what I do in
Speaker 3: the career that I pursued, and I really enjoy the
Speaker 3: scientific part of my job. You know. I went through
Speaker 3: school myself and kind of was driven by that with
Speaker 3: you know, academia, getting a master's degree. And we pride
Speaker 3: ourselves at the Deer Association to be science based and
Speaker 3: just me personally leading our conservation team, our field team
Speaker 3: that worked with the public and states and all over
Speaker 3: the country and making sure anything that we communicate through
Speaker 3: education and outreach is always science based. And so we
Speaker 3: continually try to update ourselves and stay up to date,
Speaker 3: you know, on our own working knowledge of the science
Speaker 3: and just it's so intriguing. I mean, they are amazing
Speaker 3: creatures and you know, both of those things my scientific
Speaker 3: brain plus the fact that I love deer and Huntingham
Speaker 3: makes me, you know, excited to talk about this. I
Speaker 3: actually a couple of years ago did somewhat of a
Speaker 3: similar retrospective look back kind of approach, but it was
Speaker 3: in an article form where in terms of deer research,
Speaker 3: said you know, what are the biggest things we've learned
Speaker 3: in the past decade. It was supposed to be a
Speaker 3: play on twenty twenty and then twenty twenty turned into COVID,
Speaker 3: but it was like, you know, what are the twenty
Speaker 3: biggest discoveries that we found in the last twenty years.
Speaker 3: And as I started researching or thinking about the things
Speaker 3: that we've learned about deer and deer science, you know,
Speaker 3: twenty years was just too much. It was actually too
Speaker 3: long because in ten years time so much had changed,
Speaker 3: and so the storyline changed from the twenty biggest deer
Speaker 3: research discoveries of the last twenty years to the last decade.
Speaker 3: And even that in itself was full of information and
Speaker 3: every year new research comes out, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: speaking of COVID. COVID put a pause to a degree
Speaker 3: on some of the well obviously the whole world, but
Speaker 3: it was in terms of deer research being shared, there
Speaker 3: was a lot of good science happening, and there were
Speaker 3: still some of the major events and platforms for us
Speaker 3: to share that research. But it was interesting. As things
Speaker 3: have calmed down and in person events start happening more
Speaker 3: often or regularly, again, we're seeing an uptick in the
Speaker 3: amount of deer research that is coming out. And even recently,
Speaker 3: you know, my one of my colleagues was at an
Speaker 3: event in Colorado and uh just said, the amount of
Speaker 3: posters that were there and live presentations seemed like it
Speaker 3: was two to three times the volume, and it must
Speaker 3: just be this lag effect. So yeah, we just we
Speaker 3: we learned them. We don't know everything about deer, uh,
Speaker 3: which just makes them partly why they're so cool. Uh.
Speaker 3: And every opportunity that we can learn about them more
Speaker 3: through science, we love it. And I'm you can grill me.
Speaker 3: I'm ready, let's talk about let's talk about deer science.
Speaker 3: But one of my buddies coined the term deer and
Speaker 3: I wear it proudly and said, you're a true deer nerd,
Speaker 3: And I don't disagree with that.
Speaker 2: That's that's something like you said to wear proudly. So
Speaker 2: you've got a little you've got to kind of an
Speaker 2: interesting a slightly unique position compared to a lot of
Speaker 2: other deer hunters, though, because you have to wear two hats.
Speaker 2: I think you wear this hat of you know, wildlife biologist,
Speaker 2: science based. You are steeped in the research right. Part
Speaker 2: of your job is consuming everything. I'm sure you are
Speaker 2: like constantly reading these reports and you're very You're more
Speaker 2: up to date on the latest deer science and research
Speaker 2: than probably you know, almost anyone you know. I consider
Speaker 2: myself very up to speed on this stuff, and you
Speaker 2: know twenty x of what I know. At the same time,
Speaker 2: you're also a deer hunter, just just a deer hunter too,
Speaker 2: So you're out there seeing things in real life, experiencing
Speaker 2: things in real life, probably coming to conclusions on your
Speaker 2: own based on what you're seeing. And so this is
Speaker 2: something that you and I have talked about in past podcasts.
Speaker 2: How sometimes there's this conflict between what we see as
Speaker 2: hunters in the field and the conclusions that we're coming
Speaker 2: to based on our own personal observations and then what
Speaker 2: the science tells us. And sometimes those things don't always
Speaker 2: seem to match up or it's confusing. There's a few
Speaker 2: examples of this where I'm still like man I don't
Speaker 2: understand how I see this thing all the time and
Speaker 2: the science tells me this other thing. So that's all
Speaker 2: to say, Matt. My question for you then, is, given
Speaker 2: that weird situation you're kind of in where you're deeper
Speaker 2: into it than a lot of people, how has your
Speaker 2: hunting changed over the past ten years as you've been
Speaker 2: flooded with all this new information, You've consumed, all this
Speaker 2: new science, You've been a part of all these different things.
Speaker 2: At the same time, you're also a deer hunter. What's
Speaker 2: your evolution looked like? What has stood out to you
Speaker 2: from this decade? And is that conflict that I'm talking
Speaker 2: about been a part of that at all?
Speaker 3: That is a great question, you know. I would know
Speaker 3: ever claimed that I'm an expert deer hunter, you know,
Speaker 3: and I am a biologist by trade, but I love
Speaker 3: deer hunting, and I spend as much time as I can.
Speaker 3: And I'll feel, you know, learning more just practical gaining knowledge,
Speaker 3: you know, seeing things. But I try to apply what
Speaker 3: I know through science. Uh, And there are certainly examples
Speaker 3: where it has driven my behavior and what I do
Speaker 3: or don't do. But I will also say and just
Speaker 3: kind of stepping back from that, and this could this
Speaker 3: also could come with age, but it could also come
Speaker 3: with knowing that science is not you know, using the
Speaker 3: scientific method to learn anything. Typically you need repeatability where
Speaker 3: you you test a theory through the scientific method and
Speaker 3: it's been proven in multiple landscapes or disproven and you
Speaker 3: get accurate, precise results over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: And then the culmination of all this evidence tells you
Speaker 3: the preponderance of what the situation here's above average what
Speaker 3: you can expect. But even that, there's always outliers that too.
Speaker 3: It's a theory, and there's also things that can break
Speaker 3: that that average or not you know, not fall in
Speaker 3: line there. And so you know, I'm saying all that
Speaker 3: to say, science and dear research has driven how I
Speaker 3: hunt in many ways, but I still have that intuitive
Speaker 3: part of me that will still follow gut, you know,
Speaker 3: gut feel to a degree, and I will also expect
Speaker 3: the unexpected to a degree. And so I might learn
Speaker 3: that you know, dear behavior says you know. I'll give
Speaker 3: an examples. The first thing to come to mind is
Speaker 3: that you know you're not dear. Use of scrapes is
Speaker 3: primarily supposed to be at night. You know, when I
Speaker 3: was grown up, you'd see a scrape, you'd set up
Speaker 3: a stand or blind or you know, pull pull up
Speaker 3: a chair or find a stump, and you watch that
Speaker 3: during the day and you don't see anything. Well, if
Speaker 3: science says eighty five percent of a scrape use is
Speaker 3: done at night, you tend to think, Okay, well, maybe
Speaker 3: I shouldn't do that, maybe I shouldn't hunt over that place.
Speaker 3: But you know what, there's still some deer using during
Speaker 3: the day, even if the you know, the vast majority,
Speaker 3: and you might decide to sit there and help a
Speaker 3: great buck over it. And so you know, that's just
Speaker 3: kind of an example. But I still try to follow,
Speaker 3: follow my gut, and follow my instinct as a predator.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what we are as humans. Sometimes you
Speaker 3: get the feel that something might happen, or sometimes you
Speaker 3: get the field that deer are using space in a
Speaker 3: certain way. I'll use science to back all that up,
Speaker 3: and I use science to help drive my my overall decisions,
Speaker 3: or honestly, I'll use science to justify what happened, you know,
Speaker 3: like or didn't happen. But you know, there are things
Speaker 3: like you and I have talked about moon and weather
Speaker 3: impacts on deer behavior and movement and what we've learned
Speaker 3: or not, you know, things that haven't been shown. Uh,
Speaker 3: but there's I wouldn't want anybody. I mean, I I
Speaker 3: may be a deer nerd, but I'm a dear hunter
Speaker 3: and first and foremost. And there are certain things that
Speaker 3: still don't make sense to me, even though the science
Speaker 3: has shown it. And I don't know that's you're really
Speaker 3: in a in a strange world. If you want to
Speaker 3: believe something unequivocally, unabashedly and say that is the Bible
Speaker 3: on that one circumstance, that's not a good way to leave,
Speaker 3: you know, live a life. Never mind, even like go hunting,
Speaker 3: you have to you have to be to tap into
Speaker 3: that that thing that's inside us that tells us what
Speaker 3: to do sometimes. And so I wouldn't give that advice
Speaker 3: to anybody. But I mean, we can get into some
Speaker 3: of the the details of some of the broader patterns
Speaker 3: of things I've learned. You know, you can kill a
Speaker 3: deer in the middle of the day, certainly can kill
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night. That's not legal. But
Speaker 3: most deer movement, it's supposed to be at dawn and dusk.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's something that has shown over and over
Speaker 3: and over again. Otherwise or except there are some circumstances
Speaker 3: where deer are going to be more active during I'll
Speaker 3: give you an example, and I've said this one before,
Speaker 3: in parts of certain portions of deer range, like in
Speaker 3: central South Florida where the Florida panther exists, deer there
Speaker 3: have adapted to be more active during the middle of
Speaker 3: the day. I actually just saw a report was shared.
Speaker 3: Kip Adams, my direct supervisor, our chief conservation officer, just
Speaker 3: shared an article link with our entire conservation team last
Speaker 3: week out of the research project that's been going on
Speaker 3: for about thirteen years in Pennsylvania called the Deer four
Speaker 3: Study out of penn State. They're sharing some stuff looking
Speaker 3: at some strange, strange, broader patterns that they're seeing about
Speaker 3: dear not being necessarily as crepuscular as that we thought.
Speaker 3: So that that's a new tidbit that doesn't jibe with
Speaker 3: all the other research. So you know, there's still some
Speaker 3: strange stuff out there. So the caveat of don't take
Speaker 3: one study, uh certainly as truth. You certainly want to see, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, repeated results over and over again and different landscapes,
Speaker 3: and then use all that as kind of telling you
Speaker 3: what the average deer will do. But there's still going
Speaker 3: to be outliers. There's still going to be individuals that
Speaker 3: do something different. Yeah, and don't take don't don't lose
Speaker 3: that as a hunter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a great point, and it's such a
Speaker 2: good reminder you brought up. The whole idea of the
Speaker 2: scientific method is not to come to a absolute fact.
Speaker 2: It's to come to the best understanding as of now.
Speaker 2: But science is a process. It is a like it's
Speaker 2: not like an endpoint. You know, a research study comes
Speaker 2: to a theory based on peer review and all these
Speaker 2: different things, But then the goal for everyone else is
Speaker 2: to then disprove it someday right, and keep hammering that
Speaker 2: theory and try to poke holes and explore where there
Speaker 2: might be gaps or where there might be exceptions. And
Speaker 2: you know, the success I think, you know saying this
Speaker 2: is not a biologist myself, but as someone who I
Speaker 2: guess you could say as an enthusiast, I think that
Speaker 2: success within the scientific world is when you actually do
Speaker 2: prove one of these things wrong and come to a
Speaker 2: better understanding down the road. That's actually an example of
Speaker 2: the scientific method working that we're not just stuck in
Speaker 2: the belief we had twenty years ago, but instead we've
Speaker 2: continued to polish and furnish and explore and poke and
Speaker 2: prod until we do understand this thing differently. So it's
Speaker 2: a long winded way of saying I have one more
Speaker 2: personal kind of take. Curious on your take on this
Speaker 2: when it comes to these different things you've looked at
Speaker 2: over the last ten years. Is there any one study
Speaker 2: or theory or big takeaway from the science that you
Speaker 2: think has impacted you personally the most as a hunter.
Speaker 2: Is there something you can think back on this last
Speaker 2: ten years and like, man, Yeah, when I found out
Speaker 2: that deer do X or that deer don't do why
Speaker 2: that really did change how I hunt? Is there one
Speaker 2: thing maybe that stands out to you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably in terms of de deer movements. You know,
Speaker 3: one of the things that has been kind of a
Speaker 3: eye opener over the last ten years is the fact
Speaker 3: that deer movements are not as as random as we think,
Speaker 3: and that a lot a lot has to do with
Speaker 3: their need for resources. And so one of the things
Speaker 3: that you can do as a as a hunter, whether
Speaker 3: you have the own land or not, is to change
Speaker 3: what they do based on those resources. So just managing
Speaker 3: so you know, even if you are a public land
Speaker 3: hunter and you're using public land and you might not
Speaker 3: be able to manipulate the ground, you can still pick
Speaker 3: the locations you go to based on deer need at
Speaker 3: certain times a year. I mean, one of the things
Speaker 3: that we've learned in the last decade was a movement
Speaker 3: or things that deer do they call deer excursions, which
Speaker 3: is where you know, they live in their home range,
Speaker 3: where they're there pretty much all year long, but they'll
Speaker 3: go on these excursions outside of that. Those are driven
Speaker 3: by different things that we we you know, have out
Speaker 3: of our control in some cases, but some places you
Speaker 3: can control. So just managing land and working with your
Speaker 3: neighbors is probably one of the best things you can
Speaker 3: do to influence deer use and movement and trying to
Speaker 3: apply land management as best as you can. That's probably
Speaker 3: the one something that jumps out. There's just so much
Speaker 3: market it's hard to like sort through all of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm gonna I want to force you to
Speaker 2: do some more picking and sorting. Yeah, so that's this
Speaker 2: is the perfect segue though too. As far as the
Speaker 2: most maybe impactful or interesting or paradigm shifting, you know,
Speaker 2: advances in dear science. When you did your little look
Speaker 2: back on the past twenty years or past ten years,
Speaker 2: what were the things that stand out to you now?
Speaker 2: Is like, man, these were the big ones or this
Speaker 2: is the biggest. Have you been able in any kind
Speaker 2: of way rank them, either personally or if you think
Speaker 2: there's some kind of like scientific community consensus on what
Speaker 2: those most important you know, realizations have been.
Speaker 3: It depends on uh, you know, there's a typical biologists
Speaker 3: answer is it depends right, you know, it depends on
Speaker 3: who you're asking. But you know, asking me one of
Speaker 3: the things that I think, I mean, I don't know
Speaker 3: if about ranking them, but I can just kind of
Speaker 3: list things and just tell you my viewpoint of each one,
Speaker 3: if that's helpful. One of the things that we've learned
Speaker 3: over the past you know, ten fifteen years or so,
Speaker 3: is how dear nutrition affects. We certainly know that there
Speaker 3: are if they eat a lot of good things, they're
Speaker 3: going to be healthier and they're going to be larger
Speaker 3: and more resilient to disease and even have larger antlers,
Speaker 3: which is what a lot of folks care about. But
Speaker 3: one of the things that was kind of a groundbreaking
Speaker 3: thought for a lot of researchers was how that is generational.
Speaker 3: There's some research out around twenty fifteen or were around
Speaker 3: that time out of Mississippi State that discovered, you know,
Speaker 3: deer aren't doomed quote unquote, you know, do based on
Speaker 3: where they grew up, that you can change that through nutrition.
Speaker 3: But the thing is the researchers that did that found
Speaker 3: that if their parents were born in a poor environment,
Speaker 3: it takes a couple of generations to change that. And
Speaker 3: so things take time, and so you have to stick
Speaker 3: with whatever you know management fortitude that you kind of
Speaker 3: put forth and try to change things over the long term.
Speaker 3: You can't nothing's a quick fix. And that that was
Speaker 3: something that was pretty pretty key.
Speaker 2: Yes, so let me make sure I understand this. So
Speaker 2: you're saying, let's say I pick up a piece of property,
Speaker 2: I'm going to start managing it and I'm going to
Speaker 2: start trying to do some things to improve the habitat
Speaker 2: to improve the health of the deer population. This study
Speaker 2: is basically showing that nothing I do tell me if
Speaker 2: this is the right interpretation, but nothing I can do
Speaker 2: over the next two to four years will dramatically change
Speaker 2: the you know, nutritional impact for or a deer that
Speaker 2: was living on my farm the year I bought it.
Speaker 2: It's more so going to impact you know, the fon
Speaker 2: of that deer's fawn or a generation or two down
Speaker 2: the line. And so this is is that what I'm understanding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. It takes a couple of generations to change things.
Speaker 3: I mean, what they did was they took a pregnant
Speaker 3: wild dose from different parts of the state of Mississippi,
Speaker 3: and one was, you know, one group was taken from
Speaker 3: what would be quote unquote a really high quality area,
Speaker 3: you know, lots of ag. The deer there tend to
Speaker 3: be bigger bodied, bigger antlered, produced more fawnds per unit.
Speaker 3: And then a medium quality area and a poor quality area.
Speaker 3: They raised their fawns, you know, because they were pregnant,
Speaker 3: They raised their funds and fed them all the same
Speaker 3: level of high quality forage and measured in the difference
Speaker 3: in productivity of their next generation, and they all stayed
Speaker 3: the same. It was like they were within their own
Speaker 3: units of whether they came from good quality, medium or poor.
Speaker 3: But they did that for generation after generation. It took
Speaker 3: a couple of generations for the deer that came from
Speaker 3: the poor quality area to catch up, you know, or
Speaker 3: actually produce. And they were wondering, why did it take
Speaker 3: a couple of generations. It's almost like their pre programmed.
Speaker 3: The technical term is called epigenetics. It was almost like
Speaker 3: they're pre programmed to not respond to changes because you know,
Speaker 3: evolutionarily speaking, if they were to stay in that environment,
Speaker 3: it would be not a good idea from them to
Speaker 3: like grow quickly from that and then have a time
Speaker 3: of feasts and famine and where they go back to
Speaker 3: being poor quality. Think about areas that are super arid,
Speaker 3: you know, and they have dry year after dry year,
Speaker 3: and then all of us sudden a really wet year
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of vegetation available. If those deer
Speaker 3: responded the next year, they would be then back to
Speaker 3: their norms. So it takes it takes time to almost
Speaker 3: flip the switch on. And what that taught us as
Speaker 3: managers is that one you can't blame where you're from,
Speaker 3: you know, don't blame your zip code. Don't say, well,
Speaker 3: I live in such and such a place that it's
Speaker 3: always going to be poor quality. I need to travel
Speaker 3: to go hunt better deer, quote better dear, or I
Speaker 3: need a lot of money to you know, buy property
Speaker 3: to do that. No, if you have access to property
Speaker 3: that you can manage, as long as you put in
Speaker 3: the time and the resources you can, you can make
Speaker 3: a change. It just takes time. That that was something
Speaker 3: that we learned that was kind of foundational and kind
Speaker 3: of a big deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and kind of tangential to that. Very related there
Speaker 2: was another study and I'm maybe stealing a little bit
Speaker 2: of your thunder here, but I think it's worth bringing up.
Speaker 2: In that article you wrote, there was another study that
Speaker 2: talked about the fact that soil quality does not necessarily
Speaker 2: equal plant nutrition quality. Yeah, and that's that. I think
Speaker 2: that really ties down to, like, you're not stuck by
Speaker 2: your you know, your your zipua necessarily. Do you want
Speaker 2: to expand on that one a little bit because I
Speaker 2: found that one pretty interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was that was a really cool long term
Speaker 3: project out of University of Tennessee. And I was actually
Speaker 3: able to contribute a study site to that project, which
Speaker 3: made it even cooler when they came out. But doctor
Speaker 3: Craig Harper and his students collected soil and plant nutrition
Speaker 3: data from across the country. They had twenty thirty sites
Speaker 3: from sandy soils to the high quality, highest quality soils.
Speaker 3: There's five kind of physiographic regions, growing regions or soil
Speaker 3: types I guess throughout the country. The thing is, they
Speaker 3: they collected good to high I mean sorry, poor to
Speaker 3: very high quality soils in every part of the country.
Speaker 3: So they came up to the Northeast and found the
Speaker 3: most you know, dirt poor, you know, pun intended areas
Speaker 3: that are rocky and low quality soil nutrients based on
Speaker 3: the USDA's soil map. And then they also went to
Speaker 3: really high quality, deep rich soils kind of like in
Speaker 3: our best ag region. They did it in the Midwest,
Speaker 3: they did in the Southeast, you know, and they collected
Speaker 3: the same plants from and when they say the same plants,
Speaker 3: they plants had grown all they so, for example, red
Speaker 3: maple is a tree, or you know, golden rod might
Speaker 3: be a herbaceous plant that you can pretty much find
Speaker 3: from New York to Florida. And what they did was
Speaker 3: they collected all this data and looked at it, and
Speaker 3: what they found was it didn't matter if said plant
Speaker 3: grew in Iowa or the sandy soils of the cost
Speaker 3: of South Carolina, like say pokeweed, you know that that
Speaker 3: was one of the plants they collected. They all had
Speaker 3: the same level of nutrients, crude protein, you know, all
Speaker 3: the way down, all of the things that we need
Speaker 3: nutrients out of the plant. And so if they had
Speaker 3: produced a certain range of it, and the theory had
Speaker 3: always been you need to go to the best soils
Speaker 3: to get the best nutrients. Well, just collecting plants across
Speaker 3: the country and all these different soil types, they found,
Speaker 3: well that plant pretty much always had the same nutrient levels.
Speaker 3: The difference was yield, meaning the areas that had the
Speaker 3: best soils just produced more of it. And if you
Speaker 3: think about it from an ag standpoint, you know, thinking
Speaker 3: about agricultural producers, you know, if you talk in that terminology,
Speaker 3: number of bushels of corn in central Iowa and the
Speaker 3: number of bushels of corn being produced in the North
Speaker 3: and Lower Peninsula of Michigan are pretty different. But the
Speaker 3: corn plant is probably going to have the same nutrient quality,
Speaker 3: and so it just common sense. But until this research
Speaker 3: really kind of opened our eyes to it was the
Speaker 3: reason the most productive deer populations exist in these areas
Speaker 3: that you know, you and I have gotten in trucks
Speaker 3: and driven across the country to go hunt is not
Speaker 3: because the soils are producing better food. They're just producing
Speaker 3: more of it. And I also know that when I
Speaker 3: overserve myself, you know, like if I'm going to have
Speaker 3: a second portion of dinner tonight with my family, and
Speaker 3: then tomorrow I do the same, and I do the same,
Speaker 3: and I just do it over and over again. Guess
Speaker 3: what I'm going to gain weight? It's portion size. It's
Speaker 3: not like what's in that you know, venison burger that
Speaker 3: I put on by plate. It's that I had two
Speaker 3: of them, and that that's just common sense. But it
Speaker 3: took a little bit of that to recognize that in
Speaker 3: the parts of the country that have big antler deer,
Speaker 3: big body deer, and just a lot of deer, it's
Speaker 3: just they're they're going back for second helpings because there's
Speaker 3: just so much food on the landscape and that can
Speaker 3: be measured, so.
Speaker 2: So a question then, you know as far as like
Speaker 2: what the takeaway is for that I remember there used
Speaker 2: to be you know, gosh, there might have been a
Speaker 2: map like this that showed like an overlay of soil
Speaker 2: quality and Booning Crockett submissions and they you know, show like, Man,
Speaker 2: I remember hearing people talk about how like there's this
Speaker 2: special soil along the Mississippi River corridor that is really
Speaker 2: packing on the inches on these deer and and that's why.
Speaker 2: And it made you think, well, okay, well, if you
Speaker 2: don't live along this corridor where they have this incredible
Speaker 2: mineral content and this amazing soil is depositive from the
Speaker 2: the Mississippi pulling stuff down, you were just never going
Speaker 2: to be quite at that level. But does this research
Speaker 2: kind of disprove that and basically says, man, forget that
Speaker 2: and instead, if you can somehow get the yield in
Speaker 2: your neck of the woods, So in northern Michigan, if
Speaker 2: I could somehow, you know, do enough work to get
Speaker 2: that kind of yield, I could see those kinds of
Speaker 2: results despite not having Iowa soil. Is that the right
Speaker 2: read it is?
Speaker 3: I mean it's also at a landscape scale. So you know,
Speaker 3: talking earlier, you said, you know, what are the big
Speaker 3: what's the biggest take home? And I said, land management
Speaker 3: works without a doubt, and work with your neighbors, because
Speaker 3: when you manage a property, you know, you can affect
Speaker 3: x number of deer, but as a landscape, it gets impacted.
Speaker 3: You know. If you're talking about working with multiple neighbors
Speaker 3: and they're all doing the same thing, then you're affecting
Speaker 3: a population. And so yeah, I mean yes and no.
Speaker 3: You can definitely make a difference for an individual, but
Speaker 3: it depends. It's all about scale, right, you know, So
Speaker 3: the deer that are on your northern Michigan property are
Speaker 3: likely not living there one hundred percent of the time,
Speaker 3: and so they have to come and go. You can
Speaker 3: make a detractor for them to want to be there
Speaker 3: as much as possible, and they can spend the majority
Speaker 3: of their time there, but they're also eating and traveling
Speaker 3: and going to different places. So it is it is
Speaker 3: about you know, bigger, bigger than that. You have to
Speaker 3: you have to work on a on a more landscape scale.
Speaker 2: Another thing that I heard a lot about when I
Speaker 2: first like dove into this you know, next level obsession
Speaker 2: with deer that kind of took that next step for
Speaker 2: me in college and I remember just like diving into
Speaker 2: every single book every magazine, every whatever that I could find.
Speaker 2: That's when became a quality white tail subscriber. And and
Speaker 2: one of the things I remember hearing a lot about
Speaker 2: back then, you know, two thousand and seven, eight now
Speaker 2: nine was culling. That was a thing people talked about.
Speaker 2: Shoot the spikes, shoot the little genetically inferior books, and
Speaker 2: you know that will help you, you know, eventually have
Speaker 2: better deer, improve the genetics. It sounds like in the
Speaker 2: last ten years that has I mean, it doesn't sound
Speaker 2: like I know from reading things and seeing things that
Speaker 2: that has become much much more out of style than
Speaker 2: it was ten fifteen years ago. And I think that
Speaker 2: relates pretty well. We're talking about here too, on a
Speaker 2: different side of it, what have they found on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's been a couple of big projects on you know,
Speaker 3: our ability to change through selectivity. You know, the simplest
Speaker 3: thing to talk about when you're talking about culling. Obviously,
Speaker 3: I always start at that conversation that culling is the
Speaker 3: idea that we can change said quality of deer. And
Speaker 3: when you talk about said quality, people are talking about
Speaker 3: Antler quality. I mean, all we all know that that's
Speaker 3: kind of the thing there and I always I always
Speaker 3: try to mention and talk to anybody about culling as saying, well,
Speaker 3: that's you know, your value system is on the size
Speaker 3: of the antlers. I mean, there's a lot obviously a
Speaker 3: lot of other things that bring value to deer hunting
Speaker 3: and our organization. Going back to formerly known you know,
Speaker 3: Quality Deer Management Association, A lot of people aligned QTM
Speaker 3: or you know the QTMA as growing big antlers, but
Speaker 3: we always try to push age, you know, and her
Speaker 3: health and her balance and uh, you know, I personally
Speaker 3: find a lot of value in just trying to shoot
Speaker 3: older deer, no matter how big their antlers are. And
Speaker 3: so my value is the amount of wear on the
Speaker 3: job bone. I certainly want to shoot a big antler deer,
Speaker 3: but if I'm if I'm gauging my steps based on
Speaker 3: job bone wear or taught tea toothwear, culling certainly doesn't
Speaker 3: play a role. It's just a matter of letting deer
Speaker 3: go into they're older. But from a culling perspective, what
Speaker 3: we've learned is that we can't we can't change it. Uh,
Speaker 3: partly because you know, there is no strong haritabill uh,
Speaker 3: you know, connection between antler size and what the offspring
Speaker 3: of that deer that you know, if that deer sires deer,
Speaker 3: what more bucks, what the antlers are going to look
Speaker 3: like on that And that's because part of the genes
Speaker 3: are coming from something that you have no ability to
Speaker 3: assess antler quality, and that's the dough.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: You know, Mark, I've said this before. You and I
Speaker 3: have stood in the same room a bunch of times.
Speaker 3: I'm not a very tall person. Uh. We had My
Speaker 3: brother and I had the same parents, but I have
Speaker 3: I'm five eight and my brother's six ' one. We
Speaker 3: both got genes seem two people. And somehow he got
Speaker 3: tall jeans and I didn't. And so you know, you
Speaker 3: can't tell what a buck is going to produce one
Speaker 3: hundred percent because fifty percent genes come from the dough.
Speaker 3: But probably the biggest nail in the coffin research was
Speaker 3: done in the last decade was a project in Texas
Speaker 3: where they did a scale of one hundred thousand acres
Speaker 3: and nobody owns one hundred thousand acres that's listening to this,
Speaker 3: I can almost guarantee you. And they they set up
Speaker 3: efforts that would be beyond what you know money could
Speaker 3: buy almost in every circumstance where they had intensive and
Speaker 3: moderate and then kind of a control area where they
Speaker 3: were not culling deer, and all all three of those
Speaker 3: kind of situations had similar herd and habitat characteristics. And
Speaker 3: for a series of seven years, they hunted and then
Speaker 3: captured at a helicopter every buck that they could find,
Speaker 3: and they had certain criteria that the deer need needed
Speaker 3: to meet, and if deer did not meet a certain criteria,
Speaker 3: they were they were killed. And so dear that the
Speaker 3: rest of the year were released, including bucks that were
Speaker 3: captured within the control and they just measured that over time,
Speaker 3: and what they found was, you know, at that scale
Speaker 3: for almost ten years, and you know, capturing deer with helicopters,
Speaker 3: and if you know, for every age class one and
Speaker 3: a half, two and a half, every adult male age
Speaker 3: class one and a half all the way up to maturity,
Speaker 3: and they removed here a year after year for over
Speaker 3: seven years, and still there was no difference. And so
Speaker 3: unless you own one hundred and one thousand acres and
Speaker 3: you own a fleet of helicopters, you're not going to
Speaker 3: make any impact. And so anybody listening to this at
Speaker 3: least should know at that scale culling didn't work at
Speaker 3: that rate and at that intensity. So for the average
Speaker 3: person that hunts whatever, you know, the acres is twenty acres,
Speaker 3: forty acres, one hundred acres, you're not going to make
Speaker 3: a difference if if, unless you apply greater pression than that,
Speaker 3: and even that we don't know if it's possible.
Speaker 2: So then you know the most effective levers you have
Speaker 2: to pull if you're trying to have you know, bigger deer,
Speaker 2: healthier deer, that's going to be which things age?
Speaker 3: You know, in terms of antler size, the three things
Speaker 3: that affect affect antler size our age, then nutrition, and
Speaker 3: then genetics. That's the third part of it. And so
Speaker 3: just letting deer get older by not shooting in them
Speaker 3: at young ages makes the biggest jump in terms of
Speaker 3: antler size and quality, because white tails will shed and
Speaker 3: regrow antlers, and as long as they can reach a
Speaker 3: year older, antler growth will will will increase up until maturity,
Speaker 3: which is between five and seven years of age generally.
Speaker 3: QDM and the you know, the advent of the Quality
Speaker 3: Deer Management Association always promoted and we still do in
Speaker 3: some places trying to advance age at least up in
Speaker 3: two and a half, you know, just letting the yearling
Speaker 3: age class go because that's the largest jump in the
Speaker 3: antler quality. But honestly, you know, you know, one of
Speaker 3: the things that I wrote about in this other article
Speaker 3: is and you know, really looking back, it would be
Speaker 3: probably the one of the biggest things I've you know,
Speaker 3: just kind of thinking about this, one of the biggest
Speaker 3: things that we've learned over the ten years is about
Speaker 3: hunting strategy. You know, I talked about excursions a little bit,
Speaker 3: but really hunting pressure. That's probably a whole category that
Speaker 3: we should talk about. Is you know, how deer react
Speaker 3: to us. That that there's a whole suite of research
Speaker 3: that we've learned that I think I probably take to
Speaker 3: the woods more more with me than anything else. Is
Speaker 3: just what what my presence does to to deer behavior
Speaker 3: and deer movement. I started talking about excursions earlier, but
Speaker 3: really what what I was trying to get at is
Speaker 3: just hunter pressure, like our presence. But I would be
Speaker 3: remiss to not talk about you know, some of the
Speaker 3: bigger things that we're worried about with deer are things
Speaker 3: like chronic wasting disease, which I know you cover a
Speaker 3: lot on this podcast and your listeners have heard about,
Speaker 3: and we probably shouldn't get into that too deep because
Speaker 3: you'll fill a whole podcast on that, But you know,
Speaker 3: thinking about calling and antler quality and selectivity, you know
Speaker 3: there is this we're I mean, you just had Kip
Speaker 3: on your podcast earlier this year to talk about our
Speaker 3: Deer Report, and we track the composition of deer harvest
Speaker 3: nationally every year, numbers of deer and age classes of
Speaker 3: deer and rates that were taking them. And you know,
Speaker 3: as Kip always says, we're in our heyday right now.
Speaker 3: You know, age classes are more well rounded and balanced,
Speaker 3: and more older box are in the harvest now than
Speaker 3: ever before in more places in the country. And that's
Speaker 3: all true. But you know, as I think about national
Speaker 3: issues and about you know, what we've learned, certainly, chronic
Speaker 3: waste disease has expanded enormously in the past decade. I mean,
Speaker 3: thinking back ten years twenty thirteen. You know, if you
Speaker 3: and I were in Missouri in twenty thirteen or twelve
Speaker 3: talking to each other, the landscape and what it looked
Speaker 3: like for CWD back then is very different. Than it
Speaker 3: is right now, and trying to decide and tell people
Speaker 3: how to manage deer herds is different. You have to
Speaker 3: think about it. It still impacts a small percentage of our
Speaker 3: total landscape, but it's a big enough issue that you
Speaker 3: need to be aware of it. You know, every hundred
Speaker 3: needs to be aware of it and at least be
Speaker 3: cognizant of managing. For really, herd health is the goal,
Speaker 3: and so managing deer populations is what's most important first
Speaker 3: and foremost, you know, just right, making sure that there's
Speaker 3: not too many deer for what the landscape can handle.
Speaker 3: That's that's rule number one for QDM. Honestly, instead of
Speaker 3: talking about age or sex ratio or some of those
Speaker 3: other parts of deer management, it's just numbers of deer.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately we still have. You know, actually, you and
Speaker 3: I got into some really good conversations probably five years ago.
Speaker 3: We're actually a little bit more than that. When deer
Speaker 3: harvests were starting to crash around the country, you know,
Speaker 3: we were really starting to come down and it was
Speaker 3: something everybody was looking at, Well that's it ebbs and flows,
Speaker 3: and today we're at, you know, pretty good deer harvest
Speaker 3: we're not at national highs, but we're not far off
Speaker 3: from them, and so we're at that point where we're
Speaker 3: starting to talk nationally about you know, you need to
Speaker 3: do deer just here in general, because we have too
Speaker 3: many deer in a lot of places. Outside of talking
Speaker 3: about disease managed and so I'm true and true a
Speaker 3: deer manager, and I do try to manage for herd
Speaker 3: health and balance and all those things. But one of
Speaker 3: the messages that you know, I think people should hear
Speaker 3: is that it's our responsibility as hunters to manage populations.
Speaker 3: That's the first thing that we should worry about. And
Speaker 3: so if you are withholding harvesting enough deer because you're
Speaker 3: really trying to push antler quality, that's you're missing a
Speaker 3: little bit of the first messages. You need to make
Speaker 3: sure that the deer density is not too high, and
Speaker 3: we do that through various methods of looking at their
Speaker 3: impact on vegetation. You know, browse lines, you can actually
Speaker 3: measure this stuff. But if you're just seeing a lot
Speaker 3: of deer, or too many deer, if there's a lot
Speaker 3: of car accidents, that's what state wildlife agencies need us
Speaker 3: to do is manage populations, and so that that's my
Speaker 3: number one priority when I'm hunting, is if the state,
Speaker 3: whether I'm hunting in needs, is looking to reduce deer dancy,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to shoot deer. You know, those would be
Speaker 3: my goal because they're the one that's producing more deer.
Speaker 3: But that's that's the first thing that I take on.
Speaker 3: And so I know we're talking about research and I'm
Speaker 3: I'm chasing rabbits here, not deer. But you know, when
Speaker 3: you talk about calling and what we've learned, I want
Speaker 3: the listeners to understand don't get too tied up in
Speaker 3: calling or antler size for one, because you can't control
Speaker 3: it unless you own helicopters and more than one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand acres. And then number two, our responsibilities to manage
Speaker 3: a population first as as a hunter, and we should
Speaker 3: care about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you make you make a great point, and it
Speaker 2: kind of triggered a thought in my mind which goes
Speaker 2: back to one of the first things we talked about,
Speaker 2: that being you know the impact of soil quality and
Speaker 2: nutrition on deer health. And if someone is worried about
Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of people, myself included, who
Speaker 2: get excited about big Bucks and have wanted to do
Speaker 2: habitat improvement to try to get more food on the
Speaker 2: ground and thinking like, man, this is going to be
Speaker 2: great for these deer and we're going to have more
Speaker 2: big healthy bucks, YadA YadA, YadA. Well, if one of
Speaker 2: the main takeaways from that earlier study was that, hey,
Speaker 2: you're not going to necessarily change the nutrition that the
Speaker 2: plants can provide. You're just going to impact the yield.
Speaker 2: So you could do impact. You could you could look
Speaker 2: at yield and if yield is the thing that's going
Speaker 2: to get more food to a buck to make it
Speaker 2: easier for him to pack on weight and antlers and
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff, one thing you could do,
Speaker 2: which is a lot of people jump to is the
Speaker 2: easiest option. It's not, but they will jump to this
Speaker 2: being that the sexy option, I guess is like more food,
Speaker 2: more food, more food plots, more this, more of that.
Speaker 2: Let's spend thousands and thousands of dollars to put in
Speaker 2: fifty acres of clover food plots and soybeans and all
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff, because I want my deer to
Speaker 2: have all the protein and all the whatever they need
Speaker 2: to grow big. That will get more yield, supposedly, But
Speaker 2: at the same time, you could take a different approach,
Speaker 2: which is just manage your overpopulated deer population to cut
Speaker 2: down on the number of deer on the landscape. That
Speaker 2: also gets more yield to the deer. Right that would
Speaker 2: have a you would if you would take a deer
Speaker 2: population and cut in half, you all of a sudden
Speaker 2: have twice as much food available to those you know,
Speaker 2: fifty remaining deer. So managing your deer population to be
Speaker 2: in balance with the habitat is just as effective of
Speaker 2: a way to chase your big mature buck kind of
Speaker 2: dreams as well. Absolutely so, I think.
Speaker 3: The easiest thing for us to do is manage you know,
Speaker 3: buy that bullet In terms of that, everybody wants to
Speaker 3: see deer when they're hunting, and I admit, you know,
Speaker 3: if you go hours and hours without seeing animals, well
Speaker 3: it makes you a better hunter, honestly, but you know,
Speaker 3: it can be boring, but it is important. And that's
Speaker 3: you know, using using a firearm, bow, whatever implement to
Speaker 3: try to manage the population is one of the things
Speaker 3: we should do. Uh. And when I've managed properties, including
Speaker 3: the ones I hunt today, one of the first, you know,
Speaker 3: the first things we did was assess where's the population
Speaker 3: at and tried to reduce the number of mouths to
Speaker 3: the point where when we started doing habitat improvements, honestly
Speaker 3: where I live and where you live as well, and
Speaker 3: actually you know everywhere in the country. I guess now
Speaker 3: that I'm thinking about it, you have a lot of
Speaker 3: competing invasive plant species that are not eaten by deer,
Speaker 3: whereas most of the preferred natives will be eaten by
Speaker 3: deer because they've grown up, you know, volved and lived
Speaker 3: there for eons eating those plants. And so my goal
Speaker 3: has always been on a new piece of property before
Speaker 3: I start doing habitat management is get the deer den
Speaker 3: deer numbers in check. That way, when you open the
Speaker 3: canopy uh in the woods, which is my next you
Speaker 3: know thing I would jump on is the tree regeneration
Speaker 3: response from the increase in sunlight is more of your natives.
Speaker 3: Although you might have some invasive show up, you're going
Speaker 3: to have those natives show up as well, and you
Speaker 3: can manage that through mechanical or chemical or fire or
Speaker 3: something like that. But if you have a lot of
Speaker 3: deer on the ground, you're going to be fighting two
Speaker 3: different things to you know, to push and pulls. Whereas
Speaker 3: it's not only these invasive shown up, but the deer
Speaker 3: actually a catalyst by removing the ones that you want
Speaker 3: to be there, because they're selectively picking those things out.
Speaker 3: And so that is the first thing I tried to
Speaker 3: do when when looking at a piece of properties, get
Speaker 3: the deer density and check. And then the second thing
Speaker 3: is work in your woods because it's the cheapest and
Speaker 3: most properties, at least in the Northeast where I live,
Speaker 3: they're primarily wooded. And so that's by proportion, the most
Speaker 3: land is in forest, and you know, by trade. I'm
Speaker 3: also a forester, and so I know that you can
Speaker 3: manage trees and make money from it, which then you
Speaker 3: can go into things like food plots or you know
Speaker 3: whatever fuel for your side by side or whatever else.
Speaker 3: And then you're getting the sunlight and the forage or
Speaker 3: vegetative response in the woods. Those those two things alone,
Speaker 3: bullets and chainsaw, you know, barloo bin oil and fuel
Speaker 3: for your chainsaw. You can change the world, and you
Speaker 3: can change you can change deer herd health on a
Speaker 3: pretty large landscape. It doesn't cost that much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not a bad way to go about it
Speaker 2: at all. So speaking of managing with the bullet you
Speaker 2: you kind of alluded a second ago to you know,
Speaker 2: how much progress has been when it comes to the
Speaker 2: science of deer behavior and deer reacting to pressure and
Speaker 2: and deer movement and all that kind of stuff. Do
Speaker 2: you want to touch on a couple of the biggest
Speaker 2: takeaways in the last decade on that front.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's been some awesome stuff and I don't that
Speaker 3: has come out in the last decade about uh, you know,
Speaker 3: deer response to people or hunters, you know, one of
Speaker 3: the things that we've learned. And there's some biological things
Speaker 3: too about like how do you see that I can
Speaker 3: get into, but you know, from multiple projects that have
Speaker 3: looked at sites that where hunters start entering the woods
Speaker 3: and watch how deer change their behavior, what we've learned
Speaker 3: is that generally, dear deer know that you're out there,
Speaker 3: and they respond quickly to it, and that it takes
Speaker 3: them a couple of days they will go back. It's
Speaker 3: not like they're gonna, you know, leave and never come back.
Speaker 3: Because deer have something called high site fidelity, meaning once
Speaker 3: they've once they're an adult and they're living in this
Speaker 3: place their home range. They they are stuck there. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's where they're going to live. They're not going to
Speaker 3: just leave. What they do is change where they may
Speaker 3: go within their home range and when they go to
Speaker 3: those places. So it's not like if you scare a
Speaker 3: big buck, he's gone on unless he gets shot, you
Speaker 3: know while he's running away, but he's gone forever. It's
Speaker 3: still going to be using that, it just might change
Speaker 3: change how it uses. So generally the projects have all
Speaker 3: agreed that within honestly want one visit to the woods,
Speaker 3: you know, first interaction deer alerted, they're going to change
Speaker 3: what they're doing, and that it takes two to three
Speaker 3: days for them to kind of go back and behave
Speaker 3: the way that they were before. And those projects have
Speaker 3: been done in various forms and different areas of the country,
Speaker 3: not just the southeast, but also in the in the
Speaker 3: Midwest and in the Northeast as well. And so you
Speaker 3: think about how you hunt and when you go to
Speaker 3: the woods, just recognize even if you don't see a
Speaker 3: deer run, I mean for the most part, that's going
Speaker 3: to be throughout the season. Uh, the one time that
Speaker 3: I personally will not use that science and affect how
Speaker 3: I hunt is during the absolute peak of the rout,
Speaker 3: because at that point deer are not paying attention to
Speaker 3: us as much they as they are during other times
Speaker 3: the year. So there's about probably a week to ten
Speaker 3: days where if I bumped a deer or if I'm
Speaker 3: going in the woods, I'm not really really thinking hard
Speaker 3: about where I'm going next. I'm just gonna try to
Speaker 3: hunt as much as possible during daylight hours because they
Speaker 3: they are not paying attention as much as they are
Speaker 3: during the rest of the year. But during the pre rut,
Speaker 3: even early in the rut, you know, after the breeding season,
Speaker 3: going into the you know, end of the end of
Speaker 3: the hunting season. For the most part, I am really
Speaker 3: conscious of where I walk into a property, how many
Speaker 3: days it's been, and what deer might be doing because
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: You know, one thing I can't remember seeing. I might
Speaker 2: have missed it. But has there been a study that
Speaker 2: has looked at how hunting pressure impacts the time of
Speaker 2: day deer move, So not if they move, how much
Speaker 2: they move, and not where they move. But basically what
Speaker 2: I'm getting at is, you know how hunting pressure will
Speaker 2: force deer to move more during darkness versus during daylight.
Speaker 3: There has been some I'm picturing there has been some
Speaker 3: research on that I'm picturing a project. We present a
Speaker 3: whole session in our Dear Steward course in the Level
Speaker 3: one class, which is an online course that you can take,
Speaker 3: and through that presentation that we give, I can picture
Speaker 3: some graphs in I believe it was in a project
Speaker 3: in Georgia where they had a study site and they
Speaker 3: looked at deer changing more too. They still see it
Speaker 3: was the same parts of these properties, but did them
Speaker 3: more during dark. And then another project in Maryland, this
Speaker 3: is actually one of the first projects that had GPS
Speaker 3: collars on deer. This was at Chesapeake Farm with under
Speaker 3: dark doctor Mark Connor and others, where the same thing
Speaker 3: happened is that deer tended to use the same parts
Speaker 3: of the study site, but they did it at night
Speaker 3: as opposed to during dawn or dusk hours. It was
Speaker 3: just more dark. And so you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: hunters have always said they're gonna go nocturnal, and those
Speaker 3: projects just provided evidence that that was true. Yes, they
Speaker 3: are spending more time in the dark than they would
Speaker 3: be during the day. So it's kind of a you know,
Speaker 3: a duh moment, but yes, that has been shown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it also does that also back
Speaker 2: up the idea that you're not typically going to blow
Speaker 2: a deer out of the country, right I think, you know,
Speaker 2: I used to think like man, if I go in
Speaker 2: in the wrong time and spook a buck, or if
Speaker 2: I go in there a couple of times, he's gone,
Speaker 2: he's out of here, he's going to be in the
Speaker 2: next property, or he's going to be a mile down
Speaker 2: the road, and I'm never gonna see him again. Like
Speaker 2: you said, usually white tails are a high site fidelity critter.
Speaker 2: When they find a home, they want to stay in
Speaker 2: that home, but you certainly can change when they expose
Speaker 2: themselves around that or in certain parts of that home.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 3: It is? And you know I will add h you know,
Speaker 3: and it depends type of answer to that. You know,
Speaker 3: if you ask me, does it happen, the answer is yes,
Speaker 3: because I can I can picture these projects and I
Speaker 3: you know, I remember seeing and reading some of the research.
Speaker 3: But my take home message on that is, you know,
Speaker 3: where we started this podcast is would I use that
Speaker 3: as gospel to how deer react, No, that is not
Speaker 3: how I would react. In fact, if you said what
Speaker 3: does the average do? You know, what does the average
Speaker 3: deer do? And I would say buy and large. What
Speaker 3: the average deer does is just shifts its use of
Speaker 3: its home range to another place. And so they're still
Speaker 3: going to be active at dawn and dusk, but they're
Speaker 3: going to go to those corners or sometimes not even corners,
Speaker 3: but places within their average home range where you're not going.
Speaker 3: And they could be, you know, a deep swamp, it
Speaker 3: could be right along the road where you're driving past.
Speaker 3: It's just the places you haven't been. So what does
Speaker 3: the average deer do? That answer is it just changes
Speaker 3: where it's going to be, not when it is traveling.
Speaker 3: But that is definitely the average or that it would
Speaker 3: be my take home for folks. And so I think
Speaker 3: the smartest hunters and you do a great job of
Speaker 3: like finding some profiles of people or profiling really successful
Speaker 3: hunters that do repeatedly, you know, are successful out there
Speaker 3: even in higher pressure situations. Those folks do shot probably
Speaker 3: change when they hunt to a degree. But you tell me,
Speaker 3: I'm going to turn it around on you, Mark. I mean,
Speaker 3: you've learned and interviewed a bunch of these guys and
Speaker 3: gals around the country. Is it more that they are
Speaker 3: going to places where hunters aren't going or is it
Speaker 3: that they're going in at different times from when they
Speaker 3: were earlier in the year.
Speaker 2: Probably some combination of both, depending on all sorts of situations.
Speaker 2: But yes, I mean, those consistently most successful hunters know
Speaker 2: how to find the places where those most consistently successful
Speaker 2: deer have found to be safe. Right because the bucks
Speaker 2: that survived to year three, four or five, you know,
Speaker 2: they're the ones who find the safe place and have
Speaker 2: stuck to it and have found I have understood when's
Speaker 2: it safe to expose myself in this place and when's
Speaker 2: it not? And that the bucks that didn't find those places,
Speaker 2: of the bucks that did not have that the pre
Speaker 2: you know, disposition to be particularly cautious or particularly wary. Uh,
Speaker 2: those ones got eliminated out of the gym pool early on.
Speaker 3: Exactly so. And and you know the places deer want
Speaker 3: to go typically, uh, you know, the thicker the cover,
Speaker 3: the more safe they're gonna feel. But that's not necessarily
Speaker 3: always going to be true. It's just lack of human presence. Yeah, Key,
Speaker 3: in on. And so it could be places like I
Speaker 3: said that are along highways and nobody's hunting. They could
Speaker 3: be wide open stands of trees. Uh, they could be
Speaker 3: a little you know, uh, like an island, or a
Speaker 3: mot of of shrubs in the middle of an open field,
Speaker 3: and they just know they can see you coming, and
Speaker 3: so they'll go there. They know, through their use of
Speaker 3: their five senses, where we do not go. And if
Speaker 3: they live long enough, like you said, they've been, they've been.
Speaker 3: The ones that make mistakes don't last long. But the
Speaker 3: ones that survive tend to experience those things and learn,
Speaker 3: and they end up going. And so the best suite
Speaker 3: of projects that I can think of that have had
Speaker 3: GPS collars on deer when in some of them have
Speaker 3: also had GPS armbands on hunters or even did like
Speaker 3: aerial surveys of everybody and were able to pick up
Speaker 3: through infrared imagery where the hunters were and where the
Speaker 3: deer were. But through all of these projects, in all
Speaker 3: these different landscapes, deer go to places where we don't go.
Speaker 3: That that is the take home. Not necessarily do they
Speaker 3: shift to being nocturnal, It's just they will they will
Speaker 3: find these places. There was some really cool projects out
Speaker 3: there that watched and so how deer did it in
Speaker 3: some of them that were colored for more than one
Speaker 3: hunting season would go to the same places you're you know,
Speaker 3: in the same fall, so like around the same time
Speaker 3: when guns started going off, they would they would find
Speaker 3: the same locations and go where they were safe the
Speaker 3: year before. And obviously that's a learned behavior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating stuff. How they they just they
Speaker 2: know when the time to get in there is and
Speaker 2: they they prosper because of it. So so in the
Speaker 2: interest of time, Matt, if there was one other major takeaway,
Speaker 2: one major shift in our understanding of deer, one major
Speaker 2: aha moment in the deer science community, what's that last
Speaker 2: thing you think we should touch on?
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know, Mark, There's just so much out there.
Speaker 2: You can throw a dart of the wall and pick
Speaker 2: any one of them if you want.
Speaker 3: Then yeah, I you know, I my my, my brain
Speaker 3: always goes back to on the deer research stuff on
Speaker 3: the big picture is like CWD related stuff. You know,
Speaker 3: how how dear past set and how we can keep
Speaker 3: that from occurring and so follow the rules. I guess
Speaker 3: you know, from from a hunter's perspective, ravel anywhere to
Speaker 3: hunt to to you know, bring back your boned out meat,
Speaker 3: because we've learned that, you know, in the baliant of
Speaker 3: what past ten fifteen years, how this disease moving is
Speaker 3: moving around, you know, leaving leaving some of those places,
Speaker 3: those places will take justin enison and leave the skull
Speaker 3: and the spinal cord and the bones and all of
Speaker 3: that stuff, you know, where you were hunting, and then
Speaker 3: don't put out things that congregate deer. That's that's the
Speaker 3: big thing we're fighting, you know, honestly, and there's a
Speaker 3: lot of research being done on it. Unfortunately we have
Speaker 3: to spend a lot more on it to learn a
Speaker 3: lot more. But I take that very seriously. I know
Speaker 3: you do as well, and as a hunter, I know
Speaker 3: you have a lot of people listening to this, and
Speaker 3: I want people to take that stuff seriously. You know,
Speaker 3: it's great talking about big antlers, and it's great talking
Speaker 3: about selectivity and habitat management and even hunting pressure because
Speaker 3: I use that information. But I want people to leave
Speaker 3: this podcast knowing, hey, you can make a difference. You know,
Speaker 3: we all don't hunt in chronic WASTINGO these areas, but
Speaker 3: we all, we all have the ability to slow it spread,
Speaker 3: no matter if you hunt there or not, by just
Speaker 3: being an advocate and making good decisions and listening to
Speaker 3: your stay wildlife agency. And that's kind of where the
Speaker 3: research ends for me right now. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully there's more to come now that some new
Speaker 2: funding has been sent that direction. Hopefully we'll continue to
Speaker 2: learn more about how to deal with it and how
Speaker 2: to slow it and you know, hopefully turn things around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry to be such a bummer. I'm like the
Speaker 3: DeBie Downer of the deer world.
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 2: Let's end on a high note then, so that we
Speaker 2: don't depress too many folks. I want to get a
Speaker 2: little bit more detail from you on one more thing
Speaker 2: before we wrap this up, which is a evolution in
Speaker 2: your organization, as you mentioned, formerly known as the Quality
Speaker 2: Deer Management Association, now the National Deer Association. You guys
Speaker 2: kicked off something that I just think is really really cool,
Speaker 2: which is the Public Lands Initiative, And we haven't talked
Speaker 2: about that here on the podcast before you and I
Speaker 2: can you update us on what that is, what you
Speaker 2: guys are doing, what you guys have achieved already, and
Speaker 2: then we should talk about our little collaboration too.
Speaker 3: I would love to, honestly, this is one of the
Speaker 3: most satisfying things that I'm working on right now and
Speaker 3: have been for the past two years. So, you know,
Speaker 3: the public Lands initiative, but you know, bigger picture in
Speaker 3: terms of the evolution of the organization. As I mentioned
Speaker 3: at the beginning, Now, I've been here a while and
Speaker 3: I've seen the company grow and change and adapt to
Speaker 3: a lot of the things that you know are out
Speaker 3: there in terms of the need of all we have
Speaker 3: to do as a conservation organization. I could not be
Speaker 3: more proud, honestly of where we are as an organization.
Speaker 3: It's easy for me to say, but you know, things
Speaker 3: are things are really good at NDA. We are we
Speaker 3: are doing a lot of things in policy as you mentioned,
Speaker 3: you know, a CWD funding a few minutes ago, and
Speaker 3: part of our transition from qtm A, my former employee employer,
Speaker 3: to the National Deer Association, and we created a new
Speaker 3: strategic vision, long term vision for the company, and as
Speaker 3: part of that we said, you know, we're the biggest
Speaker 3: issues affecting deer and deer management and deer hunting into
Speaker 3: the future and what can we do as an organization,
Speaker 3: can our members do and our followers do to to
Speaker 3: effect change, And things like CWD came up, you know,
Speaker 3: R three getting new hunters out there, and we really
Speaker 3: think you personally and meat Eater about you know, the
Speaker 3: donation of the back forty. That was just one small
Speaker 3: part of being able to advocate for more and new
Speaker 3: non traditional audiences and getting hunting. But another arm of
Speaker 3: one of our strategic visions was doing more on public land.
Speaker 3: As an organization. We we talk about private land management
Speaker 3: a lot. We did today, you know. And the fact
Speaker 3: is most deer hunting, white tailed deer hunting occurs on
Speaker 3: private land and that was in our Deer Report and
Speaker 3: I know you you and Kip got a chance to
Speaker 3: chat about that. But as an organization that cares about
Speaker 3: recruiting new hunters and cares about the land, our organization
Speaker 3: has worked worked really well with state wildlife agencies and
Speaker 3: state game areas or WMAs and managing and providing education
Speaker 3: outreach through states. But one thing we have not done,
Speaker 3: admittedly well in the past thirty five years is doing
Speaker 3: more with our federal partners and so kind of wrapping
Speaker 3: all that up into an initiative. We thought, we need
Speaker 3: a vision of doing more on federal lands under the
Speaker 3: guise of basically helping do more management so that if
Speaker 3: these properties are improved, access is opened, we can recruit
Speaker 3: more hunters because most new hunters, you know, going back
Speaker 3: to the R III movement, typically don't own land they're
Speaker 3: coming from. I mean, some of them do, but research
Speaker 3: shows that most of them do not. And new hunters,
Speaker 3: especially adult hunters, typically live in subourbon and urban areas.
Speaker 3: They're of college education or greater, and they don't have
Speaker 3: anywhere to go. And so one way that we could
Speaker 3: support our R three work is to work with federal
Speaker 3: partners open up more lands, do more on public land
Speaker 3: so that those places are better for deer because the
Speaker 3: reality is that a lot of them are unmanaged or
Speaker 3: not managed for you know, larger populations of deer or
Speaker 3: supporting huntable populations. And so if we did more, it
Speaker 3: would provide more opportunities, and that's the least we can do.
Speaker 3: And we created an initiative and launched it in twenty one,
Speaker 3: so just two years ago. It's called Improving Access, Habitat
Speaker 3: and Deer Hunting on Public Lands and we have a
Speaker 3: goal to improve a million acres by twenty twenty six,
Speaker 3: and we're already two years into it. And part of
Speaker 3: that was to you know, state wildlife management agencies own
Speaker 3: a lot of land, but to really make an impact,
Speaker 3: we needed to work with our federal partners to scale
Speaker 3: at that level. And so we're working with the US
Speaker 3: Forest Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service in
Speaker 3: many places. Uh and uh. You know, as part of
Speaker 3: that project, I oversee a team of stewardship coordinators. These
Speaker 3: are people, you know, uh, people that are educated in
Speaker 3: experience and land management, specifically administering work on the ground. Uh.
Speaker 3: And we are working through the country right now on
Speaker 3: we're in seven national forests that we have executed agreements
Speaker 3: in six different states. I got a bunch more that
Speaker 3: are about to be developed and signed this year. We're
Speaker 3: working with other NGOs, which is even awesome. You know.
Speaker 3: Even more awesome is that we're working with other conservation
Speaker 3: groups and the go go. There is just fine places
Speaker 3: that need management to help increase capacity that might help.
Speaker 3: You know, deer are opportunittunistic and they adapt really well,
Speaker 3: and so if you're managing land generally, deer respond if
Speaker 3: you're managing vegetation, you know, if you're just changing the
Speaker 3: composition of vegetation and creating disturbance and just making it healthier.
Speaker 3: The great thing about deer is they're resilient and that
Speaker 3: they will respond quickly. And then there's a lot of
Speaker 3: other species that benefit as well. And so we do
Speaker 3: it under the umbrella of deer management and because there's
Speaker 3: a lot of support there, but we're helping a lot
Speaker 3: of other things as well, and we thankfully have the
Speaker 3: support of our board are really really excited about this initiative.
Speaker 3: Our staff is really excited. We even have groups like
Speaker 3: bass Pro and Cabela's Outdoor Fund financially supporting it. And
Speaker 3: so there's been a lot of energy behind this initiative
Speaker 3: and the last two years, and it's growing fast. It's
Speaker 3: actually taking up a fair amount of my time, and
Speaker 3: in a good way. I'm not saying that in a
Speaker 3: negative way. I mean, I am working on this initiative
Speaker 3: the majority of my weeks almost every week, and it's
Speaker 3: just because there's a lot of moving parts and we're
Speaker 3: talking to a lot of different people, and so that's
Speaker 3: going to create really good things as a byproduct of that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think our organization is going to grow
Speaker 3: from it. I'm talking about, like you know, from an
Speaker 3: internal we're probably gonna end up having a staff up
Speaker 3: and we're going to have to. We are seeing some
Speaker 3: real opportunities for us to make a major impact, and
Speaker 3: it's got us all very excited.
Speaker 2: So give me a little bit more tangible idea of
Speaker 2: like what you're doing here. Number one, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: I read a press release or something recently that said, like,
Speaker 2: already you guys have improved something like two hundred thousand
Speaker 2: acres or something like that. What's the what's the right number?
Speaker 2: Because it's incredible? And then b what's what kind of
Speaker 2: actual work are you guys doing? So you're managing for wildlife,
Speaker 2: you're making it better for dear other critters. But if
Speaker 2: somebody were to, you know, show up in this new
Speaker 2: piece of or not new piece, but on this national
Speaker 2: forest that you guys did work on, what are they
Speaker 2: going to see that's different than it was two years ago?
Speaker 3: Sure, a lot of it falls. So I can go
Speaker 3: through some specifics and it's about three hundred thousand acres
Speaker 3: that we're estimating right now that have actually been approved
Speaker 3: and Some of that is on state wildlife management lands
Speaker 3: that we have done work on through with state wildlife agencies,
Speaker 3: both through our national partnerships with the NDA, and also
Speaker 3: some of our branches, our local volunteer chapters or we
Speaker 3: call them branches, that have done work in the past
Speaker 3: twelve months or you know, honestly to the last twenty
Speaker 3: four months, so the last two years. We do take
Speaker 3: at the end of every calendar year, we ask all
Speaker 3: of our chapters or branches, you know, what they've done
Speaker 3: for education and outreach, and if they've been working on things,
Speaker 3: if they've donated venison. But by and large, the majority
Speaker 3: of that is through Forest Service partnerships, and I'll go
Speaker 3: through some of those here in a second. From the
Speaker 3: state game areas. A lot of our branches have done improvements.
Speaker 3: Some of it could be clean up days, some of
Speaker 3: it could be planting food plots or just doing work,
Speaker 3: doing infrastructure improvements, and those vary. But the things that
Speaker 3: I directly oversee and managed with the US Forest Service
Speaker 3: is we have something called a Master Stewardship Agreement which
Speaker 3: allows us to work in certain parts of the country.
Speaker 3: It covers Regions eight and nine. And then we have
Speaker 3: agreements in other regions of the US Forest Service system
Speaker 3: out west. Each of those agreements gives us the ability
Speaker 3: to basically sign a what's called a supplemental project agreement,
Speaker 3: so that's forest specific, meaning pick a national forest, and
Speaker 3: that's we're working with the district ranger in that national
Speaker 3: forest and their staff to say what do you need
Speaker 3: done there? A lot of it is helpful for deer
Speaker 3: hunting and deer but they all tear up to their
Speaker 3: forest plans. Basically, they have these long term ten year
Speaker 3: forest management plans that they're trying to achieve and change
Speaker 3: the forest or improve the forest. And so when we
Speaker 3: start our conversations with them with an individual forest, we'll
Speaker 3: go and say, okay, you know, we'll go through the document,
Speaker 3: talk about the different NEPA clear that's you know, Environmental
Speaker 3: Policy Protection Agency cleared work that has already been gone
Speaker 3: through the vet vetting process of being able to say
Speaker 3: is this environmentally something that can be done? And things
Speaker 3: that are NEPA cleared that our work that they need
Speaker 3: to get to varies, it varies from and all. I'll
Speaker 3: talk about those examples. Now. Our first agreement that we
Speaker 3: developed was in Mississippi, which you and I will be
Speaker 3: a mississipulator and this year we'll talk about that in
Speaker 3: a second. On the national forests system there, we're working
Speaker 3: in DeSoto National Forest, the Chickisaway National Forest, and in
Speaker 3: discussions in Bienville National Forest, three different national forests in
Speaker 3: the state of Mississippi. A lot of that work is
Speaker 3: long leaf restoration, but it's not all long restoration. We're
Speaker 3: doing invasive plant like removal and some fire prescribed burning.
Speaker 3: The invasive plant removal is cogon grass springing. That's an
Speaker 3: invasive grass species that shows up and slows the growth
Speaker 3: of other natives. And so we're doing a lot of
Speaker 3: acres of long leaf work and invasive species down there.
Speaker 3: We're also working up in Michigan in the Upper Peninsula
Speaker 3: in Hiawatha and Ottawa National Forest. There's two national forests
Speaker 3: we're working there. In fact, I was talking to one
Speaker 3: of our stewardship coordinators about an hour ago is there
Speaker 3: getting a crew started. They had their first day of
Speaker 3: looking at things end Up there, we're marking timber to
Speaker 3: be cut in areas. We're also doing something called common
Speaker 3: stand exams, which is basically inventorying the trees that are
Speaker 3: out there that hasn't been done in fifty sixty years
Speaker 3: in certain parts of that forest because it's so large
Speaker 3: and so they don't know what's growing and the value
Speaker 3: of those species, and so basically just taking tabs on
Speaker 3: what's out there, and that's our contract there, although that's
Speaker 3: supposed to be growing as well. And we are working
Speaker 3: in Virginia on the George Washington Jefferson National Forest doing
Speaker 3: some restoration, some mountaintop restoration work and some opening of
Speaker 3: the forest to create early success habitat. We're working in
Speaker 3: Kentucky on Daniel Boone National Forest. That project is wide
Speaker 3: and varied. It's actually on two different Ranger districts on
Speaker 3: Cumberland and London Ranger Districts. You and I'll be in
Speaker 3: Kentucky as well, and that also that includes some engineering work,
Speaker 3: road improvements and installing culverts so that people can can travel,
Speaker 3: some timber management, actually cutting some trees. We are also
Speaker 3: working on something called their open Lands, their Open Lands Program,
Speaker 3: which is a NEPA cleared process that's looking at basically
Speaker 3: creating more open space because it's such a closed canopy forest.
Speaker 3: We're working in Idaho on the Idaho Panhandle National forest.
Speaker 3: That's in obviously northern Idaho. Most of that work is
Speaker 3: fire resiliency and pre commercial thinning out there, you know,
Speaker 3: just north of where you are today, there are fire
Speaker 3: There are fire at risk forests because the trees get
Speaker 3: like a root, raw and disease and insects, and they
Speaker 3: tend to be able to carry fire a bunch a
Speaker 3: lot faster because the preferred species are not out competing
Speaker 3: some of these other species of trees, and so you
Speaker 3: get these fuel loads where the trees get very dense
Speaker 3: in how they're growing and then their limbs die and
Speaker 3: these latter fuels are created where the fire can actually
Speaker 3: climb and make it through the forest really fast, and
Speaker 3: there's just a lot of acres. The problem is a
Speaker 3: lot of those acres are not of the size of
Speaker 3: trees where you can actually cut them and make any
Speaker 3: money from it. So it costs something. And so that's
Speaker 3: called pre commercial thinning. And so we're treating like fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred acres of pre commercial thinning just this year, and
Speaker 3: so it just adds up real fast. I mean, all
Speaker 3: of these places where are amples, but we're talking to
Speaker 3: forests all over the country at this point. It's quite
Speaker 3: a task to kind of keep up with it. And
Speaker 3: that's why it's so exciting. I mean, we're just we're
Speaker 3: doing a lot of different work. We're else we're working
Speaker 3: in Arkansas. I didn't mention that, but just it goes
Speaker 3: on and on.
Speaker 2: Mark, no wonder, no wonder. This is taken up a
Speaker 2: lot of your time, you guys. This is it's ambitious,
Speaker 2: it's incredible.
Speaker 3: It's very exciting, I mean, honestly, and we don't want
Speaker 3: to stop there. We're probably in conversations right now with
Speaker 3: almost two dozens of forests and some of my various
Speaker 3: stages of agreements. Some are going to come online here
Speaker 3: in the next couple of months, probably a few more
Speaker 3: by September, and so it's one of those things that
Speaker 3: you know, certainly by twenty twenty six we're going to
Speaker 3: be we're going to be well on our way, if
Speaker 3: not achieving that that goal. And I'm excited to see
Speaker 3: where this goes because I think it's going to become
Speaker 3: a major part of what the NDA does.
Speaker 2: Well. It's pretty exciting too, because I think it flips
Speaker 2: on its head. One of the old misconceptions about the
Speaker 2: QTUMA now the NBA, which was a previous misconception was
Speaker 2: that you guys were just for the private land manager.
Speaker 2: You were just a conservation organization for landowners that want
Speaker 2: to grow big bucks. And I think this is an
Speaker 2: incredible example of how untrue that is today in the
Speaker 2: incredible impact you guys are having on public lands for
Speaker 2: all those deer hunters and other folks out there who
Speaker 2: do depend on public land, I think it's going to
Speaker 2: be hard to make an argument that there's anyone within
Speaker 2: the conservation space in the deer world at least that's
Speaker 2: doing more for public land now and making you know,
Speaker 2: high quality hunting experiences possible for you, regardless of your
Speaker 2: own land, regardless if you live in the city or
Speaker 2: in the country, if you are a new hunter an
Speaker 2: old hunter. You guys, as you say you know in
Speaker 2: the one of your taglines is like you are for
Speaker 2: deer hunters of all stripes and types, and you know
Speaker 2: this is a great put in your money and time
Speaker 2: where your mouth is kind of moment So uh, big
Speaker 2: kudos to you guys for doing that.
Speaker 3: Thanks Mark. You know, one of the things that I've
Speaker 3: like really enjoyed working for this organization, like really looking
Speaker 3: back up my career since we're having an episode where
Speaker 3: you kind of look back. You know, it's about time
Speaker 3: and place, and I think the one thing that we've
Speaker 3: done well as a company depend on, you know, no
Speaker 3: matter who's been part of our organization, you know, membership
Speaker 3: up to our staff, up to our leadership at the
Speaker 3: board level, and our partners and sponsors people, you know,
Speaker 3: companies that support us, is we also are about you know,
Speaker 3: we're we're always about Isshian sales. We're always about what
Speaker 3: what is important now, like what's impacting deer. And you know,
Speaker 3: we know that close to ninety percent of the deer
Speaker 3: are in the country on an in the basis are
Speaker 3: killed on private land. But if you're looking back ten
Speaker 3: years ago, you know, twenty thirteen, or we were, if
Speaker 3: we were having the same conversation, it's different today. Uh
Speaker 3: not that the percentage of deer shot on public or
Speaker 3: private land has changed, It's just at that time, hunters
Speaker 3: across the country were still adopting the concept of QDM
Speaker 3: of like making decisions and that you know, what we
Speaker 3: do matters in terms of what we shoot, working with
Speaker 3: our neighbors, like I mentioned earlier, habitat management, all of
Speaker 3: these things as science has shown like where we started
Speaker 3: the episode. But today, you know, as an organization, we
Speaker 3: look and all hunters practice QTM. And I'm not just
Speaker 3: saying that, I mean there is there are not many
Speaker 3: hunters out there today that aren't practicing some form of
Speaker 3: deer management, whether they are trying to improve nutrition or
Speaker 3: get pictures of deer on trail cameras or thinking about
Speaker 3: what they shoot. I would argue, you know, and the
Speaker 3: data shows it, and it supports it, that one hundred
Speaker 3: percent of hunters are quality deer management minded. That's what
Speaker 3: they do. They might do parts of it. Ten years
Speaker 3: ago that yeah, ten years ago, that was probably not
Speaker 3: that number. It was a majority, you know. I think
Speaker 3: it was probably closer to eighty percent of hunters, and
Speaker 3: ten years before that it probably was like less than
Speaker 3: fifty percent. So those were the things that we worked
Speaker 3: as an organization. But today, you know, not only has
Speaker 3: everybody adopted and they're practicing it now, we're looking at
Speaker 3: at other things like recruiting new hunters. That is a
Speaker 3: major issue, and you've done a great job promoting that
Speaker 3: and helping support that. Diseases are a big issue and
Speaker 3: public land management is a big issue. You know, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of things out there that are impeding our
Speaker 3: US Forest Service managers and staff from getting done what
Speaker 3: they need to do. They get litigated a lot the
Speaker 3: process of getting releasing jobs to get cut mills, and
Speaker 3: the markets aren't not what they used to be to
Speaker 3: be able to sell this would and so they are
Speaker 3: stewarding like one hundred and ninety million acres of land
Speaker 3: that we can go hunt new hunters can go out
Speaker 3: and use, you know, because they don't own land, and
Speaker 3: we need to do everybody that our community needs to
Speaker 3: do a better job managing it. And thankfully, you know,
Speaker 3: not only NDA, but all of our sister conservation organizations
Speaker 3: are working in this space as well. You know, I
Speaker 3: can just tell you Mule Deer Foundation, Turkey National Wild
Speaker 3: Turkey Federation, Uh, even you know, Trout Unlimited, the Nature Conservancy.
Speaker 3: It's not just game specific groups. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: groups that are working and partnering with the for Service.
Speaker 3: But we all need to chip in because one hundred
Speaker 3: and ninety three million acres is a lot of land,
Speaker 3: and every year, every year, more of that land is
Speaker 3: getting to a state where it's not supporting good wildlife species,
Speaker 3: plant diversity, and Luckily we can change that, and so
Speaker 3: you know, I'm excited about it. And it's not to
Speaker 3: say that we're changing our tune because of we're chasing
Speaker 3: the latest golden nugget. Honestly, we need to care about
Speaker 3: this stuff and it's a focus of ours right now
Speaker 3: because we need to recruit new hunters and that's where
Speaker 3: they can go. And in that space, the US Forest
Speaker 3: Service and federal lands, those places need as much work
Speaker 3: as they not chip in. And so I'm excited about
Speaker 3: it because it's real opportunity.
Speaker 2: So you talked about the fact that we all need
Speaker 2: to chip in, which I couldn't agree more with, and
Speaker 2: that I think leads us perfectly to the last plug
Speaker 2: I want to make, which is an opportunity for listeners
Speaker 2: to come out and chip in on this very project
Speaker 2: you're talking about. We've got three of my working for
Speaker 2: wildlife tour events are in partnership with you and the
Speaker 2: NBA and the Forest Service. I well, I guess I'll
Speaker 2: let you share whatever you want to share about it,
Speaker 2: in as much detail as you want or as little detail.
Speaker 2: We can just send folks to the website and give
Speaker 2: them the dates, or if you want to give a
Speaker 2: quick If you have time to give a quick overview
Speaker 2: of each of those three events, you can do that too.
Speaker 2: But I've talked about on the podcast before. I think
Speaker 2: anyone listening should know about what the Working for Wildlife
Speaker 2: tour is. But I'll give you the twenty second general overview. Basically,
Speaker 2: this is a series of events that I am helping
Speaker 2: shine a spotlight on and participate in, hoping to bring
Speaker 2: to everyone's attention how many great volunteer opportunities there are
Speaker 2: across the country to actually get out there and do
Speaker 2: good work for wildlife on public lands. So been all
Speaker 2: over the country chipping in, partnering with different conservation organizations
Speaker 2: to improve habitat or pick up trash or do whatever
Speaker 2: it is. It's going to make these public places better
Speaker 2: for hunters, anglers and for the credits out there. And
Speaker 2: We've got three really really cool events that I'm excited
Speaker 2: about with you MAP, So do you want to give
Speaker 2: us some level of detail about those three I.
Speaker 3: Would be more than that, do you, Mark? I'm pumped
Speaker 3: about these events. Were involved with you on this year
Speaker 3: when you first came you know, for folks listening still,
Speaker 3: you know when you first approached us and came up
Speaker 3: with the idea. I remember being as enthusiastic about it
Speaker 3: then as I am now, and I thought initially, like
Speaker 3: immediately I should say of places we could tap into
Speaker 3: because of these agreements that I'm working on with the
Speaker 3: Forest Service, and in fact, some of them require us
Speaker 3: to bring in volunteers, and we have our own membership
Speaker 3: base that where we were already planning on advertising opportunities
Speaker 3: to come out. But as soon as you said you're
Speaker 3: thinking about promoting things, I said, well, even better, because
Speaker 3: that's just allowed our megaphone to get people to pay
Speaker 3: attention to it. And so the places that were we
Speaker 3: lined up to work on this year are late July
Speaker 3: July twe nin in northern Idaho on the Idaho Panandle
Speaker 3: National Forest. That location we are working with the Forest
Speaker 3: Service on Idaho Panandal National Forest as well as the
Speaker 3: Idaho Fish and Game Department. And one of the things
Speaker 3: that both entities or organizations are trying to do is
Speaker 3: promote more aspen growth. And they have some places where
Speaker 3: conifers are starting to grow and out compete and encroach
Speaker 3: on young aspen stands, and these young aspen are really
Speaker 3: good game forage they're also good for the diversity of
Speaker 3: the forest and forest resilience and fire resilience to have
Speaker 3: aspen growing out there as opposed to some of these
Speaker 3: other trees that will die out from the understory and
Speaker 3: then catch fire quickly. And so we are going to
Speaker 3: be working with both of those partners to remove those
Speaker 3: conifers by hand, create some brush piles and brush fences
Speaker 3: and enhancing and getting more aspens to grow. And so
Speaker 3: that's July twenty ninth, and then in Mississippi on July
Speaker 3: September twenty third, we are working with again the Forest Service.
Speaker 3: This is on Desodo National Forest, but we're also working
Speaker 3: with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks and
Speaker 3: the Leaf River Wildlife Management Area. Leaf River WMA is
Speaker 3: actually inside DeSoto National Forest. And we also have a
Speaker 3: corporate partner, Mississippi Power, that's helping as well. Mississippi Power
Speaker 3: owns a bunch of line right away to cross the
Speaker 3: National Forest Service there, and so we just actually met
Speaker 3: earlier today. I have partner meetings once a month to
Speaker 3: talk about these events and what we're going to do.
Speaker 3: That one. We're doing a variety of things. They actually
Speaker 3: have this old headquarter building that was actually part of
Speaker 3: the original deer restocking efforts mark back in nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 3: and so that building needs a little bit of tender
Speaker 3: love and care. So we're gonna have some people working
Speaker 3: on that. We're gonna have some people helping us. They're
Speaker 3: going to be disking in and applying applying pre emergent
Speaker 3: herbicide on some cog grass areas prior to us going there.
Speaker 3: And we're going to be seeding in clover and some
Speaker 3: oats in some areas, and then also regenerating some other
Speaker 3: and then we're gonna be doing some tree planting as well.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have some fruit bearing trees and we're gonna
Speaker 3: have a tree planting crew. So that's again September twenty third,
Speaker 3: and then the last one is October fourteenth. These are
Speaker 3: all Saturdays, and this is in Kentucky Daniel Boone National Forest.
Speaker 3: It's on the London Ranger District and actually there's a
Speaker 3: WMA there, Cane Creek WMA. So we're working with the
Speaker 3: Forest Service, Kentucky Department Official Life Resources, but we're also
Speaker 3: working with the Division of Forestry in the University of Kentucky.
Speaker 3: And an independent stave. Independent stave is a they make
Speaker 3: staves for like whiskey barrels, bourbon barrels. They buy a
Speaker 3: lot of white oak from the National Forest. And so
Speaker 3: our objective that day, and this is actually per our agreement,
Speaker 3: is we're going to be collecting acorns off the ground
Speaker 3: and we need we have a goal of collecting somewhere
Speaker 3: between five hundred and thousand pounds of acorns that day,
Speaker 3: and so we'll be doing some scouting ahead of time,
Speaker 3: and those acorns are going to be brought to the
Speaker 3: State Nursery and grown to bare root size, and then
Speaker 3: those bare root seedlings are actually going to get used
Speaker 3: to replant back into the National Forest in areas where
Speaker 3: they're trying to regenerate oak where they can't get it
Speaker 3: to oak, so they're using a local seed source with
Speaker 3: a little bit of help by getting it started at
Speaker 3: the State Nursery, and those will eventually become trees someday
Speaker 3: and hopefully up in acorns for deer that our grandkids
Speaker 3: are hunting, or they'll end up being staves and a
Speaker 3: bourbon barrel that you know, our grandkids drink out of.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, but that's a local reforestation project. So
Speaker 3: all three of those are going to end with some
Speaker 3: really awesome camaraderie and some food and we're just hoping
Speaker 3: everybody can come out. And if you want to learn more,
Speaker 3: if you go to NDA's website and go to the
Speaker 3: menu option get involved, and I know you have a
Speaker 3: link to that will guide people to the same place.
Speaker 3: So that's that's how you how you find it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so these are awesome. I'm so excited about how
Speaker 2: this has all come together, and it happened upon a
Speaker 2: secret short URL to make it even easier for people.
Speaker 2: If you go to Deer Association dot com slash w
Speaker 2: f W that's Working for Wildlife. That's the short r
Speaker 2: L to take your right to the page that you
Speaker 2: guys have set up for these three events, which is great.
Speaker 2: All the details, the regis stration, everything you need to know.
Speaker 2: So if you're in Kentucky or Mississippi or Idaho or
Speaker 2: any state near there, come on out. This is gonna
Speaker 2: be a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: As as match just said, I mean, these are really interesting,
Speaker 2: impactful product projects and uh you know, if I've taken
Speaker 2: anything away from the first two events that we've done already,
Speaker 2: it's just how much fun this thing is too, Like
Speaker 2: the camaraderie aspect of it, the energy when you're out
Speaker 2: there doing good stuff with other people that you know
Speaker 2: are excited about this too. It's just it's contagious, it's exciting,
Speaker 2: and it's like rejuvenating. So, Man, I'm excited to see
Speaker 2: you here in about a month and a half up
Speaker 2: there in northern Idaho. Man, it's gonna be it's gonna
Speaker 2: be great.
Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to to it. Mark. I you know,
Speaker 3: I I've been to idoh probably twice in the last
Speaker 3: six months, maybe three times. I go up often, I
Speaker 3: would say, but I'm I'm really looking forward to that,
Speaker 3: to that trip. And everybody I talked to up there,
Speaker 3: with all of our partners, are really excited, I can
Speaker 3: tell you. So we're gonna have a great time.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, I've kept you significantly longer than I said that.
Speaker 2: So thank you for doing this, Thanks for doing all
Speaker 2: this good work. Thanks for being such a great advocate
Speaker 2: for deer and for deer hunters, and you know, just
Speaker 2: a friend of the Wired hunt community and myself and man,
Speaker 2: another great example of wildlife having you on the podcast. Man,
Speaker 2: thanks for all this.
Speaker 3: Thanks Mark and hope everybody has a great fall. Hope
Speaker 3: hope to see at one of these events. If you
Speaker 3: can make it, I'll be there, so see you there.
Speaker 2: Don't miss them, all right, And that is a wrap.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. As I mentioned that ur L to
Speaker 2: sign up for these events we were just talking about,
Speaker 2: it's Dear Association dot com slash w f W and
Speaker 2: f Y. There is one more Working for Wildlife Tour
Speaker 2: event coming up that's not with the NDA. It's one
Speaker 2: we have in partnership with backcountry Hunters and Anglers and
Speaker 2: that is August twelfth, And if you google Working for
Speaker 2: Wildlife Tour you'll see the website we have over on
Speaker 2: the Meat Eater website with links to register for that event.
Speaker 2: And that's in Missouri. So if you're in Missouri or
Speaker 2: somewhere around there, come join us on August twelfth. We're
Speaker 2: gonna be doing some really cool stuff on some public
Speaker 2: land near the Mississippi River. If you don't want to
Speaker 2: be there for that one, if that one's too far away,
Speaker 2: you just heard about the options available to you with
Speaker 2: matt Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi. Want to see you there. So
Speaker 2: with that said, thank you, for joining. Hope you enjoyed
Speaker 2: this one, and until next time, stay wired time