Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
Speaker 1: modern white tail hunter, and now your host Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyan, and today in the show, I'm joined by
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson to explore if, why, and how a deep
Speaker 1: dive into white tail science can help you become a
Speaker 1: better deer hunter, and we're kicking off a brand new
Speaker 1: month long series on this very topic. All Right, welcome
Speaker 1: to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by
Speaker 1: First Light In. Today, we're kicking off a brand new
Speaker 1: month long series about the science of white tails. In
Speaker 1: spirit in that series is the one and only Tony Peterson,
Speaker 1: who's hearing me today. Tony, I'm glad to have you
Speaker 1: back here. Uh, how are you feeling? I hear you've
Speaker 1: been going through a rough spell man. Thanks for having me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had avoided COVID really, really well until last week
Speaker 1: and it was a it was an experience. Buddy. Do
Speaker 1: you feel like you're back to normal now or are
Speaker 1: you a shell of the former self still? I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's how I described myself, I wouldn't. I
Speaker 1: also wouldn't say normal. It's it's weird. Man, you know
Speaker 1: how it hits people differently. And I really had a
Speaker 1: couple of days where I felt pretty bad, just kind
Speaker 1: of achey and you know, just not myself. But those
Speaker 1: those went pretty quickly and I started to feel better.
Speaker 1: But man, doing some stuff like trying to write or editing.
Speaker 1: Editing is brutal, like having to think about words. It
Speaker 1: gives I get like, you know, forty five minutes, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm toast. My brain is just mush. And then working out,
Speaker 1: I got a little cocky and thought, you know, since
Speaker 1: I feel pretty good, I could go, you know, go
Speaker 1: to the gym and pick up some heavy stuff. And
Speaker 1: it did not take me very long to figure out
Speaker 1: that that my stamina was just not there. Yikes. I
Speaker 1: do not have nearly as good of an excuse as you,
Speaker 1: but I will stay. Over the last week, I have
Speaker 1: felt like I can't focus on anything. My brain's a fog,
Speaker 1: I'm fatigued, I'm I'm a shell of my former self. Uh.
Speaker 1: And And the reason for that, Tony, is that, for
Speaker 1: the first time as a parent of two children, I
Speaker 1: had to do dad duty on my own for three
Speaker 1: and a half days. And it left you. Uh, it
Speaker 1: left you in rough shape. Buddy, I'm a husk. I'm
Speaker 1: just a husk, a dried husk of a man. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I can totally sympathize my wife so much
Speaker 1: more now when I'm on for two weeks at a
Speaker 1: time hunting and she keeps the ship afloat. I just
Speaker 1: had to do it for three and a half days,
Speaker 1: and I it's no, it's no small tasks. I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm getting now. Yeah, it's uh, it's tough, man.
Speaker 1: And I know there's probably not a woman that listens
Speaker 1: to this podcast, so it doesn't matter anyway. But they
Speaker 1: are amazing at keeping the whole thing together. And we
Speaker 1: are just like placeholder idiots that come and go sometimes,
Speaker 1: I think, oh for sure. And and the women that
Speaker 1: are listening to think that we're idiots for complaining about this.
Speaker 1: It's they're definitely not impressed with us. But but yeah, man,
Speaker 1: it was. It was an adventure, my my go to
Speaker 1: kind of move for getting through it. Like I had
Speaker 1: to just kind of get through the regular work day
Speaker 1: as normal. I had to work as best as I
Speaker 1: could and try to keep the kids entertained. But my
Speaker 1: patients would just be so thin by the end of
Speaker 1: the day, I couldn't handle like, you know, playing, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, like the kids stuff they want to do.
Speaker 1: So I would just pack boys up in the truck
Speaker 1: and we would drive off to some random spot in
Speaker 1: the National forest and we would just like dump them
Speaker 1: out and we just let them explore, climb rocks, climb hills,
Speaker 1: playing creeks, playing the lakes. It was just like three
Speaker 1: days of nature babysitting, which was very very good for
Speaker 1: those those evening hours when I need a little mental break. Um.
Speaker 1: So that was that was my epiphany, I guess, was
Speaker 1: that I like Mother Nature now even more so because
Speaker 1: I realized that she's a great babysitter and that was needed. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: it's it's good if you're if you got to do
Speaker 1: something like that, this is the time of year to
Speaker 1: do it. If you're if you're like, man, I really
Speaker 1: need Mother Nature's help a little bit. You don't really
Speaker 1: want that to happen in like January. Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: we got. We got relatively lucky with decent weather and
Speaker 1: it was it was fun. I mean, the boys are
Speaker 1: pretty good and Mom's back now, and I made the
Speaker 1: mistake this is this is a digression, but I made
Speaker 1: the mistake of planning to pick my wife up at
Speaker 1: three o'clock in the afternoon when she got to pick
Speaker 1: her up at the airport and immediately take her to
Speaker 1: a campground where I'd set up a tent and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I was like, let's just start camping right away,
Speaker 1: so you'll come back from your work trip. I later
Speaker 1: found out she had to wake up at two am
Speaker 1: that day to catch her flight, and so she had
Speaker 1: woken up at two am and been on airplanes all day.
Speaker 1: And then I picked her up and was like, let's
Speaker 1: go camping. And uh. She was not necessarily loving that
Speaker 1: as far as uh diving right back into things, but
Speaker 1: we made the best of it was still fun, but
Speaker 1: it took a moment. Did she go camping? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: went camping. Um, but she was very, very tired, and
Speaker 1: she was also not impressed with my lack of packing.
Speaker 1: I I did like a halfway pack, So in the
Speaker 1: morning I packed like the camping stuff and then drove
Speaker 1: the kids to the campground and got a site because
Speaker 1: I was I was worried about not being able to
Speaker 1: get a site on a Saturday morning, Right, that's pretty
Speaker 1: tough to do. So I raced to go get a site.
Speaker 1: We set up the tent and chairs and sleeping bags
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and then I thought, after we
Speaker 1: pick up Mom, we'll just stop by the house and
Speaker 1: have like food and clothes. It would be really quick,
Speaker 1: that'll be it. But it ended up being like an
Speaker 1: hour worth of all the million different things that dead
Speaker 1: did not think of that we needed to pack. And
Speaker 1: so that was the first mistake was was Kylie realizing
Speaker 1: just how illy prepared I had us. But we made
Speaker 1: it through, had a good time. The kids, Uh, kids
Speaker 1: had fun. Did you feel so you know how it
Speaker 1: is like the first hunt of the year, You have
Speaker 1: that that feeling like you're forgetting everything, and then you
Speaker 1: get into a groove and you're pretty good for most
Speaker 1: of the season and then you get kind of that
Speaker 1: rut burnout where you just start forgetting stuff again. Did
Speaker 1: it Did it bring back echoes of either of those times? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is definitely like the first time of the year
Speaker 1: kind of situation. Didn't have my stuff organized. You know,
Speaker 1: this is our second Campion trip of the year, but
Speaker 1: our first one out west, so it was just different
Speaker 1: and stuff wasn't in the right places yet, and we're
Speaker 1: still like you know, just we're not fully settled. Um. Plus,
Speaker 1: usually it's like a team effort, right, Like there's the
Speaker 1: name for this thing. I don't know what it's calls,
Speaker 1: like something about the I wish I knew what this was.
Speaker 1: But there's this idea that when you're in a couple,
Speaker 1: like when you when you're married, you end up having
Speaker 1: certain parts of your brain, are certain parts of your
Speaker 1: day that you just completely offshore to your significant other,
Speaker 1: Like you don't even think about certain things, you don't
Speaker 1: even do certain things at all. It just becomes a
Speaker 1: part of like you knowing that your significant other will
Speaker 1: always cover this thing, or will always take care of
Speaker 1: this task, or we'll always be thinking about this part
Speaker 1: of the problem or whatever it is. And so what
Speaker 1: I realized is that that's kind of how me and
Speaker 1: my wife operate when packing for trips or camping trips
Speaker 1: or something like that. So there's so much that I'm
Speaker 1: so used to like doing this as a team effort,
Speaker 1: Like I know my things, she does her things. But
Speaker 1: in this case, I was trying to do it all
Speaker 1: and I was failing miserably. So that's the big thing. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's really good to have to face your flaws, Mark,
Speaker 1: and then you can become a better person. That's what
Speaker 1: of those things have been having to do for a
Speaker 1: lot lately. But it's uh, I have listeners all the
Speaker 1: time who are like, Hey, can you help Mark face
Speaker 1: some of his flaws? That's what you're here for, funny
Speaker 1: and uh, I guess. On on that note, you are
Speaker 1: taking us on this journey for the next month, taking
Speaker 1: over the podcast, running us on this series about the
Speaker 1: science of white tails. So maybe we should talk about that, Tony,
Speaker 1: what's up? What brought you to this? Like, why is
Speaker 1: this a topic that you wanted to explore in a
Speaker 1: deep in a deep way. There's a couple of reasons,
Speaker 1: you know, a surface level. I guess you could just say,
Speaker 1: I'm just curious about the research and the science. Like
Speaker 1: you've interviewed a whole bunch of people in your life, obviously,
Speaker 1: and it's so fun to interview somebody whose life is
Speaker 1: dedicated to science, especially when that science is dedicated to
Speaker 1: the animals we love. It's just it's just interesting, and
Speaker 1: so I was I was stoked to do something like
Speaker 1: that anyway, just to not be talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: how to kill a bucks this way or how to
Speaker 1: kill a buck that way. And then the other part
Speaker 1: of it is, you know, we beat this drama a
Speaker 1: lot about just just not understanding dear like we we
Speaker 1: we kind of take it for granted when we talk
Speaker 1: in this space that it's like, Okay, we know what
Speaker 1: dear doing. The bed here, they feed here or whatever.
Speaker 1: We kind of got to figure out the nuance of
Speaker 1: their daily travel that it's done. But we don't really
Speaker 1: understand these animals very well, like what what makes them tick?
Speaker 1: Like what what did they evolve from? And like how
Speaker 1: does their eyesight really work? And all these things that
Speaker 1: we just sort of, you know, either either don't even
Speaker 1: really acknowledge because we don't feel like we have to,
Speaker 1: or we we don't. We kind of we kind of
Speaker 1: just like dismissive of it, like, well, that's just how
Speaker 1: dear C. Like I know, how dear C. And then
Speaker 1: you talk to somebody who's like a real expert on
Speaker 1: that and it's eye opening. It's it's so interesting. And
Speaker 1: so there were a couple of different reasons and I
Speaker 1: wanted to do this and it was pretty fun. Man, Okay,
Speaker 1: what about I'm sure there's some people listening now, or
Speaker 1: who looked at the title of this and thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I just want to know where to find bucks on scrapes,
Speaker 1: or you know, I'm just gonna pour pile of corn
Speaker 1: out there and shoot a deer. Why do I need
Speaker 1: to get a PhD In the science of white tails
Speaker 1: or something like that? Like pitch me, or pitch that
Speaker 1: person who's a little antagonistic to this idea on why
Speaker 1: this is actually going to help them? Or is it
Speaker 1: is this just gonna be like scratching curiosity itch and like,
Speaker 1: is fascinating stuff Tony? Or are you actually gonna help
Speaker 1: us learn stuff that's not just fascinating but also practically helpful.
Speaker 1: It's both, I mean, And here's the this is the
Speaker 1: weird part, right, Like you you could know nothing about
Speaker 1: deer essentially and still kill them. Like, if you have
Speaker 1: the right set up, you could know very little about
Speaker 1: what makes dear tick and you could still kill them.
Speaker 1: But if you want to be a better hunter, you
Speaker 1: gotta understand what motivates them, Like you got to understand
Speaker 1: what they're made of. And you know, I always think
Speaker 1: about it, Like you know, I quit I equate a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff to dog training, right and the more
Speaker 1: you learn about how a dogs knows and how nose
Speaker 1: works or dog sees, or why a dog makes eye
Speaker 1: contact with you or you know, makes this kind of
Speaker 1: body language versus that kind or something like that. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't really need to know that stuff to train
Speaker 1: a dog, like you could. You could teach a dog
Speaker 1: to heel and sit and double blind or treating all
Speaker 1: that stuff without really knowing that, but you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: as good as a dog trainer. And I feel the
Speaker 1: same way about white tails, like if you if you
Speaker 1: want to be a better hunter, and I'm I'm guessing
Speaker 1: that most of the people who listen to this podcast
Speaker 1: do like understanding why white tails do what they do.
Speaker 1: It's so important. Yeah, you know, it's another another um
Speaker 1: another part of this. I feel like, at least for me,
Speaker 1: I do feel like when you start to understand these
Speaker 1: things is deeper aspects of white tail by allergy or
Speaker 1: you know, for me, more recently, it's been like trying
Speaker 1: to understand habitat and understand like what the different plants
Speaker 1: are out there, what trees are, trying to identify tree
Speaker 1: species and plant species, and you know, this is something
Speaker 1: I talked about during my Habitat series earlier this year.
Speaker 1: How once you start to learn about the environment around you,
Speaker 1: it it's like you are wearing a totally different set
Speaker 1: of glasses when you enter the woods. It's like when
Speaker 1: you're fishing, Tony, this is an analogy I've been using recently.
Speaker 1: You're throwing like polarized sunglasses when you're fishing, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you see this whole other world under
Speaker 1: the surface of the water that was there all along,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't see it. Well, I feel like a
Speaker 1: similar thing is happening in this case too, Like when
Speaker 1: you start learning about the science and biology of the
Speaker 1: animals you're pursuing. In this case, white tails, I think
Speaker 1: you enter the woods seeing and understanding a totally different
Speaker 1: picture than what was their previous to that, right, I
Speaker 1: really do think you create a richer experience that helps
Speaker 1: you hunt, but then also just makes the whole thing
Speaker 1: a lot more interesting to do. Um. Yeah, well, and
Speaker 1: I think you know along those lines, Mark, like, one
Speaker 1: of the most important things we can ask ourselves as
Speaker 1: hunters is why, Like why why did they do this?
Speaker 1: Or why did that buck do that? And you know,
Speaker 1: through our anecdotal observation. We can only get so far
Speaker 1: with that, right, Like I get I can only get
Speaker 1: so far if I walk if I watch a buck,
Speaker 1: you know, walk through the woods and he he makes
Speaker 1: a rub there, and he nibbles on some brows here,
Speaker 1: Like I can. I can figure some stuff out just
Speaker 1: by seeing that and paying attention to it. But there
Speaker 1: are people out there who have studied that stuff, like
Speaker 1: really studied why dear do those things? And you know,
Speaker 1: they're a wealth of knowledge that you're just like, even
Speaker 1: even in a lifetime of observation and dipping into the
Speaker 1: world of the white tail, you're not gonna learn some
Speaker 1: of the stuff that that these people learn through like
Speaker 1: careful research. And so that's I just think that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you feel like if you were looked back over
Speaker 1: the course of your life, you're hunting life, I know
Speaker 1: that this kind of stuff has always tickled your fancy,
Speaker 1: Like you're you're a student of white tail science. You're
Speaker 1: interested in this stuff. Can you think of any example
Speaker 1: in your hunting experiences over the years where some kind
Speaker 1: of understanding of the science actually helps you on a hunt,
Speaker 1: Like you were sitting there thinking what should I do?
Speaker 1: What should I do and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, well, you know what this and this
Speaker 1: means that really they're gonna be doing this kind of
Speaker 1: thing at this time of year, and that like influence
Speaker 1: the decision. Maybe early on when you were just figuring
Speaker 1: this stuff out, maybe it was more that kind of
Speaker 1: internal conversation. But does anything come to mind or does
Speaker 1: that real bell of any kind of idea where this
Speaker 1: stuff actually came into play in a way that you
Speaker 1: could say, oh, yeah, this was because I'd read this
Speaker 1: study or paid attention to this class or anything like that. Um,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, probably the most relatable way
Speaker 1: that I could describe that, or like, the most relevant
Speaker 1: way I could describe that is far as me having
Speaker 1: a lightbulb moment out there, is to start to think
Speaker 1: about predator avoidance, which when when you talk about a
Speaker 1: prey animal and a bunch of these researchers talked about
Speaker 1: different aspects of this, and you know how good deer
Speaker 1: are at just not getting killed and not just by us,
Speaker 1: by everything that's out there that can kill them. When
Speaker 1: I start thinking about myself and like a predator that
Speaker 1: they really fear, you know, like we don't equate ourselves
Speaker 1: to a grizzly bear. We don't equate ourselves to a
Speaker 1: pack of coyotes. Like, we don't think about ourselves that way,
Speaker 1: but they think of us that way and they have.
Speaker 1: When you start understanding like the universal tools they have
Speaker 1: to avoid that level of predation, it makes you realize
Speaker 1: like the impact you can have. So we can be
Speaker 1: kind of like flippant or you know, just like not
Speaker 1: not really take into account the severity of our impact
Speaker 1: on them. But we got to think about it in
Speaker 1: a way, like we we don't. We don't really relate
Speaker 1: to being you know, pursued by predators very often, and
Speaker 1: if you do have a big predator taken interest in you,
Speaker 1: it changes your perspective in a hurry. But we don't
Speaker 1: really think about them that way. Like we kind of
Speaker 1: just think we go into this world and it's like
Speaker 1: our hobby or passion and we like it. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't want to spook dear, but we don't think about
Speaker 1: like residual impact from our scent, you know, a cent
Speaker 1: trail we might leave in there, or something we might
Speaker 1: touch or you know, get spotted by that fork in
Speaker 1: the tree because you're on your phone like you don't
Speaker 1: really care, but all of that stuff is real important
Speaker 1: to them. And when you start talking to some of
Speaker 1: these researchers and listening to what they say, it makes
Speaker 1: you realize, like, man, if there's one thing I should
Speaker 1: be doing, I should be thinking of myself as something
Speaker 1: that's real scary to them and I don't want them
Speaker 1: to know them there. And I know that's like you know,
Speaker 1: we we we talked about that a lot right access
Speaker 1: and you know where you how are you going to
Speaker 1: get into your tree? And are you really going to
Speaker 1: play the wind and all this stuff. But I don't
Speaker 1: think you can focus on that too much. Mhm. So
Speaker 1: so I guess before we're going further, can you can
Speaker 1: you walk me through what we cover, Like who are
Speaker 1: the people were talking to over the course of the
Speaker 1: next month, and what are the focuses that we're going
Speaker 1: to dive into with each one. I think they'd be
Speaker 1: helpful to understand, like what we're getting ourselves into here. Yeah, man, uh,
Speaker 1: Bradley Cohen is a researcher I had on so fascinating
Speaker 1: and we spent almost the whole episode talking about Dear
Speaker 1: Vision and how they're they're literally the anatomy of their
Speaker 1: eyeballs developed and what they're really really good at, seeing
Speaker 1: how well their vision works compared to ours when it
Speaker 1: works well. Just a just a total breakdown of how
Speaker 1: white tails used their eyes. And I'm telling you, I
Speaker 1: went into that and I was like, you know, I
Speaker 1: was curious. But they've they've studied this in a way
Speaker 1: that they've learned so much about what deer can actually
Speaker 1: see in the different wavelengths and how it relates to us,
Speaker 1: and how it relates to looking at the horizon versus
Speaker 1: looking straight up into a tree. Such fascinating stuff in
Speaker 1: that one before you only further time on Uh, I
Speaker 1: gotta ask him, hoping you guys talked about this. If not, um,
Speaker 1: either you need to call him back up and add
Speaker 1: on to the podcast, or I need to call him.
Speaker 1: And because I actually want to write an article about
Speaker 1: the question I'm about to pose to you. I want
Speaker 1: to write an article or get the answer to whether
Speaker 1: or not there is anything to the idea that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't make eye contact with a deer, Like there's certain
Speaker 1: people that swear to God like when a deer is
Speaker 1: getting spooky, don't look at him, or don't look at her.
Speaker 1: Don't let her see your eyes. Like Andrea Quisto swears
Speaker 1: to God he will. He wears a mesh eye covering
Speaker 1: over his eyes, and he swears that makes a difference.
Speaker 1: And I don't have any kind of real science or
Speaker 1: anything to back it up. But when there's a deer
Speaker 1: ten yards away and she's getting spooky, she knows something up,
Speaker 1: something's up. I squint my eyes, like, I won't look
Speaker 1: her in the eye, just have like a weird little
Speaker 1: old wives tale or something. I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: feel like there's got to be something there. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't know why. I can't back it up, but I
Speaker 1: mean they say, like, don't make eye contact with a
Speaker 1: grizzly bear because they can somehow sense that and get
Speaker 1: more aggressive. So why couldn't a pray animal recognize eye contact?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Do you guys talk about that? I
Speaker 1: can't remember if I talked about it with him or
Speaker 1: somebody else, but we got into that. Yeah, is there
Speaker 1: is there anything to it? Or do you when I
Speaker 1: want to like drop the bomb because it's so juicy,
Speaker 1: you want to save it for later Because I'm very
Speaker 1: there's something to it. I mean, there is something to it,
Speaker 1: and like you said, you know you squint or you know,
Speaker 1: Andrea says this, when you when you deer hunt a lot,
Speaker 1: you recognize that moment, you know, when it almost like
Speaker 1: when a deer is gonna look at you and not
Speaker 1: spooke versus when a deer is gonna look at you
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden ratchet up that awareness level.
Speaker 1: And when you see at when you can feel that
Speaker 1: coming or you see it, you always distinctively start to
Speaker 1: kind of side eye them or cast your gaze down
Speaker 1: or just even not even look at them, you know,
Speaker 1: directly and just like it's sort of in your peripheral
Speaker 1: and just wait for them to decide. So I don't
Speaker 1: think you know this. This is a hard thing probably
Speaker 1: to prove, but I don't think there's any question that
Speaker 1: you probably don't want to, like make direct eye contact
Speaker 1: with a deer you're trying to kill. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: we see, we see, like you said, with with big predators,
Speaker 1: and you know, when you see how dogs have evolved, like,
Speaker 1: eye contacts a real thing out there in nature, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it's a it's a real threat to be looking
Speaker 1: into the eyes of another creature. What do you what
Speaker 1: do you think about like the idea of a we're
Speaker 1: really go off a tangent here, but that's okay. It's
Speaker 1: kind of tied of this like a sixth sense. You
Speaker 1: hear sometimes about people, you know, a kind of spitballing
Speaker 1: about animals have some kind of sixth cents to pray,
Speaker 1: species have some kind of other awareness of the picking
Speaker 1: up on something else that we aren't. Um do you
Speaker 1: think there's anything to that or have you talked to
Speaker 1: anyone ever who has alluded to there being any kind
Speaker 1: of scientific basis for the idea of some other sense
Speaker 1: or sensibility that certain animals species have. So I asked
Speaker 1: that question to Justin Brown actually, and we kind of
Speaker 1: go down a weird rabbit hole on it. I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody's studied it. He certainly hadn't, but we kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, academically, it's an interesting thing to discuss with
Speaker 1: somebody who's an expert on you know, kind of white
Speaker 1: tail anatomy and evolution. And I personally don't think there's
Speaker 1: anything there, but I also think there could be something
Speaker 1: there that's like totally grounded in biology that we don't
Speaker 1: really understand. So we could, you know, It's kind of
Speaker 1: like if you went back a couple of thousand years
Speaker 1: ago in our history, we would assign a lot of
Speaker 1: magic to stuff we didn't understand, right, You like, we
Speaker 1: just we just didn't know, right, Oh, it's a pile
Speaker 1: of straw mis baby mice. Well, no, like mice make
Speaker 1: baby mice. But you know at one point we didn't
Speaker 1: know that, right, So we just make up an explanation.
Speaker 1: And when you talk to a guy like Justin, you know,
Speaker 1: he's real deep into you know, why why are deer's
Speaker 1: legs built this way? Well because of this and that,
Speaker 1: and they I mean they study it, and so they
Speaker 1: figure out things about a deer's anatomy that are tied
Speaker 1: directly to predator avoidance or you know, smelling the micro
Speaker 1: nutrient content in brows and eating only the best, you know,
Speaker 1: freshest stuff that they need in the moment. When you
Speaker 1: when you see things like that, or you hear somebody
Speaker 1: who understands that, I don't think it's a stretch to think, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe there's not like a true sixth sense, but maybe
Speaker 1: there's something tied to one of their one of their
Speaker 1: highly developed senses that we just don't get you know,
Speaker 1: and and I'll give you an example. So, and I
Speaker 1: think about this a lot because it's it's kind of wooo,
Speaker 1: but it's it's I've heard it from several people. So
Speaker 1: I've I've interviewed, uh, some people who train protection dogs,
Speaker 1: so you know, canine dogs essentially uh Belgian Malanoir shepherds
Speaker 1: whatever that are. They're they're there to protect somebody, you know,
Speaker 1: whether whoever, and this this I interviewed this woman one
Speaker 1: time who said, and she owns a whole business dedicated
Speaker 1: to this, and she said, one of the ways they
Speaker 1: test their dogs is they'll throw like five volunteers in
Speaker 1: a bite suit. And so, you know, a bite suit
Speaker 1: is what everybody's seen, you know. Some somebody runs along,
Speaker 1: the dog goes and grabs you by the arm, pulls
Speaker 1: you down. Then the handler pulls them off. And then
Speaker 1: she said, to to really like test the dogs, she'll
Speaker 1: instruct one person out of those five to go really
Speaker 1: dark with their thoughts, like I'm I'm gonna do horrible
Speaker 1: things to that handler. And she said it's so like
Speaker 1: it's so reliable, so consistent that the dog will hone
Speaker 1: in on that person who's having those horrible thoughts that
Speaker 1: She's like, they just know somehow, And I've and it
Speaker 1: wasn't just her. I've had other people in that space
Speaker 1: who are really knowledgeable tell me that, and I go, well,
Speaker 1: how the hell does a Belgian Melania know what you're thinking?
Speaker 1: Or or that your thoughts have turned that dark? And
Speaker 1: so then you know, if you believe that, it's not
Speaker 1: like a huge stretch to think about a prey animal
Speaker 1: walking by some predator hiding up in a tree who
Speaker 1: has bad intentions, right Like, I'm like, when I see
Speaker 1: a buck coming, I'm like, I want to kill that
Speaker 1: son of a bit, right Like, maybe there's something to it.
Speaker 1: I don't disagree, Like I I think your explanation about
Speaker 1: how you know we'd just have them figure out the
Speaker 1: science to speak about it, yet sounds quite plausible. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many examples like well you subscribed or what
Speaker 1: about just now? This is very anecdotal. I don't know
Speaker 1: if anybody's ever actually tried to apply like a quantitative
Speaker 1: analysis to this. But how many stories have you heard
Speaker 1: of people who we're walking down a trail or were
Speaker 1: I don't know, camping or whatever, when all of a
Speaker 1: sudden they feel like the hair in the back or
Speaker 1: the necks rise up, and they just feel like someone's
Speaker 1: watching them or something bad is going to happen. Like
Speaker 1: so many people, you hear these stories where there's the
Speaker 1: sense of being watched or the sense of some impending
Speaker 1: danger coming. And then the next day they're walking around
Speaker 1: and they see mountain lion tracks ten yards behind them,
Speaker 1: behind this tree or or something like that. You know,
Speaker 1: there's so many stories where people sense something is watching
Speaker 1: them or some dangerous coming. And now, of course it's
Speaker 1: probably ten million examples of that, and we hear the
Speaker 1: ten stories where there actually was something dangerous. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: the case, right, But I don't know. There seems to
Speaker 1: be the plausible idea that there could be something to it.
Speaker 1: And you know, you talked about how, you know, like
Speaker 1: an animal's nose can pick up on these different things.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's all these different chemical signals being transferred
Speaker 1: that we don't even pick up on. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the science is now showing that trees in a certain
Speaker 1: way are communicating between each other with different chemical aerosoults
Speaker 1: that are released by their leaves based on different stimuli
Speaker 1: or different dangers. And if if that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: can be sent out in the air and transferred in
Speaker 1: a way. Why couldn't similar chemicals be created by mammals
Speaker 1: that could then be picked up by a prey species,
Speaker 1: you know, not even realizing that they're smelling this, but
Speaker 1: in some way they're smelling intention in a way, because
Speaker 1: our bodies are creating some different kind of chemical in
Speaker 1: that moment that could be picked up ten yards away
Speaker 1: or fifteen yards away by a astuteley evolutionary crafted prey
Speaker 1: species to survive that kind of thing, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't. I wouldn't put to pass it at all.
Speaker 1: I think it's well, I mean, there there's a reason
Speaker 1: that you know, I mean, it's instinct, you know, And
Speaker 1: I think that that's something that can be you know,
Speaker 1: probably pretty dulled by our modern lives because we have it,
Speaker 1: have it pretty good. But you know, if you took
Speaker 1: I mean, all right, take an example, like if you
Speaker 1: dropped me into Ukraine right now and said start fighting Russians,
Speaker 1: I'd probably be dead in like a day, right because
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have a clue what I was doing. But
Speaker 1: if you take somebody who's been fighting over there for
Speaker 1: those ninety days, and who trained for years before that.
Speaker 1: Their instincts in that environment are probably amazing, like just
Speaker 1: probably so in tune. So you know, you take it,
Speaker 1: take a white tail out there, you know that. And
Speaker 1: you can see this on a sort of a smaller
Speaker 1: level if you if you hunt a wide variety of
Speaker 1: different spots. I think, if you if you go hunt
Speaker 1: some badass branch down in Texas where there's like it's
Speaker 1: real managed and you know, the population is really high,
Speaker 1: and you know, those deer don't have like tons of
Speaker 1: fear most of the time. You can see it. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're like, these are not the same deer I hunt
Speaker 1: on public land by my house in the Twin Cities,
Speaker 1: Like they're they're different. Thing. They're there still dear, but
Speaker 1: that that instinct, that survival instinct, and those those skills
Speaker 1: of using whatever they have available. I mean, if they
Speaker 1: don't have to use them, they're gonna lose them to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, you would assume. Yeah, very very true. Man,
Speaker 1: I don't know, this is something it's very very interesting.
Speaker 1: I really need to do a deeper dive into this
Speaker 1: whole eye contact sixth sense thing. Um. If the science
Speaker 1: isn't there yet, I bet it will be someday because
Speaker 1: it's just it's just too interesting. Yeah, okay, So I
Speaker 1: mean I think, hold on one second. I think I
Speaker 1: think the hardest part about that that I got from
Speaker 1: all these these interviews is studying wild deer versus you know,
Speaker 1: you can set up a study and and this is
Speaker 1: part of the reason why a lot of this research
Speaker 1: goes the way it does, because they tend to research
Speaker 1: dear that they can, or they tend to research topics
Speaker 1: that are ah easily researchable in a pen situation, you know,
Speaker 1: like taking a wild white tail and going, okay, how
Speaker 1: do they detect predators? Not as a research scientist, like
Speaker 1: that's a heavy lift man, Like how do you how
Speaker 1: the hell do you even control that? Yeah? Who knows?
Speaker 1: I interrupted you when you were going through your rundown.
Speaker 1: So you you mentioned the vision episode and then you
Speaker 1: mentioned a guy named Justin. Who what's he talking about?
Speaker 1: Justin's fascinating man, he U he really understands dear anatomy
Speaker 1: and you know, white tail evolution. And this guy has
Speaker 1: studied more uh DOM diseases, viruses, different animals than probably
Speaker 1: anyone out there. Like he he's not just just a
Speaker 1: white tailed guy. I mean, he studied different viruses and
Speaker 1: turkeys and what's his gross what's his job title like
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. What's his actual career? So he
Speaker 1: he has a background and and he's a veterinarian and
Speaker 1: he has a background in biomedical science. Wow, so he's
Speaker 1: and I feel so bad. He was so nice and
Speaker 1: I interviewed him the day that I really came down
Speaker 1: with COVID, and so I felt I felt bad. Like,
Speaker 1: let me let me tell you this. So you know
Speaker 1: when you are doing a podcast and you're you're in
Speaker 1: the moment and you say something and like in your head,
Speaker 1: you're like that was so dumb, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: care about that. Yeah. There. I had about nine of
Speaker 1: those moments with Justin. At one point I was like
Speaker 1: I couldn't think of the word scientist, and so I
Speaker 1: said like science guy or something. And as soon as
Speaker 1: I said, I was like, oh god, like and I had.
Speaker 1: I just had several these moments, and I felt so
Speaker 1: bad because he's such an interesting guy and had so
Speaker 1: much good information and here I am this low wavelength,
Speaker 1: hairless ape trying to interview him and I'm like a
Speaker 1: train wreck. But he was fascinating, so he carried it
Speaker 1: well enough that your inadequacies won't bring down too much.
Speaker 1: He did, and he we we talked off air about
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that we didn't touch on, and
Speaker 1: that that's what was really cool about these guys that
Speaker 1: I interviewed, you know there they're passionate hunters who got
Speaker 1: into the science space. And I mean, you can talk
Speaker 1: to these guys for an hour or two and you
Speaker 1: don't even scratch the surface of what they have to offer,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean I I left I left every
Speaker 1: one of those episodes with notes about the next go
Speaker 1: around that I wanted to talk to them about because
Speaker 1: they have so much interesting, relevant information to us. I
Speaker 1: love it. So what's next? Then? So I interviewed Carl Miller. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, Carl, Carl's like a legend in the in
Speaker 1: the white tail space. I really don't think anyone has
Speaker 1: published more research on deer than Carl. And he was
Speaker 1: really really interesting. And what did you cover with him? Ah?
Speaker 1: We covered all kinds of stuff with Carl. He because
Speaker 1: of his just because of his depth of knowledge. I
Speaker 1: really just kind of wanted to. I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: go into it like, Okay, this is this is a
Speaker 1: dear vision one, right, Like, I'm like, what's the most
Speaker 1: interesting thing you've studied? Like what what are you concerned
Speaker 1: about with the future. What we think about is like
Speaker 1: you know Stewards of the Resource And have you ever
Speaker 1: met him? Do you know him? I met him a
Speaker 1: while back. Yeah, he's such a nice guy and so
Speaker 1: just so full of knowledge on white tails. So we
Speaker 1: kind of went all over the place in that episode.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a that was like a shotgun approach episode,
Speaker 1: but just just a fun guy to listen to. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's three out of five, right, So what else?
Speaker 1: Michael Chamberlain as well, So you know, people, people who
Speaker 1: listen to met Eater podcast, I'm sure have heard him.
Speaker 1: And he's he's made a name for himself as the
Speaker 1: turkey doc, right, Like he's he's probably the foremost wild
Speaker 1: turkey researcher in this country. Like I don't think that's
Speaker 1: a crazy thing to say, but man, that guy is
Speaker 1: obsessed with hunting white tails, and so he's he's out
Speaker 1: there in our space, uh, you know, educating people on turkeys,
Speaker 1: and he's passionate about turkeys. He's a whole mother level
Speaker 1: with white tails. Just loves it, and so kind of
Speaker 1: with him too. You know, we we talked about a
Speaker 1: lot of difference, like bond repruvement, a lot of predation stuff.
Speaker 1: He does a lot of studies down south and you know,
Speaker 1: do use with you know, how many fonds the bears
Speaker 1: eat in Louisiana, that kind of stuff, and just just interesting.
Speaker 1: He's such a good dude. Awesome, I like it. And
Speaker 1: then the last one, so one thing that happened in
Speaker 1: these podcasts that I didn't intend to all Right, I
Speaker 1: guess I shouldn't say that that's that's bad phrasing. I
Speaker 1: didn't see coming. Was every single one of these people
Speaker 1: I interviewed is really really interested in the future of
Speaker 1: white tales, Like there's no question in my mind. And
Speaker 1: c w D came up over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: like that you want to talk about like the top
Speaker 1: concern with these science these scientists, it's like no question, yeah, science.
Speaker 1: And so I had Jason Sumners on from the Missouri
Speaker 1: Department of Conservation. He's the he's the head of the
Speaker 1: Division of Science or their branch of science or something
Speaker 1: that the MDC down there. They have a re really
Speaker 1: really interesting set up for their their game department, and
Speaker 1: they have a heavy emphasis on science and research, and
Speaker 1: so it's he was and he runs the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and so he, you know, he and I really basically
Speaker 1: did an episode on chronic wasting disease. And it's a
Speaker 1: it's a sort of a downer, I guess you could say,
Speaker 1: but also not totally hopeless. Like when you when you
Speaker 1: have somebody like that at the helm who's concerned about
Speaker 1: it and loves dear and has the resources to really
Speaker 1: study this and figure out what might work and what doesn't,
Speaker 1: it gives you a little bit of hope. Yeah, c
Speaker 1: W D. Man, it's such a doozy of a topic too,
Speaker 1: because it's because it's it's got several things going for
Speaker 1: it going against it. I mean, it's it's slow moving,
Speaker 1: and so it's not something that instantly changes things and
Speaker 1: that people can point a thing go and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it absolutely made this horrible thing happen. So yes, we
Speaker 1: absolutely have to do something about it. But but no,
Speaker 1: instead of slow moving, it's hard to really wrap your
Speaker 1: head around. It has become politicized in a certain way
Speaker 1: within the deer hunting community, and so it's become like
Speaker 1: this this issue that's like ripping, tearing the community apart
Speaker 1: between like believers and deniers. I mean, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like COVID or climate change or something, but the deer
Speaker 1: hunting version of it, that's like becoming this weirdly polarized thing. Um.
Speaker 1: And so some people either get really charged up about
Speaker 1: it or some people just put their heads in the
Speaker 1: sand and just want to stay out of it because
Speaker 1: they don't want to get into this polarizing, depressing issue. Uh,
Speaker 1: why is it worth listening to Tony If I'm worried
Speaker 1: about that? If I'm that person, I'm thinking, Gosh, this
Speaker 1: is just this is a downer. This is gonna stress
Speaker 1: me out, and it's gonna piss off my friend. If
Speaker 1: I tell them that you should pay attention to see
Speaker 1: w D or whatever, H what do you tell that person? Uh?
Speaker 1: I would tell them a lot. You know. I'm I've
Speaker 1: been I've I've been involved in this issue for a
Speaker 1: long time. I've written about it a ton and done
Speaker 1: a lot of research on it, and I've been I
Speaker 1: kind of hit this sort of agnostic state with it
Speaker 1: where I was like, I'm you know, it was part
Speaker 1: of it was fatigue, right, but part of it was
Speaker 1: like I just don't know, Like I don't know what's
Speaker 1: bullshit and what's not, you know, like because because like
Speaker 1: you said, it is like a highly politicized issue, and
Speaker 1: when you talk to somebody who loves deer, who actually
Speaker 1: handles the science behind it, it's sort of, uh, it
Speaker 1: sort of just clears out some of the white noise.
Speaker 1: And what you realize is, you know, we have some
Speaker 1: pretty prominent voices out there who have a vested interest
Speaker 1: in straight up lying about CWD or you know, really
Speaker 1: downplaying some of the stuff we know, you know, and
Speaker 1: and those voices have done a lot of damage. And
Speaker 1: so when you when you talk to people, you know,
Speaker 1: like a really common one, a really common thing to
Speaker 1: say around CWD is that it's been here forever and
Speaker 1: it's just a part of the natural world of our
Speaker 1: dear elk. The problem with something like that is it's
Speaker 1: that's not backed up by anything. Like nobody who knows
Speaker 1: what they're doing with the science says that's true. They
Speaker 1: say it could be true, like we it might that's possible, right,
Speaker 1: there's no data to support that, and so we have
Speaker 1: so many different aspects of this that that fall into
Speaker 1: sort of that category. So yeah, you can fill in
Speaker 1: the blanks and decide that this is, it goes this
Speaker 1: way or it doesn't do this. We don't know a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff, and so there's some serious mental
Speaker 1: horsepower out there being dedicated to like figuring out those things,
Speaker 1: whether they're true or not. And yeah, can we contain it,
Speaker 1: like can we keep prevalence levels low? What does it
Speaker 1: really mean for the future or white tails? And you can't.
Speaker 1: You could take an issue like this and it's it's
Speaker 1: it just is what it is. It's there's there's research
Speaker 1: around it, their science behind it. They're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what this means. But it's also like inextricably linked
Speaker 1: to uh, the social science or the social aspect of it,
Speaker 1: and so we get it gets real muddy when we
Speaker 1: do that because we have a vested interest in seeing
Speaker 1: lots of deer out there, because we don't want this
Speaker 1: to change. So just us as an audience consuming this,
Speaker 1: we're kind of like, it's it's sort of easier to
Speaker 1: just stick your head in the stand and be like
Speaker 1: I don't I don't really want to know, or I
Speaker 1: don't really want to think about this because I want
Speaker 1: dear to be there and I don't want the bad news.
Speaker 1: And you know that that's sort of an easy take,
Speaker 1: but like maybe it's not the best one. Like if
Speaker 1: we care about the future of white pills, we should
Speaker 1: want this research to be conducted like we should. We
Speaker 1: should want to know what this means and get the
Speaker 1: best info we can. Yeah. Man, it's the perfect poison
Speaker 1: as far as hard issue to address because of those
Speaker 1: exact things. It's it's a our human psychology in so
Speaker 1: many ways, it is perfectly fine tuned to not want
Speaker 1: to deal with something like this. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a doozy m well and I would say on
Speaker 1: that too. One of the things this will be. This
Speaker 1: is tough to prove, but I believe this, like in
Speaker 1: my heart, when you when you talk to these people
Speaker 1: who I who I've talked to for these interviews, you
Speaker 1: don't get this propaganda vibe. You don't get this like
Speaker 1: undercurrent of you know, like ulterior motives or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's like you get you get the feeling that they're
Speaker 1: like I want this to continue, like I want there
Speaker 1: to be a be deer around for my kids and
Speaker 1: my grandkids. You don't you just don't. It's like, it
Speaker 1: makes you realize that there are people in this that
Speaker 1: who are genuinely working toward a good cause, and you
Speaker 1: might like the agency they worked for, you might want
Speaker 1: to assign like nefarious intent to them, But when you
Speaker 1: spend time with these people, it's like, man, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it feels pretty genuine to me that that they're really
Speaker 1: trying to learn something that can help all of us
Speaker 1: and the deer out. Yeah. So when you look at
Speaker 1: these five conversations you've had, is there anything that kind
Speaker 1: of through you for a loop? Were you surprised by anything,
Speaker 1: or did you have a previous assumption that was upturned
Speaker 1: or anything. Was there any kind of like whoa moment
Speaker 1: for you throughout this process? There definitely was, uh, And
Speaker 1: it actually happened in the CWD conversation with Jason Sumners.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't really want to give it away,
Speaker 1: but I had I had sort of made up my mind,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize I had kind of made my
Speaker 1: mind up this way until I said something about the
Speaker 1: future of white tails and what I thought, and he
Speaker 1: corrected me and said, you know, what we're finding is
Speaker 1: that that that's just not true, and I I don't
Speaker 1: want to give it away, but it was one of
Speaker 1: those moments where I was like, God, I think I
Speaker 1: had this totally wrong, like totally wrong, and I didn't
Speaker 1: even realize how, you know, like how kind of ensconced
Speaker 1: in that way of thinking. I was interesting. Here's another
Speaker 1: thing that's curious about, you know, in a lot of
Speaker 1: like my off I don't know how to described, I
Speaker 1: do a ton of just reading and research about a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different things related to wildlife and the
Speaker 1: environment and stuff, and and we're starting to see, you know,
Speaker 1: increasing evidence of you know, just the the widespread long
Speaker 1: term influence and impact we're having on wildlife right so
Speaker 1: much so that now we're actually able to kind of
Speaker 1: identify ways that animals have, you know, are beginning to
Speaker 1: evolve and adapt and change to specific you know, influences
Speaker 1: of humans, and certain species are really good at adapting
Speaker 1: and and literally changing the something called phenotypic plasticity, which
Speaker 1: is a fun new ten dollar word that I've liked
Speaker 1: that points to the the ability for these animals to
Speaker 1: to change both behaviorally and even possibly in their genes,
Speaker 1: to adapt to how the world is changing. Because of us. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that's been an interesting thing I've been reading about.
Speaker 1: I got to thinking, you know, is that happening with
Speaker 1: white tails? Are we changing white tails? I mean, white
Speaker 1: tails are incredibly adaptable. They're one of these species that
Speaker 1: are actually winners in the jack potter. I go, what
Speaker 1: am I trying to say? They're they're winners as far
Speaker 1: as an animal species that can live alongside of humans
Speaker 1: compared to many others. Right, um. And I'm curious if
Speaker 1: in any of your conversations you heard about this at all.
Speaker 1: Are there any examples of that kind of thing that
Speaker 1: these scientists are picking up on, is the biology of
Speaker 1: white tails or or the behavior or anything changing alongside
Speaker 1: of how we humans have changed things that anything along
Speaker 1: those lines come up. So yeah, that I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it was with just and Justin Brown where we we
Speaker 1: talked about that not only with white tails and how
Speaker 1: adaptable they are, and he he brought it up. I
Speaker 1: don't remember exactly how he phrased it, but it was,
Speaker 1: you know, their adaptability is partially due to their evolution
Speaker 1: as edge critters and being being sort of wired towards
Speaker 1: being around you know, edges of habitat and stuff. But
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of went down this rabbit hole
Speaker 1: of them being super adaptable to us and you know,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty rapid changing environments, you know, versus maybe
Speaker 1: mule deer. And one of the things he talked about
Speaker 1: was was coyotes, which are you know, a similar example
Speaker 1: like like the white tail, where they just whatever you
Speaker 1: throw at them, they seem to make it work. And
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating aspect to white tails to you know,
Speaker 1: to see it sort of just makes you realize how
Speaker 1: much of a gift they are to be able to
Speaker 1: play so well with us no matter how much we
Speaker 1: develop and no matter how much we change into the land.
Speaker 1: And it's it's it's pretty wild and it and it
Speaker 1: is it is like tied to you know, their evolutionary
Speaker 1: path that that adaptability is. But it's not like you
Speaker 1: can just say it's you know this gene, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's not like you can it's it's not an
Speaker 1: easy thing to put your finger on. But they're like
Speaker 1: hyper aware of it. M Yeah, they're survivors, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Some of the very best What Tony of all this
Speaker 1: is that anything stand out to you as it's something
Speaker 1: that you either identified as something you want to dive
Speaker 1: further into or that you wish you could have covered
Speaker 1: but somehow didn't come up, Like what's next for you
Speaker 1: or for us? If there's an area where you want
Speaker 1: and more, what's the area that is pulling you to
Speaker 1: explore next after this foundation that you've developed and that
Speaker 1: we're all going to learn about here soon. Oh man,
Speaker 1: there's so much stuff. I mean you you really you
Speaker 1: could probably do a hundred podcasts with each one of
Speaker 1: these guests and probably find dozens and dozens more people
Speaker 1: just like them and and talk about this stuff. When
Speaker 1: you get into conversations with these guys, especially after the
Speaker 1: show's over, you know how it is, they'll just mention
Speaker 1: something like, oh, yeah, we're working on this study, or
Speaker 1: we're thinking about this or thinking about doing that, or
Speaker 1: this was like an anomaly and we're just curious about it,
Speaker 1: and you realize how much there is to learn, Like
Speaker 1: if I took away anything from this, it was like, man,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of stuff left to learn about
Speaker 1: white tails, and so do these people who know a
Speaker 1: lot more about white tails than I do. And I
Speaker 1: just I just think that's cool, Like I I just
Speaker 1: think it's cool that there's you know, this animal we're
Speaker 1: obsessed with and we think about all the time, and
Speaker 1: we we we try to figure out and we try
Speaker 1: to just learn about and we could we could never
Speaker 1: know enough about them, like we could never get there,
Speaker 1: like we could never get to the end. And I
Speaker 1: just think that's cool. They're just such amazing animals, very
Speaker 1: very very very true, which is why we've done five
Speaker 1: so many episodes of this one and however many thousands
Speaker 1: of episodes of other podcasts and videos. Right, we just
Speaker 1: can't get enough. Yeah, well, I mean that that that's
Speaker 1: the thing we don't talk about. I think, Uh well,
Speaker 1: I mean we kind of do, but we kind of
Speaker 1: we kind of screwed around. It is you know, how
Speaker 1: how hard this stuff really is, Like how how hard
Speaker 1: it is to actually get good at, you know, being
Speaker 1: a white tail hunter. And even if you do get
Speaker 1: to like some level like that, how often you get
Speaker 1: your ass handed to you and realize, like, man, as
Speaker 1: good as you can be, you could be so much better.
Speaker 1: It's just it's I think that's just amazing. So here's
Speaker 1: a question whether it be like in your research for
Speaker 1: this or in conversations with these people, or maybe anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Did you ever them on any kind of book recommendations
Speaker 1: or resource recommendations or I don't know, for people that
Speaker 1: want to go deeper into this kind of stuff, for
Speaker 1: people who realize now that there's um something to better
Speaker 1: understanding dear not just you know what trails they take,
Speaker 1: but actually how they function and flourish. Do you have
Speaker 1: any recommendations for where people can go to get more
Speaker 1: of this kind of stuff after they listen to the
Speaker 1: series or books or anything like that. Uh, book wise,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I actually I'm kind of kicking around
Speaker 1: writing one myself because I think I think there's like
Speaker 1: a there's probably a gap in the white tie world there,
Speaker 1: and I think it would be pretty cool to to
Speaker 1: dig into this stuff because you know, you know how
Speaker 1: this is if you if you're gonna interview somebody who's
Speaker 1: a scientist or wildlife researcher, you're gonna read some of
Speaker 1: their papers, right, and and you know, research papers are
Speaker 1: pretty dry there. You know, I know, a guy like
Speaker 1: you loves them because you're wired kind of weird like
Speaker 1: most people probably don't. And but when you when you
Speaker 1: start reading them, even if you just read the abstract
Speaker 1: from each of these papers. You're like, man, this is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Like in a way, they just get to
Speaker 1: ask a question that they're curious about, and if they
Speaker 1: can get the funding to do it, if they get
Speaker 1: a grant or they can get some resources, they can
Speaker 1: go out and design experiments to figure it out. Like
Speaker 1: that's cool. Like we can't we can't do that, Like
Speaker 1: I can't you know, Andy May can't go you know
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna I'm gonna figure this thing out with
Speaker 1: these wild deer in that kind of way that he
Speaker 1: can do it in his own way and he's gonna
Speaker 1: he's gonna learn something. But they have the opportunity, these
Speaker 1: researchers have this opportunity to do something that's so cool,
Speaker 1: and I just I think I don't know. So that's
Speaker 1: a really dumb answer to your question. If you really
Speaker 1: wanted to, you know, read about this stuff. It's mostly
Speaker 1: in the research papers, and you know a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of companies, you know, meetia or does a
Speaker 1: good job at this is. If there's something really cool
Speaker 1: that comes out, there'll be an article about it that
Speaker 1: sort of bridges the gap between the academia and the
Speaker 1: in the that that style of writing versus you know
Speaker 1: what we typically read in the hunting space, which is
Speaker 1: a different it's a different delivery system, you know. Yeah, man, Well,
Speaker 1: I think this is a good call to action for you.
Speaker 1: You should write that book. I might. I might. I
Speaker 1: thought about it a lot as I was sort of
Speaker 1: sort of pulling everything together for this series. I think
Speaker 1: there's I think there's sort of a gap in the
Speaker 1: in the content space for that. Well, here's the thing is,
Speaker 1: is you just pointed out the big um like problem
Speaker 1: with most of this writing about this stuff is that
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to digest. It's usually scientific papers, it's
Speaker 1: usually pretty boring. But if you could somehow convey the
Speaker 1: science in like a fascinating fun way, like to get
Speaker 1: part of a journey, tell hunting stories, take him on
Speaker 1: a trip while they learn about this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: like all of a sudden, it is a lot more
Speaker 1: palatable and people actually, you know, be able to hold
Speaker 1: onto that information in their minds when it's tied into
Speaker 1: a larger interesting narrative. There's a there's a hell of
Speaker 1: a book right there. I'm not I'm not going to
Speaker 1: call DIBs on it, So you run with it, buddy,
Speaker 1: you know, I might. I mean, I think you could
Speaker 1: do it in a style, um you had you had
Speaker 1: the guy who wrote The Comfort Crisis on right, what
Speaker 1: was his name, Michael Michael Easter Easter Uh that you know,
Speaker 1: that book is a really good example what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean if you his journey to to
Speaker 1: get in shape and learn about the outdoors and you know,
Speaker 1: tie himself to nature. He did a really good job of,
Speaker 1: you know, blending that experience of that caribou hunt with
Speaker 1: Donny Vincent with just real research into what makes us
Speaker 1: happy and healthy. And I think I think that style
Speaker 1: is is you know, it's pretty cool, and I think
Speaker 1: you could do that with this this topic. Probably. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my my favorite kind of book and and the
Speaker 1: kind of book I guess I want to write too,
Speaker 1: is like where you combine that you learned something while
Speaker 1: also going on an interesting journey or doing something interesting
Speaker 1: along the way, makes it just so much more easy
Speaker 1: to consume it. You want to consume it, then, um, well,
Speaker 1: until you write that book, I do have a couple
Speaker 1: of recommendations that can to mind, um, for people that
Speaker 1: want to read more on this. There's a very interesting
Speaker 1: book called white Tail Tracks. This is by Valarious Geist,
Speaker 1: who is like the o G of science in the
Speaker 1: world of ungulates. Um. He recently passed away. But white
Speaker 1: Tail Tracks dives into like the evolutionary history of white
Speaker 1: tails and kind of their impact on the North American
Speaker 1: ecosystem and where we are today. Super interesting stuff, cover
Speaker 1: some of like the biology and how they are, how
Speaker 1: they are and why they are how they are. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting one. Um. There's one called deer Land
Speaker 1: by al kim Brone. This came out like right when
Speaker 1: I started Weird Hunt um, and so this one kind
Speaker 1: of covers the science of white tails, but then also
Speaker 1: like the impact that white tails have on um, the
Speaker 1: natural world, I guess, and kind of also cultural impact
Speaker 1: as well in America. So that one's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: It's it touches on some of this stuff. Um. And
Speaker 1: then one called Heart and Blood by Richard Nelson. In
Speaker 1: this one covers some of the same stuff, a couple
Speaker 1: of chapters around the science and biology of deer, and
Speaker 1: then it goes into more of like the cultural integration
Speaker 1: of deer into our world, into you know, how we
Speaker 1: interact with them. And so it's a little above and beyond.
Speaker 1: But but again another pretty interesting one that covers on
Speaker 1: some of this stuff. Those are the first three that
Speaker 1: came to mind without looking at my bookshelf. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's good stuff man recommendations. Yeah, yeah, check those out.
Speaker 1: I guess is there anything else, Tony, Like, is there
Speaker 1: anything else that we need to know or that we
Speaker 1: should chat about before we just dive in over this
Speaker 1: next month and get right into it. Uh? I think
Speaker 1: I think it's just worth thinking about this stuff with
Speaker 1: an open mind. Kind of a circle back right to
Speaker 1: you know what you started started this podcast talking about, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe people aren't that interested in it, or
Speaker 1: maybe they don't they're not making the connection that these
Speaker 1: kind of interviews will help them become a better hunter.
Speaker 1: But I just firmly believe they do. Like I really
Speaker 1: believe that if you take in this information, partially because
Speaker 1: so much of it is like, you know, ubiquitous across
Speaker 1: the space. Right Like, if you if you learn how
Speaker 1: a dear sees, like how their vision really works, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if you hunt in you know, southern Alabama
Speaker 1: or up in Canada. You know, like, it doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter the same thing if you if you really
Speaker 1: understand in you know, why a white tail might feed
Speaker 1: on this type of brows at this time of year,
Speaker 1: or how they use their nose to find food. It
Speaker 1: really doesn't matter where you hunt, like, that's that's applicable
Speaker 1: to you as long as you're just hunting deer. And
Speaker 1: so I think I think in some ways this science
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat in that aspect because we we tend
Speaker 1: to you know, if you interview somebody who's just a
Speaker 1: stone cold killer from somewhere, you know, they might be
Speaker 1: able to go to a bunch of different places and
Speaker 1: do it, but they're rooted somewhere, And so there's always
Speaker 1: somebody who's like, yeah, but here in Florida, he couldn't
Speaker 1: do that, you know, or where I hunt, that's just
Speaker 1: not gonna fly. We always have that sort of stigma
Speaker 1: attached to us as hunters, like no matter how accomplished
Speaker 1: you get, but some of this stuff just it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It's universal. It's very true. Yeah, one last question for you. Usually,
Speaker 1: historically when you have filled in for me on the
Speaker 1: main Wire Dump pod cast, you usually start every episode
Speaker 1: talking some kind of shit about me and make enough
Speaker 1: weird destinations that I might be at. The big question
Speaker 1: I have is does that continue even when I allow
Speaker 1: you to spearhead a whole series like this? Do you
Speaker 1: still bite the hand that feeds you? First Off, First off,
Speaker 1: I'm a meat eator full timer, so we're equals now, Mark,
Speaker 1: So nobody's feeding anybody. Uh. Secondly, I'm not making up anything.
Speaker 1: I just tell the people what you tell me, you
Speaker 1: and you and Spencer's little adventures, and I just let
Speaker 1: them know why they have me for the week. And
Speaker 1: so it's safe to say if I'm filling in for
Speaker 1: your podcast, it's because you're off doing something that might
Speaker 1: intrigue people, and I just let them know, just you know, casual.
Speaker 1: So thanks for that. Uh. You know, I got one
Speaker 1: other questions for you, just in case for people that
Speaker 1: are listening to this, but if they have not been
Speaker 1: tuning into recent episodes of Foundations, can you give me
Speaker 1: a little update on what's been going on recently with
Speaker 1: your Foundation series and what we can look forward to.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that folks you know about? Yeah? Uh,
Speaker 1: so we are. We are at the end of year one,
Speaker 1: and Year one's goal was just kind of as as
Speaker 1: much as possible, take a chronological look at what we
Speaker 1: should be doing as hunters to try to be successful.
Speaker 1: So you know, should you be scouting this way at
Speaker 1: this time of the year, or should you be you know,
Speaker 1: hunting staging areas at this time of year, or how
Speaker 1: should you be looking at winter scouting? And very kind
Speaker 1: of you know, useful that way, like in the moment, useful,
Speaker 1: I guess, I would say, but we've wrapped that up.
Speaker 1: And what that project is so weird for me is
Speaker 1: because I view it like with a little bit of
Speaker 1: an existential dread, because is I'm like, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know if I have anything left to say. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's the same thing when you're when
Speaker 1: you've written hundreds and hundreds of articles, you're like, how
Speaker 1: do I write about the rut again? And you know
Speaker 1: that found those foundations scripts are pretty heavy lift, especially
Speaker 1: after you get to a year. But I realized how
Speaker 1: much stuff I had not written about, or you know,
Speaker 1: how how many things I hadn't recorded, And so year
Speaker 1: two is going to be different. It won't be it'll
Speaker 1: be tied loosely into some you know, chronological stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm not going to talk about Winner Scouting
Speaker 1: in August, you know, but it's going to be more
Speaker 1: one off concepts of like, you know, everything from you know,
Speaker 1: self reflection to blood trailing to you know, target practice
Speaker 1: to why you should think about you know, maybe this
Speaker 1: piece of gear or what what you should think about
Speaker 1: with white tail fawns when they're doing this or something like,
Speaker 1: just sort of a different approach than the last year.
Speaker 1: And they've been they've been pretty fun to write, man,
Speaker 1: Like it's it sort of feels a little bit freeing
Speaker 1: to not be locked into the chronological you know, I
Speaker 1: gotta go out and do this this week type of thing.
Speaker 1: And so I hope people like them because I'm enjoying
Speaker 1: putting them together and they're they're they're gonna have a
Speaker 1: different feel to some extent. Man, I love the format.
Speaker 1: I mean, so I'm biased, right since I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit of a part of it, but I just love
Speaker 1: it's it's bite size and it's concentrated. It's like instead
Speaker 1: of drinking I don't like a gal on, a gatorade
Speaker 1: or something, I'm just taking like the energy shot and
Speaker 1: it's nothing but the good stuff. It's not an hour
Speaker 1: and a half of Mark rambling kind of on and
Speaker 1: sometimes we're talking about interesting stuff and sometimes I'm talking
Speaker 1: about babysitting or taking care of kids on my wife's gone. No,
Speaker 1: it's just like twenty minutes or fifteen minutes of this
Speaker 1: one really interesting set of insights from you. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm I'm too busy to listen to podcast
Speaker 1: most of the time, or if I when I have
Speaker 1: free time, I'm not usually listening to them. But those
Speaker 1: are ones that I'm actually you know able and interested
Speaker 1: in to to digest because of that format. So I
Speaker 1: guess what I'm trying to say is keep up the
Speaker 1: good work, buddy. Thanks man. Yeah, I'm I'm excited for
Speaker 1: this second year there. The stuff that I've already written
Speaker 1: and put together for it is honestly, people just have
Speaker 1: to listen. But it's it's stuff that I've never it's
Speaker 1: topics I've never really approached in the white tail space,
Speaker 1: and I'm having fun with that. I Mean, I think,
Speaker 1: I think, and maybe this is this is probably so weird,
Speaker 1: but I kind of think that's what really need about
Speaker 1: podcasts over some of the other mediums we work in,
Speaker 1: is because yeah, okay, you know you've got five episodes
Speaker 1: in the can dedicated to white tails. But there's so
Speaker 1: much that comes into a podcast and a good conversation
Speaker 1: that's really not like here's how the audience is going
Speaker 1: to kill their deer, you know, like there's there's so
Speaker 1: much more to it, and and these Foundations episodes, I
Speaker 1: realize how much like my personal life is tied to
Speaker 1: my thinking of white tails. Even though like if you
Speaker 1: put it on paper, you're like, oh, I'm gonna talk
Speaker 1: about this topic this week. People would be like that
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with white tails. But if you
Speaker 1: have the time to explain yourself and get into it, yeah,
Speaker 1: it actually does. And I think it just gives us
Speaker 1: a chance to talk about something that you're probably just
Speaker 1: not really going to find anywhere else in all the
Speaker 1: white tail content space. And I love that opportunity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can make a good point. I mean, some of
Speaker 1: these topics they would never get approved as an article
Speaker 1: that some company would pay for, right, They're never gonna
Speaker 1: You're not gonna be able to get production and make
Speaker 1: a video about something like this. But we really have
Speaker 1: zero over site on what we can talk about in
Speaker 1: the podcast, Like we can do whatever you want here,
Speaker 1: and that is a freeing thing Like that is a
Speaker 1: pretty cool freedom to have to explore these things that
Speaker 1: that should be explored but maybe aren't clicky enough to
Speaker 1: get love elsewhere. So that's a good point. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: It really makes you aware of how we approached white
Speaker 1: tail content for a long time. You know, like when
Speaker 1: I when I started out, you know, it was it
Speaker 1: was primarily magazines, right, and it was like you were
Speaker 1: you wanted the assignments, You're going to take them, but
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're like writing, you know, how to
Speaker 1: kill a white tail over water, And it's like you
Speaker 1: could go back, you know, when I was at like
Speaker 1: bow Hunter magazine or or Peterson's bow Hunting for example.
Speaker 1: You know, I could look in the archives and see
Speaker 1: articles about that from one and you're like, I feel
Speaker 1: like it feels weird, right, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: There's a new take on it and you can say
Speaker 1: your own thing and your own voice and and it's different,
Speaker 1: but you're still you still feel like you're just plugged
Speaker 1: into that formula and this is not that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff. Well I think, uh, I think I'm
Speaker 1: just ready to get into it. I almost wish that
Speaker 1: we could have the first episode today, so we could
Speaker 1: listen to this and then dive right into it. But
Speaker 1: I want to make everybody wait a week until we
Speaker 1: get to the first one. What is the first one, Tony?
Speaker 1: Who are we gonna hear from first? I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be Bradly Cohen first on Dear Vision. Sweet all right, man, well,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you taking the time to do this, to
Speaker 1: to dive so deep into these topics and to put
Speaker 1: together a really good looking schedule for the next five weeks.
Speaker 1: I'm personally excited, and I hope other people are too. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I hope they enjoy it. I I think they will.
Speaker 1: All right, And that's it for us today. Thanks for
Speaker 1: tuning in as we start to kind of perculate and
Speaker 1: get excited about this topic of white tail science in biology.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys are interested in what's ahead of us.
Speaker 1: I hope you will tune in over the coming weeks
Speaker 1: as we get to explore these topics that Tony teed
Speaker 1: up for us. I'm excited. It's gonna be a great
Speaker 1: thing for us to dive into here as we get
Speaker 1: the early summertime period set up. And uh, I appreciate
Speaker 1: you being here with us, so until next time, thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. Don't believe a thing Tony tells you
Speaker 1: about what I'm doing when he pitches you on at
Speaker 1: the beginning of his episodes, And until next time, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and stay wired to Hun