Speaker 1: Welcome back to cutting the distance. Today, I'm in a
Speaker 1: cabin about twenty seven kilometers from a satan in the
Speaker 1: Blue Mountains of Washington, helping try to wrestle newborn elk
Speaker 1: calves in an effort to put callers on them, ear tagum,
Speaker 1: and let fish and wildlife monitor them to see how
Speaker 1: they're doing. I'm here with Poulwick, who has been here
Speaker 1: for the last twenty years and currently serves as a
Speaker 1: district Wildlife biologist. He completed his undergrad at Central Washington
Speaker 1: and received his masters from the University of Idaho. After
Speaker 1: completion of his masters, he went on to work at
Speaker 1: the DNR as the Northeast Regional bio prior to working
Speaker 1: here in the Blues. The Blues, for those of you
Speaker 1: that don't know, at one time could have been said
Speaker 1: the rival any elk cutting anywhere in the world, And
Speaker 1: I would say that's based on both trophy potential and opportunity.
Speaker 1: But in just the last i would say ten short years,
Speaker 1: a unit seemed to have taken a little downward turn,
Speaker 1: and two years ago they had only a thirteen percent
Speaker 1: survival rate of their calves. So I'm here to talk
Speaker 1: with Paul to see what he thinks is going on,
Speaker 1: and to talk about any other factors that the elker
Speaker 1: facing that could improve or affect their survivability, and how
Speaker 1: maybe we're going to get those herds back or if
Speaker 1: we have to accept the fact they may never get
Speaker 1: back to where they're at, but how we're gonna to
Speaker 1: repair those So welcome to.
Speaker 2: The show, Paul, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: We're here. I got here this morning. We went out
Speaker 1: and looked for calves a little bit. Found one that
Speaker 1: you've already wrangled up, had an ear take in it
Speaker 1: had a collar on it. But you're in the thicket
Speaker 1: calving season. How's it going so far?
Speaker 2: It's going well. Right now, we've been out here for
Speaker 2: about three weeks. We've caught twenty seven calves in the
Speaker 2: area we're currently in. We also have two other groups
Speaker 2: working in the Dayton and two Cannon areas that are
Speaker 2: catching calves. Our goal is to have one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty five by the end of next week. And although
Speaker 2: the numbers I just gave you aren't gonna say we're
Speaker 2: gonna get there, but we have a hell copter showing
Speaker 2: up in two days that is gonna catch calves and
Speaker 2: the reason we use a helicopter is they're much more effective,
Speaker 2: but they're not very effective at finding the zero to
Speaker 2: three day old calves which are still in a hiding pace.
Speaker 2: So that's why we're on the ground trying to catch
Speaker 2: the really young ones to not miss any sources of
Speaker 2: mortality that would be important.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, and we're gonna get into it here in
Speaker 1: a little bit exactly what capturing calves looks like, because
Speaker 1: to me, it's all brand new too. So I was
Speaker 1: asking you questions like how do I glass form? Where
Speaker 1: should they be? You know, because this is the time
Speaker 1: of the year, most elk hunters aren't thinking about elk
Speaker 1: or they're not necessary out in the wood unless they're spring
Speaker 1: bear hunting or picking mushrooms or doing some other stuff.
Speaker 1: But even then, like I'm not glassing. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: jump into that a little bit more. But we're gonna
Speaker 1: start this cutting the Distance episode like we do every episode.
Speaker 1: We're gonna start with some listener questions, and once again,
Speaker 1: if you have questions of your own for me or
Speaker 1: my guests, feel free to email them to us at
Speaker 1: CTD at Phelps game Calls dot com or send us
Speaker 1: a social a message on social and we'll do our
Speaker 1: best to get them on the show. So the first
Speaker 1: one comes from Alan Roberts. What predator reaks the most
Speaker 1: havoc on elk?
Speaker 2: So, for calves, which we have the most data right now,
Speaker 2: it's cougars, at least in the Blue Mountains. We're finding
Speaker 2: that cougars are taking sixty two percent of the mortalities
Speaker 2: occurring from the calves that we're marking, which really dwarfs
Speaker 2: any other predator on the landscape.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that and I know we talked about
Speaker 1: this before, We've had a couple hour long conversations on this,
Speaker 1: do you feel that that changes with matui el ca?
Speaker 1: And I know you don't have data, but give me
Speaker 1: your opinion or maybe what you can speculate is is
Speaker 1: the cougar the predominant predator on maturialk or does it
Speaker 1: balance out a little bit with bears or wolves or
Speaker 1: anything else in the area.
Speaker 2: So bears really aren't very effective on adult elk. Cougars
Speaker 2: make up a majority of the predators on the landscape,
Speaker 2: so they should make up a majority of the predation
Speaker 2: that's occurring on adult elk. Can kind of go back
Speaker 2: to some previous work we did when I was originally
Speaker 2: started in the Blues and three, we were marking adult
Speaker 2: bulls and some adult cows, but mostly adult balls and
Speaker 2: cougar's made up a majority of the source of mortality
Speaker 2: for predation on those animals. That was pre wolf, so
Speaker 2: we didn't have wolf data at that time. There were
Speaker 2: not wolves in the Blue Mountains at least in numbers
Speaker 2: that were meaningful in any way. A couple of dispersers
Speaker 2: coming from Idaho and Oregon at that time. Right now
Speaker 2: there are six wolf packs in the Blue Mountains. What
Speaker 2: effect they might be having on adult elk we don't
Speaker 2: have a good answer for. So they probably are having
Speaker 2: more of an effect than when we did the study,
Speaker 2: which makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean the one thing I know, and
Speaker 1: I'm not a biologist, is I know what They're not
Speaker 1: having a positive effect on the elk population. That's one
Speaker 1: thing we could probably confidently say is it's not helping
Speaker 1: the elk by any means. But it sounds like from
Speaker 1: the data from the science cougars are the predator that
Speaker 1: at least has the biggest effect on caves, and from
Speaker 1: old data it had the most effect negative effect on
Speaker 1: mature balls or adult balls.
Speaker 2: Yes, And there are places in the West that wolves
Speaker 2: are not keeping the population in check, and there's places
Speaker 2: that they are, and it's hard to predict what where
Speaker 2: those places are and what the circumstances are that why
Speaker 2: that happens. I mean, there's places in western Montana with
Speaker 2: wolves that the population still they're still having a hard
Speaker 2: time keeping the population in check. In the Blues with
Speaker 2: poor recruitment, additional mortality is probably not going to help
Speaker 2: us get to where we want to.
Speaker 1: Be, for sure. So amongst your colleagues in the West,
Speaker 1: and hopefull I don't put you on the spot here.
Speaker 1: Are there units aside from the Blues where there are shifts?
Speaker 1: Is it terrain? Is it vegetation? Is there are there
Speaker 1: places where bears will have more of an effect or
Speaker 1: maybe cougar aren't so much and wolves are heavier. Like
Speaker 1: you know, you always hear about the fame Lolo area
Speaker 1: in Idaho. Do you have much insight to if the
Speaker 1: cougar's being the apex predator at least as far as
Speaker 1: Elk are concerned. Is that a Blues thing or is
Speaker 1: it typical amongst all western Elk areas?
Speaker 2: Or do you, It's really hard for me to expand
Speaker 2: outside of the Blues, but that does include Northeast Oregon
Speaker 2: because the Blue Mountains, approximately ninety percent of the Blue
Speaker 2: Mountains are an Oregon and Oregon's done some similar work
Speaker 2: with calves in the early two thousands. They've done a
Speaker 2: lot of elk research and they found very similar numbers
Speaker 2: for cougar predation in Northeast Oregon as they have in
Speaker 2: southeast Washington. So it's hard for me to say how
Speaker 2: we compare to Central Idaho, you know, kind of the Rockies.
Speaker 2: We're kind of on the edge of the Rockies here.
Speaker 2: We're kind of a unique our own ecosystem in some
Speaker 2: our ecoregion in some respects. So there are different factors
Speaker 2: that are going to affect the other herds as you
Speaker 2: go further west from you know, the elevation, the level,
Speaker 2: the distance they migrate, the habitat that they have available,
Speaker 2: and climate and fire history all play a pretty big, important,
Speaker 2: important contributing factors to this.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, Yeah, thanks for that one. The next question we've
Speaker 1: got comes from Cody Stein. It was carrying capacity and
Speaker 1: how do biologists or departments know how do they determine
Speaker 1: that and then what factors are included in that in
Speaker 1: your opinion, Like, how do you is it? You know
Speaker 1: when we talked about this a little bit when you
Speaker 1: know it's the same things we talk about, but pose
Speaker 1: a question a little bit different there.
Speaker 2: So carrying capacity is one of the most difficult things
Speaker 2: to measure. Pretty much you know it when you've gotten
Speaker 2: there because the population starts performing very poorly. Calves don't survive,
Speaker 2: pregnancy rates drop, winter mortality goes up. But to know
Speaker 2: what that number is ahead of time is pretty been
Speaker 2: almost impossible to measure for these herds because it's also
Speaker 2: a moving target. Carrying capacity one year with a lot
Speaker 2: of say summer precipitation, a wet spring, lots of forage
Speaker 2: on the landscape is going to be very different in
Speaker 2: a drought year, where the percentage forage might be thirty
Speaker 2: forty percent less. So they all have a lot less
Speaker 2: available to them. So it's a question that we've actually
Speaker 2: gotten for the Blues, are we near or at carrying capacity?
Speaker 2: And if we look at the density of elk on
Speaker 2: the sides of the landscape they're in, we're at a
Speaker 2: pretty low density for elk at this point in time,
Speaker 2: So I don't think we are. We actually manage more
Speaker 2: towards what we call social carrying capacity in the Blues,
Speaker 2: and that's because of the interface we have with agriculture,
Speaker 2: and if we have too many elk, they're getting into
Speaker 2: the peas, the winter wheat, the summer wheat, and we
Speaker 2: know that it's socially unacceptable and causes financial hardship for
Speaker 2: the farmers that are in the foothills of the Blues.
Speaker 2: So we try to manage to keep the elk at
Speaker 2: a level that reduces that which in our mind keeps
Speaker 2: us well below the carrying capacity as well.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. So in the Blues, there was a
Speaker 1: time frame where there was no hunting, correct as we
Speaker 1: tried to rebuild these populations.
Speaker 2: Only there's always been hunting in the Blues. There's been
Speaker 2: one game management unit of the Lick Creek unit where
Speaker 2: we weren't issuing branch bulltags for a period of time,
Speaker 2: but there was still the spike only season. There still
Speaker 2: was cow tags at times when the population was doing well.
Speaker 1: Even during like the late nineties early two thousands, there
Speaker 1: was always hunting, just very reduced.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's always been hunting in the Blues. We've never.
Speaker 2: I think it was since like nineteen thirties. I think
Speaker 2: they were brought back in the nineteen twenties from Yellowstone,
Speaker 2: but on a train brought to Dayton, brought to Pomeroy,
Speaker 2: and from what I've been told from some of the locals,
Speaker 2: within five years we were having egg damage.
Speaker 1: I I was just kind of I was digging it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know if that was like a unique way
Speaker 1: to maybe study carrying capacity. Why there were so few
Speaker 1: tags given? Were we able to watch those hurt umbers
Speaker 1: because there was I mean we we've talked about it back,
Speaker 1: but probably twenty ten to fourteen maybe you might be
Speaker 1: able to envelope those dates better. But the Blues were
Speaker 1: maybe an all time high or or a level where
Speaker 1: the elk hunting seemed to be good. You know, you
Speaker 1: always based off what elk hunting looks like and the
Speaker 1: opportunity mature bowls, you know, all these things kind of
Speaker 1: add into these little factors, and it seemed to be
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe two thousand and five twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: was like the high. Did we get to a point
Speaker 1: where you thought we were close to carrying capacity? Or
Speaker 1: has had always been off of that a little bit?
Speaker 2: No, and the reason I'd say that is two thousand
Speaker 2: and fifteen was roughly our recent high and elk numbers
Speaker 2: that for modern data, uh, And that's kind of a
Speaker 2: relative term because we've been doing elk population estimates through
Speaker 2: aerial survey since nineteen ninety six and the highest counts
Speaker 2: we got were roughly around twenty fifteen. And we also
Speaker 2: had some of the higher calf ratios during that time,
Speaker 2: and if we were approaching carrying capacity, we should have
Speaker 2: seen our calf ratios really declining if we were anywhere
Speaker 2: near carrying capacity.
Speaker 1: So it's a good indicator just how many calves are
Speaker 1: being born and of age, because that has to do
Speaker 1: with nutrition that's available, and those things will start to
Speaker 1: affect you know, just like our last podcast with Brock,
Speaker 1: we we get into you know, you know, the cow's
Speaker 1: ability to go into estrus after she you know, had
Speaker 1: a successful calf, and then you're rolling it in. So
Speaker 1: that all makes sense and plays right into you wouldn't
Speaker 1: see those calf successes that high if if you were
Speaker 1: close to carrying capacity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at no point in the last twenty years have
Speaker 2: we seen any of the indicators that would indicate carrying
Speaker 2: capacities even being approached.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, thanks, thanks for the answer, and once again
Speaker 1: you have your own question for me or my guests.
Speaker 1: Feel free to email those to us at CTD at
Speaker 1: Phelps game Calls dot com, or send us a message
Speaker 1: on social and we'll do our best to get them
Speaker 1: on here. So now we're gonna jump into my discussion
Speaker 1: with you. One of the reasons i'm here. I was
Speaker 1: fortunate to have a Blues tag last year. I love
Speaker 1: the Blues. I've been able to elk hunt here three
Speaker 1: or four times now. You know, it seems to be
Speaker 1: a real treat when you do get to come here.
Speaker 1: You know, my tag was as early as last year.
Speaker 1: My wife drew, I believe in twenty thirteen, so I've
Speaker 1: got to I believe I was here like at the
Speaker 1: high point and then got to hunt the same unit
Speaker 1: and see a little bit of contrast. You know, still
Speaker 1: able to get it done. But there's just something growing
Speaker 1: up in Washington, like you always dream of hunting the Blues,
Speaker 1: hunting it one time. I figured if I can hunt
Speaker 1: it one time before I die, I'll be happy. But
Speaker 1: I'm very interested in the Blues. You know, we kind
Speaker 1: of kicked this off with some uh, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: even heard numbers of worse than the thirteen percent survival
Speaker 1: immortality above ninety percent. The blues from a hunter's perspective
Speaker 1: or perspective seems to be deteriorating. And so I got
Speaker 1: a hold of you and just wanted to come talk
Speaker 1: to you. And you know what you're seeing, You know,
Speaker 1: a guy that's out here with these elk deer sheep,
Speaker 1: you know every day, and kind of what your opinions are,
Speaker 1: what your professional opinions are, what the research shows. And
Speaker 1: I think we can all play armchair biologists from our chairs,
Speaker 1: but I think every all the biologists I've got to meet,
Speaker 1: you know, gett to hang out with you so far
Speaker 1: for just a couple of hours, Like you care about
Speaker 1: the olk, You're a hunting yourself, you want to see
Speaker 1: it do good. You're not making recommendations that hurt the population.
Speaker 1: So I really want to just kind of jump into
Speaker 1: that talk with you and then let all the listeners
Speaker 1: kind of know what what you're seeing on the ground
Speaker 1: and shed some light on that. So we're going to
Speaker 1: jump back into what we're what you're doing right now
Speaker 1: that that calf study, can you give us a little
Speaker 1: background on what kicked off the calf study and where
Speaker 1: it's going to go, what the data is going to
Speaker 1: be used for, and some of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're right. You know, two thousand through twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: we had pretty healthy calf ratios. You know, we really
Speaker 2: want a minimum of twenty five calves per hundred for
Speaker 2: our population just to remain stable. About twenty sixteen, right
Speaker 2: after twenty sixteen, the numbers started dropping. The numbers have
Speaker 2: been consistently below twenty five since twenty sixteen, which indicates
Speaker 2: a problem. Something changed. We didn't know exactly what. We
Speaker 2: have some ideas that you know, climate played apart. Through
Speaker 2: we had a couple of severe winter events. We've had
Speaker 2: some summer droughts that have definitely played a part affecting
Speaker 2: the nutrition of the elk and the pregnancy rates, the
Speaker 2: ability to nurse and lactate, which is a huge demand
Speaker 2: upon elk. So really about twenty sixteen twenty seventeen, we
Speaker 2: noticed something changing in the population. We started making some
Speaker 2: small changes. We started reducing cow tags where it was appropriate.
Speaker 2: We started seeing less bowls on the landscape, so we
Speaker 2: started reducing the bull tags to try and let it
Speaker 2: balance itself, hoping that it would rebound within two three years,
Speaker 2: and it really hasn't had the ability to rebound. So
Speaker 2: we're see about two thousand and nineteen twenty twenty, we
Speaker 2: started having some internal discussions on what does this mean?
Speaker 2: Why is it happening. We did some internal reviews and
Speaker 2: had some good discussions internally in the agency, and it
Speaker 2: came down to the calf recruitment seemed to be the
Speaker 2: limiting factor. So the agency started a calf coloring effort.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one was our first year of doing that.
Speaker 2: We caught one hundred and twenty five calves in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one. In twenty twenty two we were able to
Speaker 2: catch one hundred and two. We weren't even able to
Speaker 2: catch all one hundred and twenty five. The helicopter couldn't
Speaker 2: locate enough calves to keep going at that point, and
Speaker 2: it is a bit of a cost prohibitive effort. Their
Speaker 2: helicopter capture rates are extremely expensive and it is stressful
Speaker 2: on the animals. So we made a call to stop
Speaker 2: at that point. And this is the third and what
Speaker 2: we think is our final year of doing this uh
Speaker 2: to look at calf survival estimates and is there options
Speaker 2: for the agency to make management actions that can improve
Speaker 2: calf survival?
Speaker 1: So with with that said, make management decisions what in
Speaker 1: your opinion, like you is there and we're going to
Speaker 1: get into this more. I maybe jumping ahead on my
Speaker 1: own my own topics here, but what so I look
Speaker 1: at it from like if if maybe causes aren't getting pregnant,
Speaker 1: like do you need to have more balls on the
Speaker 1: landscape or you know, so some of this like what
Speaker 1: can be made based on calf survival? I mean, we
Speaker 1: we know what's happening by predators. Does it need to
Speaker 1: be different predator seasons or is there anything within what
Speaker 1: I would consider like agency decisions, Is there anything that
Speaker 1: can be done to actually help that number?
Speaker 2: So there are a number of things that can be done.
Speaker 2: I'll start with the A biotic factors, climate, how good
Speaker 2: a shape is the range in? You know, are there
Speaker 2: things that we can do habitat wise, is there is
Speaker 2: the data indicating there might be a habitat factor? Are
Speaker 2: we seeing calves starve to death in the winter? Are
Speaker 2: we seeing calves starve to death in the summer because
Speaker 2: the cows can't get enough nutrition to have enough lactation
Speaker 2: ability to feed the calves. If we're seeing predation as
Speaker 2: a limiting factor, can we change predator numbers for a
Speaker 2: short period of time to try and get the population boosted.
Speaker 2: So those are things the agency could consider. Our data
Speaker 2: at this point is really pointing towards calves not surviving
Speaker 2: because of predation. We're seeing predation be account for seventy
Speaker 2: eight percent of the mortalities that are occurring, and that's
Speaker 2: the first two year average, and of that, sixty two
Speaker 2: of the calves dying or dying from cougars. So it
Speaker 2: really points that cougar predation is the leading cause of mortality. Now,
Speaker 2: the one thing we can't determined is are they predisposed
Speaker 2: for some reason to cougar predation, And you know that's
Speaker 2: a really difficult thing to address. Are the calves in
Speaker 2: poor condition or are they not. Calves really don't have
Speaker 2: much body fat the first couple of months of life,
Speaker 2: so we can't look at them like an adult elk,
Speaker 2: where if it died in the winter, we can look
Speaker 2: at bone marrow or percent body fat and see if
Speaker 2: they were not likely going to make it anyway, and
Speaker 2: that's why they were predated and that's where wolves, you know,
Speaker 2: they tend to take the old and the young and
Speaker 2: the susceptible on a lot of a lot of their
Speaker 2: kills are animals that wouldn't have made it, not all
Speaker 2: by any means. But we can't look at that with
Speaker 2: elk calves. So all we can say is sixty two
Speaker 2: percent of the calves are dying from cougars at this point.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, So what percentage of calves? I mean you may
Speaker 1: have alluded to it. You need twenty five percent? Here
Speaker 1: in the blues is the determinate, you know, So what
Speaker 1: what percentage of calves do you need to make it
Speaker 1: through in order to maintain which you've said twenty five?
Speaker 1: I believe it? Correct me if i'm.
Speaker 2: Well, we use a ratio of caves per hundred cows.
Speaker 2: So if you have twenty five cows per hundred cows,
Speaker 2: break it down fifty to fifty by sexes, so you
Speaker 2: have twelve and a half male twelve and a half
Speaker 2: female per hundred cows, and average adult cow survival. You know,
Speaker 2: good cow survivals ninety percent, So annually across your heart,
Speaker 2: you know you can see as low eighty five to
Speaker 2: ninety percent is kind of average, So you need to
Speaker 2: replace ten to fifteen per hundred, so that gets you
Speaker 2: ballpark needing twenty five and that'll maintain maintain your population stable.
Speaker 1: Okay, And then is there a point in which those calves,
Speaker 1: I mean you you we talked earlier, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into the story of you going up finding the mortality
Speaker 1: calf yesterday. But is there a point in which they
Speaker 1: have a better chance of surviving because it sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot of these calves are very susceptible very early
Speaker 1: in life when they you know, the mom beds them down.
Speaker 1: They're they're basically cougar bait at that point. But what's
Speaker 1: the data show as far as caller tracking that they've
Speaker 1: got a good chance at making it.
Speaker 2: So for our data, we're seeing the highest mortality in
Speaker 2: the first three to four months. We have not documented
Speaker 2: a calf dying after one hundred and fifty days of
Speaker 2: being alive in the last two years, so our winner
Speaker 2: survival has been one hundred percent. So we really see
Speaker 2: that zero to three months is when a majority of
Speaker 2: them are dying. It's really consistent. We haven't I mean,
Speaker 2: the numbers tape are off pretty quick. If you're losing
Speaker 2: the percent we're losing the first three months. But the
Speaker 2: first year we were doing this, you know, we were
Speaker 2: running sometimes two to three mortalities a day after we
Speaker 2: were done capture.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. So yeah, we looked at the charts a
Speaker 1: little bit. I think it's crazy. It's a reverse bill
Speaker 1: curve and you lose about seventy I don't know what
Speaker 1: the data is. You lose the majority of your calves
Speaker 1: in those firste hundred twenty hundred fifty days, and after
Speaker 1: that the line's straight. You don't lose any more that
Speaker 1: are colored.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is really surprising because there still should be
Speaker 2: some sources of mortality occurring. And one possible explanation is
Speaker 2: is we've lost so many calves by that time. Hits
Speaker 2: are sample sizes pretty small through winter. I think we
Speaker 2: had like thirteen calves going into the winter the first year,
Speaker 2: and last year we had a problem with callers, so
Speaker 2: in September October we lost thirty six collars defenses. So
Speaker 2: these are expandable colors with just pleats that have a
Speaker 2: couple of stitches in them, so as the calf grows,
Speaker 2: it grows with the calf, so we don't cause harm
Speaker 2: to them. But if they catch on a stick or
Speaker 2: if barberire fence or something like that, they can pull
Speaker 2: all the pleats and the collar becomes too big and
Speaker 2: just falls off the calf. So we lost a lot
Speaker 2: last year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And another thing to get some of your predation number,
Speaker 1: It sounds like you guys are doing something where you're
Speaker 1: sending in saliva swabs now on the study. And what
Speaker 1: that is, my understanding is so that you guys can
Speaker 1: confirm what your visual determining was the cause of death.
Speaker 1: Is that there's maybe some saliva that matches up with
Speaker 1: the biologists and their confirmation of what killed the calf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we still do a full knee cropsy in
Speaker 2: the field, which we can go into that here in
Speaker 2: a minute if you want. But we're identifying the bite
Speaker 2: marks or the attack sites, not the feeding sites, but
Speaker 2: the attack sites, and we are swabbing for DNA on
Speaker 2: there and sending it to the University of Washington, and
Speaker 2: they're identifying the species of animal that bit at those
Speaker 2: sites we identified, and they can actually take it down
Speaker 2: to the individual animal level. So we're hoping to look
Speaker 2: and see the intent kind of is one cougar killing
Speaker 2: three or four calves or is it a unique cougar
Speaker 2: for every calf and that kind of it definitely comes
Speaker 2: back to the behavior of the cougars and the territoriality.
Speaker 2: So this distribution of where the calves die.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that'd be interesting, just if nothing else is
Speaker 1: to look at, Like is one cougar killing five calves
Speaker 1: on a ridge or is it five different cougars and
Speaker 1: you know they're their dominant home range, Like how does
Speaker 1: that the social you know, the social all that stuff
Speaker 1: that we think we know about cougars, But are there
Speaker 1: multiple cougars one area that calving season they maybe disrupt
Speaker 1: their home territory or you know, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're going to gather out of that, but it'd be
Speaker 1: definitely interesting to see the data on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've seen the first year, but we definitely
Speaker 2: need to overlay it spatially to It was for the
Speaker 2: most part, all unique cougars the first year, but if
Speaker 2: they're all a certain distance apart, you would expect them
Speaker 2: to be unique cougars based on their own territorial behavior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, because around home, I don't know if
Speaker 1: blues is different or the densities higher on cougars, I
Speaker 1: obviously compared to where we're out at home. But you know,
Speaker 1: we always hear people talk about like twenty five to
Speaker 1: fifty square miles for an adult male tom and that
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that would work here because it would encompass,
Speaker 1: you know, two or three male tom for this entire
Speaker 1: area that we're in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we did do cougar work here in the Blues,
Speaker 2: I think in two thousand and nine through twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: And the numbers are probably not correct on the top
Speaker 2: of my head, but I thought it was about forty
Speaker 2: five to sixty square kilometer for a female and roughly
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty square kilometers for a male.
Speaker 1: Is a sot I have to make a joke on kilometers?
Speaker 1: Is it Sultin County the only county in the state
Speaker 1: that still uses kilometers?
Speaker 2: Yes, since the nineteen seventies, is what I was told.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was my joke. On the intro, I was
Speaker 1: following it's not mile posts here, it's kilometer posts, and
Speaker 1: the cabin's twenty seven kilometers. So I found that a
Speaker 1: little funny fact about a Sultin County. So let's get
Speaker 1: back to how you would normally, let's say, without the
Speaker 1: slava swabs confirming what do you I want to get
Speaker 1: too gruesome. But we talked about a little bit like
Speaker 1: being able to visually identify what predator you believe has
Speaker 1: killed the animals. So if you go through cougars, bears,
Speaker 1: and wolves and how you would identify those ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll start with cougar just because it's the one
Speaker 2: we see the most of. You know, when we're walking
Speaker 2: in on a scene, you know, we're looking for tracks,
Speaker 2: if there's a potential for tracks, we're looking for casing
Speaker 2: of the animal. So cougars definitely tend to scrape grass
Speaker 2: and brush and stuff and bury their their kill after
Speaker 2: they're done with their feeding. Then we're gonna skin the animal,
Speaker 2: so we're gonna you know, examine the outside look for bite,
Speaker 2: wound scratches, something like that, and then we do skin
Speaker 2: the entire carcass. We're ignoring the feeding site for the
Speaker 2: most part. We're actually looking for hemorrhaging underneath the skin
Speaker 2: that shows the animal was still alive when it was attacked,
Speaker 2: so you're gonna see bruising. We use the term grape
Speaker 2: jelly in terms of wolves because they bite so hard
Speaker 2: that it causes the muscles and the cells to break apart.
Speaker 2: So we want to see pre mortem are before death
Speaker 2: bleeding as an indicator that the animal was actually killed.
Speaker 2: If we can't find that, we can't confirm that the
Speaker 2: animal is actually alive and it's not scavenging. So cougars,
Speaker 2: you know, we skin it out these Some of these
Speaker 2: calves are so small, you know, they're roughly thirty to
Speaker 2: fifty pounds at this zero to seven day age. You
Speaker 2: can skin it out a lot of times in the
Speaker 2: whole to hide up to the sun and you can
Speaker 2: see the scratch marks from the four talents down the back.
Speaker 2: You can see that that was actually bruising occurred before alive,
Speaker 2: but you won't see that from the outside. It's kind
Speaker 2: of been a unique thing to see that you can
Speaker 2: look at a calf and it looks like you can't
Speaker 2: see from the outside that it was actually physically attacked,
Speaker 2: but if you skin it out and hold it up
Speaker 2: to the sun, you can see the claw marks going
Speaker 2: down its back. Inside. Cougars are really quick and effective
Speaker 2: at killing these things. We're not seeing a lot of
Speaker 2: damage to these things, and then they typically feed around
Speaker 2: the paunch their first feeding is near the paunch. We're
Speaker 2: getting to these things, so the callers are set. If
Speaker 2: that doesn't move for four hours, we get a text
Speaker 2: in an email that something's not right. And we've been
Speaker 2: getting to these things within twenty four hours a lot
Speaker 2: of times the same day, so they haven't had time
Speaker 2: to be scavenged yet, and you know, those are the
Speaker 2: indicators we're looking for. With cougars, bears tend to attack
Speaker 2: on the back of the animal, bite the back of
Speaker 2: the neck, the back of the shoulders, and when they
Speaker 2: feed on it, they pretty much open it up in
Speaker 2: one spot and skin it out extremely cleanly, and they
Speaker 2: skin it out until it's inside out. There's a number
Speaker 2: of times we find they look like an elk calf
Speaker 2: sock puppet turned inside out, so that's a really good
Speaker 2: indicator of a bear. Bears also leave a lot of
Speaker 2: scat in the area they can cash, but we haven't
Speaker 2: seen that nearly as much, and they tend to eat
Speaker 2: a lot more of it initially. Wolves we've only had
Speaker 2: three wolf kills on calves in two years, and they've
Speaker 2: in essence disarticulated the animal and spread it across the hillside.
Speaker 2: There's just little pieces left, but they also usually tend
Speaker 2: to leave a lot of tracks and sign as well.
Speaker 2: We have had one bobcat, a couple of coyotes, but
Speaker 2: for the most part, you know, the big three or
Speaker 2: what we're seeing more of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then so to accomplish this, we talked about
Speaker 1: me being you know, I always like to know what
Speaker 1: I'm doing in glass night spots. You're going out on
Speaker 1: a high ridge, glassing into these pockets that are known
Speaker 1: to be nurseries or where cows are going to take
Speaker 1: their calves to be comfortable. You're glassing them and then
Speaker 1: you wait for that cow to stash the calf and leave,
Speaker 1: and then you you're able to just walk in. And
Speaker 1: you had mentioned and I'm going to get the term wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna mention it that some people believe
Speaker 1: that the elk calve kind of pre wired for their
Speaker 1: heart rate to actually go down to maybe as they
Speaker 1: get spooked.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that term is a fright bray of cardia.
Speaker 2: And we've definitely noticed it on these you know, zero
Speaker 2: to two day old calves. You walk in and they
Speaker 2: don't even move for you. They're really quiet, really mellow.
Speaker 2: Their breathing is quite slow and it's not going to
Speaker 2: last very long. You can stimulate them out of it too,
Speaker 2: But the those one day old calves are extremely easy
Speaker 2: to handle. We don't have to hobble home, we don't
Speaker 2: put a blind fold on them, and we can do
Speaker 2: everything except ear tag them without holding them down. We
Speaker 2: get weight, sex look for things to help us age them,
Speaker 2: such as their insize, their growth of their teeth, the
Speaker 2: color and softness of their dew claws and hoofs, and
Speaker 2: the umbilical cord attachment point umbilicus, whether it's still bloody
Speaker 2: scab dried, and being able to see them walk a
Speaker 2: lot of times as a good indicator too. They're pretty
Speaker 2: bow legged and bent knees and unstable the first two days.
Speaker 2: By day six, day seven, they're starting to run around
Speaker 2: the hill pretty fast, far faster than we are able
Speaker 2: to catch them.
Speaker 1: Gotchi, I know you had mentioned if we see one
Speaker 1: walking pretty well behind its mom, we're not going after
Speaker 1: that one because we're not going to catch it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we've learned a lot in the three years
Speaker 2: of doing this, and there's times that we can try.
Speaker 2: I mean, mom still will bed them down somewhere and
Speaker 2: leave for hours at a time, and if they're in
Speaker 2: thick enough brush, we can sneak in and try and
Speaker 2: catch them by we definitely miss occasionally.
Speaker 1: And then just to coordinate, you correlate your data with
Speaker 1: what we interviewed Brock with We're about a week apart
Speaker 1: actually recording these two podcasts, and he had mentioned you
Speaker 1: mentioned a week ago we were in our hot point
Speaker 1: and he was about a week ago on Thursday. So
Speaker 1: to kind of answer our question on latitude and how
Speaker 1: you know it should have an effect but doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have much of an effect on ELK. So at
Speaker 1: least from southeast Washington down to most of Utah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be much effect at all when that
Speaker 1: like peak of Calves is hitting. Which is a little
Speaker 1: bit interesting that there's no real change as you move,
Speaker 1: you know, down latitude or up latitude, at least within
Speaker 1: the data we have from me hunting New Mexico to Washington,
Speaker 1: the UT seems to go incide at the same time
Speaker 1: in the same dates.
Speaker 2: Yeah, roughly September nineteenth to twenty first, is going to
Speaker 2: be your pig of breeding.
Speaker 1: Yep. So one thing I want to jump into. Uh,
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about carrying capacity in the blues,
Speaker 1: especially where we're at. I don't think we need to
Speaker 1: disclod you know, hide the location. But we're here in
Speaker 1: the Lick Creek unit currently, and I know you had
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that the data shows about five hundred plus
Speaker 1: or minus. Maybe a little bit of a lack of
Speaker 1: mature bowls is really what's limiting the you know what
Speaker 1: people would call the big bowl tags, the quality tags.
Speaker 1: Where there's a unit, you know, across adjacent to it
Speaker 1: that seems to have double the carrying capacity for a
Speaker 1: similar you know type unit is there in your research
Speaker 1: and you just being in the area. Is there any
Speaker 1: good explanation for why adjacent units one will be doing
Speaker 1: better than the other have double the elk? Is it
Speaker 1: historically always carried more? What are we seeing here on
Speaker 1: why maybe one unit is doing so much better than
Speaker 1: an adjacent unit.
Speaker 2: That's a tough question to answer. Historically, the Lick Creek
Speaker 2: unit had a thousand elk in it. Eight years ago
Speaker 2: we had a thousand elk here. We noticed half the
Speaker 2: unit start to decline pretty quick around twenty sixteen. We
Speaker 2: missed our opportunity to start collaring animals at that time
Speaker 2: to figure out why, and there's a good reason. The
Speaker 2: agency only has so much money to go around. It's
Speaker 2: hard to in expensive you go start capturing elk with
Speaker 2: the hope that it was a short term thing. The
Speaker 2: Mountain View unit to the south of US has remained
Speaker 2: relatively stable at a thousand elk, but they still don't
Speaker 2: have good calf survival down there, but the adults seem
Speaker 2: to be doing at least we're not losing the adults
Speaker 2: or they're remaining relatively stable. It's a much slower decline.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a caring capacity issue. It's a
Speaker 2: survival issue. What's causing survival to be higher down there
Speaker 2: than here? And I don't have a good answer for
Speaker 2: why survival is better down there. The elk here have
Speaker 2: actually pretty good winter range, and unfortunately a lot of
Speaker 2: our elk in the Lick Creek unit are going to
Speaker 2: private land throughout the winter. It's hard to compete with
Speaker 2: farmers and winter wheat and canolae even with a nice
Speaker 2: healthy bunch grass ecosystem that we have here. The Mountain
Speaker 2: View elk, a good percentage of them go to a
Speaker 2: feed lot in Oregon and get fed all winter. But
Speaker 2: there's still predation happening down there. There's still probably similar
Speaker 2: numbers of cougar down there. There's wolves on the landscape
Speaker 2: in both places. The winners are probably more severe actually
Speaker 2: down in Mountain View. So I don't have a good
Speaker 2: answer as to why some units performing differently than others.
Speaker 1: And calf survival you mentioned, it's just the adult survival
Speaker 1: of calf, calf recruitment or you know, calf mortalities are
Speaker 1: real similar in those two units. You're just able to
Speaker 1: hold that higher number due to adult elk making it through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's there is a difference, but it's not
Speaker 2: a huge difference. I mean we're still below twenty five
Speaker 2: down there. I think a couple of years in a
Speaker 2: row the feed lot was with six hundred elk on
Speaker 2: it was averaging twelve calves per hundred. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 2: a tough one. You know, we have private land adjacent
Speaker 2: where these things are on private land, and you know
Speaker 2: they're doing a little bit better. There's probably a different
Speaker 2: risk on the landscape in private land where there's a
Speaker 2: lot more people available for everything to interact with. So
Speaker 2: it's I don't have a good answer. The Dayton unit's
Speaker 2: doing really poorly. I mean that's gone from a thousand
Speaker 2: elk down to like three hundred and fifty elk and
Speaker 2: we had only nine calves per hundred in there this
Speaker 2: year when we did our aerial survey.
Speaker 1: And it's yeah, it's just it's tough, you know, what's happening.
Speaker 1: And how come. One of the things we talked about
Speaker 1: maybe affecting it is you know, climate change, and what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is the extreme weather swings. We
Speaker 1: may have you know, a bad an extreme winner every
Speaker 1: third year, but in between those, you mix in an
Speaker 1: extreme drought at the same time. And so while you're
Speaker 1: maybe struggling for this CAFF recruitment, which may it may
Speaker 1: play into it, we're not being helped at all by
Speaker 1: the weather r It's not given us a favor. So
Speaker 1: we're trying to comp compound poor CAF survivability in between this,
Speaker 1: but then get dished out some crappy winters in some
Speaker 1: dry summers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, in the last eight years, we've had
Speaker 2: two severe winners, the winner of sixteen seventeen and eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 2: probably one of the worst winters in fifty years that
Speaker 2: people recall in the Blue mountains, and there's some metrics
Speaker 2: to support that through the National Weather Service. We've also
Speaker 2: had the drought of twenty fifteen. We also had a
Speaker 2: twenty one drought that was some of those temperatures that
Speaker 2: set all time records. It was like one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty two degrees in Clarkston in June. Really affects the
Speaker 2: nutrition of the landscape, the available forage. You know, it
Speaker 2: affects pregnancy rates of cows. So if you had a
Speaker 2: drought in twenty fifteen, in a severe winner of sixteen seventeen,
Speaker 2: so if they're bread in the fall of fifteen, they're
Speaker 2: born in sixteen, we count them as calves in seventeen
Speaker 2: following a bad winter. What was the main effect We
Speaker 2: probably will never know, but we do know that those
Speaker 2: things all are cumulative effects. And it's not given this
Speaker 2: population a break right now.
Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah, it's tough. You need you know, it's to
Speaker 1: rebuild this You need all that ideal. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't want your cows going in in bad shape and
Speaker 1: then your calves having to survive that bad winter. It's
Speaker 1: just a bunch of compounding issues that are ultimately not
Speaker 1: helping us out. With the oak population.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in our calf study we did, we started in
Speaker 2: twenty one in a severe drought. Twenty two was one
Speaker 2: of the more wet springs in summers in the Blue Mountains,
Speaker 2: and we don't know what twenty three is going to be.
Speaker 2: I mean, we did see higher survival in twenty two.
Speaker 2: Is it related to the weather? You know? Those are
Speaker 2: really tough questions to tease apart.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, it's tough. So within management and management strategies,
Speaker 1: what are the bowl to cow ratios here in the
Speaker 1: Blues or does it very tremendously from unit to unit
Speaker 1: or is it fairly.
Speaker 2: It does vary unit to unit. Our goal is twenty
Speaker 2: to twenty five bulls per hundred cows, and twenty five
Speaker 2: bulls per hundred cows is going to give you a
Speaker 2: pretty diverse age ratio and some good quality opportunity. Some
Speaker 2: of our units are running in the low teens. The
Speaker 2: Lick Creek units typically low, you know, the Winnaha typically high,
Speaker 2: much tougher place to hunt. We're fairly conservative with tags
Speaker 2: in there. We also share it with Oregon for management purposes,
Speaker 2: So there is the bowl ratio really is an effect
Speaker 2: of our hunting and we can manipulate that to some degree,
Speaker 2: assuming that there's normal recruitment.
Speaker 1: And so I have to assume that the Blues is
Speaker 1: still being managed for trophy quality. Is that still the intent?
Speaker 1: Or are we getting ourselves to a point where we
Speaker 1: might actually need to be managing for quantity with some
Speaker 1: of the lower numbers, or do you get what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Like direct me there, Like are we managing for quality
Speaker 1: still or are we gonna have to get to a
Speaker 1: point where, hey, we may just need to manage for
Speaker 1: quantity and you know, opportunity at some point.
Speaker 2: We definitely still are managing for a little bit higher
Speaker 2: bowl ratio than other units in the state, with the
Speaker 2: result being quality, quality, opportunity, quality bowls in terms of
Speaker 2: age structure, you know, mature bowls for big antlers. We
Speaker 2: still do have the spike only general season, so everybody
Speaker 2: gets to hunt. Are we approaching a time to change?
Speaker 2: You know? We rerode our ELK Plan three three to
Speaker 2: five years ago, went through public process, got you know,
Speaker 2: majority support for how we're managing Elk in the Blue Mountains.
Speaker 2: If the constituents of Washington want to change, we can,
Speaker 2: We can definitely you know, go through that process and
Speaker 2: evaluate it and let the majority, you know, rule as
Speaker 2: long as we stay within bounds of you know, a
Speaker 2: healthy herd biologically, so there's enough cows to be bred.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm a big fan of having some
Speaker 2: bulls diye of old age on the landscape. I think
Speaker 2: that's healthy for an elk population or any hunted population.
Speaker 2: So I don't want to necessarily go down the road
Speaker 2: of having average age of three to five year old
Speaker 2: in a harvest. But if that's what the hunters want,
Speaker 2: we could do that. But there's repercussions for any change
Speaker 2: we make.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna that's my last bullet here at the bottom.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this, I talked about with brock Is.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, we probably had a twenty
Speaker 1: minute conversation the day on the hill. Is how do
Speaker 1: you manage for everybody? And I think it's impossible. We're
Speaker 1: going to save that that little bit here for the end,
Speaker 1: So back, let's rewind back to predators. I think that's
Speaker 1: the main purpose of the calf study. There. There's no
Speaker 1: denying apex predators on the ground. You showed me a
Speaker 1: little video yesterday where you thought you had got a beacon.
Speaker 1: You got a signal from a dead calf that you
Speaker 1: had just colored what within the last week. Yes, got
Speaker 1: a caller and that you showed me the video and
Speaker 1: I thought the same thing. You can see the calf
Speaker 1: in the video, and I'll let you take it from there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I walked in on this dead calf, and the
Speaker 2: dead calf was there. And as I'm getting close and
Speaker 2: these callers give you a GPS point, I'm using telemetry
Speaker 2: to listen to the calf and I can tell I'm
Speaker 2: probably within ten twenty feet of it at this point.
Speaker 2: Can't see the calf for sure, but I see this
Speaker 2: little tan patch in the shrub and I immediately conclude
Speaker 2: that that's the calf laying there under the shrub, and
Speaker 2: I go walking up to it. I'm maybe six feet
Speaker 2: away at this point, and it starts to move, and
Speaker 2: I'm still thinking, elk calf in my mind that I
Speaker 2: got a false mortality signal from the collar. I'm wondering
Speaker 2: if something's wrong with the calf. And this is all
Speaker 2: happening in probably two three seconds, and I'm debating whether
Speaker 2: I want to grab the calf to check the collar
Speaker 2: fit see if there's something wrong with it when I
Speaker 2: realized it was a cougar or that I was done
Speaker 2: about four feet from at that point in time, and
Speaker 2: it just stood up and slowly walked away through the brush.
Speaker 2: And I quickly backed up a few feet and it
Speaker 2: walked about twenty feet and laid back down, and the
Speaker 2: calf was laying about six feet away, buried under a
Speaker 2: bunch of grass.
Speaker 1: It was about that point you probably wish you had
Speaker 1: some bear spray, maybe brought just to, you know, something
Speaker 1: with you to defend yourself aside from your little pocket knife.
Speaker 2: I wished I had something at that point in time,
Speaker 2: but it was it was one of those things where
Speaker 2: how cool is this? And also am I in a
Speaker 2: bad spot?
Speaker 1: It looked that mature cat. Maybe this is what I
Speaker 1: was guessing, maybe a little bigger in the video.
Speaker 2: I was guessing a little bigger, a little bit. I
Speaker 2: was guessing it was, you know, a tom that it
Speaker 2: might have been over one thirty one forty. But you know,
Speaker 2: it is a really difficult thing though. Look at a cat.
Speaker 1: It was just a big It wasn't It wasn't a
Speaker 1: juvenile by any means. It was an adult cat, you know, tough,
Speaker 1: But I was. It was kind of cool just for
Speaker 1: you to capture that and that cat running away, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, literally really in such a short time frame.
Speaker 1: You you were the ones to put a collar and
Speaker 1: an ear tag, and yet within that seven days that
Speaker 1: calf's dead by a cougar. And it's just it's happening
Speaker 1: that quick. And it kind of goes back to those numbers.
Speaker 1: You know that firs one hundred and twenty days is
Speaker 1: really really hard on a calf, you know, almost We
Speaker 1: do a lot of turkey biology and it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're lucky your ninety percent chance of dying in that
Speaker 1: first year and then the seventy percent chance of dying
Speaker 1: in your second year. It's just it's almost, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a little eye opening to me. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that calf mortality was maybe so bad. And it may
Speaker 1: not be like this in every area, but at least
Speaker 1: the Blues has got a cat problem.
Speaker 2: We do have a healthy cougar population in the Blues. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So back to my question, I wanted to share
Speaker 1: that little story. I forgot about it earlier when we
Speaker 1: were talking about the predators on the ground. In your opinion,
Speaker 1: can can we as hunters make a difference and put
Speaker 1: a dent into those cats. And I I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get into baiting or hounds or any of that,
Speaker 1: just as hunters with the weapons were given now and
Speaker 1: the tactics that we can implore, Like, is there any
Speaker 1: way we can make a difference on the predators to
Speaker 1: maybe help out.
Speaker 2: I think it's a you have to revert back to
Speaker 2: the biology, and you can't ignore the social constraints and
Speaker 2: the season structure that Washington currently has cougars. You know,
Speaker 2: Washington's currently targeting twelve to sixteen percent is our harvest
Speaker 2: guideline of cougars, and that's what the science shows that
Speaker 2: they reproduce with an excess of say average of fourteen percent,
Speaker 2: So you can harvest fourteen percent a year and the
Speaker 2: population will remain stable. To reduce a cougar population, you
Speaker 2: actually have to hit the cougars quite hard. You know,
Speaker 2: more than thirty percent of the cougars would have to
Speaker 2: be harvested a year just to account for the dispersers
Speaker 2: on the landscape, the territorial nature of it, and boot
Speaker 2: hunters alone, even if we had a year round season
Speaker 2: and multiple tags. They're a secret of animal. It's hunters
Speaker 2: probably can't kill that many cats a year without the
Speaker 2: other tools that you know aren't currently available to us.
Speaker 2: Harvesting cats is not a bad thing in any way.
Speaker 2: I mean, I have a cougar tag in my pocket,
Speaker 2: but we're without political support and commission support, we probably
Speaker 2: wouldn't open our season up to that structure without those
Speaker 2: people buying into it. We used to have a cougar
Speaker 2: season year round season in the Blues for one tag
Speaker 2: per person, and we actually killed less cats pre two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight when we started adjusting our season structure
Speaker 2: than we did once we adjusted it. And there's not
Speaker 2: a lot of people that want to kill a bunch
Speaker 2: of cats. Taxi Ermy's expensive times, expensive gas is expensive,
Speaker 2: and you've got to spend a lot of time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not a lot of proven tactics right to
Speaker 1: come out and be successful like gear and elk glass
Speaker 1: do this, do that? Cats are you know, maybe cut
Speaker 1: a track and start walking it down in your boots.
Speaker 2: And we have people that do that every year successfully.
Speaker 2: We have people that call every year and are successful.
Speaker 2: Some of the times. They're a very difficult animal. Most
Speaker 2: of our harvest is deer, and elk hunters out there
Speaker 2: during modern firearm just encountering an animal, and I think
Speaker 2: it's incidental take to actually target a cougar. Very challenging, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Very tough, So we can't forget about. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: hunters are a predator as well. Belk right, we take them.
Speaker 1: We've got spike season over the counter here in all
Speaker 1: these blues units. We do have the quality bull tags.
Speaker 1: We have some cow tags to In your opinion, our
Speaker 1: hunters having a drastic effect on the population or is
Speaker 1: it a small enough population that it it doesn't calculate
Speaker 1: in I gets if that makes any sense, Like.
Speaker 2: It totally does. In terms of bull as long as
Speaker 2: there's enough bulls to breed the cows. And there's been
Speaker 2: some work done at Starkey and Northeast Oregon. The breeding
Speaker 2: efficiency you know, was still increasing up to age five
Speaker 2: for bulls. So you want enough bulls age five plus
Speaker 2: to actually efficiently breed your cows so they get bread
Speaker 2: and first estis But if you have that on the landscape,
Speaker 2: killing surplus bulls on top of that isn't really a
Speaker 2: population effect. So where hunters have an effect on the
Speaker 2: population is killing cows and in the Blues. You know,
Speaker 2: we've historically issued a lot of antlerless elk opportunities when
Speaker 2: the population can support it. We're down to zero antlerless
Speaker 2: opportunities on public land, and the tags we issue now
Speaker 2: are on the egg area, so we're you know, trying
Speaker 2: to protect the farmers from damage and still balance the
Speaker 2: elk population. But that's kind of outside the core public
Speaker 2: land portion of the Blues. So there's some places that
Speaker 2: I'm still happy to issue lots of cow tags, and
Speaker 2: I say out by Tri Cities, the Burbank area, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not an area we want the population to really
Speaker 2: grow or establish anymore than it already is. But in
Speaker 2: the core Blues, in the public land areas, you know,
Speaker 2: we've taken that opportunity away from hunters a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago, and if hunters were having an effect, we
Speaker 2: should have seen some kind of change in the population.
Speaker 2: We haven't seen a change, and that would really indicate
Speaker 2: that what we think is happening is, you know, hunters
Speaker 2: are not having that population effect.
Speaker 1: Gotch So the reduction in tags is really just a
Speaker 1: result of the population as an overall doing poorly. There's
Speaker 1: just that age class of bulls are there like missing
Speaker 1: segments or missing age classes that we're seeing. Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it age class? Like, you know, not necessarily trying
Speaker 1: to dig it why there's a reduction in tags. Obviously
Speaker 1: I'm in full support of definitely cow, you know, and
Speaker 1: then you ultimately bulls, bull tags coming down if you
Speaker 1: can't support that quality and that that potential. But is
Speaker 1: that I don't want to twist what you said, but
Speaker 1: if bulls, if the quality of bulls and the number
Speaker 1: of bulls are there to basically regenerate and repopulate, what's
Speaker 1: the tag recommendation based on I just did a big
Speaker 1: roundabout and I ended up back right to my same place.
Speaker 1: But it's trying to get that answer of, you know,
Speaker 1: like what dictates that tag number.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we do what's called an aerial sideability survey.
Speaker 2: So we fly in a helicopter typically the first two
Speaker 2: weeks of March in the Blues. We fly. The Blues
Speaker 2: is broken into thirty seven different survey zones. We fly
Speaker 2: a percentage of those survey zones based on what we
Speaker 2: determine our how many ELK are in each one, And
Speaker 2: that's really based on twenty five thirty years of doing
Speaker 2: this at this point, so we have a good idea
Speaker 2: where they'll like to be for winter, and that accounts
Speaker 2: for elkie don't see based on group size, behavior, snow cover,
Speaker 2: and it gives us a population estimate with confidence intervals
Speaker 2: that we can say we have this ninety five percent
Speaker 2: probability of having this mini elk with a range of this.
Speaker 2: With that, I actually have a formula that we calculate
Speaker 2: how many bull tags we want to issue. So we
Speaker 2: calculate how many bulls we want to take accounting for
Speaker 2: the bull ratio the bulls per hundred cows broken out
Speaker 2: by GMU, and then that is further broken down by
Speaker 2: a percentage of weapon type archers muzzleowders, modern firearm and
Speaker 2: runs off an average success rate of three years of
Speaker 2: the previous tag holders. So we can calculate how many
Speaker 2: tags based on that. So the current reduction that people
Speaker 2: are seeing as a result of us counting less bulls
Speaker 2: in these units and trying to maintain our you know,
Speaker 2: our objective of how many bulls per hundred cows and
Speaker 2: what opportunity there is for harvest.
Speaker 1: Gotcha? So I don't know if I missed it in
Speaker 1: there as far as manager is are you guys managing
Speaker 1: to like a certain amount of like size or is
Speaker 1: it age or what are we using to determine like,
Speaker 1: you know, because we are managing for trophy, but are
Speaker 1: we managing on all right? You've got ten bowls over
Speaker 1: three fifty? I don't know if that's the that's a
Speaker 1: horrible metric, but I'm throwing it out there. Or we've
Speaker 1: got tooth data back on the four bowls that were
Speaker 1: killed out of this unit and they're all averaging this.
Speaker 1: We need to you know, we like, how do you
Speaker 1: come up with the trophy versus the number of tags?
Speaker 2: Part of the trophy is not really considered in how
Speaker 2: we're issuing tags. It's almost more towards a bull ratio.
Speaker 2: But I don't want to ignore that because we do
Speaker 2: collect that in the helicopter. We collect yearling's rag horns,
Speaker 2: what we call like three to four year old bulls,
Speaker 2: which you know probably are in that that two point
Speaker 2: fifty to three hundred range three ten range, and then
Speaker 2: what we call adult bulls that are you know, likely
Speaker 2: over three hundred. Judging a bull from the helicopter is
Speaker 2: not easy. It's really hard, but you can tell when
Speaker 2: it's a big bowl versus a small bull. That's pretty
Speaker 2: easy to do. But if we run an average of
Speaker 2: just twenty to twenty five bulls per hundred cows, you
Speaker 2: know there is going to be a percentage of those
Speaker 2: in there that are mature. And we can look at
Speaker 2: our data to see if that trend from our counts
Speaker 2: is declining or increasing, and we're going to issue a
Speaker 2: percentage of the bulls in the unit. And if our
Speaker 2: bull ratio is high, we issue a higher percentage of
Speaker 2: the number of bulls in the unit for harvest, and
Speaker 2: if our bull ratio is dropping, we issue a much
Speaker 2: smaller percentage of the total counted bulls in the unit
Speaker 2: for what the harvest opportunity is. So somewhat a self
Speaker 2: correcting model to try and get us to our target.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes that makes sense. So everything we've talked
Speaker 1: about some struggles, you know, historically, what I would I
Speaker 1: would even great, great elk cutting, right, it's every we've
Speaker 1: talked about this. It's got everything you need. It's got
Speaker 1: the genetics, it's got the potential for the food. If
Speaker 1: we're not dealing with drought and winter. The blues, I
Speaker 1: would say, has the potential. But I almost feel where
Speaker 1: at a point where we almost need to accept that
Speaker 1: it may not ever get back to where it was
Speaker 1: the historic eyes. Maybe maybe not. Maybe you're going to
Speaker 1: disagree with me here, but let's roll all this up
Speaker 1: here to kind of to close this up. You have
Speaker 1: like an ultimate fix for this area, and I know,
Speaker 1: being being science driven myself, and there's there's multiple factors, right,
Speaker 1: there's this equations probably you know a yard long by
Speaker 1: time you lay out all the variables and all the factors.
Speaker 1: But but in your opinion, like what are some things
Speaker 1: that that would fix or start to fix this area
Speaker 1: and kind of turn that corner and either let it
Speaker 1: level out or start to improve.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of things we can't control as managers.
Speaker 2: Weather patterns is going to be something that needs to
Speaker 2: align for three to five years in a row that
Speaker 2: are favorable for elk to reproduce and grow calves. And
Speaker 2: that's a huge one. H you know, the habitats in
Speaker 2: good condition in the Blue Mountains, we've had numerous landscape
Speaker 2: level fires since two thousand and five. A huge percentage
Speaker 2: of the Blue mounta says burnt in the last eighteen years,
Speaker 2: creating what should be good el habitat. You know, fire
Speaker 2: has a you know, a ten to twenty year benefit,
Speaker 2: sometimes less depending on the habitat type. If you're talking grasslands,
Speaker 2: you're probably talking three to five year benefit. But overall,
Speaker 2: we think our habitat's in good shape. What dials can
Speaker 2: an agency turn? I mean we can change harvest, We
Speaker 2: can change harvest of the carnivores, we can change harvest
Speaker 2: of the elk themselves. Those are the few things that
Speaker 2: we can actually change when things are not aligning for
Speaker 2: a population. Our hands really don't have a lot of opportunities.
Speaker 2: And you know, turning some of these dials comes with
Speaker 2: social feedback, and the hunters may think one thing and
Speaker 2: other groups in the members of the public might think
Speaker 2: another thing in terms of what value they want to
Speaker 2: place on this, And that's probably where Washington's struggling lately.
Speaker 2: So are there dials we can turn the ad but
Speaker 2: they all come with some kind of feedback that the
Speaker 2: decision makers have to balance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the decision makers and then you know the
Speaker 1: very opinionated hunters. Right. We talked about this on the
Speaker 1: mountain already this morning. Is I'm going to point my
Speaker 1: life where I want an opportunity at a mature animal.
Speaker 1: I want to go challenge myself. I want to see
Speaker 1: if I can outsmart that animal. But I've also got
Speaker 1: a thirteen year old son that's starting to hunt. I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily want him to have to go out and
Speaker 1: challenge himself to kill trophy. I want him to have opportunity.
Speaker 1: My old man, you know where he was where I'm at, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was getting Now maybe he's kind of transitioning out
Speaker 1: of that trophy and wanting to go just have opportunity.
Speaker 1: And then you take that and dice it up by
Speaker 1: archery hunters wanting this season or that many tags versus
Speaker 1: muzzloader versus rifle, and they all start bickering about why
Speaker 1: their success is better and theirs is worse, and why
Speaker 1: they should get more tags because they're less successful, and
Speaker 1: you know, and then you hear the rifle hunters argue
Speaker 1: about how of the archery hunters actually wound, so we
Speaker 1: shouldn't even have any and you know, it just it
Speaker 1: turns into this big infighting. Right, nobody can decide whether
Speaker 1: you know, I might want trophy, you might want opportunity.
Speaker 1: Neither of us are wrong, but we're gonna voice our
Speaker 1: opinion differently when we go talk to the rule setters
Speaker 1: or the and then like I say, you add it
Speaker 1: with different hunters, or there's a mindset of maybe somebody
Speaker 1: just wants to put a cow in their freezer because
Speaker 1: they eat better, versus Joe over here just wants an
Speaker 1: opportunity at any legal bull. He's not interested in a cow,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't necessarily care about going and chasing the
Speaker 1: biggest bull in the unit. And then there's and it's
Speaker 1: just like, I don't know the right answer. Me and
Speaker 1: Brock ended our podcast with it. We're gonna end ours
Speaker 1: with it, just because I don't think we can all
Speaker 1: sit back and be the armchair biologists. Yeah. We I
Speaker 1: would say most people on the landscape got good ideas.
Speaker 1: They're out there, they're observing. We're all part. We're an
Speaker 1: intricate part of this balance, right, and so we're all involved.
Speaker 1: But I don't necessarily think that that it's as easy
Speaker 1: as saying I'm an archery hunter that want trophy bowls.
Speaker 1: This is the way it should be. You know, there
Speaker 1: there's so much more. There's the winter range, there's nutrition,
Speaker 1: there's there's all of this, and then you throw us
Speaker 1: in our opportunity in and what we're after. It just
Speaker 1: becomes a very very complex decision. And I don't envy
Speaker 1: the biologists the rules setters at all. But the more
Speaker 1: I get to hang out with the biologists, the more
Speaker 1: I get to talk with you, you know, all of you,
Speaker 1: I honestly feel you guys are doing what's right by
Speaker 1: the herd and making good decisions. Just what do we
Speaker 1: do about this? Like opportunity versus quality? Is it ever?
Speaker 1: Is it ever going to be a clear decision from
Speaker 1: here on out? Or is it always just going to
Speaker 1: be I mean, it seems like you can't make a
Speaker 1: decision without being wrong at this point, Like there is
Speaker 1: no right decision at this point.
Speaker 2: Change is hard, no doubt about it. I'm in the
Speaker 2: same boat as you. I've been working here twenty years,
Speaker 2: haven't drawn a branch bull tag yet, sitting on twenty points.
Speaker 2: I really would like to pursue an adult ball while
Speaker 2: I work here. Is part of my career. But I
Speaker 2: also have two teenagers that I want them to be
Speaker 2: able to hunt every year at this age when they're
Speaker 2: you know, receptive to it, make it part of their lifestyle.
Speaker 2: It's hard to have both. It's hard for success rates
Speaker 2: to be managed in a way that people are happy.
Speaker 2: I mean, if we run two percent success on our
Speaker 2: general season spike hunt, when you know one in fifty
Speaker 2: people are getting to shoot a spike, Hunters need some
Speaker 2: kind of positive feedback occasionally. I mean, not everybody's out
Speaker 2: there just for the meat or the kill. But that's
Speaker 2: pretty bad success. I can manage a population either the
Speaker 2: way we're doing it now. We could go permit only
Speaker 2: people don't get a hunt every year. Draw odds in
Speaker 2: Washington are not that good. Our current system is not
Speaker 2: favorable to drawing tags very often. So it'd be great
Speaker 2: if our hunters could get together, not fight over weapon type,
Speaker 2: fight for the resource and maybe fights the wrong word here,
Speaker 2: but you know, work together to make sure that hunting
Speaker 2: remains part of our tradition in Washington, because there are
Speaker 2: people that want to take that away, yep. And in
Speaker 2: this day and age with the Internet and social media,
Speaker 2: those voices are definitely being heard more so the hunters
Speaker 2: need to work together to you know, keep working towards
Speaker 2: keeping this lifestyle, keeping this recreational opportunity, and coming to
Speaker 2: consensus is never going to be easy, but we can
Speaker 2: manage this herd in a lot of ways for recreational
Speaker 2: opportunity and still stay within the bounds of what's biologically
Speaker 2: you know, feasible and correct to keep the system functioning
Speaker 2: the way it should be.
Speaker 1: Yep, No, I'm I'm in full agreement. I think we
Speaker 1: need to take like you know, you as a biologist,
Speaker 1: you've got data, you've got the research. Me as kind
Speaker 1: of an engineer who bases everything off of science data calculations.
Speaker 1: I think we just need to look at it and
Speaker 1: not be selfish. It's easy to figure out success ratios, opportunities,
Speaker 1: and I think we should just you know, it may
Speaker 1: we may have to take a deep look into ourselves,
Speaker 1: make sure we're not being greedy, make sure it's not
Speaker 1: all for us. It might be for our kids, it
Speaker 1: might be for my dad, might be for my grandpa,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. And I think we need to
Speaker 1: find something that worked for everybody. And I think we
Speaker 1: just need to look at it and like I say,
Speaker 1: I think greed and maybe a little selfishness, and just
Speaker 1: look at if we put the elk, the deer, whatever
Speaker 1: animal is that we're trying to manage to a point
Speaker 1: that's sustainable and provides the opportunity is what should be
Speaker 1: at the forefront, and maybe not so much our own
Speaker 1: personal wish upon getting a tag or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said, Yeah, we'll.
Speaker 1: Close it with that. I really appreciate you inviting me here.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we can go wrestle some calves to night, and
Speaker 1: really looking forward to that. But I appreciate having you out.
Speaker 1: Thank you for being on the podcast. I really, like,
Speaker 1: I say, me be in semi numerical driven, science driven.
Speaker 1: I love being able to interview biologists because it let
Speaker 1: us know exactly what's happening, not just a bunch of
Speaker 1: speculation and guessing. So really appreciate you having me here, Paul,
Speaker 1: and good luck on what seems to be maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit of an uphill battle here with the Elk
Speaker 1: and the Blues.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you and hopefully we can see some positive
Speaker 2: change in the next couple of years here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I said, I was very very fortunate last
Speaker 1: year to have a tag. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: deserve the credit, but there was. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: large mature bulls that are still out here. It takes
Speaker 1: a little more work than when my wife had the
Speaker 1: tag in twenty thirteen, but the opportunity is still there,
Speaker 1: and so no, thank you, thanks for being on and
Speaker 1: good luck and everything in the future.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me