Speaker 1: Welcome back to Cutting the Distance, where I continue my
Speaker 1: conversation with Dr Bronson Strickland. He's a professor of wildlife
Speaker 1: Management at Mississippi State University. He's the co director of
Speaker 1: m s u S Deer Lab and co host of
Speaker 1: the Deer University podcast. If you'd like to go back
Speaker 1: and listen to Part one, we cover listener questions on
Speaker 1: at what age would you start making decisions on buck management,
Speaker 1: what year round food strategy should you be employing for
Speaker 1: the healthiest deer, as well some of my own questions
Speaker 1: on genetic potential, nutrients, mother's health, and environmental factors and
Speaker 1: how those all add up to a buck's potential and
Speaker 1: how you go about managing those for better heart health.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this conversation with Dr Bronson Strickland, make
Speaker 1: sure go back and check out part one if you
Speaker 1: haven't already. All right, we're gonna digress um from Doma
Speaker 1: a little bit, and uh, this will be a little
Speaker 1: more universal amongst all areas. I know the times may change,
Speaker 1: but you know you hear everybody with their systems like
Speaker 1: this is how these are the phases of the rut.
Speaker 1: This is I'm gonna ask you to kind of break down.
Speaker 1: You know, whether it's the beginning of September. Shoot, you
Speaker 1: you know down in the South, you guys are probably going,
Speaker 1: you know, the rut. You know, parts or portions of
Speaker 1: the rut go all the way into January. Breakdown kind
Speaker 1: of what you feel or you know, major milestones in
Speaker 1: in buck behavior, you know, from throughout the rut, you know,
Speaker 1: starting in September ending in late January. UM, and I
Speaker 1: know it's going to change a little bit based on
Speaker 1: you know, where you're at. If you don't mind, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna back it up another month then include August UH.
Speaker 1: August September UH. That is when bucks are typically still
Speaker 1: within their bachelor groups, and so they are tolerant of
Speaker 1: one another. They are typically still in velvet or coming
Speaker 1: out of velvet, and biologically what is going on there
Speaker 1: is the level of testos drown in their bloodstream. So
Speaker 1: bucks tolerate each other when they're in velvet because testosterone
Speaker 1: levels are very very low. So when the velvet shedding
Speaker 1: process begins, that is when testosterone begins to spike. That
Speaker 1: is when antler hardening happens. And that is also when
Speaker 1: these bachelor groups start breaking up because they don't want
Speaker 1: to look at their buddy anymore. They just want to fight,
Speaker 1: and so that is when they're gonna go back and
Speaker 1: back to probably the previous fall, the area that that
Speaker 1: they occupied it and that home range. Typically, let's just
Speaker 1: say now in the southeast, if if you peek your
Speaker 1: ruts end of November December, then you have a couple
Speaker 1: of months to where those bucks are again gonna be
Speaker 1: setting up their their social hierarchies. They're gonna be refamiliarizing
Speaker 1: theirselves with their territory. And then when you start getting
Speaker 1: about three weeks, two weeks, et cetera before the peak
Speaker 1: of the rut, that is when you're gonna see the
Speaker 1: most scraping activity d That's when they're they're running their
Speaker 1: trap line and they're putting their calling card out there
Speaker 1: on the landscape. And that is typically Jason when most
Speaker 1: people think that the peak of the rut is most
Speaker 1: often that is the pre rut that hunters think is
Speaker 1: the peak of the rut. The peak of the rut
Speaker 1: is gonna be two to three weeks later when there's
Speaker 1: gonna be less visible dear activity because bucks are engaged
Speaker 1: in courting dough, so they're they're locked up, and then
Speaker 1: that's gonna go on. If you're up north, it might
Speaker 1: be two to three weeks. If you're in the South,
Speaker 1: it might be about a month. And then after that
Speaker 1: of your dose have been bred, and then bucks are
Speaker 1: gonna start focusing on uh rebuilding their their tissue. They've
Speaker 1: lost ten of their body weight. That's when we see
Speaker 1: them focusing back on food again. So that's a good
Speaker 1: hunter's tip right there, as you always include food in
Speaker 1: the equation after the peak of the rut um and
Speaker 1: then they'll start taking advantage of those stragglers. It might
Speaker 1: be a dough fawn that's coming into heat for the
Speaker 1: first time. It could be an adult dough that was
Speaker 1: bred during the peak of the rut, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: just like humans, she was bred but didn't conceive and
Speaker 1: become pregnant. Thirty days later, she's gonna cycle and come
Speaker 1: back into heat again. So that's when you'll see that
Speaker 1: that trickle or that second rut is occurring. Then, yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for thanks for breaking that down. We got to
Speaker 1: hunt Kansas kind of i'd say, right on the front
Speaker 1: end of lockdown, and it was a little bit frustrating
Speaker 1: those guys like to kill their their bigger bucks. I
Speaker 1: would you know, October and maybe even earlier because they're
Speaker 1: more patternable. They they're starting to you know, like the
Speaker 1: like you said, they're they're scraping pre rut, they're marking
Speaker 1: their territory. There's still somewhat patternable. And then when we
Speaker 1: got there, like it's very very fun to hunt the rut,
Speaker 1: but the deer that we're on cam's a week ago,
Speaker 1: just we're gone. They had found a dough ranner off
Speaker 1: somewhere didn't care to be out. Like I say, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a little bit of a love hate, like
Speaker 1: I love being out there during the rut. But it
Speaker 1: was also like Randy, we have all these pictures of
Speaker 1: bucks on camera, like they're around, like we would see
Speaker 1: them maybe one of the four or five days, but
Speaker 1: then they were just you know, off again. They'd get
Speaker 1: on the dough and and then take off. So no,
Speaker 1: thanks for breaking that right down. That that helps, you know,
Speaker 1: me understand kind of those phases versus you know, some
Speaker 1: of these people out there have got twenty eight phases
Speaker 1: of the rut, you know, like they're gonna between this day.
Speaker 1: I might, well, that's so hard to manage. You know,
Speaker 1: if you can break it down to like just a
Speaker 1: few phases, like you said, and what you should be
Speaker 1: focusing on, makes it makes it a little easier for
Speaker 1: a hunter to they don't have to think that hard.
Speaker 1: And that's what's that's what's fun about the rut, but
Speaker 1: can also be frustrating is what we we think about
Speaker 1: the rut and anything can happen. I think that the
Speaker 1: rut equal random. Anything can happen any time of the day. Um.
Speaker 1: But but at the same time, you're you don't have
Speaker 1: that reliability and the patterns that are that are established.
Speaker 1: So but Jason, if you were gonna see if if
Speaker 1: now you were going to be that person to shoot
Speaker 1: the neighbor's buck that they've been managing all these years,
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna beat dround the peak of the road. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's the one time you could if you
Speaker 1: had a dough that crosses on Yeah, you can pull in.
Speaker 1: And I you know, I I I'm very um, you know, curious,
Speaker 1: So I asked all kinds of questions. Randy probably got
Speaker 1: Randy and and Chris Parrish was a hunt with us
Speaker 1: there at the place at the same time. And you know,
Speaker 1: ask those guys that have spent a lot more time
Speaker 1: in a white tail stand these same questions, like what
Speaker 1: are the chances you know, have you guys killed bucks that?
Speaker 1: And they the numbers seem to be low, like it
Speaker 1: can happen. But they said, you know, Randy's couple of
Speaker 1: properties or you know, a couple hundred acres apiece scattered
Speaker 1: about and you know, very rarely does he say they
Speaker 1: end up with a buck that they didn't cut, you know,
Speaker 1: know about It does happen, but but not very often.
Speaker 1: You usually they know what's there, they don't they don't
Speaker 1: have the scragglers. But you know, I also see the
Speaker 1: advantages I'm looking for property there, like you can get
Speaker 1: the right eighty acres and you know, a smaller piece
Speaker 1: with different landowners, and the probability of killing the buck
Speaker 1: that's not on your place probably goes up tremendously because
Speaker 1: you can't hold all those, dear all the time, and you're, um,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, yeah, and and you know you're getting
Speaker 1: back to the whole uh patterning, dear, you know the
Speaker 1: one thing that you can never account for, and that
Speaker 1: is these excursions and it's these things that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: as a researcher, I didn't put a lot of faith
Speaker 1: into when when hunters were reporting this a decade or
Speaker 1: more ago, evidence they were getting from trail cameras up
Speaker 1: we've never seen this buck. And he was here for
Speaker 1: a week or two weeks and then he was gone,
Speaker 1: and then a year later at the exact same time,
Speaker 1: I mean literally down to the week or three days,
Speaker 1: like this buck is back again. I didn't buy into
Speaker 1: any of that. I was like, there's no biological reason
Speaker 1: for that to occur. But when you put a GPS
Speaker 1: caller on a bunch of bucks, that does occur, absolutely happens. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I think Mark Drewy had he called a buck,
Speaker 1: you know, he had the same thing. It would disappear
Speaker 1: like almost to the date and then wouldn't come back
Speaker 1: until the fall. And it didn't even come back one
Speaker 1: year at all. And it's just to me, that's mind boggling.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna ask you a question. I'm sure you're
Speaker 1: probably maybe you'll have answer, like, is there any understanding
Speaker 1: on what just makes that buck say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pop up today and go a mile away
Speaker 1: on a different farm, just completely leave an area I've
Speaker 1: been for the last nine months. Um uh that that
Speaker 1: that that's a tough one, you know. So we think
Speaker 1: of um, I guess I think of it as short term,
Speaker 1: long term. You know, in the short term, could there
Speaker 1: be some kind of que like I'm getting a whiff
Speaker 1: of an extra dough, so I'm gonna move. Uh man,
Speaker 1: I'm hungry, you know, I'm not getting what I need.
Speaker 1: There's a whole bunch of hunting pressure right here, so
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna leave. I would call those, you know,
Speaker 1: short term. But but then we also, Jason, have some
Speaker 1: longer terms. Where why every single year on November does
Speaker 1: this buck get up and move five miles away we
Speaker 1: gotta bucking in Mississippi. That in February every year he
Speaker 1: leaves the Mississippi, swims the Mississippi River, and spence his
Speaker 1: summer in Louisiana. Now, now tell me why try to
Speaker 1: be logical about that? Why invoke all this risk moving
Speaker 1: that far and swim in the river, and and then
Speaker 1: come August that same buck moves right back to Mississippi
Speaker 1: and spends his hunting season over here. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it I think it all
Speaker 1: be speculation. Unless you know, we could somehow figure that out.
Speaker 1: You know, I me wanting to have an answer. You know,
Speaker 1: as a as an engineer, there should be an answer
Speaker 1: to everything. So you know, what goes through my mind
Speaker 1: is like, were they at four and a half? Was
Speaker 1: he not that you know they're going to definitely be
Speaker 1: in the rut, but maybe there was a pecking order issue.
Speaker 1: And then by five and a half he's like one
Speaker 1: mature enough and there's another buck that's hanging around here
Speaker 1: that just won't give me the chance, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go find my own spot where maybe there there isn't
Speaker 1: a morem You know, it's like we could speculate all
Speaker 1: day long why does it? But it's just always intriguing
Speaker 1: on how you could have such consistent, you know, patterns
Speaker 1: on a deer and then just you know, that excursion
Speaker 1: takes place where, like you said, a deer that's whims
Speaker 1: the river at a certain time and comes back. It's
Speaker 1: just yeah, I guess that's that's what makes it fun.
Speaker 1: They do things because they're dear and we may never
Speaker 1: understand why why they do it? What what we think?
Speaker 1: We have no way to prove this, of course, but
Speaker 1: what we kind of think it's a biologist would call
Speaker 1: it kind of a vestigial trait. It's just something buried
Speaker 1: pretty deep in their genome. I just think there's a
Speaker 1: fraction of deer, just like within human beings, there's a
Speaker 1: fraction of humans hundreds of years ago that wanted to
Speaker 1: be explorers, their risk takers. The grass is always greener,
Speaker 1: they're going for the gold, etcetera. And they're willing to
Speaker 1: risk their life to do it. And white till deer,
Speaker 1: we always say they're a colonizing species, are always you know, moving, expanding,
Speaker 1: looking for the better food, better cover, etcetera. And I
Speaker 1: think there's just always a small fraction of individuals and
Speaker 1: in this case bucks that are just willing to pick
Speaker 1: up and move. But I can't say it's even just
Speaker 1: just bucks. This was uh, definitely exacerbated by floodwaters adjacent
Speaker 1: to the Mississippi River. We we had to do also
Speaker 1: pick up and move twenty miles away and set up camp.
Speaker 1: So it happens with both of them that that's crazy.
Speaker 1: That's starting to get comparable to the western like winter migrations,
Speaker 1: you know, at the point that moving that far and yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, it's all speculation. Another thought is like,
Speaker 1: you know when is that where he was born? Where
Speaker 1: his mom Like, you know, it's like and and he
Speaker 1: moved off and just is coming back. Well, we may
Speaker 1: never know, so I'm gonna digress because we could probably
Speaker 1: talk in circles on that one all day. Um. The
Speaker 1: next one is a western hunter. Um, you know, an
Speaker 1: elk hunter that's on the ground trying to get very
Speaker 1: very close. You know, wind is always key, but to
Speaker 1: piggyback on wind is sent um. You know, being a
Speaker 1: brand new white tail hunter one of my biggest things.
Speaker 1: What you know, these the white tail hunters are you know,
Speaker 1: they're spraying their clothes with all this stuff. They've got
Speaker 1: some sort of scent locker, scent crusher, some sort of
Speaker 1: a cabinet with ozone, and you know, I'm like watching
Speaker 1: what seems to me as a Western hunter is a
Speaker 1: little bit crazy because we just like, I have to breathe.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sweat to death out here in the West,
Speaker 1: climbing mountains. I'm just gonna keep the wind in my
Speaker 1: face at all times. But stand hunting, it was very
Speaker 1: obvious that you can't get into your stand, you can't
Speaker 1: protect the wind at all times. You got deer on
Speaker 1: the ground, You're letting them come to you, So wind
Speaker 1: and and scent becomes a little bit You're I don't
Speaker 1: want to say you're giving them the wind, but you were.
Speaker 1: You had to risk the wind a little bit more
Speaker 1: than I can't elk cunning, because elk cunning, I can
Speaker 1: hear a bowld bi aggling. I'm just gonna walk a
Speaker 1: ninety degree you know. Uh, I'm gonna walk ninety degrees
Speaker 1: to my left and get the wind better, so I can,
Speaker 1: you know, play it right where I'm not worried about
Speaker 1: what's behind me or what maybe in the adjacent betting
Speaker 1: area whatnot. So what with that all said? Uh, my
Speaker 1: understanding or just from what I've read, maybe even a
Speaker 1: research that you've done, is that you know, a dear
Speaker 1: sense of smell can be anywhere from tune and fifty
Speaker 1: two a hundred times more acute than than human smells.
Speaker 1: So you're right off the bat, you're not gonna get
Speaker 1: away with much. But I'm gonna I'm gonna have multiple
Speaker 1: questions here, but like what smells matter was was always
Speaker 1: you know, I'm curious about is it human odor? Is
Speaker 1: it um? You know the the laundry detergent I washed
Speaker 1: my clothes with is at the breakfast breed I may
Speaker 1: have build on my hunting pants that morning on the
Speaker 1: way to the stand um in your opinion, due to
Speaker 1: the types of smells matter and and is there any
Speaker 1: research to support you know what smells matter? That that
Speaker 1: that that that last little part you said there is tough. Um.
Speaker 1: I would say there is, there's research to support that
Speaker 1: absolutely smell is gonna matter. But but it's really difficult
Speaker 1: for us to disentangle exactly what that smell is. What
Speaker 1: you know, why is this particular of molecule gonna elicit
Speaker 1: a response in a deer that another scent molecule won't.
Speaker 1: And one example that that I can give you that
Speaker 1: for me open my eyes and too how complicated this
Speaker 1: is is? Uh? Steve and I did did an experiment
Speaker 1: here at Mississippi State where we worked with the chemists
Speaker 1: with all the sophisticated equipment where they could they could
Speaker 1: detect the the acronym they use or v O C
Speaker 1: S volatile organic compounds that we emit, and we would
Speaker 1: put on this suit and they would extract the air
Speaker 1: that came off of us and and it was literally
Speaker 1: over a hundred different compounds, and it could vary from
Speaker 1: individual to individual as well. And uh, that just I
Speaker 1: just remembered something I saw on the news a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago regarding um this new research. But that
Speaker 1: is showing something humans have noticed for a long time.
Speaker 1: You know, Jason, why is it whenever you and I
Speaker 1: are together? Why are mosquitoes all over you? But they're
Speaker 1: not as much on me? Well, end up this this
Speaker 1: same kind of study. They actually were able to isolate
Speaker 1: it down to a particular compound and this particular genome,
Speaker 1: this expression of this gene, and this person. They manufacture
Speaker 1: more of this compound and the mosquitoes queued in on it. Now,
Speaker 1: that kind of got off track a little bit, But
Speaker 1: the bottom line is that it's hard to define what
Speaker 1: is human scent because it's a whole bunch of different compounds.
Speaker 1: And is there any way to truly and effectively suppress
Speaker 1: or eliminate all those different sense that a deer can
Speaker 1: detect detect. I can't say from a research per sective,
Speaker 1: yes or no, but I find it very very unlikely
Speaker 1: that that you can do that. And another example, Jason, Uh,
Speaker 1: this seems to resonate with people very well. When I
Speaker 1: talked to him, is if we want to compare a
Speaker 1: deer's nose to a dog's nose, which I think is
Speaker 1: a really good comparison. We all know a bloodhound and
Speaker 1: that you know how how good they are. Um, But
Speaker 1: but we have dogs now, like cadaver dogs. We have
Speaker 1: dogs that can at least there's a lot of research
Speaker 1: showing they can tell if some one has Parkinson's disease
Speaker 1: or not. We we have and I know this intimately
Speaker 1: in my family. There there are service dogs Jason, that
Speaker 1: could be in the room with you right now, and
Speaker 1: if you were Type one diabetic, they could tell if
Speaker 1: your blood glucose level was above or below a threshold. Now,
Speaker 1: to me, if we're how how do you completely cover
Speaker 1: that up? I just don't think you can. But what
Speaker 1: I think you can do are the odds. You put
Speaker 1: the odds in your favor. You know, of course, you
Speaker 1: don't want to be eating a bacon and you know,
Speaker 1: sausage biscuit and smoking a cigar and have diesel fuel
Speaker 1: on your boots and all that kind of stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's really hard to manage for that yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it's just to be over and that's where
Speaker 1: I kind of got to is is just being over
Speaker 1: critical on sense like just I may never know, you know,
Speaker 1: in in the you know, you the moment, what matters
Speaker 1: or what doesn't. But if I control and take care
Speaker 1: of as much of that, you know, so when you
Speaker 1: get back to the house, you take all your hunting
Speaker 1: clothes off before you cook breakfast, you know, and and
Speaker 1: just try to manage it to the highest level possible.
Speaker 1: I figure that's the best bet because you know, you're
Speaker 1: always gonna have to breathe, and if that's what they're
Speaker 1: picking up, you're you're gonna be you know, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get picked off. And um, you know that kind of
Speaker 1: leads onto the better or not the better. The safer
Speaker 1: play is just make sure that the wind is always
Speaker 1: in the right the right place and your stands in
Speaker 1: the right place, um, and make sure that they don't
Speaker 1: have a chance to smell you. Um. For that that's
Speaker 1: the that's the proactive thing that you can control, is
Speaker 1: positioning yourself in the wind. Yeah. Um. One last question
Speaker 1: on on sand and and I know this is a
Speaker 1: very a very nuanced question because you know, a one
Speaker 1: to two mile hour winds different than a seven to
Speaker 1: ten versus a eighteen to twenty. We talked about this
Speaker 1: a little bit before we we got hit the record button. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, out west, as I'm approaching Elk, I'm always wondering,
Speaker 1: like if I need to cheat the wind or or
Speaker 1: give them the wind completely? Is five yard loop good enough?
Speaker 1: As a seven hundred fifth yard loop good enough? Like?
Speaker 1: When can they smell me? Is there any data that
Speaker 1: kind of supports that? And I know it's going to
Speaker 1: be variable on the wind, you know, the concentration of
Speaker 1: the smell. So it's like, yeah, everything I'm asking an
Speaker 1: answer for it gets very very complex. There's so many
Speaker 1: variables and you know each one has its own um.
Speaker 1: You know, I guess it's probably weighted differently as well,
Speaker 1: you know in that that answer, um uh, there's no
Speaker 1: research that I'm aware of that that can answer that
Speaker 1: question definitively. But but I'll give you my opinion. The
Speaker 1: way I think about it, I think about it as um,
Speaker 1: even though it's microscopic and we can't see it and
Speaker 1: it's hard for even for us to comprehend it, but
Speaker 1: I look at it as uh, for that, dear. You know,
Speaker 1: stimulus and response, there is probably has to be a
Speaker 1: threshold number of particles to elicit a deer saying I
Speaker 1: gotta get out of here. This is very very dangerous
Speaker 1: for me. Um. And so you know, I'm not a
Speaker 1: mule deer hunter. I'm I'm a white tail hunter. If
Speaker 1: if you've hunt a deer down here long enough, you've
Speaker 1: definitely seen those situations where like you're saying, the wind
Speaker 1: is swirling and a deer comes in, whether they're fifty
Speaker 1: yards away or a hundred fifty, but they caught a whiff.
Speaker 1: They know it's swirled by. And I look at that, Jason,
Speaker 1: as there was a particle or two or a hundred
Speaker 1: or however you would enumerate that, but there was enough
Speaker 1: to say, you know, I need I need to to
Speaker 1: be careful here. Something's going on. And then they get
Speaker 1: that next with and it exceeded that threshold where they
Speaker 1: said I gotta get out of here. Yeah, yeah, or
Speaker 1: the number i've I've smelt it once and I've smelt
Speaker 1: it twice, I'm I'm out. Yeah, that makes sense. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask why I lied there a little bit.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you one more question on set, which
Speaker 1: if you were you know Dr Bronson stricklands headn't do
Speaker 1: a stand and you've got you're going to hunt target
Speaker 1: buck number A, but target buck B might be downwind
Speaker 1: of how you have to get into your stand? What
Speaker 1: what would be the safe distance? I'm gonna put it
Speaker 1: this way, just like, what are you gonna do? How
Speaker 1: far away are you gonna stay? But in order to
Speaker 1: hunt buck A, you're gonna have to let your wind
Speaker 1: go to to be on your approach. Um, what in
Speaker 1: your mind, what could you get away with, you know,
Speaker 1: for that that scent hitting you know that that betting
Speaker 1: area or where you think that bucks hold up at.
Speaker 1: I don't think it would be a couple hundred yards
Speaker 1: I would want it to be a thousand or more away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just once again, just played on that conservative side, a
Speaker 1: little extra effort, a little farther walking, just to make
Speaker 1: sure that that when so. Yeah, not I'm not putting
Speaker 1: you on record, but over a thousand yards away you
Speaker 1: feel like you may be safe, you know, And it
Speaker 1: sounds like I wouldn't even put a number on it.
Speaker 1: As far as possible. You're gonna stay away as far
Speaker 1: as possible as you can, as long as yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: as long as it doesn't you know, turn your half
Speaker 1: mile hike into the stand into a five mile hike.
Speaker 1: You know, within reason, you're gonna stay as far away
Speaker 1: as possible, exactly, and make as little noise as possible.
Speaker 1: The list goes on and on. Yeah. Um, we talked
Speaker 1: about the run a little. It we mentioned some you know,
Speaker 1: nine yards versus yards. Um. You know, we know that
Speaker 1: deer move you know, October November, they're moving thirty three percent.
Speaker 1: I think some of your research says three percent of
Speaker 1: the time during the day during lockdown, they're moving their
Speaker 1: movements during the day. Um, but we noticed, and I
Speaker 1: come back to my people a probably getting tired of
Speaker 1: me of my white tail hunt in Kansas. But it's
Speaker 1: what I know, it's it's it's it's my experience, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna dive back into it. Um. You know, he's
Speaker 1: got cameras spread out all over his you know, thousand acres,
Speaker 1: a couple of different forms, and you know he may
Speaker 1: have one camera that only gets a picture of one buck.
Speaker 1: You know that buck doesn't leave his core area of
Speaker 1: I don't know a hundred two hundred three hundred acres.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming, you know, he's or even tighter than that,
Speaker 1: because the farm is bigger than that. He's got cameras
Speaker 1: more you know, closely closely spaced out than that. But
Speaker 1: then there may be a buck that is on all
Speaker 1: ten of his cameras and all of his neighbors twenty cameras,
Speaker 1: and you know, in the next neighbors over his cameras.
Speaker 1: What what lead to that that? I guess, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: habit or what leads to to that deer's movement patterns
Speaker 1: um for one buck to sit still, in one buck
Speaker 1: to travel all over And I've got some follow up
Speaker 1: questions on that as well. Well, I don't think we
Speaker 1: know the answer, but but we know that it exists.
Speaker 1: We know that there's a lot of variation, uh, and
Speaker 1: how they move and the area they cover and how
Speaker 1: often and what we kind of call it personality, we
Speaker 1: call you know, bucks have have different personalities and some
Speaker 1: of it, Jason, can be Some are just very aggressive.
Speaker 1: Some of them are always out there, always looking for
Speaker 1: a fight. They're always looking for a breeding opportunity. Some
Speaker 1: of them, and this can be mature bucks as well.
Speaker 1: Some of them just are not programmed that way. Some
Speaker 1: of them are just gonna what we call them norm
Speaker 1: if I'm showing my age here, but cheers Norm. I
Speaker 1: mean every Friday night, you know where norm is gonna be.
Speaker 1: And there are are some bucks like that, And to me,
Speaker 1: we got to think back into But the currency for
Speaker 1: an animal is an evolutionary term we called fitness. Fitness
Speaker 1: is basically for you to win and mother nature, you
Speaker 1: gotta live longer or you've gotta have more offspring. And
Speaker 1: so I think you have this diversity of buck personalities
Speaker 1: where some of them are going to be very aggressive
Speaker 1: about breeding opportunities and some of them are gonna be
Speaker 1: more conservative and are gonna stay at home and stay
Speaker 1: close to cover and just try to live longer. That
Speaker 1: their game is the long game of i may have
Speaker 1: less breeding opportunities per year, but I'm gonna live till
Speaker 1: I'm eight years old. This other little whipper snapper, you know,
Speaker 1: he's gonna have maximize as many breeding opportunities as he can,
Speaker 1: but he dies at three and a half. So both
Speaker 1: of those are acceptable solutions. And and so you know,
Speaker 1: without really knowing why, you know, maybe it's it's just
Speaker 1: intrinsic and genetic a little bit and it's just who
Speaker 1: they are. Um, is there any any data or you
Speaker 1: know from your own experience, have you seen that change
Speaker 1: with maturity like well that you know you mentioned whipper
Speaker 1: snapper in the in the last example, does that deer
Speaker 1: settle down as he moves up the pecking order and
Speaker 1: maybe knows he'll be able to breed those doughs clothes?
Speaker 1: Or is there any correlation between maturity and how how
Speaker 1: far a deer wants to go? Um, we don't have
Speaker 1: a good data to assess that, simply because we we
Speaker 1: don't have enough the the longevity of a deer retaining
Speaker 1: a collar, at least the way we do studies is
Speaker 1: you get about a year, sometimes a year and a
Speaker 1: half out of a collar and the batteries exhausted and
Speaker 1: we drop it off. The I think the best explanation
Speaker 1: I can give is like in our deer pens and
Speaker 1: our research facility, we we will see some of the
Speaker 1: aggressiveness change over time. We will see sometimes that a
Speaker 1: buck at middle age that was just really really aggressive,
Speaker 1: by the time he becomes a mature it's almost like
Speaker 1: he settles down. It's almost like he realizes the risk
Speaker 1: I am taking and every time a buck locks up
Speaker 1: for a fight, for example, they're they're taking a risk
Speaker 1: with their life. Uh, they're taking a risk with getting
Speaker 1: an antler. You see it all of an antler in
Speaker 1: the eyeball, wound in the neck. And so it's like
Speaker 1: some of these bucks just learn over time that the
Speaker 1: ruts not here, there's not an estraus dough right in
Speaker 1: front of me. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna run
Speaker 1: all over the place and pick fights with everybody like
Speaker 1: some of these other bucks do. That makes a ton
Speaker 1: of a ton of sense there. Um, moving on to
Speaker 1: my my final question before we get into the vocalizations
Speaker 1: a little bit um, you know, looking at a piece
Speaker 1: of property aside from seclusion and absence of human pressure,
Speaker 1: which in my quick research, um, is maybe the number
Speaker 1: one factory to keeping you know, bigger, more mature deer
Speaker 1: on your property. What do bucks need to get big
Speaker 1: and stay big and and and stay on your property? Um?
Speaker 1: You know, for elk out West, we always talk about
Speaker 1: when we're looking to find elk, we're looking they need
Speaker 1: to have they need to have security and using north
Speaker 1: facing benches in timber or brush, and they need to
Speaker 1: have access to water every day. How do you relate
Speaker 1: that to like the white tails and and where, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not where what you need to keep them
Speaker 1: on your place? The essentials food. Of course, food is
Speaker 1: really really important until you get to the rut and
Speaker 1: food is less important. Um. I would say during that
Speaker 1: time of the year. It's kind of like what we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier. It's something you can't really manage for.
Speaker 1: But there they're roaming the landscape looking for for breeding opportunities. Um.
Speaker 1: But but one thing that we neglect a lot is
Speaker 1: is cover. It's having a really good cover. And so
Speaker 1: you know, I'll get an email or a call and
Speaker 1: I'll get the question of what do I have to
Speaker 1: do on my property, you know, my small acreage, my
Speaker 1: fifty two to keep and you know, hold more deal
Speaker 1: on my property. And and the way I always end
Speaker 1: up is you need to go to Google Earth or
Speaker 1: some program like that, and you need to zoom out
Speaker 1: and you need to figure out what is the most
Speaker 1: limiting factor on the landscape, not on your property adjacent
Speaker 1: what is limiting is food limiting? If so, then you
Speaker 1: can be the destination food property around you. But just
Speaker 1: as easily think of the Midwest. It could be cover.
Speaker 1: You know, so if you just have this wide open
Speaker 1: landscape and you have all this food, well you need
Speaker 1: some cover adjacent to it to hold deer on your property. Um.
Speaker 1: And then once you address those, don't mess it up
Speaker 1: by uh, disturbing the deer all the time. Be sensible
Speaker 1: about about how you hunt and how often you hunt.
Speaker 1: Don't just go in there and blow them up every
Speaker 1: afternoon or they're gonna leave your property or certainly not
Speaker 1: move around during daylight hours. And that makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. And coming from out west, you know, we've
Speaker 1: got it's brush. You we've logged everything, you know three
Speaker 1: times now, you've got stumps, you've got brush, you've got
Speaker 1: black very brush. You get into the creek bottoms, we've
Speaker 1: got devil's clubs, you know, whatever it may be. There's
Speaker 1: just we have brush and and everything for days. And
Speaker 1: so heading out um, you know, to the Midwest, you know,
Speaker 1: to to realize that a little cedar thicket that created
Speaker 1: some sort of like thermal barrier for those deer. And
Speaker 1: we hunted very close to to a cedar um thicket there,
Speaker 1: and you know, coming from out west, it's like, why
Speaker 1: would these deer want to be in it. But you
Speaker 1: realize really quick that you know, when it was eight
Speaker 1: to fifteen degrees, those bucks were moving some of those
Speaker 1: deer into that and they wanted to be in there
Speaker 1: during the middle of the day when they were going
Speaker 1: to bed down so they could have an extra tenor.
Speaker 1: And we walked to farm and walked through a couple
Speaker 1: of them, just looking at new properties and just kind
Speaker 1: of doing the walk around, getting the whole you know,
Speaker 1: first white tail experience and um, you know, just seeing
Speaker 1: the amount of trails and the activity on the property
Speaker 1: going in and out of there at different times of
Speaker 1: the day. What was eye opening. And then I remember
Speaker 1: walking through we walked from you know, one I guess
Speaker 1: would be agg section to another, but there was a
Speaker 1: we were in bluff country and we had to maybe
Speaker 1: drop a couple hundred feet down through a creek, and
Speaker 1: you know out west we clear cut everything. We cut
Speaker 1: it off of the stump. We either turn it into
Speaker 1: lumber or we send it overseas his export logs. And
Speaker 1: I looked and on this property, Randy had cut everything.
Speaker 1: I heighten, just let it lay and it just created
Speaker 1: this tangled mess. And you know, he explained hinge cutting
Speaker 1: to me, which coming from out west made zero since
Speaker 1: it all like left tree was worth money, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's like let trees with more to the big bucks.
Speaker 1: And it is you know, in a in a sawmill.
Speaker 1: And so you quickly start to look at you know,
Speaker 1: all right, don't go in here. But then this is
Speaker 1: like that big buck you know, betting area. They can
Speaker 1: be secluded. There's no reason for anybody outside of hunting
Speaker 1: season to ever go into here. Um. You know, it's
Speaker 1: literally set aside for for bucks. Um, you know. And
Speaker 1: then fast forwarding to a different piece we hunted, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he left a twenty acre circle between his
Speaker 1: dick timber, his open oaks, his food plot of CRP
Speaker 1: and um. I was amazed how many deer would pop
Speaker 1: up at three thirty in the afternoon out of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Like they didn't want to go head in the thick brush,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to go bed, you know, up in
Speaker 1: the timber. Um, they were just going out in the
Speaker 1: middle of theirp And so it quickly started like there's
Speaker 1: no right answer, um, you know, aside from maybe leaving
Speaker 1: these things loan or not bother them all year or
Speaker 1: bothering him, you know, pre hunting season, during hunting season. Um,
Speaker 1: you know there's a there's a security they want, you know,
Speaker 1: like you said, thermal thermal breaks from from cedars and
Speaker 1: and and it kind of opened up my eyes. You
Speaker 1: have to think a little bit more about what those
Speaker 1: dear need, you know, right? And I guess it is
Speaker 1: an aggregate. They don't just need one thing they wanna.
Speaker 1: It seems to be a combination to me at least
Speaker 1: that that they want a little bit of everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and think about the adjacency as well, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: where where can I put this cover relative to where
Speaker 1: food is gonna be? Think about your hunting strategy. Am
Speaker 1: I going to be able to get in and out
Speaker 1: of being in between food and cover? Can I get
Speaker 1: in and out undetected? I mean there's a Um, you
Speaker 1: can be a lot more intentional, uh and and successful
Speaker 1: with where you put cover. Then. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people give credit for I think we give so
Speaker 1: much attention to the food plot, where we're putting the
Speaker 1: food plot, etcetera. I think you need to put just
Speaker 1: as much of where you are intentionally putting cover, and
Speaker 1: it's just gonna increase your success hunting. Okay, now we're
Speaker 1: gonna kind of close us out with you know what,
Speaker 1: what I'm interested in and my job designed deer calls
Speaker 1: is just vocalizations. And you're your opinion what you know
Speaker 1: about deer vocalizations all, um, All add in bits and
Speaker 1: pieces from what I've seen in the stand um, but
Speaker 1: go through like a deer's vocabulary at at a high level.
Speaker 1: And then we'll break it down into you know, grunts,
Speaker 1: rattling bleats, in your opinion what those means and how
Speaker 1: we can you know what they mean to the deer,
Speaker 1: and then how we can maybe use those um in
Speaker 1: hunting situations. Um, from a hunting situation that you know,
Speaker 1: there there are a lot of vocalizations, and I didn't
Speaker 1: do my homework to rattle off all twelve of them
Speaker 1: or whatever. The ones that are are are you know
Speaker 1: most meaningful? Of course, distress you know there's a problem there.
Speaker 1: They blow you know, really hard. Uh, And that's just
Speaker 1: to alert everybody something's wrong and get you know, get
Speaker 1: the heck out of town. Uh. Grunting or the tending
Speaker 1: grunt is the one we think most commonly, and that
Speaker 1: is just communication. Uh. A buck is tending a dough.
Speaker 1: He's he's on the on, on the chase or the pursuit.
Speaker 1: And then more of a territoriality part of that is
Speaker 1: in the grunt store at WESE and that is more
Speaker 1: of a you know, hey, buddy, we're about to tangle
Speaker 1: here and I'm just I'm letting you know, you better
Speaker 1: back off real quick. Um, I've had so so so
Speaker 1: there's no doubt Jason that grunting and work. Um. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't have this industry producing grunt calls if it never worked.
Speaker 1: But everybody that has used them enough has also noticed, Um,
Speaker 1: it works sometimes and it doesn't work others. And the
Speaker 1: way I think about it anyway, is it's gonna depend
Speaker 1: on um Number one, and this seems really silly to
Speaker 1: say this, but did the buck even hear it? So
Speaker 1: the but the buck has to hear the grunt before
Speaker 1: it can respond to the grunt. And and then number two,
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna depend on its mood or physiological state
Speaker 1: as to whether it's gonna respond. So everybody that's grunted
Speaker 1: a deer has grunted, and you like, why in the
Speaker 1: world it didn't even pay me any attention? And you
Speaker 1: can have that exact same scenario two days later with
Speaker 1: a different buck and they come charging in. UM, it's
Speaker 1: really hard to determine exactly what was going on there,
Speaker 1: but we see the same thing with rattling as well.
Speaker 1: It can be UMH is very I'm sorry, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of going down a side road here. I was very
Speaker 1: lucky to work with a buddy of mine UH named
Speaker 1: Mick Hellickson years ago. This would have been in the
Speaker 1: GALIUH mid nineties, and to to my knowledge, it has
Speaker 1: been the only kind of scientifically studied UH rattling experiment.
Speaker 1: And we went to this This wildlife refuge has these
Speaker 1: observation towers and an even buck age structure, and that's
Speaker 1: very important. It was a classic South Texas deer herd
Speaker 1: where you had just as many bucks were mature as
Speaker 1: or immature. And we looked at pre rut, rut, post rut, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and different rattling sequences and so forth. And and Jason,
Speaker 1: the single most important thing about a buck coming in
Speaker 1: and responding to you was did the buck here you
Speaker 1: or not? So with with the with then where you're at,
Speaker 1: there is a certain rate us around you that there
Speaker 1: has to number one be abut to hear you rattling.
Speaker 1: And then number two, are they in the mood you
Speaker 1: know to to respond? Yeah, And that was one of
Speaker 1: the things that I sat in the stand. What I
Speaker 1: would consider, you know, similar age class dear, you know,
Speaker 1: similar level of dominance or same level on the pecking order,
Speaker 1: on the same trail. So whatever they think they're smelling
Speaker 1: as they go by. I could grunt at one and
Speaker 1: he he heard me, he'd pick his head up, you know,
Speaker 1: I always always that's I guess my indicators. He snaps
Speaker 1: his head up and looks at your direction. If not,
Speaker 1: I assume he didn't hear me, and then he would
Speaker 1: put pick his head up and go right back down
Speaker 1: to sniff. And the next year, three and a half
Speaker 1: years old, same age dear gets the same spot, I grant,
Speaker 1: he picks his head up and turns and walks six
Speaker 1: yards under the stand, And I'm like, gosh, dang, I
Speaker 1: don't know why, and maybe we never will know why.
Speaker 1: It's just that first buck didn't have, you know, enough
Speaker 1: want to come back and and you know, pick up
Speaker 1: the trail that I was on. You know, you gotta
Speaker 1: assume that's what they're thinking that I was on. You know,
Speaker 1: a dough or grunting. Um, you know, that didn't work.
Speaker 1: And then there were also times where mature deer. We
Speaker 1: got some mature deer to stop and look and they
Speaker 1: would kind of angle our way. And then it seemed
Speaker 1: to work better on those three and a half the
Speaker 1: four and a half year old deer. If we were
Speaker 1: dealing with the five or six and a half, they
Speaker 1: weren't near as interested in coming. Now. I know that
Speaker 1: might just be a coincidence on this hunt, but it
Speaker 1: seemed like it was easier to to grunt in those
Speaker 1: three and a half to four and a half year
Speaker 1: old bucks. Um. And yeah, I I don't know. I
Speaker 1: always just wonder why and how come? But you know,
Speaker 1: similar to a lot of our discussion today, it may
Speaker 1: just be that deer and what that deer wants to do.
Speaker 1: And you know, if he's that bully buck that wants
Speaker 1: to come try to you know, whoop my butt to
Speaker 1: to take my do over, So the other one didn't
Speaker 1: have that much you know, interest and and a lock
Speaker 1: up or a fight or anything like that. I thought,
Speaker 1: I think it it depended on that buck's personality. You know,
Speaker 1: see a lover or a fighter or a dancer or whatever.
Speaker 1: And then did you catch him in the right mood?
Speaker 1: You know, is he ready to jump up and come fight?
Speaker 1: And some are and some aren't. And you and I
Speaker 1: have been in the exact same experiences, whether it be
Speaker 1: a grunt call or rattle and antlers, where you were
Speaker 1: simultaneously looking at two different bucks and they're about the
Speaker 1: same distance away, so it's not because they didn't hear.
Speaker 1: And one of them lifts his head or just twitches
Speaker 1: his ear and for the most part ignores you, and
Speaker 1: another one picks his head up and comes running in.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, that's what makes it fun. I
Speaker 1: don't know. We got to hunt out of a ground
Speaker 1: blind a couple of days, and you know, we we
Speaker 1: do that. Let's get up, make sure there's no deer
Speaker 1: around before we grunt or rattle, and we do our
Speaker 1: little secret, you know sequence. And there would be times
Speaker 1: where you would grunt and you would have a buck
Speaker 1: just coming real slow. You can see him out maybe
Speaker 1: your blind side window. You're coming real slow. There were
Speaker 1: other times, and I'm using these simultaneously grunts or rotting.
Speaker 1: There other times we'd smash the horns together or grunt
Speaker 1: and you would have a deer come fly into the woods,
Speaker 1: and once again you were trying to figure out, like
Speaker 1: does it matter how hot of dose are in the
Speaker 1: area if he's just completely looking for one, I'll probably
Speaker 1: go to my grave never knowing the answer. But it
Speaker 1: isn't it, you know, whether it's an engineer me just
Speaker 1: wanting to know if I can be a more educated hunter.
Speaker 1: It's like, why did one dear you know, take his
Speaker 1: time very cautiously come in, and then why that other
Speaker 1: deer like charge the blind, you know, come flying by
Speaker 1: it five yards and run past us, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um if if you know, we'll ever
Speaker 1: have the answer, it sounds like the probably no, we'll
Speaker 1: probably never zip that up knowing the reason why. But um,
Speaker 1: here's a cool little story. Is very similar to what
Speaker 1: you're describing. But again with with rattling is in that
Speaker 1: experiment Jason, we had of course, we did this for
Speaker 1: days and days and weeks and weeks and replicated what
Speaker 1: we were doing over and over and just what you're
Speaker 1: you're describing. We we have some bucks that completely ignore
Speaker 1: what you're doing. We we have some bucks that come
Speaker 1: charging in and it's kind of like some of these
Speaker 1: old videos are the guys on the ground rattling. The
Speaker 1: next thing he knows he's getting knocked over by buck,
Speaker 1: you know, just on top of him. But but then
Speaker 1: you also on the exact same rattling sequence where you know,
Speaker 1: to your left, this buck came charging in over to
Speaker 1: your right. When you're done rattling, you look and they're
Speaker 1: one had tiptoed, you know, one wasn't gonna come charging in.
Speaker 1: They come circling around. They're just very cautious. And then
Speaker 1: I had one example I still vividly remember, and again
Speaker 1: this was in Texas. You could see a long ways,
Speaker 1: but I see a buck about three maybe four hundred
Speaker 1: yards away, and I'm wearing these antlers out, you know,
Speaker 1: breaking a sweat, going as hard as I can. And
Speaker 1: while I was rattling, you had to be making the sound.
Speaker 1: While you were rattling, that buck was coming towards you.
Speaker 1: But part of our protocol, our experimental protocol, was you
Speaker 1: rattled for X amount, you you didn't for x amount,
Speaker 1: you pick it up, and when you would put the
Speaker 1: antlers on on your lap, that buck instantaneously would stop coming.
Speaker 1: There was no memory in his head, like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: keep going there as long as the stimulus of the
Speaker 1: rattling antlers was taken away. He clipped and in three
Speaker 1: rattling sequences, I brought him from that far away. Three
Speaker 1: different times. He would stop and just go back to feeding,
Speaker 1: pick him up, rattling again. Here he comes again. But
Speaker 1: because he had to close the distance of four hundred yards,
Speaker 1: you know, it took that long. Yeah, that's very similar
Speaker 1: to predator calling bears they get they get uninterested very quickly,
Speaker 1: so you have to stay on the call forever. So
Speaker 1: it sounds really similar like they would move when you
Speaker 1: were um, you know, rattling, but but not so. Uh.
Speaker 1: One last thing I calling and then we'll we'll wrap
Speaker 1: this up and put a bowl on it. Um grunting.
Speaker 1: So in your opinion, I'll just maybe you can either
Speaker 1: agree with me or disagree with me. When when we
Speaker 1: got there, you know, Parish and Randy like, we're not
Speaker 1: ever gonna grunt at a buck that's on lockdown or
Speaker 1: that's chasing there, Like, we don't call to that, dear. Um,
Speaker 1: they don't like to call first thing in the morning,
Speaker 1: So we were doing morning in and evening sits. You know,
Speaker 1: some people don't like to hunt mornings at certain times,
Speaker 1: you're only agg at night. But we were. We only
Speaker 1: had a certain amount of time from out of state.
Speaker 1: We had to be in the tree at all times.
Speaker 1: So um, you know, we tried not to grunt on
Speaker 1: a buck that was locked down or chasing or chasing hard.
Speaker 1: And then um, we didn't typically grunt in the morning.
Speaker 1: Would you say grunting every thirty minutes is about right
Speaker 1: if if nothing's around. My only concern is when I
Speaker 1: looked at the pace that these bucks were running, if
Speaker 1: I didn't say anything, if I just observed that dear
Speaker 1: would be out of ear shot. Like you said, the
Speaker 1: most important thing is he hears me. So then my
Speaker 1: mind triggers, do I should be calling maybe every ten
Speaker 1: minutes because that buck's gonna leave? Leave my you know,
Speaker 1: radius that that you can hear me? What in your opinion,
Speaker 1: what would be the And I know this may maybe
Speaker 1: more of your hunting opinion and not necessarily research base,
Speaker 1: but what's the right there? You know, cold calling, cold grunting?
Speaker 1: I guess, um, yeah, and you're right, yeah, the sitting
Speaker 1: research basis is just biologists that hunt's opinion. But but
Speaker 1: but I think The single most important thing is as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, is you know, a buck's got to hear it,
Speaker 1: and and I'm not gonna sit up there and just
Speaker 1: where a grunt call out the whole you know, every minute.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that's just disturbance and all. I
Speaker 1: think everything's getting alerted to your presence. But but I
Speaker 1: would want to think of, like the example you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: is that every fifteen two at the most thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: I want the opportunity that, however, whatever that distance is,
Speaker 1: based on the configuration of the land, uh, the wind, noise,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I want to be sure that if there
Speaker 1: is a deer within say two hundred yards of me,
Speaker 1: is that and not maybe I don't see him, that
Speaker 1: he can hear me. So I'm thinking probably every fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty minutes, I'm gonna do that a couple of
Speaker 1: times and just see if I get a response that
Speaker 1: That's kind of what we did, and we kind of
Speaker 1: rotated our grunning versus rattling, like you know, maybe a
Speaker 1: bucks more interested in rattling versus grunning. So whether now
Speaker 1: you're only rattling every thirty forty five minutes and grunting
Speaker 1: every thirty five mixing him in it seemed to be
Speaker 1: a good mix and it kept you know, enough action
Speaker 1: or enough dear coming to the to the location to
Speaker 1: keep us interested in and not get get bored. Um.
Speaker 1: Uh rattling the type time of year are you rattling from?
Speaker 1: You know started pre rout all the way through you
Speaker 1: know even post rut um is that is that the
Speaker 1: ideal time you're gonna get dear to respond to that?
Speaker 1: Then pre rut number one, post rut number two is
Speaker 1: all about Yeah, it's all about being lucky that a
Speaker 1: dove buck tending a dough is has finished breeding and
Speaker 1: he's on the search, and the probability of you catching
Speaker 1: him then is just last versus in the pre rut
Speaker 1: when all the bucks are roaming and looking and searching,
Speaker 1: you just have greater odds um bleats. Where do they
Speaker 1: have their place and calls or should we just leave
Speaker 1: our bleak calls at home all the time or is
Speaker 1: there a place where they can be effective? And and
Speaker 1: how a dough would you know naturally use that sound? Um?
Speaker 1: It definitely works and uh I've I've used it and
Speaker 1: gotten a response um like a lot of people have.
Speaker 1: In terms of a dough coming in and charging in.
Speaker 1: It's just difficult, at least for me. And maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not a good enough hunter um where I could manage
Speaker 1: that and try to get a shot under undetected. But
Speaker 1: to me, it's just that the dough is coming in
Speaker 1: on high, high alert and is focused in where that
Speaker 1: sound is coming from, so trying to get a bow
Speaker 1: drawn back is difficult. Yeah, it can be effective. I
Speaker 1: had about an hour loll on the day I actually
Speaker 1: killed my buck um and and just bleeded. I had
Speaker 1: granted a couple of times or nothing. Time. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna switch it up. I got the call in my
Speaker 1: in my pocket, and whether it was that or not,
Speaker 1: or whether they were already coming, that's a hard part.
Speaker 1: You don't know if they were already on their way,
Speaker 1: you know, two days showed up, uh you know, five
Speaker 1: seven minutes later and they had four you know, two
Speaker 1: bucks each on them, and it's like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it worked not, but I'm not gonna not
Speaker 1: do it. You know, we'll have to test it more
Speaker 1: in the future. But you know, those dose did show up,
Speaker 1: they did turn and it took about a half hour
Speaker 1: for the bucks to finally come back. But um, you
Speaker 1: know bleats, we we don't use them a whole lot.
Speaker 1: We didn't use them a whole lot, but we did
Speaker 1: use them, you know, just a few times to see
Speaker 1: how um and when we were trying to get you know,
Speaker 1: does to come to come to our location. And that
Speaker 1: last sound that we're we're gonna use in hunting, um,
Speaker 1: that snort weeds? Are you going to load that up
Speaker 1: more in the pre rut um and avoid it during lockdown?
Speaker 1: And and are you gonna come back to it in
Speaker 1: the post rut? You know that that's one I've never
Speaker 1: never used before. Um, I've seen it used before and
Speaker 1: it can be effective, and I would think I would, Um,
Speaker 1: I think that might be more of a post rut
Speaker 1: for me doing that. UM, I probably have to put
Speaker 1: more thought into that than I am now. But I
Speaker 1: guess my logic is that during the pre rut, bucks
Speaker 1: are just moving around more often, and if they get
Speaker 1: challenged at that time, uh, maybe they're just gonna move
Speaker 1: on and keep looking the versus Uh, in the peak
Speaker 1: of the rut or post rut, they might be more
Speaker 1: willing to accept the challenge and fight. But that's a
Speaker 1: good question. Yeah, I know, you know just and like
Speaker 1: I said, you can read anything on the internet, so
Speaker 1: whether you've proofed it or not. But people that you know,
Speaker 1: I know, they use it more pre rut. And I
Speaker 1: know you know the guys that I was hunting with
Speaker 1: in the Midwest, they were like, I we don't sport
Speaker 1: we is during the middle of the rut. And um,
Speaker 1: you know which it sounds like you don't do a
Speaker 1: whole lot in the middle of it, like you said, besides,
Speaker 1: get lucky and hope you just put your stand in
Speaker 1: the right place where. Um, you know, either he's chasing
Speaker 1: the door around or he's returning from chasing the door
Speaker 1: around and passing through trying to find a new one.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I really appreciate having you on an
Speaker 1: inclosing Um, Dr Strickland, I'm gonna I'm gonna leave you
Speaker 1: with this one. If if you could give advice to
Speaker 1: hunters by using you know, a deer's biology or their
Speaker 1: instinct against them to find successful would that one hip,
Speaker 1: B Well, that's that's a good one. Um. Probably a
Speaker 1: pretty boring answer here. I would probably just go back
Speaker 1: to my to my fundamentals of don't disturb, don't constantly
Speaker 1: disturb where where deer or bedded? Um, think strategically about
Speaker 1: where cover is at, Think strategically about where food is at.
Speaker 1: Uh use the wind, try to get get in and out. Um.
Speaker 1: So I guess in terms of the biology against them,
Speaker 1: it would be their stomach that makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna I was gonna have you clothes on that.
Speaker 1: But now I've got another question that popped up. Um,
Speaker 1: would you say, just as far as I even checking
Speaker 1: cell cameras like that, deer may not see you, may
Speaker 1: not hear you on that day, but he may pick
Speaker 1: up you know, as you said, one or two or
Speaker 1: ten molecules, whatever that number is. That's that's a low amountain.
Speaker 1: It just puts some want alert. Are you saying just completely?
Speaker 1: You know, we should be using cell cameras, like unless
Speaker 1: it's some farmer agg that has to happen, you know, harvest,
Speaker 1: we should just kind of leave those things alone as
Speaker 1: much as possible. Well, I guess I would say that, UM,
Speaker 1: disturbance isn't just a gunshot, you know, disturbances your present,
Speaker 1: your scent, the sound of your a TV, the truck door.
Speaker 1: You know that. I think it's though all the collection
Speaker 1: of those events over time, alert dear at the population scale,
Speaker 1: does something's changed, something's different, And so you know, I'm
Speaker 1: still gonna run up a trail camera and check it
Speaker 1: throughout the year. But I think you just have to
Speaker 1: treat those as almost like a hunt. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: think everybody can run twenty cellular activated cameras, you know,
Speaker 1: but I think it's not going in there and checking
Speaker 1: it every third day. It might be every couple of
Speaker 1: weeks looking at it and and even treating the wind
Speaker 1: approaching your camera set up much like a hunt. Stand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't go in the middle of the morning when
Speaker 1: he might be on that plotter and that you go
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day where you think he's
Speaker 1: moved off. And yeah, that just taking all of those precautions,
Speaker 1: like you said, make sure you got the right wind,
Speaker 1: even check your camera. Um, all that stuff seems to
Speaker 1: just add up and and just like everything we've talked about,
Speaker 1: I think it's a decision on you know, you have
Speaker 1: to weigh the benefit versus the detriment, right, Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I looked at like the hinge cutting of one of
Speaker 1: these areas, like you're gonna go into a Bucks area
Speaker 1: that he's probably already using. But does hinge cutting make
Speaker 1: it that much better? Um? Is it worth the week
Speaker 1: or two of of hinge cutting? You know all of
Speaker 1: these oaks and you know some of that stuff is
Speaker 1: what I'm still trying to get my you know, my
Speaker 1: head around, like what's worth it, what's not? What's you know,
Speaker 1: what could push that buck out of there versus what
Speaker 1: may you know bring two more bucks into the area.
Speaker 1: Is I think that's that game that everybody plays, trying
Speaker 1: to keep big bucks girl, big bucks. Um. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think like the example, you gave a buck maybe
Speaker 1: using it, but you want him to who use it differently?
Speaker 1: So the buck maybe using that wood lot by just
Speaker 1: passing through, but but you want him to bed right there,
Speaker 1: or you want multiple deer to bed right there. That's
Speaker 1: where being manipulative like that and hinge cutting or or
Speaker 1: just cutting trees could help a lot. Yeah. And there
Speaker 1: could be a short term negative effect. There could be
Speaker 1: a short term negative effect, but years later it's gonna
Speaker 1: be positive. Yeah. Play play the long game and right
Speaker 1: you get you'll get the benefit out of it. So
Speaker 1: I really appreciate having you here. Dr Bronson Strickland a
Speaker 1: wealth of knowledge. I probably could have talked to you
Speaker 1: all day about white tells, but I appreciate the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah gave us and good luck now that your seasons
Speaker 1: are just getting going down there. Yeah, I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to it. Time to get out and hunt some more.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for the opportunity and enjoy talking to you. Yeah. Thanks.
Speaker 1: M