Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
Speaker 1: modern whitetail hunter and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast. I'm your guest
Speaker 1: host Tony Peterson, and today I'm speaking with Jason Sumners,
Speaker 1: who is the Science Branch Chief at the Missouri Department
Speaker 1: of Conservation. All Right, folks, welcome to the Wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: You might notice that this is not the velvety voice
Speaker 1: of Mark Kenyon. He sent me a text last week
Speaker 1: asking me to cover for him so he could attend
Speaker 1: a Yosemite Sam Mustache competition, where, not surprisingly, our own
Speaker 1: Clay Newcomb is one of the guest judges. Feel free
Speaker 1: to wish Mark good luck on that one. I know
Speaker 1: he really values his facial hair, so this is a
Speaker 1: big opportunity for him. Anyway, today I'm speaking with Jason Sumners,
Speaker 1: who is the Science Branch chief at the Missouri Department
Speaker 1: of Conservation. Jason has been involved in a pile of
Speaker 1: deer studies and dear research over the years. He's a
Speaker 1: devout white tail and turkey hunter and it's just a
Speaker 1: not only a good guy, but he's a wealth of
Speaker 1: information on white tails, and this podcast covers I don't
Speaker 1: know a few different topics, including how he approaches the
Speaker 1: management of hard science of white tail research while factoring
Speaker 1: in the social science aspect, which is which is a
Speaker 1: weird dichomic, which is a weird dichotomy that a lot
Speaker 1: of state game agencies face. The podcast also covers a
Speaker 1: lot about c w D. This guy is real knowledgeable
Speaker 1: about c w D um where it came from, how
Speaker 1: they found it, where it's going, what the future looks like,
Speaker 1: pretty in depth stuff. They're not as pessimistic of an
Speaker 1: outlook as I would have expected, so it's actually pretty
Speaker 1: interesting to hear how he feels about the future of
Speaker 1: this might go um. And we also talk about some
Speaker 1: management practices like Antler point restrictions and how you know
Speaker 1: they have their place in different parts of the country. Now, overall,
Speaker 1: such such an interesting guy to talk to. I think
Speaker 1: you're gonna absolutely love this one. Jason, Welcome to the
Speaker 1: Wire to Hunt podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. You
Speaker 1: come highly recommended from a fellow that I had on
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, this was months ago now, John McRoberts, who
Speaker 1: talked all about that wild Missouri buck. You guys had
Speaker 1: down there that lit out for like a hundred eighty
Speaker 1: miles and kind of broke, you know, most of the
Speaker 1: rules we think about for deer and he was that
Speaker 1: that was a really interesting episode. He's a sharp guy,
Speaker 1: but he he recommended you. So you you come here
Speaker 1: with a gold star by your name. Let me put
Speaker 1: it that way. Well, I pretty shape that. Yeah. John
Speaker 1: is a great guy and we've had the opportunity to
Speaker 1: work together quite a bit over the last several years.
Speaker 1: We we took a turkey biologist and are trying to
Speaker 1: turn him into a servant biologists. So yeah, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: he's into birds big time. Yeah, learning the challenges of
Speaker 1: having to to manage a four legged creator versus a
Speaker 1: two legged one. That's a different deal. Before before we
Speaker 1: get into it, why don't you let the listeners know
Speaker 1: what you do? Yeah. So, um, I'm a science Branch
Speaker 1: Chief for the Missouri Department of Conservation and that's a
Speaker 1: fancy title to say that. I lead a team of
Speaker 1: about eighty five scientists biologists, you know, real researchers um
Speaker 1: that are focused on gathering the science based information that
Speaker 1: helps our agency inform um resource management decisions. As well
Speaker 1: as social um science kind of related issues as well.
Speaker 1: So we informed policy through through human dimensions work. And
Speaker 1: that's a that's a big department probably compared to a
Speaker 1: lot of state game agencies to be you know, dedicated
Speaker 1: to science around game animals and non game animals too. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so agency wide, you know, we've got fourteen hundred full
Speaker 1: time employees. We have a really large agency, but we do,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty unique in terms of having UM eight
Speaker 1: plus folks that really are working on everything from fish
Speaker 1: and wildlife health related issues to invasive species systems, you know,
Speaker 1: ecology and management, watershed protection to also our you know,
Speaker 1: big game UM wildlife species as well as sport fish.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we spend UM a pretty significant amount of staff,
Speaker 1: resources and dollars to again just try to provide the
Speaker 1: information to help make UM as well informed decisions as
Speaker 1: we possibly can. Well, where does that come from? Down
Speaker 1: there in Missouri? Where? Where? Where did the emphasis for
Speaker 1: the science behind all this stuff really really take hold? Like?
Speaker 1: How how does that happen? It? Really the science based
Speaker 1: management or informed management really dates itself to the beginning
Speaker 1: of the agency in ninety six and the first action
Speaker 1: of the Conservation Commission in fact, was to establish the
Speaker 1: Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Missouri, And
Speaker 1: so very early on, UM, folks here recognize the need
Speaker 1: of science. Aldo Leopold was very influential, UM, working with
Speaker 1: the Sydney Stevens and some of the folks who kind
Speaker 1: of really helped shape the Missouri model of conservation and
Speaker 1: its citizens based approach, and and recognize that proactive science
Speaker 1: and research was was what was gonna need to help
Speaker 1: guide resource management in the state, across the country quite frankly,
Speaker 1: and would be a big foundation for helping build public trust. UM,
Speaker 1: you know, really trying to make it is a transparent
Speaker 1: as possible how the agency was making decisions and what
Speaker 1: information they were using to do it. And so it's
Speaker 1: been a long legacy of the department. Yeah, and we'll
Speaker 1: get into this a little bit later, because I do
Speaker 1: want to talk to you more about that. But there's
Speaker 1: a weird balance there of just hard science based around
Speaker 1: the resource whatever whatever you're studying white tails on down
Speaker 1: or whatever, but there's also the social science aspect of
Speaker 1: what you do because you need the you know, you
Speaker 1: need guys like me to buy licenses and go help
Speaker 1: you shoot a you know, your deer every year or
Speaker 1: whatever whatever the goal is. And so it's it's a
Speaker 1: weird it's a weird balance to strike. Yeah, no it is,
Speaker 1: and it's again it's another one of those that the
Speaker 1: the agency has been very proactive in doing. We we
Speaker 1: had actually the first social scientists employed by a state
Speaker 1: fish and wildlife agency was hired by the Missouri Department
Speaker 1: Conservation in the late nineteen seventies. And so even from
Speaker 1: that time forward, you look now there's still state agencies
Speaker 1: are just now adding and growing their social science capacity.
Speaker 1: So I often say, you know, I managed the dear
Speaker 1: population is for biologically and socially acceptable levels. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are many things that as you mentioned, we do
Speaker 1: this cooperatively with the public and specific segments of our public,
Speaker 1: and so ensuring they are a critical part of our
Speaker 1: decision making processes is key to the success of any
Speaker 1: action we take today. Have you have you worked for
Speaker 1: other state game agencies? I am not UM. Missouri Partment
Speaker 1: Conservation the only state fish winelife agency I've worked for UM.
Speaker 1: I went to grad school in Mississippi, spent some time
Speaker 1: doing research and in South Texas, so those times I
Speaker 1: had opportunities to engage with the folks that run those places.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've been at Missouri for thirteen years. It
Speaker 1: seems like that that school downe in Mississippi turns out
Speaker 1: a lot of dear biologists. It does. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: I graduated from University of Missouri and had the opportunity
Speaker 1: to go to Mississippi and work with Dr Steven Maris
Speaker 1: and you know, Bronson Strickland and Rainy Deng was there
Speaker 1: at the time. Um so yeah, some folks who were
Speaker 1: really moving and shaking the world of deer mamanagement and
Speaker 1: and and open up you know, my eyes to how
Speaker 1: things are done in in different places. Are you I
Speaker 1: know that you have colleagues from different states and are
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you're plugged into this scene. And
Speaker 1: it's an interesting it's interesting to hear you talk about
Speaker 1: the MDC down there having such a focus on this, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it kind of speaks to where you know,
Speaker 1: even like you talked about fifty years ago placing the
Speaker 1: value on hunting and the tradition of hunting fishing game.
Speaker 1: And I guess what I want to ask you was like,
Speaker 1: do you talk to people in similar positions in other states,
Speaker 1: Are they jealous of what you guys have going on?
Speaker 1: Because I know, I've interviewed a pile of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: state and federal, you know, employees involved in game management
Speaker 1: and different capacities, and it almost seemed like some states
Speaker 1: they're just like struggling to even get noticed at all.
Speaker 1: And you know, MR's see that seems like a different
Speaker 1: case down there. Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's no doubt we because of the sales tax also
Speaker 1: that went into place in nineteen seventy six. You know,
Speaker 1: the the citizens of the state of Missouri have been
Speaker 1: a long term vested party in the work of conservation
Speaker 1: and how that happened and we can we can speculate
Speaker 1: all day, but but the founding in the commission was
Speaker 1: based on initiative petition so y six. It was put
Speaker 1: to the citizens of the state of Missouri, how did
Speaker 1: they want their conservation department of function? And and at
Speaker 1: that time I think the citizens really took real ownership
Speaker 1: of what conservation would look like moving forward. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just something put into the executive branch of state government.
Speaker 1: So from the from the very beginning of Missouri Conservation Federation,
Speaker 1: stood up led the initiative petition to get the Conservation
Speaker 1: Department created, and then in nineteen seventy six, after a
Speaker 1: number of attempts, also led UM a petition to get
Speaker 1: the one eighth of one percent sales tax put in place.
Speaker 1: So again the citizens driving UM and saying they value
Speaker 1: and have strong commitment to the work of conservation. So
Speaker 1: at that time we got one eighth of one percent
Speaker 1: UM sales tax generated that goes straight to the Conservation Commission.
Speaker 1: Another unique thing that many folks don't recognize is that
Speaker 1: we have a second conservation and State Parks sales tax.
Speaker 1: We get one tenth of one percent that goes to
Speaker 1: the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and state Parks, and
Speaker 1: half of that is also split out to the county
Speaker 1: soil and water districts, and so you're not only paying
Speaker 1: the one eighth but also the one tenth. So it's
Speaker 1: really reflective of again the kind of the citizen led commitment.
Speaker 1: And so from the very beginning, the department is always
Speaker 1: in the Commission has always placed great value in that strong,
Speaker 1: strong relationship with the public. So I think it has
Speaker 1: built support. Not only is the built capacity through the funding,
Speaker 1: but it's just built general support report trust. So we're
Speaker 1: always talking about how do we maintain the trust of
Speaker 1: the public. And again it gets back to this science
Speaker 1: based decisions, but then also using social science to inform
Speaker 1: those as we move forward, so that the decision making
Speaker 1: process is really open and transparent. Yeah. I mean you
Speaker 1: you would have a hard time catching me lobbying for
Speaker 1: lots of extra taxes. But I really love there's there's
Speaker 1: some success stories in the outdoor industry around like what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, where it's like this is dedicated funding.
Speaker 1: It comes from here, it goes to there, and that's it. Now.
Speaker 1: I just think when you know, when you look at
Speaker 1: the problems we're facing that some of which you and
Speaker 1: I'll chat about here, and you know you hear you
Speaker 1: hear people throw out different solutions. I just look at
Speaker 1: this and I go, man, I think the way that
Speaker 1: we save this, at least as long as we can
Speaker 1: is just through access. And I really wish we could
Speaker 1: get something going, you know, state, state level. There's you
Speaker 1: see these walk in programs in different places, and I
Speaker 1: love them. I would love to see more of that,
Speaker 1: even even at a federal level. Somehow where some little
Speaker 1: tiny chunk of some kind of sales tax or something
Speaker 1: goes into just access. It's just we're gonna we're buying
Speaker 1: more land open to hunting and fishing. We're buying, we're
Speaker 1: leasing more from the private landowners to encourage this, and
Speaker 1: just you know, had your bets against this urban sprawl,
Speaker 1: keep some places that aren't gonna you know, become mcmansion's,
Speaker 1: and just keep that going where it's like we've got
Speaker 1: we've got access. We're always moving towards that target. I
Speaker 1: would just love to see that. Yeah, I know, you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right. And there's been some you know, some federal
Speaker 1: programs that have helped kind of stimulate that. We were
Speaker 1: kind of late to the party in terms of of
Speaker 1: leasing lands for the purposes of providing recreation, you know,
Speaker 1: from private landowners. But most of those things have come
Speaker 1: in short temper every buckets of dollars from the federal government.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you don't get that long sustained kind of process.
Speaker 1: When we got some of those initial funding, then the
Speaker 1: Commission the Conservation sales tax was allowed us to then
Speaker 1: continue to support it and move forward. So there is
Speaker 1: no doubt continued and consistent funding streams is really really
Speaker 1: critical to the work we're doing. It's also part of
Speaker 1: why we're working so hard to get recovering America's Wildlife
Speaker 1: Act through Congress again to support kind of that third
Speaker 1: leg of fish force and wildlife and then kind of
Speaker 1: the diverse fish and wildlife species to be another pool
Speaker 1: of consistent funding that isn't just relying solely on the
Speaker 1: backs of hunters and anglers through you know, excise tax
Speaker 1: dollars or license revenue to support the work of conservation. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ways we could address this, and
Speaker 1: I know even some of the some of the opportunities
Speaker 1: that you know, for those private lands open to public
Speaker 1: that we had before, they're they're not enough anymore. I
Speaker 1: mean it just as an example where I hunt in
Speaker 1: northern Wisconsin. Uh, there's a lot of MFL open land.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a tax incentivized program where if you
Speaker 1: if you enroll your land, you basically your your tax
Speaker 1: bills cut down to almost nothing. But it's public and
Speaker 1: so I mean, you can still use it obviously, but
Speaker 1: so can everyone else. And man, I'm starting to see
Speaker 1: at least one or two places that I like to
Speaker 1: hunt go out of that program. Every year, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of reasons. Right when you get a
Speaker 1: hot real estate market, people are gonna sell, and you know,
Speaker 1: people want to keep places for themselves, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons for it. But you see that and go, man,
Speaker 1: that worked for a while to keep access out there,
Speaker 1: but it sort of feels like that one slipping and
Speaker 1: needs a little bit more love. And I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: examples of that all over the country where you know,
Speaker 1: not not just white tail hunters, but all hunters are
Speaker 1: looking at it going, man, we're losing some stuff that
Speaker 1: we should we need to have access to. And I
Speaker 1: hope we really make that front and center as much
Speaker 1: as possible in the next few years because I think
Speaker 1: it's really important. Yeah, it's an ongoing challenge, and as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, the way we hunt has changed, the way
Speaker 1: we value land and in bringing others along with us,
Speaker 1: uh to hunt has certainly changed. Specially in the white
Speaker 1: tail world, is more emphasis on being very selective in
Speaker 1: harvest decisions and stuff like that. Limited access and it's
Speaker 1: only gonna get worse, you know. We just continue to
Speaker 1: see the challenges have a tap fragmentation, urban sprawl, all
Speaker 1: those things, reducing the acres in which we have opportunity
Speaker 1: to hunt, and knowing what regulations are and access are
Speaker 1: d two single biggest barriers that that most folks face
Speaker 1: when trying to get into the world of hunting. For
Speaker 1: those of us that grew up doing it, we we
Speaker 1: trudge away and we we figure it out. Um. But
Speaker 1: but if it's not if you don't own land or
Speaker 1: you don't know somebody who has land, especially in the
Speaker 1: eastern part of the US, and it's certainly here in
Speaker 1: the heart of the Midwest, having having public land is
Speaker 1: certainly a challenge as well. Yeah, yeah, it's important. We
Speaker 1: should we should probably talk about some deer here. What
Speaker 1: uh what do you guys? Let me ask you this first,
Speaker 1: what are in your position there at MDC. What are
Speaker 1: you most concerned with with white tails right now? Well,
Speaker 1: certainly right now, chronic wasting disease is always at the
Speaker 1: forefront of the biggest challenge we face in terms of
Speaker 1: long term management and sustaining deer populations. Um. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then the second one would certainly be what do long
Speaker 1: term hunter numbers look like? As we talk about this
Speaker 1: access issue. Um, it's not only access for individual hunters
Speaker 1: to hunt, but it's access to deer populations to manage
Speaker 1: them through hunting. And we struggle here with with urban
Speaker 1: deer management issues. We struggle with quite honestly, with the
Speaker 1: leasing of large chunks of property where you know, the
Speaker 1: folks leasing it that might have a different object if
Speaker 1: then than what the landowner leasing it might be. So
Speaker 1: so again, you know, certainly access and population manage. But
Speaker 1: but no doubt the emergence of chronic wasting diseases is
Speaker 1: at the forefront of that. Well, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: that in a second. Well, I want to I want
Speaker 1: to touch on that what you just said about that,
Speaker 1: the challenge of managing deer with such diversified interests out there,
Speaker 1: and you know, you see this, you see this a
Speaker 1: lot where there there's like a tendency to want to
Speaker 1: claim ownership over deer if you're if you're running a
Speaker 1: private place and you've got that lease or you've got
Speaker 1: your own land and you've got the hit lists and
Speaker 1: all that stuff, and then you've got you know, maybe
Speaker 1: you've got somebody like that on a couple hundred acres
Speaker 1: next to you know, Union Ridge or something like that
Speaker 1: down there in in Missouri, that's gonna get you know,
Speaker 1: piss pounded during you know, rifle season in both season.
Speaker 1: And so you're looking at that, going, well, we've got
Speaker 1: one landowner or several maybe soaking up a ton of
Speaker 1: these deer and being very selective. Then we've got another
Speaker 1: spot where, you know, if it's brown, it's down just
Speaker 1: because of the sheer numbers of people out there. It's
Speaker 1: gotta that's gotta be a real challenge to manage white
Speaker 1: tales with that, with the way things just are. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you look at the natural things that occur, just the
Speaker 1: arrangement of habitat on the landscape from a county by
Speaker 1: county basis, but yeah, we we do have just tremendously
Speaker 1: very hunter density um in counties and no doubt difference
Speaker 1: in personality and in you know, what the local hunting
Speaker 1: culture might be and what they desire to have. And
Speaker 1: so all that does is they add the complexity of
Speaker 1: regulations makes it harder folks understand how we're going to
Speaker 1: manage a deer population. And so it is certainly, um
Speaker 1: without a doubt, probably one of the most challenging species
Speaker 1: that a state fish wildlife agency has to try to manage.
Speaker 1: To balance all those varying interest is it. It's gotta
Speaker 1: be I mean, there's gotta be a positive sight to
Speaker 1: that though as well, just from the you know, there
Speaker 1: are a keystones species, right, Like everybody loves white tails.
Speaker 1: You know, you get into the Midwest, this is what
Speaker 1: we have and you know alutia, same thing, and so
Speaker 1: you have that passion around it and that history and
Speaker 1: tradition and the desire for it. So that's a plus
Speaker 1: because you you know, if your intentions are good, you
Speaker 1: can probably get some funding for this, and you know,
Speaker 1: like people, people want white tails out there. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you've got the other end of that
Speaker 1: spectrum that you're dealing with, and it's it's just got
Speaker 1: to be difficult, yeah, you know, and this is why
Speaker 1: I really worry about chronic wasting diseases that you know,
Speaker 1: folks do value the opportunity to chase them, to know
Speaker 1: they're there, to have them on the landscape and appreciate them.
Speaker 1: You know, they produced millions of pounds of food every
Speaker 1: year for folks to eat, and you know, we talk
Speaker 1: about food insecurity, things that happen, and so they're just
Speaker 1: a wide range of the way folks value them. And
Speaker 1: then there are certainly folks who who they compete with,
Speaker 1: right you know, road crop farmers and others who are
Speaker 1: trying to trying to make a living to so that
Speaker 1: that dichotomy is challenging the kind of long term from
Speaker 1: a broader conservation perspective, you know, stay fishing wildlife agencies
Speaker 1: oh much of their success of the restoration of white
Speaker 1: tail deer and turkeys, but the value folks place in
Speaker 1: recreational lands, the value and the amount of work habitat
Speaker 1: work that they'll do to manage for white tail deer benefits.
Speaker 1: A whole wide diversity of species protects our waterways and
Speaker 1: our watersheds, provides cover for the whole host of ground
Speaker 1: nesting birds and and and everything else that occurs within
Speaker 1: the ecosystem. And and so my concern kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: like microscopically long term with the conservation community is that
Speaker 1: as chronic wasting disease continues to increase, as folks choose
Speaker 1: not to hunt in areas where chronic wasting disease is
Speaker 1: really prevalent, as the potential value of the white tailed
Speaker 1: deer resource declines, then what happens to much of the
Speaker 1: rural Midwest where folks have been not pushing out timber
Speaker 1: to grow fish, uewing cows, not you know, doing some
Speaker 1: of the habitat management things they've been doing to protect
Speaker 1: and manage for white tailed deer. And so, yeah, no
Speaker 1: doubt we worry about the loss of this really important resource.
Speaker 1: But to me, it's also kind of the trickle down
Speaker 1: effects of of what comes from that and the benefits
Speaker 1: that we get from folks managing for deer and turkeys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in in reference to CWD, do you think that we
Speaker 1: take by we, I just mean, like the general hunting population,
Speaker 1: we take white tails for granted because most you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're aging out, you know, sort of the
Speaker 1: upper echelon of the white tail hunters. You know, the
Speaker 1: boomers are going away kind of just just from their age,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of people who are you know,
Speaker 1: picking up the reins have only ever known pretty good
Speaker 1: deer populations. Like I mean, even even when I started hunting,
Speaker 1: and which you know it was you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: hey day stuff, but it definitely wasn't like nine seventy, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I've never known a world where you couldn't go out
Speaker 1: and count on white tails to be in the woods
Speaker 1: with you. And I always wonder about that in in
Speaker 1: reference to CWD, like are we just are we taking
Speaker 1: this for granted that they're always going to be there
Speaker 1: and this thing goes this thing breaks bad in a
Speaker 1: real bad way. You know, we might not have any
Speaker 1: choice about this like this it might be too late. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're really right, Tony. You know, in the
Speaker 1: individual conversations you had with folks there, there tends to
Speaker 1: be a greater concern with the older hunting public because
Speaker 1: they do remember the days when when when you when
Speaker 1: you expect you you were excited to see a dear,
Speaker 1: not disappointed when you didn't see a deer, you know,
Speaker 1: And and it's so shifted. When I took over the
Speaker 1: deer program in two thousand eleven UM, the paradigm across
Speaker 1: much of the Midwest was there was no way we
Speaker 1: were ever going to get top of deer populations. They
Speaker 1: were gonna be ever growing. Hunters could never shoot enough
Speaker 1: deer to control population. So yeah, we're living in this
Speaker 1: world of abundance. We had the twelve hym ragic disease
Speaker 1: outbreak and on the tail end of years of shooting
Speaker 1: lots of lots of antalysts deer, and in some places
Speaker 1: deer numbers went down and folks went, whoa, wait, maybe
Speaker 1: we can so we started to shift that paradigm. But
Speaker 1: but they've always been very resilient, right. We just backed
Speaker 1: off the harvest and deer populations come back. And so
Speaker 1: I I do think that we take for granted, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of the resiliency of of this species, and they
Speaker 1: certainly are resilient. Um. But but the long term consequences
Speaker 1: CWD are real. And as much as we would like
Speaker 1: to wish them away, reality is that kills deer, and
Speaker 1: it kills them at much younger ages than they would
Speaker 1: die otherwise. Um. And it's a real it's a real
Speaker 1: challenge and a real challenge because we don't see it
Speaker 1: day to day. We don't see deer find deer in
Speaker 1: a pond er cree did from CWD like we do.
Speaker 1: E h D. It is just a slow trickle. It's
Speaker 1: like a pinhole in your tire. You know. It's not
Speaker 1: like a screw where it just blowing air out and
Speaker 1: you know the problem is there. It's like this this
Speaker 1: small little penel that you can't figure out where it is,
Speaker 1: but you walk outside one day and your tires flat.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't quite understand why. So it's a
Speaker 1: real challenge for perspective to get your arms wrapped around.
Speaker 1: And you guys are pretty heavy into studying a bunch
Speaker 1: of these aspects of CWT right now down there, aren't you. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: yeah we are. And I think at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: our biggest focus really is trying to do intensive surveillance
Speaker 1: to inform management, and so we've been doing is intensive
Speaker 1: of CWD sampling, is is anybody in the country UM
Speaker 1: to try to really inform management is be aggressive as
Speaker 1: we can to try to limit the spread of it.
Speaker 1: So we we implemented targeted culling UM in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: shortly after we had our first detection in the in
Speaker 1: the free ranging herd, to try to again limit the spread,
Speaker 1: try to limit the distribution UM lengthen the timeline in
Speaker 1: which c w D has an impact on the deer population,
Speaker 1: and I think to this point we've been successful at
Speaker 1: doing that. But our challenge now is that it is
Speaker 1: it is so prevalent in free ranging populations across the
Speaker 1: country UM as well as had been in captive facilities
Speaker 1: that we're getting new introductions of the disease, so we
Speaker 1: have it popping up in new places, and the continued
Speaker 1: spread in that challenge that it poses UM is almost insurmountable. Well,
Speaker 1: what do you say to people, because I know what
Speaker 1: people are listening to this, They're gonna say, well, that's
Speaker 1: you're they're popping up because you're testing. What do you
Speaker 1: say to people when they say that, Well, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not true. You know, it just couldn't be farther from
Speaker 1: the truth. So in two thousand two to two thousand four,
Speaker 1: the state UM tested twenty two thousand deer statewide, and
Speaker 1: so we elected almost two hundred deer from every county
Speaker 1: across the state. And that what that did was that
Speaker 1: told us that if the disease was there in two
Speaker 1: thousand to two thousand four, it was there at very
Speaker 1: low prevalence. So we should have detected it if it
Speaker 1: was at a county scale at like two percent. So
Speaker 1: if we look at some of the most heavily infected
Speaker 1: core areas of Wisconsin, where it's maybe at the county
Speaker 1: level it's ten or fifteen percent, within the buck segment
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's fifty we would have detected those.
Speaker 1: There's just no doubt in my mind we would have
Speaker 1: detected those. And so as we continued, we we we
Speaker 1: continued to sample deer through that time, and our first
Speaker 1: detection of the free range of population was in where
Speaker 1: we had already tested close to seventy thousand deer in
Speaker 1: the state up to that point. So we never stopped testing.
Speaker 1: We've been testing through time. So the other side of
Speaker 1: it is is it follows a very predictable pattern. It
Speaker 1: increases in prevalence and increases in distribution. If we were
Speaker 1: just detecting it because we were doing more testing, we
Speaker 1: would find sort of a stable percentage that the disease
Speaker 1: would be at. We would go test everywhere and we
Speaker 1: would just finally find it. But that just it's just
Speaker 1: not the pattern that it follows. And it's an easy
Speaker 1: narrative for those who don't want to believe to just
Speaker 1: kind of throw out that um that suggestion and then
Speaker 1: we have to like provide the evidence to refute it, right,
Speaker 1: And so it just doesn't follow the patterns that we see.
Speaker 1: So you guys down there, we're testing for almost a
Speaker 1: decade statewide before you had the first your first positive
Speaker 1: pop Yes, yep, were you were you also testing uh,
Speaker 1: captive servants? Yes, there was testing occurring within captive facilities
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah. So our first, our first free ranging
Speaker 1: in our first captive positives both occurred about the same time.
Speaker 1: Our first captive positive occurred in two thousand and ten
Speaker 1: in Lynn County and a hunting preserve um in two thousand.
Speaker 1: Fall two thousand eleven, we detected it in another captive
Speaker 1: facility that was associated with that original one, about about
Speaker 1: ten miles of the crow flies, and then the fall
Speaker 1: of eleven we detected it just right outside of that
Speaker 1: one in the free ranging population in Macon County. And
Speaker 1: so again at that time we went in and we
Speaker 1: started doing mandatory sampling in a six county area and
Speaker 1: on opening weekend we started just very intensively sampling and
Speaker 1: you don't find it right, you don't find it, You
Speaker 1: don't find it, and then a couple of years later
Speaker 1: we pick up another spot, so it's it's evidence of introduction.
Speaker 1: And then when we have those spots, we go in
Speaker 1: try to do very intensive removals with the cooperation of
Speaker 1: landowners to keep prevalence low. And we see different patterns
Speaker 1: based on where we've we've been in the state based
Speaker 1: on participation. Um. But yeah, so we continually, year after
Speaker 1: year after year, are looking at that. One big change
Speaker 1: we made in the mid two thousands was to shift
Speaker 1: to testing adult bucks, which increased our likelihood of detection,
Speaker 1: increased the power in which we would detect the disease earlier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you you might have been skewed a little bit,
Speaker 1: you might have been skewed to fewer positives testing the
Speaker 1: general dear population without a focus on mature bucks. But
Speaker 1: it's still would have that still doesn't disprove that that
Speaker 1: it just wasn't there and then it showed up and
Speaker 1: now it's there, right right. Yeah. Another perfect example is
Speaker 1: you know the border with Arkansas. You know, we we've
Speaker 1: tested along the border of Arkansas for a long time,
Speaker 1: and over the last three years we've detected positives and
Speaker 1: that's because of the spread that is occurring throughout northwestern
Speaker 1: Arkansas and so those animals are starting to enter into Missouri.
Speaker 1: It's not that we hadn't been testing there, it's just
Speaker 1: the diseases now been there. And so as as we look,
Speaker 1: you know, in free arranging white tail populations, all communar
Speaker 1: populations across the West. Hunters are now moving more UM
Speaker 1: infected animals across the landscape, and no doubt, you know,
Speaker 1: there's more where the disease exists to make some of
Speaker 1: those long distance movements that are introducing the disease to
Speaker 1: new places. And then again, the continued you know movement
Speaker 1: either in the back of tructs will again dead or alive.
Speaker 1: UM just represents an opportunity for the disease to get
Speaker 1: to more places more frequently now than we were we
Speaker 1: were fifteen years you know. Yeah, well, and what's what
Speaker 1: is pretty frustrating about this issue that I'm I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're well aware of, is it's there's always an attempt
Speaker 1: to just boil it down to either it's really not
Speaker 1: an issue, or it's this, you know, this person's fault
Speaker 1: or this segment of the you know, serving industry's fault.
Speaker 1: And you see that game going on, and then you know,
Speaker 1: like that that study that we referenced earlier with about John,
Speaker 1: you know, and the buck that takes a real, real
Speaker 1: long walk, and then you know, if you're in the
Speaker 1: captive servit industry, you can say, well, jeez, the wild
Speaker 1: white tails are walking eighty miles away. Maybe it wasn't
Speaker 1: us moving these year around and it's like, no, do
Speaker 1: you understand it's probably everything, Like you can't just stick
Speaker 1: your hand your head in the sand and be obtuse
Speaker 1: about this and be like, well, couldn't be us. And
Speaker 1: when you look at these issues and go, man, this
Speaker 1: is spreading around for a lot of different reasons, and
Speaker 1: we're all in the same boat, like this is not
Speaker 1: something where like it doesn't do us any good to
Speaker 1: just fully blame you know, one segment or the other
Speaker 1: when this thing is out there doing what it's doing. Though, no,
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more Tony. You know, early on there
Speaker 1: is no doubt that the distribution of the disease was
Speaker 1: being spread by confined servants and and that's that's just
Speaker 1: the reality of how it was getting to some new
Speaker 1: places and new locations. Proving how that happened, and extremely
Speaker 1: challenging because one thing, it's it's a it's a really
Speaker 1: hard disease for us to detect, right, I mean, we
Speaker 1: gotta basically sample dead critters, and it's not just as
Speaker 1: simple as getting a little blood onto a tissue or
Speaker 1: something like that and testing it. You know, we've got
Speaker 1: to have lymphatic tissues gotta go to lab. They have
Speaker 1: had to have had it for a while for it
Speaker 1: to detect it. So there's all these things that are
Speaker 1: inherently challenging when when detecting the disease. But you're absolutely
Speaker 1: right that as the disease became established in free ranging
Speaker 1: populations and minimal management action was taken, then populate the
Speaker 1: diseases increased in free ranging populations, and so that that
Speaker 1: represent an opportunity for more hunters to be unintentionally moving
Speaker 1: the disease around. When they were throwing a deer in
Speaker 1: the back of their truck driving you know, forty minutes
Speaker 1: or four hours home or guard us you know where
Speaker 1: it is, and thinking they weren't doing anything wrong, they
Speaker 1: bone it out, They throw the carcass out back and
Speaker 1: let the eagles and the cows and everything else scavenge on. Hey,
Speaker 1: putting it back in nature. We're not doing anything wrong.
Speaker 1: And then it's like, oh, whoops, we may have been
Speaker 1: contributing to the spread of this disease across the landscape.
Speaker 1: And and we find ourselves at a point now where
Speaker 1: it matters not how it got there or how it started.
Speaker 1: This is where we are now are we taking a
Speaker 1: holistic approach of trying to minimize the risk of continuing
Speaker 1: to introduce it to new places and the risk of
Speaker 1: it it expanding where it does exist. Do you do
Speaker 1: you feel sort of a you know, damned if you do,
Speaker 1: damned if you don't situation here, because there's really when
Speaker 1: and when you get a new you know, a new
Speaker 1: flare up somewhere, or you finally they start popping positive.
Speaker 1: You really only from from your perspective at the state agency,
Speaker 1: you really only have two options. Let it go and
Speaker 1: just cross your fingers. I hope you retire before it
Speaker 1: blows up, or you go, we gotta knock this population
Speaker 1: down to buy ourselves some time. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: what we have going on. I mean, that's gotta be tough.
Speaker 1: It is, it really is, and I often I greatly appreciate,
Speaker 1: you know, Doug Dern saying we're buying time and paying
Speaker 1: for science, and that's really what we're trying to do
Speaker 1: because it elimination of the disease once it's become established,
Speaker 1: which by the time a lot of the modeling work
Speaker 1: we've done, by the time we detected or able to
Speaker 1: detect it, it's there and the ability to eliminate it
Speaker 1: from the landscape is so hard. But if we can
Speaker 1: detect it really, really early, and that's why I think
Speaker 1: our continued diligence and really intensive testing has allowed us
Speaker 1: and many of these places to detect it very early,
Speaker 1: we can go in and do some of these really
Speaker 1: challenging management interventions like tarted cohling asking a landowner if
Speaker 1: we can come on their property and shoot a bunch
Speaker 1: of deer or ask them to shoot a bunch of
Speaker 1: additional deer, we can minimize the impacts to everybody else.
Speaker 1: And if you look at a lot of the survey
Speaker 1: data that's been done, Illinois has done some great survey data.
Speaker 1: They're hunters within the places where CWD is at are like,
Speaker 1: leave us a lung, We don't want to do anything. Well,
Speaker 1: they've already got it, so we understand. But you look
Speaker 1: at the places where they don't have it, and they're like,
Speaker 1: do everything you possibly can to stop it. So you
Speaker 1: even have these two great dichotomies that exist. That creates
Speaker 1: a ton of challenges in terms of what are we
Speaker 1: asking folks to do? And and I've talked to many
Speaker 1: of those landowners. It how hard could it be to
Speaker 1: go through the decision making process. Say I bought this
Speaker 1: property to hunt and manage deer, and you're asking me
Speaker 1: to shoot a bunch of additional ones. You're asking me
Speaker 1: to make my hunting worse to benefit the guys that
Speaker 1: are five or ten or fifteen or twenty miles down
Speaker 1: the road, or for something that may really not have
Speaker 1: impacts for me for the next fifteen years or twenty years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's where it gets back to be real challenging
Speaker 1: about the age of our hunters. You've got really old hunters.
Speaker 1: They're like, I'm worried about my hunting for the next
Speaker 1: ten years. Yeah, unless the forward thinking, they're not thinking
Speaker 1: the long term. It's hard that that's a that's a
Speaker 1: hard one because we we don't think fifteen years down
Speaker 1: the road. We just don't. I mean, you can see
Speaker 1: this in so many aspects of hunting that that get
Speaker 1: pretty frustrating. You can see this in the resident nonresident
Speaker 1: fights out west all the time, where you know, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of non residents out there, and I
Speaker 1: totally get why they would do this, But if they
Speaker 1: could wave of a magic wand they would keep you know,
Speaker 1: the non residents out forever and keep the hunting for themselves.
Speaker 1: But long term that's not a great solution for a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons. It would be beneficial to some people. Then,
Speaker 1: you know, like I get that. It's the same thing
Speaker 1: with this, and I think maybe maybe the hardest part
Speaker 1: I'm curious how you feel about this is we can
Speaker 1: do all these sacrifices. We could do everything that that
Speaker 1: you know, the MDC asked the hunters in the Minnesota Department.
Speaker 1: You know, like, we could do it all to the
Speaker 1: best of our ability right now, and it might not
Speaker 1: change the thing. Well, I think it would. I think
Speaker 1: I do. I guess that's the glass half full. You know.
Speaker 1: Mindset is that we've been in north central Missouri doing
Speaker 1: tarted culling on landowners for a decade now, more than
Speaker 1: a decade right today, right so, ten or eleven years
Speaker 1: of remaining tarted culling. They're still deer there, They still
Speaker 1: have hunting opportunities. Is the disease spreading, Yeah, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: getting geographic change, it's spreading, but our prevalence is still
Speaker 1: really low. We still have only you know, four and
Speaker 1: a hundred deer that we test are testing positive for
Speaker 1: the disease. So you still have a preponderance of the
Speaker 1: animals that that hunters are harvesting and have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to harvest. We're saying are safe to consume. They can
Speaker 1: still enjoy them. And and and it's been it's been
Speaker 1: a slog, right. We went through the early stages of
Speaker 1: all right, we're on board, we'll do whatever we can.
Speaker 1: Two then I don't want We're tired, we don't want
Speaker 1: to do it anymore. And I would say that was
Speaker 1: the mid middle, like five years of doing this too. Now, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys have been whacking deer for a while. We
Speaker 1: still got a few deer, So maybe it isn't as bad.
Speaker 1: Maybe we will go ahead and try to continue to
Speaker 1: sustain that. And so there's there's no doubt that long
Speaker 1: term successes is really really challenging. But there are real
Speaker 1: actions we can do today to try to not make
Speaker 1: the problem words and help again by us a significant
Speaker 1: amount of time, and we got a couple of places
Speaker 1: where it's stayed tight, it's stayed small, and the neighboring
Speaker 1: properties and and you know that that circle around is
Speaker 1: still really small. And so I think there is reason
Speaker 1: for optimism, but it's not easy. Yeah, well, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you brought that up because it's interesting to hear you say.
Speaker 1: You know, if we do this right, we can keep
Speaker 1: that prevalence to around like four percent, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: given the current circumstances, is awesome. We'll take it every time.
Speaker 1: So then let me let me ask you what, like
Speaker 1: what happened in like Iowa County in Wisconsin, and because
Speaker 1: you know, they went hard for a while, but did
Speaker 1: they just stop? I mean, is that? Is that what happened? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So this, you know, the story in Wisconsin is that
Speaker 1: you know, they detected it at a point where I
Speaker 1: would sk mate and I'm not sure that they've probably
Speaker 1: got specific members. They kind of think where it was,
Speaker 1: it probably would have been probably about five percent over
Speaker 1: a pretty large landscape, kind of evenly distributed. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so two thousand four, early two thousands and like two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, they were very intensively removing deer over
Speaker 1: a pretty large chunk and landscape and you can look
Speaker 1: at their prevalence rates and they were slowly creeping up,
Speaker 1: but not a lot. And then in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: you know, due to lack of trust just great resistance
Speaker 1: to the management actions. Um, they were the guinea pigs,
Speaker 1: you know, to be quite honest in terms of what
Speaker 1: what do we learn, how do we communicate? What are
Speaker 1: we trying to accomplish? So those of us that came
Speaker 1: after had the benefits of kind of learning from the
Speaker 1: experience of the Wisconsin. But but they stopped, and since
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven it's done nothing but increase exponentially,
Speaker 1: both in prevalence inside of the core areas in the
Speaker 1: geographic distribution where now there's there's you know, a hundred
Speaker 1: and you can look at some of their data and say,
Speaker 1: there's a hundred forty four square mile area, we're literally
Speaker 1: fifty of the adult bucks that they harvest and test
Speaker 1: test positive. So you're flipping a coin as to one
Speaker 1: of the buck you shot. The CDC says you could
Speaker 1: or should consume it, and so man, that that to
Speaker 1: me is is really hard. And so you're seeing ships
Speaker 1: in their behavior. So you're seeing hunters that want to
Speaker 1: have deer to eat, shooting more like young deer and
Speaker 1: not shooting older deer, or avoiding some of those places
Speaker 1: where there's just really high prevalence. UM. So with cooperation,
Speaker 1: we can I think manage prevalence to to some extent
Speaker 1: geographic spread is is just a whole another beast that
Speaker 1: that is really really challenging to manage. Do you do
Speaker 1: you feel when when you talk about you know, the
Speaker 1: difference between what happened in Wisconsin and I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: they were different circumstances, and then what happened with what
Speaker 1: you guys were handling down there in Missouri and actually,
Speaker 1: you know, like your optimism and feeling like you kind
Speaker 1: of got ahold on this thing, like you kind of
Speaker 1: at least gotta a plan that can work. Do you
Speaker 1: feel like there's just, h there's just an optics problem
Speaker 1: a lot of times between state game agencies and the hunters.
Speaker 1: I think that could be the case. Yeah, there there's
Speaker 1: certainly an inherent trust that the hunting public or the
Speaker 1: broader public has in the decision making of their state agency.
Speaker 1: The individual decisions state agencies may yeah, folks may or
Speaker 1: may not agree with them, but it's a matter of
Speaker 1: whether they're generally agreeable to the agency or not. I
Speaker 1: firmly believe that, you know, we started this whole discussion
Speaker 1: of what is kind of the broad public trust and
Speaker 1: the state Fish and Wildlife Agency, And I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any doubt that we would not be where we
Speaker 1: are today in terms of being able to manage c
Speaker 1: w D without that broad and real deep public trust
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily exist in other places. So that's a
Speaker 1: that's kept things from while at the legislature and other places,
Speaker 1: there has been some noise around our management efforts, it's
Speaker 1: kept the discussions at the local level. And so we've
Speaker 1: tried really hard to be in those local communitunities having
Speaker 1: the conversations with the direct individuals impacted, and not having
Speaker 1: the conversations in jeff City, Right where do the management
Speaker 1: decisions like hit the ground? Where does that matter? And
Speaker 1: you've got to be there, and you've got to be local,
Speaker 1: and you've gotta be engaged. And so some of the
Speaker 1: differences we've seen across the state have been a reflection
Speaker 1: of where we have more staff in the local community,
Speaker 1: we have greater trust in buying in those places, they
Speaker 1: are more heavily engaged. In some of the spots where
Speaker 1: it's popped up where we just don't have as many
Speaker 1: staff assigned there, there just aren't as many of them there.
Speaker 1: The trust and the relationships aren't there, and so we've
Speaker 1: struggled to really kind of gain that kind of foothold
Speaker 1: in terms of management of the disease. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: there is there is no doubt that US as a
Speaker 1: state agency having general broad public support, again may not
Speaker 1: agree on any general decision that we make. But for
Speaker 1: the most part, I think folks understand the Department Conservation
Speaker 1: has the best interests of the resource in mind and
Speaker 1: trying to do it in a way that's so socially
Speaker 1: acceptable um to to get it done, and then very
Speaker 1: proactive in trying to socially engage um with the folks
Speaker 1: that are impacted by the disease. Yeah, what what's happening
Speaker 1: on the science side of things? So, I know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of research going into the distribution of st
Speaker 1: v D and and how it's getting places, and you
Speaker 1: know what the prevalence levels doing checked versus unchecked. But
Speaker 1: what what else is being done? Is there is there
Speaker 1: any promising science out there, any promising research that like
Speaker 1: gives us hope that maybe we could like actually get
Speaker 1: a handle on this stuff and you know, maybe you know,
Speaker 1: not have it be killing every deer that it infects
Speaker 1: or is there any is there hope on that front somehow? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's lots of hope. Um, there's no doubt
Speaker 1: it's going to take a you know, Nobel Prize winning
Speaker 1: kind of scientific paradigm shift and how we deal with
Speaker 1: prion diseases to really get us over that next step
Speaker 1: to therapeutics or a cure or you know, some inhibitor
Speaker 1: to infection. But there's been great progress over the last
Speaker 1: couple of decades and our better understanding of prion diseases,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to better connect with pre on biologists
Speaker 1: across the country that are dealing with preon and humans
Speaker 1: and other species. Um. We have invested a ton of
Speaker 1: time and energy with with you know John you know
Speaker 1: the group he works with University of Montana in terms
Speaker 1: of trying to do modeling research to understand which segments
Speaker 1: of the population we need to target to kind of
Speaker 1: minimize prevalence and changing geographic distribution, you know, get a
Speaker 1: better handle on what proportion of the population, which particular
Speaker 1: segments of the population and where on the landscape can
Speaker 1: give us the biggest bang for our buck. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest criticisms we all often here is what,
Speaker 1: You're shooting a lot of healthy deer to protect them
Speaker 1: from a disease, you know, And so it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we understand that, and we need to shoot a lot
Speaker 1: of deer to manage populations, but how can we better
Speaker 1: refine our management actions to to be much more targeted.
Speaker 1: But then we're also forming kind of unique partnerships with
Speaker 1: others outside of our traditional group we would work with.
Speaker 1: We were now working with the School of Engineering in
Speaker 1: the Veternary Diagnostic Lab at you Versity of Missouri to
Speaker 1: implement some really new and innovative you know, nanotechnology and
Speaker 1: engineering kind of challenges to to disease detection. Right, can
Speaker 1: we get to a place where a hunter could um
Speaker 1: collect a bit of blood um and and be able
Speaker 1: to be that earlier, much earlier detection, much easier to do,
Speaker 1: much less costly and time intensive for us to do that.
Speaker 1: So so we've actually been able to use the nanotechnology
Speaker 1: to detect preons into blood. What does that mean We
Speaker 1: don't We don't exactly know yet, but but we're making,
Speaker 1: you know, incremental progress. And there's been a ton of
Speaker 1: work on just preon biology to better understand actually the
Speaker 1: mechanisms in which these things operate UM, and then how
Speaker 1: might we be able to interfere with them or protect
Speaker 1: animals from those um from those infections. So it's it's
Speaker 1: all sort of an emerging thing preons. In terms of
Speaker 1: our under understanding UM from a science community is just
Speaker 1: really really limited. But one of the bright sides of
Speaker 1: CWD is it's gave It's gave pre anologists another model
Speaker 1: to work in, right, they can work in dear because
Speaker 1: they can replicate it many of these struggles they've faced
Speaker 1: with humans. We can't exactly experiment on humans, right, and
Speaker 1: so it is open up the realm for them to
Speaker 1: really start to ask some challenging questions and there and
Speaker 1: there has to be at least a little this is
Speaker 1: a weird one, but there has to be a little
Speaker 1: bit of a benefit for how quickly generations turnover in
Speaker 1: the white tail population to just see, you know, which
Speaker 1: is kind of kind of leads me to what I
Speaker 1: want to ask you that white tails are pretty amazing
Speaker 1: critters as far as adaptability, and I mean, they play,
Speaker 1: they play well with man, they play well out in
Speaker 1: the real wilds. They they they're survivors. Uh do you see,
Speaker 1: is there any reason to have a little bit of
Speaker 1: hope that maybe just through some evolutionary thing, these white
Speaker 1: tales will get this taken care of, or we'll get
Speaker 1: we'll get a certain percentage of them that are just
Speaker 1: not going to be susceptible to these prions. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's I think that's certainly a hope. You know,
Speaker 1: there's lots of genetics work being done, um folks across
Speaker 1: the country, UM looking at you know how or are
Speaker 1: we seeing shifts in particular genes that have been identified
Speaker 1: as as sort of resistant and I hate to use
Speaker 1: that term. We we hear resistant genotypes or there's resistant
Speaker 1: deer out there on the landscape. At this point, we
Speaker 1: still don't know that there's any deer that's completely immune
Speaker 1: to c w D. What we do know is there
Speaker 1: are some particular genetic makeup of deer that kind of
Speaker 1: delay progression of the disease, which, on one end, you
Speaker 1: might think, well, that's good. Their their delaying progression. They're
Speaker 1: gonna live a little longer. Maybe there maybe it's not
Speaker 1: as bad from a distribution of the disease and spreading
Speaker 1: it though, the problem is as they live longer and
Speaker 1: it gives them greater opportunity to spread the disease. So
Speaker 1: there's like this little bit of a tradeoff there, and
Speaker 1: there's some other unknown consequences of some of these deer
Speaker 1: that appear to have some level of resistance to progression
Speaker 1: of the disease. But I don't think there's any doubt
Speaker 1: that animals evolved and have evolved through a number of
Speaker 1: disease bottlenecks and things like that. But those things typically
Speaker 1: occur over thousands or tens of thousands of years, and
Speaker 1: we in our short, you know, kind of time frame
Speaker 1: of looking at things, were like, well that letting it
Speaker 1: go and maybe they'll recover is something that would Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe they would recover in the length of time it's
Speaker 1: been since we're here now to the time of the
Speaker 1: you know, into the Pleistocene, you know. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's like those long term kinds of things. So folks
Speaker 1: are looking at it. But for management of free ranging population,
Speaker 1: it's it's really really challenging to think, um, that that's
Speaker 1: our our only solution or hope. Inside the confined serving industry, absolutely,
Speaker 1: if we can make those animals less susceptible, more resilient,
Speaker 1: UM and make it less risky, you know, moving moving
Speaker 1: those lambs across landscape ensure some of the genetics work
Speaker 1: can can certainly benefit them. Um, yeah, we don't, No,
Speaker 1: we don't know what some of the tradeoffs of the
Speaker 1: disease resistance might be to other characteristics and survivability of
Speaker 1: the deer. Yeah, So they're just just to clear this
Speaker 1: up there. There's evidence out there that some deer with
Speaker 1: certain genetic makeups can survive longer after infection, but there's
Speaker 1: no evidence that there's any natural immunity out there in
Speaker 1: the wild populations, right, correct, Okay, correct, even those that
Speaker 1: that appear to be you know, not nearly as susceptible. Um,
Speaker 1: they've been attempting to do some manipulations and confined facilities
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but there's still no evidence that
Speaker 1: they won't get the disease or that they're resistant from
Speaker 1: getting the disease. Because that's that's a common thing that's
Speaker 1: brought up, you know, even way back from the discovery
Speaker 1: in Colorado days of like this thing has been around
Speaker 1: forever and some deer get it and some don't, and
Speaker 1: it just you know, find some level of equilibrium out
Speaker 1: there in the population, and none of that's true, right,
Speaker 1: there's no way. The only equilibrium I think it's going
Speaker 1: to find out there in the population is is at
Speaker 1: what point has it infected all the deer that it
Speaker 1: can infect versus kind of the new ones that are
Speaker 1: put out on the landscape. So there is some like
Speaker 1: if you look at the whole deer population as a whole,
Speaker 1: you know, there's probably some fifty to six prevalence that
Speaker 1: we probably can't go above unless they're in a small
Speaker 1: pen where they're absolutely touching one another. But animals are dying,
Speaker 1: animals are getting removed from the population, You got new
Speaker 1: ones being added to the population every year. Is the
Speaker 1: female and their social group actually infected? You know, there's
Speaker 1: there's kind of some of these more complicated things that
Speaker 1: would that would impact that that that top prevalence. But
Speaker 1: but no, I would say, there's no evidence that we've
Speaker 1: we've reached some low levels stable um kind of prevalence
Speaker 1: of the disease that animals are going to continue to persist.
Speaker 1: But you think it's going to lead to population extinctions though, right,
Speaker 1: one big thing that really happened in the late eighties
Speaker 1: and early nineties as folks were modeling this thing out,
Speaker 1: it's uniformly lethal. You know, by two and a half
Speaker 1: or three and a half or four and a half,
Speaker 1: you know, most close to the animals are gonna get in,
Speaker 1: they're gonna die. Lead us some models that predicted extinction,
Speaker 1: right I predicted extinction of the species or locally extinct.
Speaker 1: Back to the resilience of white tails. I don't believe
Speaker 1: that will be the case. I think there's still gonna
Speaker 1: be enough ability for individuals to reproduce in the population,
Speaker 1: to continue to produce fonds that we will have. Dear.
Speaker 1: The question is is whether c w D is going
Speaker 1: to be that governor of the population, which in many
Speaker 1: places it probably will be, that removes hunting from being
Speaker 1: necessary to manage deer populations, that they will just simply
Speaker 1: be regulated by the fact that there's enough cw D
Speaker 1: in the population. It's killing enough old individuals that we
Speaker 1: have no harvestable surplus. That is that if you harvest
Speaker 1: some you just have fewer deer. Yeah, so I think
Speaker 1: that's sort of probably, you know, in in five years
Speaker 1: or whatever, we look out at to what's the white
Speaker 1: tailed population look like, that's where we could find ourselves.
Speaker 1: Do you see in your research have you seen that.
Speaker 1: So when you say, all right, even if you take
Speaker 1: a place that's got a heavy prevalence and they've just
Speaker 1: let it go, just said whatever, we're just gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna manage white tells like we always did. We're going
Speaker 1: in to knock them down. We're gonna just let this
Speaker 1: thing go. And you see the bucks, you know, mature
Speaker 1: bucks or whatever, and you see, let's say there's a
Speaker 1: forty prevalence right just just for the hell of it
Speaker 1: in the population. Why doesn't it become a hundred or
Speaker 1: or does it when they get to a certain age? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think why it doesn't come to a hundred
Speaker 1: is because you have and it may be in that segment,
Speaker 1: you still have to have individual deer transmitting it to
Speaker 1: one another, and you still have to have sufficient or
Speaker 1: sufficient environmental contamination that they're still exposed to the pathogen.
Speaker 1: So as we talk about individual dear behavior, you know
Speaker 1: those you know if you watch deer on trail cameras
Speaker 1: or try to map them out on your property or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, you got deer that are just like reclusive,
Speaker 1: like they're always by themselves. They're never in a spot
Speaker 1: where everybody else is at and then you got year
Speaker 1: they're everywhere, right, they're always there, they're always interacting with
Speaker 1: other groups. And so those deer that are always interacting
Speaker 1: with other groups individually are more susceptible to contracting the disease.
Speaker 1: That one that's a loner and it's hanging out may
Speaker 1: only be exposed during particular times of the year. So
Speaker 1: there's always gonna be some level of individual behavior or
Speaker 1: just spatial arrangement on landscape of where they're hanging out
Speaker 1: that's gonna make them less susceptible. And then you can
Speaker 1: add some genetic components to it potentially, So that's why
Speaker 1: part of why you won't get to and then you've
Speaker 1: always got you know, maybe up to twenty five or
Speaker 1: thirty percent of your population being added new every year
Speaker 1: in the form of funds, you know, and so you've
Speaker 1: got you've got this new pulse of uninfected naive animals
Speaker 1: every year that occurs that that sort of limits that
Speaker 1: ability to push up to But I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: in some places, you probably if you just took out
Speaker 1: whatever is left of the adult segment of a three
Speaker 1: and a half and plus yr old segment of of
Speaker 1: a buck population is some really heavy infected areas, I
Speaker 1: would guess your prevalence there is going to be pushing
Speaker 1: towards at seventy plus per cent. And when when you
Speaker 1: talk about you know, those loaner bucks out there who
Speaker 1: don't seem too social and seem to really just be
Speaker 1: hardwired to kind of be loaners for their survival, you know,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about what what evolution could do
Speaker 1: for white tails if you gave if those were the
Speaker 1: primary breeders over you know, the next couple of thousand generations,
Speaker 1: you might have a lot less social white tail population
Speaker 1: that would be less likely to pass this thing around
Speaker 1: and maybe naturally get it into some kind of check
Speaker 1: a little bit. But we'll be way dead before that happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think these are you know, these are like the
Speaker 1: evolutionary mechanisms that lead to change. But yeah, that takes
Speaker 1: it takes hundreds or thousands of generations typically for those
Speaker 1: kinds of things to happen. But let's talk about something
Speaker 1: more less less depressing than the future of CWD. UM.
Speaker 1: I know, I know Missouri has been pretty proactive, at
Speaker 1: least in parts. I'm not sure if it's the whole
Speaker 1: state with a PR and some some management which is
Speaker 1: kind of a you know, kind of on opposite end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum versus knocking everything down to keep CWD
Speaker 1: and checking certain hot spots. How do you how do
Speaker 1: you negotiate or like, how do you navigate that world
Speaker 1: of being? You know, because I know you're I know
Speaker 1: you're a hardcore hunter, and I know a lot of
Speaker 1: the dear biologists and the wildlife biologists I interview are
Speaker 1: and so you've got this world of like, you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna address this disease issue in a
Speaker 1: way that's not gonna look great to hunters because we're
Speaker 1: taking we're taking white house off the landscape, like you said,
Speaker 1: healthy ones, so they don't get six, they don't spread it.
Speaker 1: And then on the other end, you've got you know,
Speaker 1: we'd like we'd like you to shoot bucks with four
Speaker 1: points on a side, or you know, a minimum inside
Speaker 1: spread or something like that too. Just increase the the
Speaker 1: experience to a lot. I mean, it does have some
Speaker 1: I believe anyway, the APR and some of the management
Speaker 1: stuff has some positive biological effects as far as age
Speaker 1: structure and stuff like that, but it's also just mostly
Speaker 1: viewed as a social thing to like we're gonna let
Speaker 1: them bucks grow up, like we're gonna put a value
Speaker 1: on them. How how do you navigate that kind of dichotomy? Well,
Speaker 1: I would say first, one of the big reasons there
Speaker 1: were two reasons we went to the Antler Point restriction
Speaker 1: and started it in two thousand four. One was like,
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit ago ever expanding exponentially growing
Speaker 1: dear populations and and a hunting public that really shot
Speaker 1: whatever first legal deer came by, and so could we
Speaker 1: by implementing a restriction on bucks, get folks to shoot
Speaker 1: more analysts deer. So that was a big reason why
Speaker 1: we started down the path. Also knowing a a big
Speaker 1: benefit of it would be you're letting young bucks pass
Speaker 1: and age on into another age class, which they then
Speaker 1: become more challenging to hunt. And despite the fact we
Speaker 1: put a little more, you know, still put pretty high
Speaker 1: pressure on them. By the time they get to those
Speaker 1: older ages, they're more challenging to kill. Even if there
Speaker 1: are more of them out there, you get to kill
Speaker 1: more of them because they're more of them out there,
Speaker 1: but they're still equally as challenging. So really, for us
Speaker 1: in many places, the evaluation was on what did it
Speaker 1: do to antle as harvest, how would that impact it?
Speaker 1: And we we've seen some real differences based on hunter density.
Speaker 1: We talked about some of the challenges accounting by counting management,
Speaker 1: and some places where you got real high hunter density
Speaker 1: went where you don't. In places where we have high
Speaker 1: hunter density, the antler point restriction really does have a
Speaker 1: huge impact on the growth rate of the population because
Speaker 1: that opportunity shoot first legal deer, they were then shooting
Speaker 1: dose And in a couple of places we actually remove
Speaker 1: the antler point restriction because we were killing too many
Speaker 1: dose because of it. You could see the clear shift
Speaker 1: in other places where we had kind of moderate dear densities.
Speaker 1: That certainly helped dampen things down and help facilitate this
Speaker 1: conversation of managing the population as it relates to disease management.
Speaker 1: The way that I've always communicated it is that we're
Speaker 1: doing everything we can to try to detect the disease
Speaker 1: in white tailed populations across the state, and it's not there,
Speaker 1: or if it's there where we have the APR, it's
Speaker 1: at a very very low prevalence, and so our management
Speaker 1: for these quality populations that that that a growing segment
Speaker 1: of our hunting public desires to have, and the cain
Speaker 1: interaction that occurs with a buck segment of population that's older.
Speaker 1: You know, no doubt kind of the more natural breeding
Speaker 1: systems that would have occurred is a good management strategy.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with it. How do we just make
Speaker 1: sure are and effectively communicated? WD is not everywhere and
Speaker 1: it's only gonna get there by us introducing it. The
Speaker 1: flip side of that that we've been having a conversation
Speaker 1: now is as as we look at our populations, as
Speaker 1: we better understand the dynamic of the disease, how do
Speaker 1: those management strategies make our populations more or less resilient
Speaker 1: when CWT gets there? So I think, and and that's
Speaker 1: some modeling work we've we've really started to initiate what's
Speaker 1: the you know, what's the likelihood how fast might it
Speaker 1: spread if that introduction occurs? And and so I think
Speaker 1: that's where a little bit of the push and pull happens.
Speaker 1: But but I've been pretty staunched that that the a
Speaker 1: PR is a good rule. It's very popular, it has
Speaker 1: its place, It does not have a place with disease
Speaker 1: management if the disease is present. But if it's not present,
Speaker 1: let's let's keep doing good your management, keep testing and
Speaker 1: trying to detect it. But but it's a good regulation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that I think that that's so refreshing to hear
Speaker 1: because you know, like I said earlier, it's it's really
Speaker 1: easy to sort of boil this stuff down and you know,
Speaker 1: four against or whatever. But when you look at something
Speaker 1: like a PRS, when you take Antler point restrictions, and
Speaker 1: from my perspective as a hunter, I hear you say that,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, hell, yes, I have no problem with
Speaker 1: you know, getting rid of a little bit of its
Speaker 1: brown it's down and having some better age class here,
Speaker 1: especially if you have legitimate options to kill Antler this dear,
Speaker 1: and on your side of things, you're like, hey, we
Speaker 1: want to we want to knock back this population a
Speaker 1: little bit, balance it out better, and you know, keep
Speaker 1: the hunters at because they're still gonna be c indeed,
Speaker 1: they're still gonna have their their venison, they're still gonna
Speaker 1: have a better chance at killing a big buck, and
Speaker 1: it sort of feels like a win win, And then
Speaker 1: you go, well, as long as we don't get popped
Speaker 1: for CWD here, and then all bets are off because
Speaker 1: now you know, we don't want a bunch of old
Speaker 1: age males in this population. And it really kind of
Speaker 1: highlights how difficult this kind of push pull is with
Speaker 1: you know, the perspective of somebody tasked with managing a
Speaker 1: wild game population versus the desires of the average hunter.
Speaker 1: There's so much going on there, and it's so not
Speaker 1: a simple thing. Yeah, it is a huge, complex set
Speaker 1: of interacting variables, you know, and and and the other
Speaker 1: side of it is there's not there's not one perfect
Speaker 1: solution to that. We could do it any number combination
Speaker 1: of ways. And that's why I think we see state
Speaker 1: to state differences right that Culturally, you know, we've we've
Speaker 1: established cultural norms as to the way that we want
Speaker 1: or like to hunt deer. And so how do you
Speaker 1: then shift these tools around to say, Okay, well, here's
Speaker 1: the suite that we think will kind of hit that
Speaker 1: that sweet spot kind of satisfy our population because we
Speaker 1: can do we you know, I last one to say
Speaker 1: that we have the perfect model in terms of deer management,
Speaker 1: and it's since it's just a series of trade offs
Speaker 1: and and so as we have, as we have built
Speaker 1: changes into this, I think we have tried really hard
Speaker 1: to do it with the public. We talk about the
Speaker 1: public Outreach and Engagement UM In two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, sort of as CWD was emerging, we
Speaker 1: were in the midst of some of these population to
Speaker 1: clients resulting from the twelve and RAGI disease outbreak, strong
Speaker 1: shift towards antle as harvest, increasing hunter numbers actually in
Speaker 1: the state for one of the few UM. It's been
Speaker 1: on the downward trend since then. But all these challenges,
Speaker 1: we actually entered into eight or twenty two public meetings
Speaker 1: in about an eighteen month period to revamp our deer
Speaker 1: management plan to say what are we gonna do, how
Speaker 1: are we gonna make anage the disease, and how do
Speaker 1: we want to manage the white tail population as we
Speaker 1: move forward. So it's just a it's just a it's
Speaker 1: so critical that we continue to have that agency, hunting, public,
Speaker 1: other affected stakeholder dialogue on an ongoing basis to figure
Speaker 1: out where we as a state, I think we want
Speaker 1: to try to push the dear population. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on there. I got I got two questions
Speaker 1: for you to wrap this sucker up. The first one
Speaker 1: is do you think we should arrange a cage match
Speaker 1: between Doug during and Ted Nugets so they can fight
Speaker 1: over this issue? And I mean I don't mean a debate,
Speaker 1: I mean a real fight. Yeah, Oh damn. It's it's hard,
Speaker 1: you know, And I've been in the middle of those,
Speaker 1: and it is It's just I just wish we could,
Speaker 1: you know, find some common ground and and and get
Speaker 1: back to you know what, what do we know and
Speaker 1: what do we not know? And just be honest about
Speaker 1: the dialogue. But unfortunately, when you deal with the public,
Speaker 1: you deal with the values, the beliefs and everything that
Speaker 1: comes along with those individuals, and and inherent mistrusted government
Speaker 1: as part of that, the mistrust of science, the actions
Speaker 1: of government and of science that have contributed to that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a it's a tangled web. But
Speaker 1: I greatly appreciate Doug and his perspectives, have had the
Speaker 1: chance to to speak with him, you know what if
Speaker 1: a few engagements over time, and just really greatly appreciate
Speaker 1: his perspective. Yeah, all right, last one, are you can
Speaker 1: you can you make a phone call down there at
Speaker 1: MDC and and make it so we can hunt turkeys
Speaker 1: all day. I would sure like to be able to
Speaker 1: do that. Um. We've had ongoing discussion of that for
Speaker 1: a long long time, and it really is a we're
Speaker 1: missing opportunity by not having all day tay hunting. You know,
Speaker 1: our research and stuff would certainly suggest um that we're
Speaker 1: not over harvesting our gobblers, Um, that we still have
Speaker 1: great opportunities, especially now as I have a son you know,
Speaker 1: who's whose seven and we only have the mornings during
Speaker 1: the regular season, and the loss of some of those
Speaker 1: opportunities to get him out in the field. You know it,
Speaker 1: It certainly is is an opportunity that we're missing. You know.
Speaker 1: The flip side of it is is we've got production
Speaker 1: problems and and when you talk about increasing opportunity to
Speaker 1: harvest a species, um, ball of species isn't necessarily doing
Speaker 1: as well as it had been. It's hard again to
Speaker 1: get over those humps of well, at least we could
Speaker 1: just do something, if we could save one more hen,
Speaker 1: if we could say, one more gobbler, at least we're
Speaker 1: doing something. And so it becomes a really really challenging
Speaker 1: thing just to do um socially, even though biologically UM
Speaker 1: it would be or or at least our evidence suggests
Speaker 1: it would not have a significant negative impact on the population.
Speaker 1: But I just hope we can figure out something that's
Speaker 1: going to help with production. Yeah, that's that's a whole
Speaker 1: other issue, a whole another issue with the turkeys. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, you guys would definitely sell me a nonresident
Speaker 1: turkey tag every year if you let me hunt all day. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely has an impact. You know, early on when
Speaker 1: turkey it was really really good, non resident could bump in,
Speaker 1: shoot bird be gone, or you know, show up at
Speaker 1: the tail end of the first week and shoot one
Speaker 1: bird and then catch the second bird of the first
Speaker 1: part of the second week and and go on. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't doubt that um A half day
Speaker 1: hunting has has had an impact on nonresident participation in
Speaker 1: the state. Yeah, but it has on me. I love,
Speaker 1: I love turkey hunting down there, but I have a
Speaker 1: hard time, you know, calling it at one o'clock and
Speaker 1: then you're just sitting in your tent picking ticks off yourself.
Speaker 1: Way way to go try to roost one or something.
Speaker 1: You know, it's tough anyway, Jason, this has been really fun. Man.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you took the time to come on
Speaker 1: here and uh and and speak with me. So I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Man. Well, I appreciate the opportunity and
Speaker 1: I never turned down the chance to talk to folks
Speaker 1: who have an audience who again we can break down
Speaker 1: those barriers, start to develop relationships with people to understand
Speaker 1: how and why and the thought processes beside behind those
Speaker 1: of us who are making management decisions state fish and
Speaker 1: wildlife agencies. And so I just appreciate you and everyone
Speaker 1: else who who opens up the opportunity for us to
Speaker 1: to speak to an audience in a in a different
Speaker 1: way and in a less controversial way. We're not arguing
Speaker 1: specifically about a particular regulation or something like that, and
Speaker 1: and just share thoughts and ideas and the kinds of
Speaker 1: things we're thinking about that we just don't get to
Speaker 1: do in a lot of other formats. So I appreciate
Speaker 1: everything you guys do to continue to the hard work
Speaker 1: of all of us doing the right thing for conservation. Awesome,
Speaker 1: thank man. All Right, that's it for this week, folks.
Speaker 1: Be sure to tune in next week for more white
Speaker 1: tailed goodness. This has been the Wired to Hunt podcast
Speaker 1: and I'm your guest host, Tony Peterson. As I always,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening and for your support.
Speaker 1: And if you're looking for more white tail content, be
Speaker 1: sure to head on over to the meat eater dot
Speaker 1: com slash wired to see a pile of new articles
Speaker 1: each week by Mark myself and a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: white tail addicts. Or head on over to our Weird
Speaker 1: Hunt YouTube channel and you'll see the weekly how to
Speaker 1: videos that Mark and I dropped