Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything, all right. The first order of business
Speaker 1: is I need to do a correction. We were talking
Speaker 1: there day for a long time, long long time on
Speaker 1: this same program about Ursus arctos okay, or the brown bear,
Speaker 1: and I was talking about all kinds of stuff I
Speaker 1: don't know the truth about, and am Dr Jarco wrote
Speaker 1: in to clarify something to me. He was like, I
Speaker 1: was saying, how I I don't know where I got
Speaker 1: this in my head that ursus the old name for
Speaker 1: grizzlies was ursus horeblus, like horrible bear. But this guy
Speaker 1: called in and clarified that in fact, it's that's like
Speaker 1: an example of trinomial nomenclature, where it's ursus arctos horeblus.
Speaker 1: Ursus arctos hereblas was and is a name for interior
Speaker 1: brown bears, so like the grizzly bear would be ars
Speaker 1: arctos horeblus. I thought that they dropped the horeblus because
Speaker 1: it was like bad pr for the bears. But he
Speaker 1: says that is not correct. He said No. He had
Speaker 1: a couple of those gripes of things that I kind
Speaker 1: of don't really agree with. Oh yeah, he clarified something
Speaker 1: I also said that I used as an example of
Speaker 1: trinomial nomenclature would be Ursus arctos arctos. He says, that's
Speaker 1: perfectly valuable, value valid. But I should have pointed out
Speaker 1: that that is Ursus arctos arctos is the Eurasian grizzly,
Speaker 1: not found in North America. And he had a third
Speaker 1: gripe where he said that, and I this is what
Speaker 1: I kind of disagree with them about. I was talking
Speaker 1: about binomial Norman clature, which is like the Lennean system,
Speaker 1: where you have uh, for instance, Ursus arc toes, which
Speaker 1: should be like northern bear. He was saying that the
Speaker 1: second word in that, so if you like Homo sapiens, okay,
Speaker 1: I used the second word like it was like genus
Speaker 1: and species, but he said the second part of the epithet,
Speaker 1: So in Homo sapien, the second part of the epithet
Speaker 1: refer is just called that's just the species. It's not
Speaker 1: fair to say that the second part is the species,
Speaker 1: because the two things make up the thing. So they're
Speaker 1: Dr Jarco. I'm saying your name right now. Second thing, Uh,
Speaker 1: do you guys go with seeker Sicka? Because I hear
Speaker 1: both ways you like I've been corrected. I used to.
Speaker 1: When I first came here a year ago, I called
Speaker 1: him Sicca, and I was corrected by some of the locals. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the locals are think. I don't know if
Speaker 1: pauses a lot of confusion with the Sitka, the Sitka
Speaker 1: black tail deer. Yep. But I have a hunting video
Speaker 1: that Janna shared with me, called by by an outfit
Speaker 1: called Chesapeake Pursuits or something like that, And those are
Speaker 1: the first boys I've ever heard say Sica, not sca.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yourt an opinion about it? The locals, I
Speaker 1: think say Sica. I say Sicca, did you do? And
Speaker 1: you're the damn biologists, So I'm probably wrong the locals,
Speaker 1: I think so because I say Seca to do let's
Speaker 1: do intros as though dealing as though dealing poker. Um,
Speaker 1: there's me and then there's yea, hon do no do
Speaker 1: a big long intro, oh, big long intro. I just
Speaker 1: don't have to just because yeah, he's no one. I'm
Speaker 1: Marcia pratings, and I'm the project leader for the Chesapeake
Speaker 1: Marshaland's National Wildlife Each Complex, which includes Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge,
Speaker 1: Eastern Neck, Martin and Susquehanna. We're a significant percentage of all.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go SICCA right now, I'm going Seek of
Speaker 1: the whole show. You can stick with sick, stick with yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: all the same thing. We're not talking about sick of
Speaker 1: black tails? All right? You know what I'm going with
Speaker 1: SICKA al right, which is where a significant percentage of
Speaker 1: all I still can't decide if I want to go
Speaker 1: with seeker sick of what do you recommend? I'm going
Speaker 1: I'm going sick. I live here, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: go with the locals I'm running. I'm running sick of
Speaker 1: the whole program. Yeah, and you run SKA just out
Speaker 1: of fairness, it's like to keep it bipartisan. So that
Speaker 1: refuge complex is where a significant percentage of all the
Speaker 1: sick of deer living in the United States of America live.
Speaker 1: That's correct. You probably can't venture a guest though, as
Speaker 1: to what percentage almost one percent between the refuge and
Speaker 1: the state land um that represents a pretty big percentage
Speaker 1: of the public of the public land, there are there
Speaker 1: are a lot of deer on private land to um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the refuge system definitely holds a huge part
Speaker 1: of the population of the of the total population. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: anything else you want to add about your you want
Speaker 1: to clarify what? Um? What what falls under your jurisdiction
Speaker 1: there under your job title? Sure, Well, I'm the refuge
Speaker 1: manager here at Blackwater, so I oversee basically everything that
Speaker 1: goes on on the refuge, including our biological program, our
Speaker 1: visitor services, our maintenance, everything from taking care of the
Speaker 1: almost two hundred thousand visitors that come visit Blackwater each
Speaker 1: year to taking care of all of our roads and uh,
Speaker 1: you name it. So we make two hundred thousand count
Speaker 1: hunters because you run so you oversee the hunting programs. Yes, correct,
Speaker 1: and that do you have a number on hunters that
Speaker 1: visit your Yeah, we have about eighteen hundred individual hunters
Speaker 1: that apply for permits each year, and they apply for
Speaker 1: over permits different types of hunts. Yeah, so there's more
Speaker 1: permits than hunters. Yeah, that's correct. If you look at
Speaker 1: how our hunting season runs, you can apply for quota
Speaker 1: hunts non quota hunts different days and so forth, so
Speaker 1: that's why, and so one hunter might have multiple permits, right,
Speaker 1: So that's why I distinguished. We've got about eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: deer hunters, I should say, because we also have waterfowl
Speaker 1: hunting and turkey hunting on the refuge too, to a
Speaker 1: lesser degree. So even though you run a permit we'll
Speaker 1: get into more that we'll get into this a greater detail.
Speaker 1: But even though you run a permit system there, you
Speaker 1: don't turn away hunters like anyone that wants to hunt
Speaker 1: and get a crack at it. Well, we do have
Speaker 1: it depends we have quota hunts where we only allow
Speaker 1: so many hunters per unit, so they'll be limited in
Speaker 1: that respect. In our muzzle loader hunts and our shotgun
Speaker 1: hunts get pretty full. Archery stays are our trees open yea,
Speaker 1: and that goes from September eighth, the state opener, until
Speaker 1: it ends at the end of January. So our tree
Speaker 1: has been unlimited, all right. So jumping along on our intros, Steve,
Speaker 1: Steve Kendrot, I'm a wildlife biologist with the USDA, but
Speaker 1: today I'm joining you just as a avid sick of
Speaker 1: hunter you're running sick of I'll run sick of today. Yeah. Really,
Speaker 1: but if we're going to do that, we also have
Speaker 1: to talk about he has a house in Dorchester County,
Speaker 1: so yeah, he's you're a whole You're like a resident here,
Speaker 1: your local Yeah sort of. I don't think the locals
Speaker 1: ever consider anybody that ain't born here resident. But uh,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I've been here for since two thousand two.
Speaker 1: We've been pursuing the elusive secret deer or sick of deer.
Speaker 1: I bounced back and forth. We're gonna start talking about
Speaker 1: and bull miners. The locals talk about minnows and turtles.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a whole lexicon of interesting names for
Speaker 1: critters down this way. I'm with you. Um. And then finally, Brian,
Speaker 1: I am dear biologist for Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
Speaker 1: So you're the head chief. You've kind of like these words.
Speaker 1: You're the main dear biologists. Sure, but Maryland is a
Speaker 1: small state. So yeah, there's there's we have. There's two
Speaker 1: two dear biologists that work for the state, myself and
Speaker 1: and uh George Tempco does urban suburban We have a
Speaker 1: lot of urban suburban areas in the states. So we
Speaker 1: have a biologist dedicated to trying to deal with whitetail
Speaker 1: deer and and there's areas so, but I mainly set
Speaker 1: mainly you know, UM, analyze harvest data overseas collection to
Speaker 1: harvest data and biological data, any of the research we're doing. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, we've done numerous studies on one sick of
Speaker 1: deer down here? UM and uh so yeah, are you um,
Speaker 1: how long have you been doing that for? Um? I
Speaker 1: have been with d n R for sixteen years, and
Speaker 1: I was involved with deer research before that through penn
Speaker 1: State University. Um, so I've been I've been dealing with
Speaker 1: deer for plus years. What got you wanted to do?
Speaker 1: Was it deer hunting? They got you wanted to become
Speaker 1: a biologist? Yeah, I grew up and I'm a Pennsylvania kids,
Speaker 1: so I grew up deer hunting and and then and then, UM,
Speaker 1: is it true that you kind of got away from
Speaker 1: a little bit now that that's all you work on? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got away for I escaped from deer for a
Speaker 1: brief period when I was a fishing wildlife service and
Speaker 1: then I got sucked back in. I did actually did
Speaker 1: my master's down here on one stick on white tail,
Speaker 1: and then I started with the stage or shortly after.
Speaker 1: So do you still hunt? Yeah? Oh yeah definitely, so
Speaker 1: not as much as I used to, um, because I'm
Speaker 1: kind of working when everybody else is hunting. But yeah,
Speaker 1: now do you here's a quick question for you. Then
Speaker 1: we'll get into the main matter. Do you ever find?
Speaker 1: Are you ever? Like, man, I wouldn't have got that
Speaker 1: buck if it weren't for all my schooling? No? Or
Speaker 1: does it totally different? Like being a deer biologist and
Speaker 1: being a dude shooting deer is like two different things,
Speaker 1: two different tool kids, different thing. Yeah, different things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you you know, when you work with a deer
Speaker 1: for forty hours a week, it's you know, it's changes
Speaker 1: things a little bit. So I mean definitely the knowledge helps,
Speaker 1: no question. The knowledge here that you pick up helps. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so you feel that, uh like you feel that
Speaker 1: being a your experiences as I guess because yeah, you
Speaker 1: must look at so much like deer sign all the
Speaker 1: time and just like well like learn to recognize areas
Speaker 1: that hold a lot of animals and not Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you know that you have that insight. Um. But
Speaker 1: then also just the access to data, I mean, just
Speaker 1: the data end up though. Yeah, you just know how
Speaker 1: to mind it. Yeah, well I don't. I mean you could, yeah,
Speaker 1: you couldn't mind it and use it. But yeah, um,
Speaker 1: all right now I'm gonna go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: Who okay, why are the deer here? Just to clarify
Speaker 1: this deer species sick of seka deer aren't if you've
Speaker 1: never heard of them? Is because they're not even they're
Speaker 1: not a native. They're not native wildlife, right, they're non natives.
Speaker 1: And how well do you know the I know that
Speaker 1: it's not totally knowable because there's some mystery about there
Speaker 1: there there, where they came from and how they got here?
Speaker 1: But can you sketch that out? Like why is it
Speaker 1: that a little corner of Maryland has a huntable population
Speaker 1: of a deer that no one's ever heard of before? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of an interesting story. Um. They the subspecies
Speaker 1: we have, So you were talking about your brown bears
Speaker 1: and nomenclature. So the subspecies we have is service Nippon Yukushimi.
Speaker 1: Um so there, and that's a Japanese subspecies, yakusha. And
Speaker 1: they came from Yakushima Island off the southern tip of
Speaker 1: Japan back in the early eighteen hundreds. They were apparently
Speaker 1: imported from Yakushima Island into Ireland. Not sure what the
Speaker 1: connection there was or anything, but so the deer we
Speaker 1: have here didn't come straight from Japan. They they were
Speaker 1: imported into Ireland. From Ireland, they were gifted to various individuals,
Speaker 1: probably pretty important people, um yeah, and they ended up
Speaker 1: in Britain, etcetera. And then at some point in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds or actually early nineteen hundreds, Um, apparently
Speaker 1: there were half dozen maybe um, that were gifted to
Speaker 1: an individual here in Cambridge, Maryland. Has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with this story. Not this story. Now, I didn't give
Speaker 1: him some of these or something like that. Not Theodore Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: Now he's not involved in this story that I'm aware of.
Speaker 1: That Clement Henry was a gentleman's name told me that.
Speaker 1: Did you tell me that I might have that? Dude.
Speaker 1: I feel like every every non native story from back
Speaker 1: then is like, yeah, someone gave Teddy six of these
Speaker 1: or Teddy took six elk and shifted to New Zealand.
Speaker 1: Right now, not not in this story that I'm aware of.
Speaker 1: And who was the guy again, Um, Clement Henry was
Speaker 1: the gentleman here in Cambridge that had him. And was
Speaker 1: he thinking like was he like, you know what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do is I'm gonna take these deer and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna cut him loose out in the marsh. No, he
Speaker 1: had him in captivity. And I don't think the story
Speaker 1: is real clear whether as he got too many in
Speaker 1: captivity he would release them or if he just all
Speaker 1: at once said hey, I'm getting rid of my dear
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna stick him out here on James Island,
Speaker 1: which is the mouth of the little chop tank. Uh see,
Speaker 1: so he caught it. He thought maybe that did they'd
Speaker 1: stay on the island. Yeah, I think that was probably
Speaker 1: the thought, and you know put him out on the island. Um,
Speaker 1: of course they didn't. You know, we were the let
Speaker 1: Well the last hundred years basically there's been a slow
Speaker 1: expansion across southern Dorchester. And is it true that he
Speaker 1: may be cut looses to as few as two so
Speaker 1: well he not it could have went further back than that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, if you so, we had the Smithsonian Institute
Speaker 1: look at some genetics work and this was back fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago. Um. But their genetics work and then even
Speaker 1: some more recent genetics work from University of Delaware UM
Speaker 1: shows that there is basically no variation in these animals.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, they probably our population probably started from
Speaker 1: two individuals, and those individuals may even have been siblings,
Speaker 1: is the way they have. But no, these animals are
Speaker 1: doing great, so like a tremendous bottleneck. But then they
Speaker 1: don't have a problem with nothing. Now if you either
Speaker 1: over the years, different there's been different studies. They've looked
Speaker 1: at parasite loads and just you know, general health, and
Speaker 1: actually they are cleaner and healthier than our native whitetail deer.
Speaker 1: Does that original island still have some Um, No, that
Speaker 1: island at that time, the islands, Yeah, actually they still
Speaker 1: do have that subspecies. But the interesting thing is we
Speaker 1: probably have more, I'm sure we do. We have more
Speaker 1: here than what they have over there. Has anyone ever
Speaker 1: taken one from that island in Japan and one from
Speaker 1: here and just stood them next to each other to
Speaker 1: see if there's some visible Because when you just start
Speaker 1: a population with a small amount, you could have some Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would have some freaks, right, you could have some
Speaker 1: unusual animals and then have create. If you look at
Speaker 1: pictures on the internet, they're identical, you would say. If
Speaker 1: you looked at one for a picture of one from
Speaker 1: Yukushi mile and you think you were looking at the
Speaker 1: Dorchester County sick. So when they first when he first
Speaker 1: drive him in, were people trying to regulate them? No?
Speaker 1: Early on, yeah, early on there weren't seasons in bag
Speaker 1: limits for him, and they weren't very popular, to be
Speaker 1: honest with you. You know, for as far as a
Speaker 1: hunted hunted species go UM regulations really started in uh,
Speaker 1: probably in the eighties, I guess was when with when
Speaker 1: we started really got aggressive, you know, started recognizing, hey,
Speaker 1: they may be an issue, they could be a problem, um,
Speaker 1: and they started to be regulated in that manner to
Speaker 1: try to not not to get rid of them. You know,
Speaker 1: we never they kind of found a niche down here.
Speaker 1: They're not like an invasive species like nutria. UM. So
Speaker 1: we've never approached at that you with the philosophy that
Speaker 1: we were going to eradicate them like neutria because they
Speaker 1: have kind of found niche and they're they're popular, um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, we don't want a whole
Speaker 1: del Marva Peninsula full of secondary either. So you do
Speaker 1: not want that, No, no, we want to try to
Speaker 1: keep them here in Dorchester. And but they've they've expanded.
Speaker 1: They they're like expanding now slowly. Yeah, they have expanded. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know they're in Delaware now. Um, we've had Delaware
Speaker 1: has had a couple. What's their take on harvested? They
Speaker 1: would prefer to keep them out. So it is there
Speaker 1: is there a line around the known Like Steve you
Speaker 1: were saying, is if you look at what do you
Speaker 1: call the peninsula where I know we're on the del
Speaker 1: Marva Peninsula, explain that just for people to to understand, Well,
Speaker 1: that's that big chunk of land between the Chestpeake Bay
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic Ocean, comprised of all of the state
Speaker 1: of Delaware, the portion of Maryland that's on the eastern
Speaker 1: shore of the Chesspeake Bay, and then the Virginia portion.
Speaker 1: So del Marva how peninsula gets and what's the peninsula
Speaker 1: that has all the deer if you look at it?
Speaker 1: But does they have a name as a peninsula? Is
Speaker 1: that just Dorchester County? Yeah, Dorchester County is is uh
Speaker 1: sits between the chop Tank and the Nanacooke River, so
Speaker 1: it it sort of forms a peninsula, I guess, but
Speaker 1: it's not recognized as one. Yeah. And if you're looking
Speaker 1: at a map and you find if you go to
Speaker 1: Maryland and then you find Dorchester County, you'll see there's
Speaker 1: a highway sort of a that that county sort of
Speaker 1: sits on a peninsula, and there's a highway that kind
Speaker 1: of cuts the the base of the peninsula diagonally fifty
Speaker 1: Highway fifty right. And most of these deer live south
Speaker 1: and west of that highway. Is that correct? Correct? Correct?
Speaker 1: And it's about how many well, our modeling would put
Speaker 1: it somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand. That's probably a
Speaker 1: minimum um. We harvest three thousand a year, so you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at a percentage, if you're
Speaker 1: harvesting of your animals, are side of that put you
Speaker 1: in that ballpark somewhere between ten and ten and fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand probably And is there like a has they won't
Speaker 1: gone and drawn a band like if you say that
Speaker 1: they're welcome here, because they're not. They're occupying one they're
Speaker 1: very popular with hunters, and they're occupying a landscape where
Speaker 1: they're not really coming into direct contact. They use the
Speaker 1: area differently than white tails. They like to hang out
Speaker 1: in places of the white tails don't like to hang out.
Speaker 1: But has anyone ever drawn a line and said that
Speaker 1: we will have zero tolerance for these deer across this line? Now,
Speaker 1: we don't approach it from that, from that, you know,
Speaker 1: to that black and weight of a degree, it's just
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, we we would like to
Speaker 1: keep them in in southern Dorchester. You know, they're in
Speaker 1: there in why Comic Coo, They're in Somerset, a few
Speaker 1: of them in Somerset. Um, generally they're expanding up our rivers.
Speaker 1: You know then, whether it's the job Tank or the
Speaker 1: Nanna Cooke, the Marshy Hope off Banana Cooke. Um, that's
Speaker 1: how like they're fine in their way into Caroline in
Speaker 1: some of these areas. Um. So you know, we'll just
Speaker 1: tweak seasons and bag limits to try to to try
Speaker 1: to keep that population here, you know, contained in Dorchester
Speaker 1: as much as we can. But but now there's never
Speaker 1: been really a hard line drawn. I mean, and do
Speaker 1: you feel like you guys can can you like open
Speaker 1: and close the valve pretty reliably by by tweaking hunting seasons. No,
Speaker 1: we can't. Um, you know, we can do our best, um,
Speaker 1: but we don't have enough hunters and a lot of
Speaker 1: the locals down here would disagree with that. But in
Speaker 1: all honesty, we don't have enough hunters and enough hunting
Speaker 1: pressure to really regulate this species or port white tails
Speaker 1: for that matter. Um. Our hunters are saturated. So you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you mean as far as seasons
Speaker 1: at bag limits. I mean we're very we're very we're
Speaker 1: very liberal. Yeah, they have we have it very. We're
Speaker 1: in the good old days of deer hunting. You know,
Speaker 1: when you can hunt from September to the end of
Speaker 1: jam neary Um and we have if your archery hunting
Speaker 1: white tails down here, you can, we have there's no limit.
Speaker 1: You can antler lists. You can harvest as many antlerless
Speaker 1: white tails with archery equipment as you want in a
Speaker 1: in a year. So you know, our average hunter takes well,
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's just two point zero
Speaker 1: deer now was one point nine deer for a lot
Speaker 1: of years. But our average hunter takes two point zero
Speaker 1: deer a year because that's what they can use. And
Speaker 1: that's you know, they're not going to waste deer and
Speaker 1: and expend more efforts. So you know, and our hunter
Speaker 1: numbers are fairly stayable. They've been stay able over the
Speaker 1: last you know, ten years or so. But but we
Speaker 1: have half as many hunters is what we have when
Speaker 1: we peeked back in the seventies. Um and that's not
Speaker 1: just a Maryland phenomena, you know what I mean, you
Speaker 1: look at the East. Not so bad in the Midwest
Speaker 1: or the West, but in the East, I mean, hunter
Speaker 1: numbers are really seriously declined. And um so as a
Speaker 1: deer manager kind of concerns you. So there's how many,
Speaker 1: like if you've if you have half, like half the
Speaker 1: participation you had in the sevenies, the generation to go, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how many what what's the do you know? Like how
Speaker 1: many how many more or less deer do you have
Speaker 1: now than the seventies. Gosh, we have ten times as
Speaker 1: many deer. It was way more deer for a person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what were they doing back then? Well, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of them weren't deer hunters back then. I
Speaker 1: should I should clarify that, you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean that's when I'm saying, when I'm saying half as
Speaker 1: many hunters. That's all hunters, so that's small game, that's waterfowl,
Speaker 1: that's deer, et cetera. Because and we didn't have as
Speaker 1: many deer hunters back then because there weren't as many
Speaker 1: deer obviously. UM. So you know, we may have we
Speaker 1: probably have more deer hunters now than what we had
Speaker 1: in the seventies. UM, but it's just because of that
Speaker 1: shift from small game. You know, we don't have pheasants anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you probably don't know that history. That's that's for another time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, well back in back in the sixties seventies,
Speaker 1: pheasants were really popular, you know, small games species, and
Speaker 1: they still are in the mid you know, in the Midwest. UM.
Speaker 1: But a lot of our hunters when when when pheasants
Speaker 1: went away, they shift, Some of them shifted the deer,
Speaker 1: some of them probably stopped hunting or just kept hunting waterfowl. UM.
Speaker 1: So you know, we total numbers, we don't have near
Speaker 1: the hunter effort that we that we used to have,
Speaker 1: UM and and and deer hunting days actual number of
Speaker 1: deer hunting days peaked in the nineties actually UM at
Speaker 1: about a hundred and I think we had probably a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five thousand days of deer deer hunting
Speaker 1: effort um, and now we have I think my last
Speaker 1: estimate was about eighty thousand, So again about about half
Speaker 1: half as many hundred days going towards deer. But they're
Speaker 1: killing probably twice as many deer for that half effort. Yea,
Speaker 1: So are there more sick of deer now than anytime?
Speaker 1: I'm in sick of deer history? Our models would say yeah,
Speaker 1: so the last now it bounces around, but but just
Speaker 1: and just say the last five years. Yes, there's more.
Speaker 1: Over the last five years, there's there's more secreteer sickredeer
Speaker 1: than than any common history. That population is increasing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going back to say population. So, uh, there is
Speaker 1: the consensus that they're harder, that it's harder to hunt them,
Speaker 1: because here's the thing I was reading your report. Harder
Speaker 1: to hunt them than what harder than hunting white tails
Speaker 1: because they live so much longer than white hills, right,
Speaker 1: which leads you to believe that it's like one of
Speaker 1: them has a That might not mean they're harder to hunt,
Speaker 1: it's just there's like a less chance that they're gonna
Speaker 1: die from something like ten year olds are common, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if i'd say common. But we've had
Speaker 1: We've probably had half a dozen that I know, or
Speaker 1: over twenty um that I've had my hands. The one
Speaker 1: that we're tagged back in like the late eighties or
Speaker 1: early nine. You know that you're not going by tooth analysis.
Speaker 1: Someone knows the year they hung a tag on that thing,
Speaker 1: so it was already alive when I got tagged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're and some of those were by tooth analysis, but um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you know, I mean we've had, we've had
Speaker 1: them over twenty Again, they're not falling out of trees,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, it's not uncommon. They're definitely longer lived
Speaker 1: than white tails. Do you think they're longer lived than
Speaker 1: white tails? Because you probably can't even you probably can't
Speaker 1: know this. Absolutely they longer lived in white tails just
Speaker 1: because they're just they live longer just or is it
Speaker 1: because of predation is different on them? The other ones
Speaker 1: can chime in, but I would say predation is different
Speaker 1: as in, as in their their natural habits just make
Speaker 1: them a little harder to hunt. They're a little more nocturnal.
Speaker 1: The habitat they're in is just harder to hunt. You know,
Speaker 1: you always hear all they're smarter than white tails. I
Speaker 1: don't think they're smarter than white tails. Um No, they
Speaker 1: just living twelve foot tall. They live in twelve foot
Speaker 1: tall their security cover is just provides them an opportunity
Speaker 1: to escape hunting pressure and they'll turn nocturnal like that.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, they used they use the ground like how
Speaker 1: like a cotton til uses a briar pack. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, A lot of people in Maryland use bait
Speaker 1: as well, and I believe that bait tends to favor
Speaker 1: nocturnal behaviors as well. So despite the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: I think it enhances their hunting success, I actually think
Speaker 1: it contributes to less success. It concentrates the deer. They
Speaker 1: don't have to move as much. They're not exposed to
Speaker 1: hunters as they move across the landscape as they would
Speaker 1: if they had the forge for natural foods. So I
Speaker 1: think it helps to sort of keep them small home ranges,
Speaker 1: and that, you know, helps to minimize the pressure on
Speaker 1: an individual deer. So you do get some that that
Speaker 1: little lot longer. What I got a question Marsha's bating
Speaker 1: allowed on the refuge. Baiting is not allowed any of
Speaker 1: the refuges, and and and no public land, that's correct,
Speaker 1: no abating on public to private land early. But it's
Speaker 1: really heavily used that private land, right, Unfortunately it is.
Speaker 1: And we're like it's like a patchwork quilt of landownerships.
Speaker 1: So you've got Blackwater, it's a lot of contiguous land.
Speaker 1: We've got about almost thirty tho acres, but you've got
Speaker 1: these private landowners, a lot of sick clubs in particular
Speaker 1: pockmarking the whole refuge as well and cranking out corn yep.
Speaker 1: So it certainly impacts everything. So how how is it
Speaker 1: like on the from the refuge side of things, how
Speaker 1: is it determined by a national wildlife refuge to allow
Speaker 1: or not allow bait? I mean, is that something that
Speaker 1: would just is that something that would a decision that
Speaker 1: would be made in d C that would just apply
Speaker 1: to all refuges. Is that an individual decision that a
Speaker 1: refuge can make for itself. Well, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: Everything that we do as a national wildlife as a
Speaker 1: national wildlife refuge, all the ends on, is it going
Speaker 1: to harm or or improve wildlife? Conservation. So that's the
Speaker 1: first question we have, and we allow what we call
Speaker 1: the Big Six, which are six priority uses hunting, fishing, wildlife, photography,
Speaker 1: wildlife observation, ment, education, interpretation. These things are actually in
Speaker 1: a law called the National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act of
Speaker 1: that says we're here for wildlife. That's the purpose. That's
Speaker 1: why we're dedicated, and we're on the ground. And each
Speaker 1: refuge will have a little bit different purpose. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: Blackwater is was formed in ninety three for waterfowl primarily,
Speaker 1: so that's our primary reason why we're here, and that
Speaker 1: was kind of in response to the great decimation of waterfowl,
Speaker 1: right like when when the refuge system started to spring up,
Speaker 1: it was part of a national effort to recover waterfowl. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and market, uh, the millinary trade was going on as well,
Speaker 1: so market hunting in general for waterfowl, for other types
Speaker 1: of birds, for thee yeah, the millinary trade in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds or people would kill e grits and
Speaker 1: even hummingbirds and so forth to put them in their hats. Literally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Roosevelt. If you read back to Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: you read his earlier writings. I mean he just rails
Speaker 1: against that industry. And because you used to be able
Speaker 1: to go out, I mean people would just go out
Speaker 1: and hunt any bird. You just go out shoot shore birds, herons,
Speaker 1: and you get your hands on to sell feathers, right exactly.
Speaker 1: It's kind of people are so familiar with that story
Speaker 1: about shooting buffalo for hides, right, shooting passenger pigeons for me,
Speaker 1: But people don't realize the decimation of non game birds
Speaker 1: and also that waterfall from market hunting for me, but
Speaker 1: also just the decimation of shore birds for guys for
Speaker 1: tricking out people's hats. Yep, they have these egret plumage
Speaker 1: in their hats, all sorts of really fancy hats and
Speaker 1: those pretty good money. Yeah. You read about guys making
Speaker 1: like small fortunes on it. Yeah. And and Teddy, the
Speaker 1: very first refuge that was ever formed was in h
Speaker 1: three by Teddy Roosevelt by executive order, was Pelican Island
Speaker 1: Off the floor. That's reading about that, Yeah, because people
Speaker 1: would just be they were just decimating the egrets and
Speaker 1: the pelicans and other types of anything out there for
Speaker 1: feathers in particular. Yeah, I tried to look down on
Speaker 1: those guys that were doing that too much, because I
Speaker 1: would have been if if I was alive at that time,
Speaker 1: I would have been totally involved in that business. Not
Speaker 1: a dubt my mind, because I don't know that they
Speaker 1: were really aware. I think people have a hard time
Speaker 1: conceptualizing like finiteness. Yeah right, so as always the visionaries
Speaker 1: right like this, the guy that was complaining then would
Speaker 1: be the same guy that's complaining about something now and
Speaker 1: people are brushing them off. Is that we're not like
Speaker 1: done making mistakes, No, not at all. You know, we
Speaker 1: all act like, oh, you know, it's so silly. And
Speaker 1: my dad always liked to joke that, um, they would
Speaker 1: put cigarettes in his sea rations during World War Two,
Speaker 1: so like every meal, you guy had three cigarettes in it,
Speaker 1: and then we laugh about it now. But right now
Speaker 1: we're making right now, we're doing something is equally stupid
Speaker 1: that our children will laugh about that. We didn't realize
Speaker 1: how stupid it was, Like we're not you know, we
Speaker 1: never There's an inexhaustible supply of mistakes people make and
Speaker 1: then later get hindsight. So at the time, I think
Speaker 1: Roosevelt was like criticized for how much he griped about it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: putting an end of the good times. We got a
Speaker 1: earful yesterday about a guy, Um, we got a earful
Speaker 1: yesterday by a guy who's uh uh it sounds like
Speaker 1: very upset about any form of bag limits or regulations
Speaker 1: ruining people's livelihoods. So yeah, yeah, So everything we do
Speaker 1: on the refuge, we look at is it going to
Speaker 1: be compatible with wildlife conservation and is it going to
Speaker 1: hurt by a diversity? Is it going to hurt the
Speaker 1: purposes of the refuge in particular? And when you look
Speaker 1: at baiting, there's a lot of impacts that come from baiting.
Speaker 1: Besides the fact you're like all the things we we
Speaker 1: just talked about your impacting those species, you're also going
Speaker 1: to be what do people do to get their corn
Speaker 1: out there? They take quads, all sorts of Yeah, they
Speaker 1: end up ruining the ground. And it's a big impact
Speaker 1: on the perspective I mean too. I mean just it's
Speaker 1: it's you got the biological issue of baiting, and you know,
Speaker 1: and the disease issues that get along with that. But
Speaker 1: then on public l and you got that whole social issue.
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody puts bait out and then the next
Speaker 1: time I gets there before the guy to put the
Speaker 1: bait out and sets up over You can imagine that.
Speaker 1: You can imagine that would go. Yeah, when I was
Speaker 1: growing up there, Yeah, when I was growing up, it
Speaker 1: was funny because you could at the time it was
Speaker 1: baiting was wide open, like when I grew up in
Speaker 1: Michigan for deer. Later they started putting later because the
Speaker 1: disease issues and the other things. They started putting limits
Speaker 1: on time when you put it out there. But we
Speaker 1: used to go down and you could buy this, I'm
Speaker 1: not joking. We go to Grant, Michigan, and you could
Speaker 1: fill a pickup truck up with reject carrots, misshaping carrots
Speaker 1: with like that look like weird anatomical features, you name it,
Speaker 1: Like carrots that were not like when you go buy
Speaker 1: a bag of carrots and they're all just like these
Speaker 1: beautiful straight carrots that that's like one in three. The
Speaker 1: rest go for jews and pulp and animal fodder. But
Speaker 1: you could you could fill a truck for five bucks
Speaker 1: and then you'd go dump it out in the woods.
Speaker 1: And we even griped about it, but it was like
Speaker 1: we griped about it because we were aware that it
Speaker 1: really changed the way dear act pushing them towards being nocturnal,
Speaker 1: changing their travel patterns. But it was like, if you
Speaker 1: can't beat them, join them, And that's the philosophy in
Speaker 1: Maryland today. So we would be like, yeah, it sucks
Speaker 1: that you can bait. Let's go put the bait out right,
Speaker 1: Because if I had to do childhood all over again,
Speaker 1: I would take a different approach and I would just
Speaker 1: not do it because I feel like, you're not um.
Speaker 1: I would not do it out of some moral thing.
Speaker 1: I just feel like I would have learned so much
Speaker 1: more about animals had you looked at had you been
Speaker 1: able to go look at like, well where are they naturally?
Speaker 1: Instead of like where can I make them go? It's
Speaker 1: just a much more interesting lesson, Like you can learn
Speaker 1: that like, yes, I learned the really interesting thing that
Speaker 1: dear love carrots, or you could have learned like what
Speaker 1: our deer doing when they're not eating on the carrots
Speaker 1: you stuck out in the work. I call it scouting
Speaker 1: in the bags in my mind. Yeah, well yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is coming from a guy that gage like I'm not,
Speaker 1: like I said, I can hardly can condemn it because
Speaker 1: it was something I was heavily engaged in from the
Speaker 1: time I was well and it legally bow hunt at twelve.
Speaker 1: I was running bait from the time I was twelve
Speaker 1: at the time I was eighteen. Yeah, and I mean,
Speaker 1: and it does have its It does have its usefulness.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like I said, we struggle with
Speaker 1: urban and suburban deer issues all the time. In therese
Speaker 1: cases where it does give you access to deer that
Speaker 1: you otherwise may not. You know, if you if you
Speaker 1: have a refuge of deer, not not national wilde refuge,
Speaker 1: but just an actual you know, a natural refuge where
Speaker 1: you can't get to deer hunt them, you know, you
Speaker 1: might be able to bait and pull some of those
Speaker 1: deer over to an area where you can so. So
Speaker 1: it does have some usefulness. But but you know, I
Speaker 1: wish our hunters, like you said, I mean, we need
Speaker 1: to get back to some more woodsman ship. This year
Speaker 1: is a great example. It's a really good acorn year
Speaker 1: in Maryland. This year, there's acorns everywhere. Deer are gonna
Speaker 1: be on acorns. They're not going to go to corn.
Speaker 1: Our hunters are going to continue to sit on corn
Speaker 1: not see any deer because the deer at the nearest
Speaker 1: white oak or you know, red oak or black oak
Speaker 1: or whatever. So success is going to go down. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: no doubt. I mean any state in the appellation can
Speaker 1: show you data that when we have a good mass year,
Speaker 1: deer kill goes down and that that's why because there's
Speaker 1: deer on acorns and you know they're not they don't
Speaker 1: have to move as much for food so well, or
Speaker 1: even the states that don't have that don't allow baiting
Speaker 1: still show that draw They even those states show that
Speaker 1: dropping in the harvest because there's more dispersed. The hunters
Speaker 1: are not adapting or is that it that the deer
Speaker 1: actually harder to hunt, Well, they're they're harder to hunt
Speaker 1: in a way because yeah, they are more scattered and
Speaker 1: more you know, you can't pattern them as well. Um,
Speaker 1: but you just have you know, I think we have
Speaker 1: a generation of hunters that that don't think about natural
Speaker 1: behavior and natural food sources and you know, and where
Speaker 1: to spend your time trying to trying to get to
Speaker 1: there's there's animals. You know, I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of biological evidence out there that said we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: you know that there's really a lot of reasons not debate.
Speaker 1: I mean, chronic wasting disease is a big one. I
Speaker 1: mean we have chronic wasting disease in the region, you know,
Speaker 1: in Maryland. Um So, No, I think there's plenty of
Speaker 1: biological reasons. That being said. Like I said, there are
Speaker 1: areas where baiting is useful, and we have always been
Speaker 1: a baiting steak, like Michigan. Um. And it's not going
Speaker 1: to go away. No, No, it's not. I think in
Speaker 1: fifty years it will. Well maybe in fifty years it might.
Speaker 1: We won't have we won't we won't have any hunters
Speaker 1: in fifty We've got bigger problems. Yeah, Oh, there's gonna be.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be. There will be people cranking only at it.
Speaker 1: I hope, hope were it would be tough and force
Speaker 1: because it's you know, private land, and how many game
Speaker 1: wardens would you need to patrol all the private land
Speaker 1: that we have here? And yeah, but on unenforceable stuff
Speaker 1: you want, you just wind up getting a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, sure you're gonna have you're gonna
Speaker 1: have some number of people who aren't gonna follow the rules.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people just follow the rules because
Speaker 1: of the rule. Yeah, that's true. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: always like because you've got a club hanging over your head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. You know, we've always had that philosophy. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't you can't. You can't set rigs for the
Speaker 1: for the dishonest guy or now, because they're going to
Speaker 1: find a way to around the system, to break the
Speaker 1: law regardless. So you know, I mean, the vast majority
Speaker 1: of our hunters will you know, they'll obey whatever we
Speaker 1: put out there. Like this morning, walking out, we could
Speaker 1: have shot a deer in the dark with flashlights. Yea,
Speaker 1: once we've gotten swamp. But it wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not thinking yourself like how that they'll never catch us,
Speaker 1: right because we're both hunting, you know. Well yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, just personal ethics, a lot of us won't
Speaker 1: shoot a deer in a certain circumstance just because it
Speaker 1: doesn't match what we think is either fair chase or
Speaker 1: an ethical harvest or you know what you came here for.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, I'd be easy to walk two steps
Speaker 1: down from the parking lot and have a deer pop
Speaker 1: up and shoot it. But that's not kind of why
Speaker 1: I'm out there. You know, I wanna have to work
Speaker 1: for it and learn from it. You wanted to happen
Speaker 1: in a way that you wanted to happen in a
Speaker 1: way that you laid out. Yeah, you know an interesting
Speaker 1: thing that Steve's friend we're gonna get back for talk
Speaker 1: about bear with me, but your friend had an interesting observation. Uh.
Speaker 1: Steve's friend Matt was saying that his uh wife has
Speaker 1: some like she likes the only wild meat. But he
Speaker 1: was joking that there's like a rule that she prefers
Speaker 1: that if it hadn't looked at him, that it was
Speaker 1: unaware of his presence. You know, talk about like having
Speaker 1: like a strict code of how you want things to
Speaker 1: play out. There's like this idea. But when he said that,
Speaker 1: it resonated with me because I was like, when I'm
Speaker 1: telling the hunting story, I always like to point out,
Speaker 1: as you many other hunters, I'm like, and it never
Speaker 1: knew I was there, which you think is sort of
Speaker 1: like a positive right when you're hunting, You like, it's
Speaker 1: a positive if you I feel like, if you get
Speaker 1: an animal that didn't know you were present, because it
Speaker 1: suggests some level of like sneakiness, right, or some level
Speaker 1: of that you were in its space, that it being
Speaker 1: unaware of your space. But that puts together this other
Speaker 1: idea that it's like, um, there was never a relationship
Speaker 1: between you in the animal where you lock eyes, So
Speaker 1: it might be like how that might be kind of
Speaker 1: partially what I feel when I feel that it's so
Speaker 1: important or so positive to get an animal that didn't
Speaker 1: know you were there, is because we never established a report.
Speaker 1: I had an experience once I had perfect stocking conditions,
Speaker 1: saw a dough bed down in some golden and I
Speaker 1: managed to stock with him ten yards of that deer,
Speaker 1: and she never knew I was there, and I had
Speaker 1: to wait and wait and wait for her to stand
Speaker 1: up and offer me a shot. And this whole time
Speaker 1: I could watch her chewing her cut and just completely
Speaker 1: oblivious to my presence. And when the moment came and
Speaker 1: she stood up, I pulled back and I flubbed probably
Speaker 1: one of the easiest shots right over back. And to
Speaker 1: this day I think it's in my head. I just
Speaker 1: I couldn't kill that deer after that, having that experience
Speaker 1: with it, you know, it'd become like your pet. I've
Speaker 1: had that, having staring through binoculars where you watch buck
Speaker 1: bed down at nine o'clock in the morning and then
Speaker 1: you get set up for the shot and you wait
Speaker 1: it's three pm until the buck finally stands up and
Speaker 1: you've watched it change position in its bed, you know,
Speaker 1: groom itself to it's cud, fall over, you know, watch
Speaker 1: his antlers hit the ground while he's sleeping, get back up,
Speaker 1: you know, watch all that. And then by the time
Speaker 1: they're like shooting times, you know it's coming. You're kind
Speaker 1: of like, maybe he'll get away, you know, now that
Speaker 1: ever happens when I'm on the trigger, But if I'm
Speaker 1: like looking for someone else some kind of maybe they'll
Speaker 1: get away, especially they do something cute like turn around
Speaker 1: and kind of nibble or groom. Uh no, I don't
Speaker 1: have that. So back to the refuge do do so
Speaker 1: hunters that come out to hunt, like on the refugees
Speaker 1: that primarily that's like people hunting, Yes, big game, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the big species. Yeah, there's white tail too, but
Speaker 1: like last year we did what three and fifth We
Speaker 1: harvested three and only seventy seven white tail, So there
Speaker 1: are some white tails out there. And do people complain
Speaker 1: about do people complain about the lack of baiting. I
Speaker 1: haven't heard that yet. I think because it's been that
Speaker 1: way for a long time, it's just accepted. It's just accepted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that it's not that that's just not feasible on public
Speaker 1: lands for all the reasons that we talked about. And
Speaker 1: it gives you a different type of hunting experience too.
Speaker 1: If you want to go out there and look for
Speaker 1: sign and look for follows and try and find a
Speaker 1: good trail, try and figure out where are they coming
Speaker 1: from the marsh to the woods at what time. It's
Speaker 1: a great experience that you won't get elsewhere. Do you
Speaker 1: have you ever like figured out success like have you
Speaker 1: guys looked at have you of you any kind of
Speaker 1: idea of success rates for the refuge, like like like
Speaker 1: dear per hunter hour or any dear per day or
Speaker 1: anything like that. No, we haven't done that. We haven't
Speaker 1: done that yet. You killed? How tell me how many
Speaker 1: you killed? Like last year or not? How many? Yea
Speaker 1: three fifty sick and seventy seven white tail? And how
Speaker 1: many individuals? Do you have a guess how many individual
Speaker 1: hunters rolled through the refuge? Yeah? I think we had
Speaker 1: sevent permits sold for deer waterfall. No, that's just dear.
Speaker 1: That's just dear. Now do some people buy permits and
Speaker 1: not show up that year? Yeah? Do some people show
Speaker 1: up and hunt a whole ton? Yeah? And so this
Speaker 1: past year we asked on the permit application for the
Speaker 1: first time, how many how many days on average did
Speaker 1: you hunt last year? Because we're trying to get a
Speaker 1: feel for for exactly that. What's your sense of it,
Speaker 1: like are there? Is it kind of like everything where
Speaker 1: you feel that there's some people that put in the
Speaker 1: time and they do real well, and some people that don't.
Speaker 1: They don't Oh yeah, Is it kind of like a meritocracy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean yeah. The folks that are willing to get
Speaker 1: out there put in the time, deal with the mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I was out there on opening
Speaker 1: day September eight, and it was pretty brutal that first
Speaker 1: well actually the whole month. When it comes to heat
Speaker 1: and mosquitoes and things like that, a lot of people
Speaker 1: aren't out there putting that putting that time in. So
Speaker 1: if you're willing to put on the chest waiters and
Speaker 1: get out into the marsh and try and go where
Speaker 1: other people don't go and figure it out they'll be successful.
Speaker 1: So what's access like there? So we've got a number
Speaker 1: of different units. We've got parking lots and roads back there,
Speaker 1: So it depends. Some of the units are easier to
Speaker 1: access than others. Some you can park and you can
Speaker 1: go out into open woods and never need to put
Speaker 1: on waiters. Others you could be you could be walking
Speaker 1: quite a bit out in marsh that's really falling apart.
Speaker 1: So you take one two steps and then you fall
Speaker 1: through a hole. And what about using canoes and kayaks
Speaker 1: if people do that? Yeah, for the uh, this year
Speaker 1: is the second year that we've allowed boat access to
Speaker 1: certain units. Yep. So, and that's been a little bit
Speaker 1: controversial as well because the people who are able to
Speaker 1: walk back to those kind of really good secret spots
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden they put in an hour
Speaker 1: walk And yeah, and I went. I was with a
Speaker 1: friend and on one of the units, and I spent
Speaker 1: forty five minutes walking back there. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of short and it doesn't take much to get
Speaker 1: into marsh up to my waist and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I get into a tripod stand and sit there and
Speaker 1: rate at light. You know, you see a boat coming
Speaker 1: up and accessing a different part of the marsh. But
Speaker 1: that's kind of the game. So it's it's an interesting
Speaker 1: conundrum because we want to offer access for people, you know,
Speaker 1: for older people who can't do that. What about taking kids?
Speaker 1: What have taken other folks. If I didn't have my
Speaker 1: friend helping me get back to that spot, I probably
Speaker 1: couldn't have gotten back there either. At least you said
Speaker 1: there are a lot of places that aren't easy. That's correct,
Speaker 1: there are. So the boat access is limited to a
Speaker 1: few areas. We're trying it again this year and we'll see,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, the lugs you're being able to see if
Speaker 1: if it creates too much, yeah, tension between hunters or yeah.
Speaker 1: And actually the bigger trouble that we've been having is
Speaker 1: people putting in. If you've driven around this area, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of ditches with water especially it's been kind
Speaker 1: of dry, very dry until recently, but you could put
Speaker 1: your kayaker, canoe in a ditch almost anywhere and get
Speaker 1: to one of these waterways. So that's been an issue
Speaker 1: with trespassing. And yeah, yeah, people putting not putting in
Speaker 1: where they're supposed to for the refuge. But putting their
Speaker 1: boat in in a ditch literally and then going in,
Speaker 1: so that can cause access issues. And if you guys
Speaker 1: have rules about where how you want where you want
Speaker 1: people to park, yep, yep. And but the bigger issues
Speaker 1: with private landowners. So some folks don't know and they'll
Speaker 1: just put in and trespass on other people's property. You
Speaker 1: can get to the refuge through our ramps, but you
Speaker 1: can also get to the refuge through public um, I
Speaker 1: mean private areas as well if you have permission. So
Speaker 1: we don't want to cause problems for other people either.
Speaker 1: I got you. And then uh back to like like
Speaker 1: what are the hallmarks? Like? So what are the things
Speaker 1: that the people who are successful at it? Like? What
Speaker 1: do they do? I mean, is there a way you
Speaker 1: can kind of describe the person who finds success trying to? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Steve's asking because we've been hunting for two days.
Speaker 1: We don't have any success. Ye were by myself, like
Speaker 1: I said, I've been trying to. I've been gun hunting
Speaker 1: for a long time, but I've just started bow hunting
Speaker 1: and I myself have been trying to get my first
Speaker 1: sicke as well with my bow. Um, So the thing
Speaker 1: that that I've talked to the people who have really
Speaker 1: been successful and they like to help other people be
Speaker 1: successful too. Is is they put the time. I mean
Speaker 1: they're looking at aerial maps. They're trying to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: this guy's going to go in the marsh here and
Speaker 1: then the woods there. There's crops there, So they're looking
Speaker 1: at the landscape. Um. And then they're going out there
Speaker 1: and scouting and putting the time in to see where's
Speaker 1: the sign and so forth. Now, when it comes to
Speaker 1: public lands, it's always a little bit of a crapshoot
Speaker 1: because when everybody else goes out there, they're gonna move.
Speaker 1: The deer patterns are going to move because of the
Speaker 1: people moving in the woods. That's why early archery is
Speaker 1: so fun to me anyways, and I think to a
Speaker 1: lot of people because it's so miserable that no one's
Speaker 1: out there. That's right in some regards. Yeah, because that
Speaker 1: first gunshot hasn't gone off. So when muzzle loader opens tomorrow,
Speaker 1: we're going to see a lot more hunters in the woods.
Speaker 1: They're gonna hear the shots. That deer are going to
Speaker 1: go a lot more nocturnal, and they're not going to
Speaker 1: act as natural as they have been. So I'm going
Speaker 1: out tonight and hoping I can get my And do
Speaker 1: you feel that, um, do you feel from what you've
Speaker 1: seen that that people who are willing to walk and
Speaker 1: wade out too hard to access areas of that that
Speaker 1: that's good? That works for people. Yeah, it works for people.
Speaker 1: But I've also heard the same exact people be very
Speaker 1: close to a parking lot and get to your deer
Speaker 1: as well. I think it comes down to experience. You
Speaker 1: can't nothing and replaced as getting out there and doing
Speaker 1: it yourself and learning those hard lessons and seeing it.
Speaker 1: Nothing can replace that, and that's what I've seen amongst
Speaker 1: the hunters that I respect and know around here, are
Speaker 1: just a lot tougher because you can't even even when
Speaker 1: they're not disturbed by the ares, alter season or a
Speaker 1: firearm seating, you can't pattern them like a white tail.
Speaker 1: They just they're a little bit more random, you know,
Speaker 1: white tails, and you can pretty much guarantee they're gonna
Speaker 1: be on that bean field every night or whatever, whereas
Speaker 1: sick as are a little harder to pattern. You just
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta put yourself in that high percentage area.
Speaker 1: But you got to do it a whole bunch. That's
Speaker 1: playoff hunt with Steve for the last couple of days.
Speaker 1: Is I came down like trying to like, you know,
Speaker 1: I was asking a lot of questions about like very
Speaker 1: specific landscape, like like oh, trail intersections or and just
Speaker 1: kind of explain your idea about them, like like how
Speaker 1: you go about stand selection. Yeah, it's it's like Brian said,
Speaker 1: I look, I've been disappointed many times sitting over a
Speaker 1: trail it looks like a cow path and you think, oh,
Speaker 1: they've got to come here regularly. It's just a matter
Speaker 1: of time. And it probably is just a matter of time.
Speaker 1: But a lot of that activity is at night. And
Speaker 1: so I've found that sitting on trails per se is
Speaker 1: not a very productive uh technique for shooting deer. But
Speaker 1: and if you look from an aerial photograph, you'll see
Speaker 1: there's just a network of trails through the marsh and
Speaker 1: into the woods. You can see you can see from Google. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it's like a crap shoot whether they're gonna
Speaker 1: take this trail or that trail. So what I try
Speaker 1: to do is, like Brian just said, find high percentage
Speaker 1: areas where deer activity gets funneled down and hopefully that
Speaker 1: means one is going to come within range. You know,
Speaker 1: with me shooting traditional archery equipment, it's like twenty yards.
Speaker 1: So I look for thicker and tighter and heavier cover
Speaker 1: than probably most people that would be able to shoot
Speaker 1: a little firs because you don't care about the forty yard.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love to see the deer. It's fun
Speaker 1: to watch him and stuff, but it's way out of
Speaker 1: my range to it might as well be four hundred
Speaker 1: if it's forty. Um. But you know, looking for those
Speaker 1: patches where maybe the frag mighties pokes a little further
Speaker 1: in towards the woods, or it's it next down into
Speaker 1: a narrower strip. Um, and they'll follow the edge of
Speaker 1: of those things. Um. They love that switch grass, kind
Speaker 1: of marshy, wet stuff. They like to have their feet wet.
Speaker 1: You know, they go on the uplands, but they spend
Speaker 1: most of their time with their feet wet, waiting around. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I heard that the first ones I saw. I heard
Speaker 1: him before I saw him, and it just sounds like
Speaker 1: stuff running through the water. Yeah, that's normal out there.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of people was first experience. Can you
Speaker 1: Steve explained the frag mighty stuff. Oh, frag mighty is
Speaker 1: is a non native ornamental plant that was introduced I
Speaker 1: don't even know when, probably early nine dreds, if not
Speaker 1: soon her uh and it's you know, escape become feral.
Speaker 1: It establishes very dense monotypic stands that crowds out other
Speaker 1: native plants. Is it is it a grass or yes?
Speaker 1: Read and but mine got like twelve feet high. Twelve
Speaker 1: feet high. It's actually quite beautiful. But does it like
Speaker 1: a dozen or more stalks per square foot? I'd have
Speaker 1: to say, oh, yeah, it's almost impenetrable. Certainly you can't
Speaker 1: get through it without a whole lot of effort. But
Speaker 1: they just like run around. They're like little muskrats. Man.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the deer do. That's great cover for him.
Speaker 1: They That's probably why someone lived to be twenty years old. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was laughing. You have like a non native species
Speaker 1: utilizing a non native vegetation to great effect. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: And on the refuge, we we try and control fragmighties
Speaker 1: in certain areas, which is always interesting because some of
Speaker 1: the hunters would rather us not. They like it. They're yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but we can't control it all. That's how would you like?
Speaker 1: What do you try? What do you try to do
Speaker 1: to get rid of it? We use Rodeo Glyphus eight
Speaker 1: and we spray that and we have a machine called
Speaker 1: a Marshmaster, which is a pretty cool thing that just
Speaker 1: goes out and we spray it. Uh. When we had
Speaker 1: a slug of funding from an outside source, we were
Speaker 1: able to do some aerial spraying of it a number
Speaker 1: of years ago, but we can't keep that up. So
Speaker 1: we control about five acres of frag mighties, which there's
Speaker 1: a lot more out there. So there's plenty for the
Speaker 1: for sica and for hunting, but you've got a spot
Speaker 1: of five acres where you try to keep it native vegetation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have areas that equate to five acres, like our
Speaker 1: impoundments that we create for waterfowl. We want to keep
Speaker 1: the frag mighties out of there so that the water
Speaker 1: fowl can utilize it over the winter and then whenever
Speaker 1: the marsh. We have this marsh migration that's going on.
Speaker 1: If you go out on the refuge or anywhere around here,
Speaker 1: you'll see dying trees kind of transitioning to living trees.
Speaker 1: And that's where the sea level is rising and the
Speaker 1: marsh is literally migrating up slope. We're so flat here
Speaker 1: the marsh can do that, and if it doesn't run
Speaker 1: into development, it's going to migrate. Like the highest place
Speaker 1: in this county is eleven ft or something like that
Speaker 1: something probably it sounds about right. And Steve was saying
Speaker 1: that just in the time you spent hunting here, you've
Speaker 1: watched that oh yeah, tree line. Yeah, dramatic changes in
Speaker 1: the tree lines. And you know some of the places
Speaker 1: that you saw today when I first started hunting them
Speaker 1: twelve fifteen years ago, those were had big trees you
Speaker 1: could put tree stands in. And you know, more than
Speaker 1: half of those trees have died and the ones that
Speaker 1: are left are just kind of stunted and whatnot. So
Speaker 1: another ten years from now that I'll be dead lying
Speaker 1: on the ground. And the salt water intrusion and yeah,
Speaker 1: Black Waters lost five thousand acres of marsh to open
Speaker 1: water since five thousand, really yeah, and we're still losing
Speaker 1: it today. And everybody who goes out, the muskrat trappers,
Speaker 1: the hunters, everybody who goes out there, they can see
Speaker 1: the changes right before your eyes. Five thousand acres from
Speaker 1: marsh to open water. Yeah, so that's what we have
Speaker 1: to deal with, and we're trying to help we we
Speaker 1: want to keep that marsh. You want to keep that
Speaker 1: high marsh that used to be there in marsh in general,
Speaker 1: and so as the frag mighties comes in and moves
Speaker 1: into a lot of these areas where it would have
Speaker 1: been different species before. So there's certain areas that we
Speaker 1: target for the Fragmighties control, and the other places we
Speaker 1: just we let it go. Can you explain high marsh? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: high marsh. Well, back in the nineties when the refuge
Speaker 1: was established, I saw pictures over this weekend of someone
Speaker 1: who did a history of the refuge where you it
Speaker 1: used to be the marsh was high enough above the
Speaker 1: water level you'd have different species of of the cord grass,
Speaker 1: the salt marsh, hay, etcetera. And the cattle could actually
Speaker 1: graze it. Well, you would never imagine doing that now
Speaker 1: because with as the marsh has actually the sea level
Speaker 1: has risen, water levels have risen. Therefore there's a different
Speaker 1: it's a low marsh instead, and as more water gets
Speaker 1: higher and higher, it becomes more broken up. If you
Speaker 1: look around you'll see marsh. That's just all grass. But
Speaker 1: if you look in the middle, you'll start to see
Speaker 1: like poles of water, open wire. That's the marsh just
Speaker 1: just uh, degrading, falling apart. And that's not you know,
Speaker 1: what we want to see, but that's indeed what's happening.
Speaker 1: So we have to deal with it. Things change. What
Speaker 1: species come out as the winner on that? Uh well, fish, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got more fish now, yeah, snakeheads uh yeah, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're losing. But you could you could argue that
Speaker 1: that Sica and freg Mighty's are winners in this because
Speaker 1: they're they're might as this marsh is migrating up into
Speaker 1: the woods, the dying woods. It's a different species before
Speaker 1: freg Mighty's and sicket was different species of of the
Speaker 1: cord grasses and so forth, three square things like that.
Speaker 1: So here here's like a probably harder question for you
Speaker 1: about like managing a refuge and then and then having
Speaker 1: a species like sick of deer that have a tremendous
Speaker 1: like hunter interest, Like I would think if you look
Speaker 1: at the ma and date for the refuge system would
Speaker 1: not be to provide a habitat to a non native
Speaker 1: that's correct. So do people float the idea of trying
Speaker 1: to do an eradication or is there I mean, is
Speaker 1: there is there just no negative to them? Uh? Certainly
Speaker 1: we have folks um that question. Oh wait, especially with
Speaker 1: their deer hunting program. You're managing for sica. That's a
Speaker 1: non native invasive species that some would argue compete with
Speaker 1: white tail, whether or not that's true or not. And
Speaker 1: we argue that well, you know, they felt like, like
Speaker 1: Brian explained, it's we are managing a resource for hunters
Speaker 1: that we don't think is having a detrimental effect to
Speaker 1: the refuge in and of itself. However, we are trying
Speaker 1: to focus our efforts of harvest on certain areas where
Speaker 1: they are causing problems. For instance, we plant crops um
Speaker 1: for waterfowl so that when they get here, when the
Speaker 1: geek which have started arriving, the migrants, that's there that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be there for the waterfowl over the winter
Speaker 1: and the sick in particularly, well, all the deer are
Speaker 1: really hitting those crops hard. So we try and open
Speaker 1: up wildlife drive and some of those areas that are
Speaker 1: closed to hunting specifically so that hunters can go in
Speaker 1: and hopefully hit those deer harder so that we can
Speaker 1: have that resource there for waterfowl. So it's a balancing act. Um.
Speaker 1: So with the with the can you break down the
Speaker 1: difference between the refuge and the what's the other thing
Speaker 1: that the stay wildlife management areas? Yeah? But what river
Speaker 1: is it? Not the Savage but fishing Bay Fishing Bay
Speaker 1: wildlife management area, So like break down from me what
Speaker 1: those two things are. Sure, I'll talk about the National
Speaker 1: Wildlife Refuges are We're federally owned by the US Fish
Speaker 1: and Wildlife Service, and so that was the first refuge,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned, was Pelican Island back in three. And
Speaker 1: we're the only lands federally loan owned lands set aside
Speaker 1: specifically for wildlife and wildlife dependent recreation for people. So
Speaker 1: like the hunting and fishing that we talked about, we've
Speaker 1: got five and sixty six around the country, and Blackwater
Speaker 1: is is one of those. We were established back in
Speaker 1: ninety three, primarily for waterfowl, but also for other species
Speaker 1: of wildlife as well. And uh yeah, so we follow
Speaker 1: federal mandates of the Fishing Wildlife Service UM, which includes
Speaker 1: allowing visitors and those types of activities that are compatible
Speaker 1: for wildlife conservation and and the Blackwater Refuge actually shares
Speaker 1: a border with Fishing Bayishing Bay correct in Fishing Bay State,
Speaker 1: that's a state wildlife management area. Most of those were
Speaker 1: purchased with Pittman Robertson funds. A lot of stemmy nuts
Speaker 1: break wildife management areas are pretty common across the country.
Speaker 1: So UM Fishing Bay, I think that's our largest. Our
Speaker 1: largest one is fifty however plus thousand acres or whatever
Speaker 1: it is UM and they form one contiguous piece of marsh. Though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's more USA. And how many acres total of It's like,
Speaker 1: how many acres total of public land are there in
Speaker 1: this area? A good bit. I don't know the percentage. Wise,
Speaker 1: we're we're a little over twenty nine thousand acres, so
Speaker 1: that includes Martin the Island and some of our other
Speaker 1: smaller refuges, but certainly most of it's a black water
Speaker 1: and uh, Fishing Bays about twenty five Taylor's Island. There's
Speaker 1: w m A at Taylor's Island. So I mean there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of public land in the area. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty thousand plus acres easily UM not all contiguous,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean there's softy acres of of of
Speaker 1: sika deer habitat. Yeah, so it's like water. So it's
Speaker 1: not a lot of it, good percentage of it right
Speaker 1: here it yea and how and there's how many deer
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen thousand? Do you guys feel that? Uh?
Speaker 1: Do you guys feel that that? It's the thing that
Speaker 1: people don't really know about. I think the sick of
Speaker 1: they know about they seem to. But I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what I mean. I mean nationally, I want my whole life,
Speaker 1: but I have to come down here. One time, a
Speaker 1: friend of mine was at some fundraiser auction for Ducks Unlimited,
Speaker 1: and somehow or another wound up with a snow goose
Speaker 1: hunt invited me to come along at for like a
Speaker 1: day and emerdis guy talking about like these like marsh dear, Yeah,
Speaker 1: sick of deer, marsh dear. And it was kind of
Speaker 1: in one year and out the other. But I was remember,
Speaker 1: that was like the first time I've ever had any idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: We've been playing in this trip for two years and
Speaker 1: I've yet to tell somebody, Yeah, We're going to Maryland
Speaker 1: to hunt seek of deer and have someone go, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Remy Warren was the only one. He's got
Speaker 1: his he's got his finger to the polls man. And
Speaker 1: I do know that all the locals want to keep
Speaker 1: it kind of their own little secret. I can imagine,
Speaker 1: yeahs out of the bag, you know, their perceptionists that
Speaker 1: were overrun with non residents and come years looking to
Speaker 1: hunt secret deer. And but the numbers don't bear that out. No,
Speaker 1: not really they don't. I mean, it's definitely they are
Speaker 1: well known in the mid Atlantic, so you know, you
Speaker 1: see a lot of Delaware hunters, you see a lot
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania hunters, you see fair number of New Jersey hunters,
Speaker 1: Virginia hunters. Yeah see, you know, so it's more it's
Speaker 1: a local mid Atlantic they're well known, um, among the
Speaker 1: deer hunting community. Um. But once you get outside of
Speaker 1: that range, and there's been quite a few celebrities that
Speaker 1: have been here hunting them and have done shows on them. Um,
Speaker 1: I've done you know, I don't know, I can't even
Speaker 1: count four or five, six, half a dozen different you know,
Speaker 1: over the year's different interviews with different hunters that that
Speaker 1: have come. So it has attracted national you know, at
Speaker 1: that at that level, but but it's definitely more still
Speaker 1: a more local type phenomena. So one of the things
Speaker 1: I could imagine limits it a little bit is they
Speaker 1: have dinky little antlers. So it's like it's like you
Speaker 1: gotta have it. But I'm not hacking that because don't
Speaker 1: really care. I mean it's like you have like a
Speaker 1: con of sewer's eye to recognize. Yeah, they're not They're
Speaker 1: not a elk, you know. I mean, if it happened
Speaker 1: to have some freakish giant antlers, it's just a fact
Speaker 1: that more people to say. But you're right, so have
Speaker 1: you tried one? Have you eaten one? Yet? They are
Speaker 1: so good, they are much tastier. I heard people almost
Speaker 1: universally like them better than I would say, that's true.
Speaker 1: Steve had a word to describe whitetail met Could you
Speaker 1: call it kind of minerally? Yeah, yeah, I've heard that
Speaker 1: term before. It's it's a slight metallic or livery taste.
Speaker 1: Is what I prefer these. I prefer the secret dear Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I love white tail too, but there's something
Speaker 1: that secret backstrap is just I've never talked to anybody
Speaker 1: that they would prefer whitea however, So it's just like
Speaker 1: widely as you know, it's pretty much universal. Yeah, it's good,
Speaker 1: not just you know, the flavor and then the texture
Speaker 1: to like I said, are most of the time they're
Speaker 1: more tender than white tail. It's killing me that I
Speaker 1: haven't got one. So but yeah, I don't. I want
Speaker 1: to get back to the antler because I want to
Speaker 1: be hacking on them. But I mean, you've got some
Speaker 1: ones that are that are were described to me, Steve.
Speaker 1: You've killed something that were described to me by not
Speaker 1: just you, by beings like trophy class. Yeah, the three
Speaker 1: I showed you just about anybody would would get mounted
Speaker 1: in there, you know, a trophy. Yeah. And it's like
Speaker 1: they're like, I'm not dogging on him. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: it's like a little it's like it's like three three
Speaker 1: times per antler. And then the main beam is sixteen
Speaker 1: inches long maybe for a huge one. Sixteen sixty is
Speaker 1: a really big one. And you're saying that like more
Speaker 1: like an eight point is like virtually unheard of, very rare.
Speaker 1: A true eight point is extremely rare. But it's an
Speaker 1: elkish kind of little antler yeah, yeah, they're really cool,
Speaker 1: nice eye guards. And and you do get some different
Speaker 1: configurations sometimes, whether it's generated by injuries or either to
Speaker 1: the antler when it's growing or to the dear their
Speaker 1: body when they're growing antlers, but that you know, three
Speaker 1: by three configuration is your typical mature stag. And you'll
Speaker 1: get a lot of I call them, uh glorified spikes,
Speaker 1: these little six pointers that are just little nubbins for
Speaker 1: eye guards, and and the top points, the splits, we
Speaker 1: call them. I saw one of those today. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: year lanes are always spikes, and I've never seen a
Speaker 1: branched antler yearling. And then at two and a half,
Speaker 1: they they will be what you just described, one of
Speaker 1: those little you know, week you might be able to
Speaker 1: call them the six point, but maybe a four point
Speaker 1: or whatever. And then it takes two and a half
Speaker 1: or it takes three and a half and up to
Speaker 1: start getting into maturity and you know, true six points. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then these guys don't have twin fallns either, right, No,
Speaker 1: just single calf yeah that I've ever seen, um, and
Speaker 1: that's in the literature all which suggested only they only
Speaker 1: ever have a single calf. I've had different reports over
Speaker 1: the years. People said, no, she had twins or whatever,
Speaker 1: but um, I've only ever seen yeah, single single calf. No, Marshy,
Speaker 1: I overheard you earlier before we got started. You were saying,
Speaker 1: you've like you haven't got one with your bull. You've
Speaker 1: passed up shots. I've passed up several spikes. Why that's
Speaker 1: just me. I just I just want to let the
Speaker 1: let the little guys grow, and I wanted to get well.
Speaker 1: Let me all right, let me talk about the other week.
Speaker 1: So it was it last week or the week before.
Speaker 1: It was one of those really hot days and I
Speaker 1: had a spike under and I had a shot, but
Speaker 1: it was also you know, it was really hot with
Speaker 1: the rut, so I kept thinking another a mature stag
Speaker 1: was gonna possibly come in, or a Hind. I'd rather
Speaker 1: take a Hind or a mature stag is gonna let
Speaker 1: the little guy go. So that was just me at
Speaker 1: that time. Now, if it had been late January, I
Speaker 1: think I probably had just taken him. But because it
Speaker 1: was early in the season and the rut was on,
Speaker 1: that's what I chose to do. How did it come
Speaker 1: to pass that was under your tree? Like? What hell?
Speaker 1: I was hunting of friends that was actually under I
Speaker 1: was actually hunting bait that time. I was. I've been
Speaker 1: I've hunted bait and I've not hunted bait, and my
Speaker 1: preference is to not hunt bait my properties that I least,
Speaker 1: I'm not baiting this year. I did last year to
Speaker 1: try it out. It's a lot of I'm just not
Speaker 1: going to do it. I don't just not my preference. However,
Speaker 1: trying to get my first sick and my first bow kill, um, well,
Speaker 1: if a friend's gonna ask me, I'm also not going
Speaker 1: to pass it up. Have you have you been out
Speaker 1: hunting on the refuge too? Yes? I have, Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: you spread it out and tomorrow is gonna be I've
Speaker 1: never hunted muzzleloader before. Tomorrow is my first day muzzleloader
Speaker 1: hunting ever. And I'm going on the refuge. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you're gonna do the opening day of Muslim I am,
Speaker 1: And it's it's the quote to day. I'm in the
Speaker 1: unit that everybody complains about has too many people on
Speaker 1: it because as a staff person, UM, just treat me
Speaker 1: like someone else, in fact, treat me worse, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm going out there and I'm gonna So you're
Speaker 1: gonna go out with your bow tonight. I'm going out
Speaker 1: with my bow tonight onto my my private least, which
Speaker 1: is not bated, and there's white tail and sick of
Speaker 1: there um. However, there's there's some nice white tails there too,
Speaker 1: So I'm going there tonight. I hope, you know, see
Speaker 1: if I can finally make that happen. And then tomorrow
Speaker 1: I'm going muscle later. And do you already have do
Speaker 1: you already have your stand? Like like you already have
Speaker 1: your stand set up on the refuge. No, I'm using
Speaker 1: my climbing stand. So I went and scouted. I picked
Speaker 1: a spot. And since I'm hunting by myself tomorrow and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of I'm not very big, you know, height
Speaker 1: wise or anything, I've got to be able to take
Speaker 1: care of that deer myself. So I didn't go out
Speaker 1: until the marsh. And like if I had if I
Speaker 1: was hunting with buddies, I didn't go to where I
Speaker 1: would normally go. I had to be smart about it.
Speaker 1: Where can I go and take care of a deer myself?
Speaker 1: If I get it well, I think tomorrow you're definitely
Speaker 1: gonna have to shoot a spike because if you shoot
Speaker 1: some giant like that as the refuge manager, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. You have to take a vacation day.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you bet. You can't ect like you're out
Speaker 1: there doing something else with a muzzleoader. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I will be hunting them. So you gotta put in
Speaker 1: for you gotta put in for vacation, and I gotta
Speaker 1: put in for the quota and get selected to which
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, I'm in the unit that's still open,
Speaker 1: so just to avoid any feel of yeah, of privileged specially,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. And I was hunting a unit
Speaker 1: with my with my bow the very first day, and
Speaker 1: I'll be hunting back there again too. So you've already
Speaker 1: you've already hunted the refuge with your bowl this year. Yes,
Speaker 1: the opening around a lot, yes, and you keep hunt
Speaker 1: until January. Yes, I did last year. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: was down at my lease that I was just white
Speaker 1: tail down there, and then a friend would take me
Speaker 1: once in a while, first sicker around here, and so
Speaker 1: I would do that if you could tolerate the cold.
Speaker 1: January is great tom to hunt. There's not many people
Speaker 1: out they Yeah, I enjoyed it. I had to. I
Speaker 1: ended up keep buying more and more stuff because I
Speaker 1: kept getting colder and cold. So the little inserts, the flips,
Speaker 1: you got to turn them on through your boots. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got those fewer mosquitoes. You'll still have mosquitoes in January,
Speaker 1: you will, you will. So I never heard of the
Speaker 1: thermo cell till I came here and started hunting, and
Speaker 1: that's like the you have to have that here, you
Speaker 1: have to have that. So I'm trying my time, and
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna happen for you. Yeah, so did
Speaker 1: you not? So? So? Did you not start hunting until
Speaker 1: until as a grown up? Yeah, untill about twenty three
Speaker 1: four or something like that. That was the first time
Speaker 1: I actually hunted. Something got you. Ye, started off with
Speaker 1: bird hunting and then moved to deer white tails because
Speaker 1: I'm from western Pennsylvania, so that's all white tails. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And now you're working in on the local secret. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I never thought I'd be able to bow hunt.
Speaker 1: I just didn't think I could pull enough weight back
Speaker 1: and just you know, it's a lot of pressure, but
Speaker 1: I really love it. You've been at it two years now.
Speaker 1: This is my second season bow hunting you not. No,
Speaker 1: it's not a problem. You haven't got one yet. No, No,
Speaker 1: I'm all right. I don't hope I should start feeling
Speaker 1: sorry for you. But it sounds like you're right on track. No,
Speaker 1: I've gun hunted up. Yes, you'll kill something this year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and last year, Like I said, I did pass up. Well,
Speaker 1: at the least down in Somerset County. We those of
Speaker 1: us in it, we have this. We don't shoot anything
Speaker 1: less than an eight point. So when I had some
Speaker 1: smaller box, kind of under my stand, I didn't take
Speaker 1: it because that was kind of the informal rules for secrets. No,
Speaker 1: for white tails, I'm sorry for white tails. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna waiting a long time. White tails only. So that's
Speaker 1: that's that's us. So myself, I'll take a hind or
Speaker 1: a mature any sort of mature stag. But you asked
Speaker 1: me again a little bit later, and yeah, maybe I
Speaker 1: will take a spike. I got one last question. Last
Speaker 1: night when you were guys were talking another thing I overheard.
Speaker 1: Were you saying that, like I'm holding this, I'm holding
Speaker 1: a stag here that Steve killed that's missing the time?
Speaker 1: Are you saying that someone found that time yeah. So
Speaker 1: in another deer, yep, a fellow hunter that hunted the
Speaker 1: same property that I do. I shot a six point
Speaker 1: that was about the same caliber as that that seven
Speaker 1: point there and uh to you know, very mature stags,
Speaker 1: and he got his mounted and he took his taxidermisters
Speaker 1: or keeping it out. The uh taxidermists found a length
Speaker 1: of bone that matched up perfectly with what was missing
Speaker 1: off the tip of that one antler. There. Where is it? Now?
Speaker 1: He's got it? Yeah, he didn't give it. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's it's just kind of his trophy. So I didn't
Speaker 1: want to take. Yeah, it was pretty Yeah, he's got
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1: They are extremely aggressive. Well, he's a fan of your program.
Speaker 1: So when he hears that, I don't want to. I
Speaker 1: don't want brother. Obviously he's got impeccable taste. Well that
Speaker 1: just uh all right, Brian. You gotten to witness them fighting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's brutal. Yeah, they're they're they're impressive and like
Speaker 1: they you can't see the skull that we're holding, but
Speaker 1: this would all be fat. So they have over an
Speaker 1: inch of fat on that skull to help protect against
Speaker 1: you know there's points and all, but they are just brutal.
Speaker 1: But you know they're there's no question there's a lot
Speaker 1: that that die every year just from injuries. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you find that. Do you find sheds? You probably
Speaker 1: can't find the sheds because of the habitat type, right
Speaker 1: or do you know didn't find them every once in
Speaker 1: a while. Yeah, you can find him, you can find
Speaker 1: not in the march, you're not gonna find him. This
Speaker 1: seems like if they drop out that that, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: going stuff. You're not gonna Yeah. I did find one
Speaker 1: and frag once. So I was tracking a deer that
Speaker 1: i'd hit and really blood trailing him. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: looked down and here's this beautiful three point antlers sitting there.
Speaker 1: They are a little welk, so they do have beauty
Speaker 1: or appreciate so being a being a little elk, they
Speaker 1: are a little stigil tusks, So that's cool. Yeah, Brian,
Speaker 1: is it roar or bugle sound they make? I've always
Speaker 1: just heard bugle ms will talk about the roar, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think it just kind of spill over from
Speaker 1: the red deer roar. And they anything that ruts, they
Speaker 1: just called the roar, but here it's bugling. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think we just we just equated without Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: a weird, like I don't know if I could exactly
Speaker 1: explain it. It's um to me. It's more of like
Speaker 1: a whistle, multi pitch whistle stay in stages. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: did you hear from a distance? You only hear the whistle,
Speaker 1: but if you're closer, which we've gotten to be close
Speaker 1: up a couple of times, you also hear that there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a gird at the beginning, and
Speaker 1: then just a little bit at the end, and then
Speaker 1: there's another call what'd you call it when you're real
Speaker 1: close the key ways call it a hehaw. That starts
Speaker 1: out was a real high pitched kind of e sound,
Speaker 1: and then it drags off into this ah sounds, so
Speaker 1: it's like, really nothing else sounds like. It's kind of crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And what tripped us up as I think that was
Speaker 1: the first day that we were hunting with you, I think,
Speaker 1: and we we thought we had heard him. It was
Speaker 1: the wind was kind of blowing, so it's tough to
Speaker 1: hear anything at all. But both Steve and I get
Speaker 1: together and we're like, man, we I think we heard
Speaker 1: a bugle, but it was like it must have been
Speaker 1: a guy because it was like three in a row,
Speaker 1: Like who would be doing that? Right? We go to
Speaker 1: Steve and he's like, oh, yeah, every time the bugle
Speaker 1: it's you know, and I've heard now twos, threes and
Speaker 1: even fours. It seems like, um, do you have that recording? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one I videoed last season on Blackwater and
Speaker 1: uh called it in with a cow call. Came across
Speaker 1: the marsh about two hundred yards and wandered, well, didn't
Speaker 1: wandered it. It came pretty directly to me and I
Speaker 1: got within twenty yards, didn't find this challenger that had
Speaker 1: had called at him, and uh so he let out
Speaker 1: with the cat I actually had bugled earlier. And then
Speaker 1: uh he came out of the woods about two hundred
Speaker 1: fifty yards away and I watched him and he was
Speaker 1: clearly rolled up. He made about four or five wallows
Speaker 1: on the back side of this this marsh. They roll
Speaker 1: around in the mud and get their antlers all dug
Speaker 1: into the marsh and p on themselves and just in
Speaker 1: the wallows to break off from the sound real quick.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's small. Probably what maybe two square feet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably something like that. And they looked to me, every
Speaker 1: time I've seen one, it's it's not like it was.
Speaker 1: They continue to use the same one, right. They look
Speaker 1: like they could just like randomly stop anywhere and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: making a new wall, right, Yeah, they will reuse them also,
Speaker 1: But um, most of the ones I think you see
Speaker 1: are just one off. That's what it seems like, which
Speaker 1: is why I don't bother hunting them, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's nice to have a bunch of around because you
Speaker 1: know there's a stag there. But I don't set up
Speaker 1: with my tree stand over a wallow because it's just
Speaker 1: you can wait forever for him to show up. Once
Speaker 1: in a while you'll find one that looks like it's
Speaker 1: probably a sort of communal sort of wallow and it'll
Speaker 1: be ten ft wide and just shoot up and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But most of them are just sort of frustration being
Speaker 1: taken out, I think. But now, Marka, you're telling me
Speaker 1: you set your stand up over Oh no, I just
Speaker 1: look for wallows. Look for sign Yeah, a scrape you
Speaker 1: called it. We were talking about a wallow when you
Speaker 1: told me, Well, I said, look for sign like trails,
Speaker 1: and blows and scrapes like for white tail and things
Speaker 1: like that, but not necessary that you would set up
Speaker 1: on there, just trying to determine where are they moving through.
Speaker 1: Oh but yeah, but you told me, and I thought
Speaker 1: it was in an email you said something about a
Speaker 1: scrape and that was that was that was for what?
Speaker 1: That was my my hunt last last week. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. I was looking for signs um at
Speaker 1: my lease which has white tails an sica, and the
Speaker 1: buck that had come in had a scrape. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize it, but when I watched him actually work the scrape,
Speaker 1: then I realized, Yeah, yeah, it happened to be near
Speaker 1: a pond and there was a lot of sign going
Speaker 1: in and out like it was really it's been really dry,
Speaker 1: so there was like a lot of dried mud on
Speaker 1: the vegetation. So I was hoping, yeah, okay, the sick
Speaker 1: are going to come from the woods to the pond
Speaker 1: in the evening because it's hot and it's my best chance.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that there was also a white tail
Speaker 1: that was making a pretty nice scrape there until I
Speaker 1: saw excellent stand Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, let's hear
Speaker 1: the queue it up m m m m. So that
Speaker 1: real guttural um sort of start and finish. A lot
Speaker 1: of people don't hear that if it's not real close
Speaker 1: to you just say the high pitch whistle part. But
Speaker 1: most of the commercially available calls that are out there
Speaker 1: don't really capture that. And you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: that it's necessary for the deer to respond to it, um,
Speaker 1: but for my own sort of personal confidence in the
Speaker 1: call I'm blowing, I just like to to be as
Speaker 1: authentic as possible, you know. And uh so the one
Speaker 1: call I've found that actually captures that part is the
Speaker 1: Nordic Seka and that it's manufactured in Sweden. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty neat call. It's a one trick pony.
Speaker 1: It really only does the the bugle and you could
Speaker 1: probably do the he hawk kind of sound with it too,
Speaker 1: if you really practiced at it. But so I always
Speaker 1: carry standard ELK calls to so I can make the
Speaker 1: myriad of sounds. But but uh, it's it's pretty exciting
Speaker 1: when they respond to it. Yeah, I'm hoping I'm gonna
Speaker 1: blow mine a hundred times tonight. Ryan. Have you guys
Speaker 1: done it ever? Any research on the vocalizations. No, we
Speaker 1: have not, but if you if you read the literature, um,
Speaker 1: you know, what I've read is that seeker or the
Speaker 1: sicker or the most vocal of the servety. So you know,
Speaker 1: and and if you spend a lot of time out there,
Speaker 1: there are I mean, there's six seven different vocalizations you
Speaker 1: can you can pick up, not just not just the stags,
Speaker 1: but the hinds with the calves and just the other.
Speaker 1: If you had to describe the hind calve call like
Speaker 1: a mu, they almost elk like yeah, yeah, very similar, yeah,
Speaker 1: very similar. So the other one too. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if you've probably heard yet, but they do this really
Speaker 1: low guttural growl and it almost sounds like they're talking
Speaker 1: to lugie or something, and it's there's no pitch to it.
Speaker 1: It's just as when you hear that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: usually from what I've seen, it's challenges to another stat
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, you don't hear that unless they're
Speaker 1: within probably fifty semi five yards, unless it's a real
Speaker 1: still day and just perfect which is a mile in
Speaker 1: frag mighties. Yeah, um yeah, you know, that makes them
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. But the thing about let's being
Speaker 1: new here and in that march, you're hearing so many
Speaker 1: other noises, I mean, the the heron's you know squawking.
Speaker 1: You could easily confuse a weird haron squa walk for
Speaker 1: something that this secret deers making. Yeah, and then what
Speaker 1: who else is out there making to some really odd
Speaker 1: I mean, we've heard barred owls and young owls, you know,
Speaker 1: screech out, they go all over the place with their
Speaker 1: um there's clapper rails. They don't really sound like sicca,
Speaker 1: but you know, if you're new to it and you've
Speaker 1: never heard it before. I remember the first year I
Speaker 1: hunted him, I heard that they made this you know,
Speaker 1: bugle sound that I had no idea what it sounded like.
Speaker 1: So everything I heard out there when I was sitting
Speaker 1: in a tree stand, what is that one? Is that one? Known?
Speaker 1: Is that one? And flickers will make a very similar
Speaker 1: sound to their alarm calls and their muse sometimes. I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say, my first couple of years of alcohntin,
Speaker 1: I put at least a dozen stocks on the Western
Speaker 1: Flicker before I before my mind, you know, learned to
Speaker 1: dial in that. Then I remember the first time of
Speaker 1: stag bugle close to me and the hair and my
Speaker 1: next stood up. I was like, Ah, that's what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. Yeah, if we still have New Trio, you'd
Speaker 1: listening to yeah, sitting out the trio all the time.
Speaker 1: So that was another march sound to cover that when
Speaker 1: we do the New Trio podcast. Um cool? Anything else
Speaker 1: to add Brian about the vocalization? So cool that. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta give it a fair shot. Don't
Speaker 1: expect something your first time, or your second, or maybe
Speaker 1: even your tenth time. But sooner or later they'll respond
Speaker 1: to it and look every direction. They'll circle behind you,
Speaker 1: they'll sneak in on you. Sometimes they'll run you over
Speaker 1: like a bulldozer. It's it can be pretty exciting. Imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, calling in a seventy pound turkey with antlers. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're three haunts in now. I mean we've haunted two mornings,
Speaker 1: one evening, and twice now. I've heard the footsteps and
Speaker 1: I believe it to be probably less than sixty yards
Speaker 1: if I can hear that, and I've yet to see
Speaker 1: one well either I've seen him in the distance, but
Speaker 1: I've yet to see the two that make that range.
Speaker 1: Tea yeah, but I think it's because I'm a bad
Speaker 1: tree stand hunter, because I haven't like remembered all my
Speaker 1: old skills about how you had to stand there like
Speaker 1: a statue. I think I'm out there stretching out all right, cool,
Speaker 1: all yeh? He got any final uh things you want
Speaker 1: to add? I like that the wire job you did
Speaker 1: on this for hand, did you invent that? Probably can't
Speaker 1: really invent that much when it comes to wires and skulls. Well,
Speaker 1: there was just something that came up with. I was
Speaker 1: too cheap to buy anything to do it, and I like,
Speaker 1: I just like a simple I like, you know, texted
Speaker 1: Ermys gonna take a picture of this wireing job and
Speaker 1: we're gonna put it on. We're gonna put it up
Speaker 1: in the show notes. You're gonna you're gonna This picture
Speaker 1: is being taken right now. And if you want to
Speaker 1: see a sweet way to wire up a euro Mount,
Speaker 1: go what you are It turned out real nice, Go
Speaker 1: to our show notes. It gives you that flat against
Speaker 1: the wall hang too, as opposed to a screw which
Speaker 1: will pop them out. Alright, you have to pick him
Speaker 1: up and hold him, look at him. Remember the hunt.
Speaker 1: You can't do that with a big mountain on the wall,
Speaker 1: you know, some tactile about being able to touch it,
Speaker 1: and it makes moving easier. Yes, it does. Moving to
Speaker 1: be like daunting. If you had a text, they everywhere
Speaker 1: like where am I gonna put my full draft draft?
Speaker 1: You can haul it around with your helicopter. The del
Speaker 1: Marvas squirrels I've seen, I've seen say it it's the
Speaker 1: del Marroo fox squirrel. It's the fox squirrel. And Janny
Speaker 1: says it lumbers through the forest, lumbers down. I saw
Speaker 1: my second one today. The first one I saw it
Speaker 1: is coming down a tree and these, um, what kind
Speaker 1: of pine is it? La bla bla blah blah blah
Speaker 1: or damn not native? Right, lob blalls are not native? Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's that's what is that? What Abernati is trying to
Speaker 1: get rid of that whole big gripe is is uh,
Speaker 1: you know they cut down all the long leaf um
Speaker 1: for pitch and like masting all kinds of things, and
Speaker 1: then lob lolly came up in its place. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't have it doesn't support it does doesn't support that
Speaker 1: understory of like that grassland ecosystem underneath it all kinds
Speaker 1: of trouble with the quail and whatnot. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: all planted in lab lolly blah blahly plantation. We need
Speaker 1: to have Abernathy on to talk about lob lollies and
Speaker 1: long leaves. Hopefully we'll be seen in this spring anyhow. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: the bark flakes, like when you're climbate, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just bark coming off everywhere. With this squirrel, I mean
Speaker 1: it was like an avalanche barks climbing down the tree.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm like, holy cow, I've never seen that,
Speaker 1: but the when I saw today, Yeah, he got got
Speaker 1: to watch him under the standing on the ground. You
Speaker 1: know how most schools like they sort of hop um,
Speaker 1: they're always hopping, you know. Three times, this dude was
Speaker 1: walking like a cat, like he's got a gate to him,
Speaker 1: you know. Bear. Yeah. Yeah, So my question is, what's
Speaker 1: it one of the chances that we're gonna get to
Speaker 1: come here and hunt them someday. Well, they had ees
Speaker 1: a protection until recently didn't. They were recently downlisted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're not a listed species and make the news. Yea,
Speaker 1: it did. It just depended on what news you're watching. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, only only two percent of species to
Speaker 1: get s a listing have ever made it off get
Speaker 1: delisted because of recovery. They get delisted because it was
Speaker 1: a mistake and there's like a taxonomical error, or they
Speaker 1: get delisted because there's a population people weren't aware of.
Speaker 1: But I think it's like one point seven percent of
Speaker 1: things that get on come off because of recovery, like
Speaker 1: an alligator. Guy. Yeah, so just like a big story, right,
Speaker 1: like the bald eagle. Now wolves in some areas, grizzly
Speaker 1: bears in some areas. Usually like hear about a D listing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is a quiet delisting. Yeah, del Marva was
Speaker 1: excited about it. Yeah, and then uh, I know this
Speaker 1: is I don't think there's any plans to hunt them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's too much habitat loss, it's too small of
Speaker 1: a substanc population. But it's a fox squirrel, yes, just
Speaker 1: a big box squirrel. Could you could come here and
Speaker 1: just hunt gray squirrels and fox squirrels and have the
Speaker 1: enjoyment of getting to see del Marva. I guess they
Speaker 1: seem like pretty small gray squirrels from what I've been seeing,
Speaker 1: I mean, not the big giant del Marva fox. I'm saying,
Speaker 1: your your general Joe blow. Gray squirrels not like small
Speaker 1: squirrel hu. I have been looking at him, and I
Speaker 1: mean not that I wouldn't hunt them happily, but they
Speaker 1: seem to run a little small, which should be like
Speaker 1: part of Bergman's rule, right, Bergman's principle that that you're
Speaker 1: at the sub you're at the southern, you're getting towards
Speaker 1: your more southerly portion of their range, so they're gonna
Speaker 1: tend towards a more diminutive form. And I would say
Speaker 1: squirrel hunting is probably not as culturally big around this area.
Speaker 1: Is that there's in some other parts of the country
Speaker 1: you don't hear about people. People aren't as sophisticated down here.
Speaker 1: I don't know well, and it's I mean, it's it's shifted.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the dearest king down here, and people
Speaker 1: don't want squirrel hunters messing up their dear word was. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I've heard that that's the thing, is the squirrel hunters
Speaker 1: become It's such a shame the squirrel hunt has become
Speaker 1: such a second class citizen. I have had guys come
Speaker 1: to me and say that I've had two things happened.
Speaker 1: I've had friends come and say that they feel bad
Speaker 1: hunting squirrels during deer season. And I've had squirrel hunters
Speaker 1: come to me and say, this happened to Murphy. Kevin Murphy,
Speaker 1: who a guy has gotten down out of his tree
Speaker 1: stand on public land in the Mannistee National Forest in
Speaker 1: my home state of you can a guy got down
Speaker 1: out of his tree stand to accost my friend for
Speaker 1: having the audacity to be out hunting schools during our
Speaker 1: treat I would have punched that guy in the face.
Speaker 1: That's that's a little much. But we do. I would
Speaker 1: have felt, as I was gonna do, we have to.
Speaker 1: You know, we have a really long deer season in Maryland,
Speaker 1: you know, from September to the end of you're on
Speaker 1: the well. It makes it tough, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: for for small game hunters, squirrel hunters and all, because everything,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of it is least up for
Speaker 1: deer hunting and all. And and so that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why we don't have squirrel hunters or small
Speaker 1: game hunters is because it is because it's all taken
Speaker 1: up by deer, you know. And and there's been different
Speaker 1: times where We've been asked to extend deer season even
Speaker 1: longer in February, and it's like, you know that just
Speaker 1: that just takes more even more time away from you know,
Speaker 1: these folks that want to I want to do you know,
Speaker 1: these other these other hunts. You know, there's there's yeah,
Speaker 1: there's validity to that because you know, we used to
Speaker 1: hunt squirrels because squirrel season, well, archery deer open October one,
Speaker 1: squirrel open September, so you'd pour the coals to the
Speaker 1: squirrels for two weeks and then you'd pick them back
Speaker 1: up again when deer season end, so you'd be hunting them,
Speaker 1: you know, after Christmas. You'd hit them hard until the
Speaker 1: end of season. And that's like kind of like when
Speaker 1: you hunted squirrels. Yeah, so but here, you know you
Speaker 1: have the first you know, you have the first week
Speaker 1: of September basically because because deer season is into Friday
Speaker 1: after Labor Day, so you have the first week of
Speaker 1: September in general, and then like said, you might have
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks in February, and otherwise you gotta
Speaker 1: if you're a squirrel hunter or a small game hunter,
Speaker 1: you gotta share the woods with deer hunters, it's not
Speaker 1: always real fun. So if you're a deer hunter down here,
Speaker 1: you're hunting der five months out of the year. You
Speaker 1: start the Friday after Labor Day and go to January
Speaker 1: thirty one. Yeah, and then if you have I'm gonna
Speaker 1: move down here. And then if you want to like
Speaker 1: hunt some of the urban managed hunts, some of those
Speaker 1: do go into February, so you could be hunting and
Speaker 1: you can be like usually it's usually deer season. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but then you can wait for springing turkey hunt. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got my first. I went turkey, got my first
Speaker 1: turkey this year. That was like the greatest thing ever.
Speaker 1: That was a ton of fun. Telling you what, man,
Speaker 1: that's that's even more exciting than squirrel hunting. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. So did you have it? Do you have
Speaker 1: any final thoughts? Marshall myself. Yeah, no, I just say
Speaker 1: come on over to Blackwater, check it out, come hunt,
Speaker 1: come visit. You're gonna get all kinds of the hunters
Speaker 1: mad at you for saying that. Oh I know, but
Speaker 1: that's okay, m Yeah, they might bump into you. All
Speaker 1: the public resources we're there. Yeah, you gotta get we
Speaker 1: gotta get more hunters engaged, and we've got to get
Speaker 1: people who haven't hunted before get excited about it. And
Speaker 1: the only way we're going to do that is if
Speaker 1: we're welcoming to new hunters, and so can people personally.
Speaker 1: Can people personally call you up and ask you what's up?
Speaker 1: People do? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I encourage that. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have public meetings. I talked to folks who we get
Speaker 1: ideas and comments. Doesn't mean I can do everything that
Speaker 1: people suggest, No, I mean of some guys, like if
Speaker 1: some guys like, hey, man, I'm gonna come down and
Speaker 1: check out this secret dear thing, there's resources for him
Speaker 1: him or herd figure it out. Oh yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I think it's really important that we get more people
Speaker 1: to see the benefits of hunting and just getting outdoors
Speaker 1: in general. So we've got to be welcoming to do it.
Speaker 1: I've noticed too that you guys have made the hunt
Speaker 1: unit maps available on Google Earth and downloads, so you
Speaker 1: can look at it out in your smart That's probably
Speaker 1: the biggest impedance to new secret hunters is it's an
Speaker 1: intimidating landscape you get out there, and especially black Water,
Speaker 1: and that's like the nastiest of the nasty stuff on
Speaker 1: Fishing Bay and black Water, and that's where most new
Speaker 1: secret hunters go to. And that's uh, it's you can
Speaker 1: get lost out there easy, and uh it turns a
Speaker 1: lot of people off. A lot of people come down
Speaker 1: try it once and it's like, oh, no, more of
Speaker 1: that for me to give a sense. I was watching
Speaker 1: the video where a guy was hunting secret here out
Speaker 1: of his boat just to give you just like a yeah,
Speaker 1: like an example, to give you a sense of the landscape.
Speaker 1: And he was talking about the importance of raising when
Speaker 1: he leaves his boat, of raising a flag pole. He
Speaker 1: must not be a big GPS guy. Of raising a
Speaker 1: flagpole the blaze orange flag on it. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: lose your boat so he can read, so he can
Speaker 1: locate his boat. Yep. Yeah, but don't let that scary off.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a great it's a great are you
Speaker 1: said earlier? I mean it's a fishing wildlife mecca. You know,
Speaker 1: you can multiple species, you can go fishing. I mean
Speaker 1: you can pack so much and uh, a week's trip
Speaker 1: or a weekend trip or whatever. I mean, it's really
Speaker 1: an awesome Yeah. We don't even touched the blue crabs
Speaker 1: and snakeheads. That's a whole another podcast. So, uh, Brian,
Speaker 1: you got any concluding thoughts you want to add things
Speaker 1: you need't get a chance to know. There are a
Speaker 1: great species or unique species, and it's the only place
Speaker 1: in the country or probably maybe in the world that
Speaker 1: you can hunt these guys. And they're probably one of
Speaker 1: the purer strains around of secret deer. A lot of
Speaker 1: secret deer have been hybridized. And also it's really a
Speaker 1: unique opportunity. Um, yeah, have Um, this is my concluder.
Speaker 1: That's a question. Have I know you guys have some
Speaker 1: c w D in Maryland. Have c w D positive
Speaker 1: white tales interfaced? Here's what I'm getting at. Any idea
Speaker 1: about whether CWD is gonna make the jump? Um can so? No?
Speaker 1: I mean in Maryland from a geography to standpoint or
Speaker 1: nowhere close. And we got the whole chich I speak
Speaker 1: base separating, so c w ds in western Maryland. Um, so,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't expect necessarily our secret deer to be exposed
Speaker 1: to c w D from that standpoint. Um, it's very
Speaker 1: plausible that that that's sick of deer, you know, or
Speaker 1: susceptible of c w D. No one's talc them together
Speaker 1: in the pen yet to see what happened, to see
Speaker 1: if they transmit. Now, well you've done it with monkeys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, they've done a lot of you know, they've
Speaker 1: done a lot of testing like that. Um just recently Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the word research out of Canada shows that, yeah, macaques,
Speaker 1: that they were able to infect macax with c w D.
Speaker 1: I guess kind of like implanting it. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: really well, they didn't implant it, but it was really
Speaker 1: had high aggressive, higher loads than what you would expect
Speaker 1: like you or I sitting down and eating venison to
Speaker 1: night for dinner. So but you know that's still you know,
Speaker 1: you have to look at that and take that into consideration.
Speaker 1: And the CDC that is, you know, they they looked
Speaker 1: at it and they actually changed their wording for you know,
Speaker 1: for for hunters that are hunting in c w D
Speaker 1: areas and they're a little bit more um strongly, they've
Speaker 1: more strongly worded it now that you should really consider
Speaker 1: getting your dear tested if you're if you're hunting in
Speaker 1: a c w D area. That's what I've done the
Speaker 1: last couple of years. Man, when I've hunted c w
Speaker 1: D area. It's just it's it's the problem is it's
Speaker 1: hard because there's not a lot of areas to get
Speaker 1: that testing done. Um, So we need to make some
Speaker 1: improvements there, um for for hunters, you know, to be
Speaker 1: able to do that. But back to your original question there,
Speaker 1: you know, our our sick of deer or a little
Speaker 1: welk um. They're in the serve you know, service family,
Speaker 1: So I'm sure they're probably susceptible c w D. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't see why they why they wouldn't you know? You
Speaker 1: are white tailed dear mule deer ls you know, falor
Speaker 1: deer about the only ones that come to mind that
Speaker 1: I don't think, you know, they've been able to to
Speaker 1: get c w D into falor dear. Yeah. So, but
Speaker 1: so that's an interesting question you asked, though, Steve, because
Speaker 1: it made me think of something that I have a
Speaker 1: question for you, Brian. Recently, you know, this is the
Speaker 1: time of your e h D and the tongue starts
Speaker 1: hitting deer and and people are finding a lot of
Speaker 1: dead white tails this time of year, and increasingly I'm
Speaker 1: seeing guys on the internet forums referring to oh it's
Speaker 1: either cf C w D or e h D, and
Speaker 1: they're talking about us to ensure populations, and people are
Speaker 1: starting to sling the term around like it's it's commonplace
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And I wonder if the Department's doing any
Speaker 1: outreach to sort of combat that perception that yeah, we
Speaker 1: you know, let hemorrhagic disease, blue tongue. Sure you know that, right. Well,
Speaker 1: we're in the midst of a pretty good outbreak right
Speaker 1: here in Dorchester and Caroline and Talbot. So yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, I mean, I don't mean, but
Speaker 1: that's not as scary. No, no, no, it's not your
Speaker 1: right because there's not a human because it's like a
Speaker 1: thing that happens. But a lot of our hunters, but
Speaker 1: a lot of our her hunters, I don't think use them. Interchange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I use them and don't realize that there are two
Speaker 1: separate diseases. Um. So yeah, I mean, yeah, we've we've
Speaker 1: done press releases about h D and yeah, but i'd
Speaker 1: be like saying your body like I don't know, he's
Speaker 1: got the flu or cancer. Yeah, It's like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just like the two different things. It's completely different, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean completely different magnitude. Um, a lot
Speaker 1: of hunters probably feel h D is more of a
Speaker 1: threat than c w D because screws up the hunt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: screws up the hunt. Yeah, you know, I mean we
Speaker 1: probably you know, we we we've got there's a couple
Speaker 1: of areas over here where we've we've probably had a
Speaker 1: pretty good you know hit on the deer population. Now
Speaker 1: they'll bounce back in a year or two, five years
Speaker 1: to be back to having not even five years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So but but yeah, so I was a concern from
Speaker 1: that standpoint. Um, but but from a human standpoint, c
Speaker 1: w D is definitely the you know, the one we
Speaker 1: have to watch. I'm gonna be more concerned about. So
Speaker 1: stuff keeps me up. What's a big hit for e
Speaker 1: h D? Like a really big hit would be fifty
Speaker 1: of the popular that was seventy year or something. Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: you know what, if you're in a and if you're
Speaker 1: in a naive state, like a deer population that's never
Speaker 1: seen it before, you probably could get you know, over fifty.
Speaker 1: But here in the East where we've had you know,
Speaker 1: we've had h D since the seventies, I think, or
Speaker 1: now it's probably might even been before that they found
Speaker 1: in New Jersey and fifty five identified or identified it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and fifty five and described it scientifically. It might have
Speaker 1: always it could have been there before that, right, but
Speaker 1: not too much longer there because we were reintroducing deer
Speaker 1: and thirties and forties, so it wouldn't have been too
Speaker 1: much before that. Well. Anyways, long story is a big
Speaker 1: hit around here. Yeah, would be a big hit. And
Speaker 1: that's the term. Naive state would be a state where
Speaker 1: naive the first time of population, the population that hasn't
Speaker 1: had it before. Yeah, like Ontario this year, because I've
Speaker 1: been to some naive states. Yeah, but not for not
Speaker 1: for HD, like Ontario had their first had their first
Speaker 1: HD cases here Connecticut. They're in the news right now.
Speaker 1: They have HD right now. So it's there's light at
Speaker 1: the end of the tunnel, slowly moving moving. Have we
Speaker 1: gone over HD before? We've never done. Is it possible
Speaker 1: to give us like a two to five minute yeah,
Speaker 1: HD or e H D episodic and this can you
Speaker 1: include how people call and blue tongue is Well, they're
Speaker 1: two separate, they're two different things. I mean, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: two different strains. Yeah, there's actually yeah, no, No, they're
Speaker 1: actually different. There's different strains of of h D m
Speaker 1: r agics disease, and some of them are e h
Speaker 1: D and some of them are blue tongue. And then
Speaker 1: within within there's there's different different strains. So like here
Speaker 1: in Maryland, we're in an outbreak right now, so we'll
Speaker 1: try to get our hands on samples. We send them
Speaker 1: to Georgia to the Southeast Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study. They
Speaker 1: do the testing for us, and we have e h
Speaker 1: D two and e h D six. We're working on
Speaker 1: our deer right now. It's a virus and it's spread
Speaker 1: by noseums, gnats, midges, whatever you wanna call them, co
Speaker 1: coiled days um and nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's no threat the humans um, but when
Speaker 1: it gets into a deer population, I mean you know,
Speaker 1: it can kill a significant number a number of the animals.
Speaker 1: And like we were just talking about, if it's a
Speaker 1: if it's a population that's been exposed to h D
Speaker 1: over the year, they're more resistance, so you won't see
Speaker 1: us significant of an impact. But as this disease or
Speaker 1: virus moves north and gets into into these populations that
Speaker 1: have never been exposed. It can it can hit them
Speaker 1: pretty hard, um, you know, and then up mortality. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's why you see it in the news Michigan
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, it was it was big
Speaker 1: news in Michigan for when it where my brother Matt
Speaker 1: lives in eastern Montana, they got swept. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: starting to you know, it's it's really starting to radiate out.
Speaker 1: You know, here in the East, we haven't seen any detrimental,
Speaker 1: long term issue, you know, issues with it. I mean
Speaker 1: that what's the spacing on epidemics about it seems like
Speaker 1: every five to seven years we get a big outbreak.
Speaker 1: Now we'll have deaths every year, you know, it'll spring
Speaker 1: up every year. Um, but it seems like every five, six,
Speaker 1: seven years we get a pretty big out Does it
Speaker 1: correlate with a big population, Well, that would be part
Speaker 1: of it, you know, because there's that certain there's that
Speaker 1: certain proportion of the population that is resistant and that
Speaker 1: proportion that's not resistant. As it builds up, that gets
Speaker 1: up to a certain point and then you'll see a
Speaker 1: bigger outbreak. Um. So so that that plays into it. Um.
Speaker 1: There's also theories that weather plays into it. UM, it
Speaker 1: seems like possibly if it's a drought, if it's a
Speaker 1: mild winter, any drought summer or a dry summer. UM.
Speaker 1: The thought is that you have reduced areas with water
Speaker 1: UM and also probably increased breeding. Maybe areas for these
Speaker 1: for these gnats might congregate dear more around the water
Speaker 1: that's available, so you know, you might have a worse
Speaker 1: year for for HD. UM. There's some theories out there
Speaker 1: that maybe we're starting to see it further north based
Speaker 1: on maybe some changes in wind patterns. Maybe some of
Speaker 1: these maybe some of these gnats are actually physically being
Speaker 1: transported to new areas, you know, where they haven't been before.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot we still don't know UM, And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of research going on. UM. But it
Speaker 1: is it's a it's been around, like I said, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was identified in New Jersey and fifty five I think.
Speaker 1: So it's nothing to you know, really get worked up about.
Speaker 1: But but it happens, you know, it happens every year.
Speaker 1: So what are the symptoms and how does the killer
Speaker 1: dere so want to ask, what's death look like? So
Speaker 1: it is pretty vicious. I mean, it's very fast acting. UM.
Speaker 1: If it's a deer that that's not resistant to it UM.
Speaker 1: It literally breaks down cells and breaks down blood vessels UM,
Speaker 1: and the deer hemorrhages to death. Um or or you know,
Speaker 1: or you know causes fluid on the lungs and basically drowns.
Speaker 1: UM causes a real high fever. So a lot of
Speaker 1: times we'll get a you know, we'll get a call,
Speaker 1: hey there's three deer fluting in my pond, or you know,
Speaker 1: some somebody may be fishing on a nanniocoke and found
Speaker 1: two or three. Yeah. Yeah, it drives into water so um.
Speaker 1: But it actually it's you know, it's hamorrhagic disease. So
Speaker 1: I mean it acts on them real quick. Um. There
Speaker 1: is a certain proportion that survives that you know, if
Speaker 1: if they get it UM. And an easy way to
Speaker 1: tell if it's a deal that that that had HD
Speaker 1: and survived is you know, if you're writing and you
Speaker 1: kill a deer, if the hooves are all sloughing off
Speaker 1: because of arrests hoof growth, I guess, And then if
Speaker 1: they survive it, then when the who's start growing again, um,
Speaker 1: it's sloughs off, so their their hooves will look pretty
Speaker 1: pretty rough. Yeah, so you know, the water thing explains
Speaker 1: something that happened to me once years ago when the
Speaker 1: Lower Yellowstone had an outbreak. I was at the tax
Speaker 1: therm was there in Miles City, and his shot was
Speaker 1: just full of bucks that he was doing euro Mountain
Speaker 1: on giants. Yeah, And I was like, what the hell
Speaker 1: all these bucks doing here? And he's like, man, these
Speaker 1: are all things farmers are pulling out of the river,
Speaker 1: is that right? And no one knew the bucks like this,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't know. I you know, I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time knocking around there, like a whole class
Speaker 1: of bucks. He just didn't know existing down in those
Speaker 1: willow you know, down like the willow choke bottoms and stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he said, he said, every farmer in town
Speaker 1: is bringing them all these bucks. He's buckheads dragging about
Speaker 1: these giants. You know a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll hear all. It hits bucks harder, and I don't
Speaker 1: I think if you looked into the data that you're
Speaker 1: just you just see that buck first, you know, And
Speaker 1: I think that's what your mind perceives. But I think
Speaker 1: it's an equal opportunity virus. I think it's probably you know,
Speaker 1: it's probably hitting any of them, but this this area
Speaker 1: as well gets uh, this part of the river gets
Speaker 1: bad ice dams. They had ice dams so bad in
Speaker 1: the forties that they had to take a like a
Speaker 1: full on bomber. It took an Air Force bomber and
Speaker 1: dropped ordinance to break up an ice dam that was
Speaker 1: gonna flood mild City. They then levied some parts of
Speaker 1: the town off to protect it from overflow from ice dams.
Speaker 1: But a couple of years ago big ice dam formed
Speaker 1: up and flooded all the lowlands. Eventually the ice dam
Speaker 1: breaks up, and we're down in there, uh, fish and
Speaker 1: calfish and one around looking for turkeys and whatnot in
Speaker 1: the spring, and there's fish hundreds of yards away from
Speaker 1: the river, just like laying out in fields and out
Speaker 1: in like cottonwood groves, just fish every where. My boy says, yeah,
Speaker 1: they get up in there when the ice dam forms
Speaker 1: and they're swimming all over hell. And then I think
Speaker 1: when it busts that drains also fast, just leaves the
Speaker 1: fish and so it just be like catfish and carpet
Speaker 1: suckers scattered. That's yeah, all over in the woods everywhere.
Speaker 1: It looks like it was like rain and fish, so
Speaker 1: death and miles city. Um, the last thing was blue tongue.
Speaker 1: Do we get to what I was? Yeah, just it.
Speaker 1: It causes a blood flow issue and oxygen deprivation. So
Speaker 1: a lot of times you'll the tongue will turn blue.
Speaker 1: But only the one form causes or do they both
Speaker 1: cause blue tongue? They both, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: they both can cause. Yeah, the blue tongue issue. A
Speaker 1: lot of you'll see stars in the mouth. Um, that's
Speaker 1: another sign that it was a deer that at each
Speaker 1: Is it in life or death that it gets a
Speaker 1: blue tongue? Um, I think it's very as it happens
Speaker 1: so fast. I think it's right there at that you know,
Speaker 1: the deer could still be alive. Um so, but it,
Speaker 1: like I said, it, it acts pretty quick on them,
Speaker 1: um than four probably hours forty eight hours. They go
Speaker 1: from probably alive too dead that fast? Do you guys? So,
Speaker 1: do you guys even bother going in and youthanizing sick?
Speaker 1: Dear that it happens so quick that very most of
Speaker 1: the times when we get a report, it's a deer
Speaker 1: that that was that's already dead or the you know,
Speaker 1: the land owner says Yeah, I was watching it was
Speaker 1: sick and then now it's dead. So you know, it happens,
Speaker 1: It happens pretty quick. They're not clinical for for a
Speaker 1: long time c w D chronic wasting disease, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean they can carry that, yeah, very slow acting,
Speaker 1: but hdn hit some pretty quick. Yeah. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds like if you are going to catch when, I'll
Speaker 1: go with the h D. Yeah, sick of deer. Just
Speaker 1: just a little note one that as far as we
Speaker 1: never sick of deer, do not get HD or a
Speaker 1: blue tongue. Now, back when I was doing my my
Speaker 1: graduate work, I had a bunch of deer radio collared
Speaker 1: not too far from here, and we had an HD
Speaker 1: outbreak and it killed I forget what percentage, but it killed.
Speaker 1: It killed quite a few of my radio collared white tails,
Speaker 1: and never touched one of my sick of deer, so
Speaker 1: that I had of callers really not saying it's impossible,
Speaker 1: but but just based on on what we've seen, we've
Speaker 1: never had a report of one. We've never been able
Speaker 1: to test one. And like I said, none of my
Speaker 1: radio collared animals ever, I never got it, So wow, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe someday My kill would be like, what's the white tail.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't. I just know about sex,
Speaker 1: all right, guys, Well, thanks so much man uh for
Speaker 1: coming up. Thank you. It's exciting. I think people will
Speaker 1: be really interested in this, and the people from here
Speaker 1: will be real mad we talked about this at such length. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Thank you
Speaker 1: m