Welcome back to cutting the distance. My new found obsession maybe whitetailed deer. Please don't tell my wife I need another obsession. Um like nothing else, but it was pretty fun and animal. I've always joked about hunting. When I turned seven years old and can no longer chase meal deer, blacktails, or elk around, so I've I've started to dig up all the information that's out there because that's kind of where all my hunting starts. I want to know about
the animal before I go out there. And there's one name that always seems to come up as an expert on whitetail biology, does a ton of research on him, Dr Bronson Strickland. He's a professor a Wildlife management in Mississippi State University. He's a co director of m s US Deer Lab and the co host of Deer University podcast. And I brought him on today to kind of pick his brain a little bit see how we can use these bigger bucks, their biology, their instincts against them in
the fold. So welcome to the show. Dr Scriptling, Hey glad to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Were you able to get out in the woods is here and hunt it all or just just well, it's really just beginning here. I mean we a gun season just began, and uh, and it's finally cooling down. You know what, when I was younger, even if it was ninety degrees during both season, I would go out of obligation. The the older I get, though, I like to wait
for for cold weather. So it's finally getting right down here, perfect. I always forget down in the southeast. You guys ruts a little bit later. Your seasons are a little bit later, So that makes a ton of sense. I know, I was in Kansas, um, you know, ten days ago and the cold snap had hit there. We were in the you know, the single digits, you know, low low teens for a lot of that, and uh, you know the rut was was cranking along pretty good there between the
tenth and about the fifteenth. UM. So yeah, I guess your your season still um coming up. But I'm gonna ask you to just kind of kick off the podcast, give us a quick rundown on kind of your history, um, and how you got to where you are now to be respected is as you know, as knowledgeable as you're in white tails, and what's led you to this point, Well, Uh,
I'm really lucky. I'm just really really lucky that I grew up in a place and time to where being a white tail researcher and a biologists and outreach specialist is a job. And so uh got got my degrees uh at University of Georgia, Texas A and m Kingsville and Mississippi State, and it's all focused on wildlife management
and specifically white tailed deer. And then UH lucky again that I could get a job uh here at Mississippi State where I could focus keep focusing on uh deer research and then the outreach component of that, and that is basically just taking all the research that we do and putting it out in various forms articles, presentations, books, podcasts, et cetera. So that's that's kind of the heart of
what I do. Thanks for that, Rundown. And as a civil engineer myself, I love when you can take research, you can take data and apply that to what I've seen in the field. You know, they were I had a great professor um going through school where it's like You're gonna teach you everything that's in these books, the theory, the science, but then to go out and proof that research and data on the ground, you know, and in this instance to ultimately Harvard you know, grow bigger bucks,
find bigger bucks, understand bigger bucks. You know, the same thing on the engineering side. So as an engineer, this stuff really gets me when you're able to add facts, data, research to what we're trying to do. UM, I really I really like this stuff. So UM yeah, I appreciate having you on. So, like every Cutting the Distance podcast, we're gonna feeld a few questions UM from you the listeners, And if you have a question of your own to submit, please email us at ct D at Phelps game Calls
dot com or send us a message on social media email. UM. Well, we'll do our best either have me or in this case UM our expert guests answer these questions, because I'm not quite um versus enough on these white tailed there yet to answer these questions. So our first question for you, Bronson, at what age should you start managing your bucks? Um? And by that I mean you know, we have identified the age, we've identified what they've got on their head.
What's the right time to make a good decision that that deer is not ready to be taken out of the herd um if you listen to any of of our media or read any of our our articles. UH. My colleague and friends, Steve Demeris, he's also co director of the Deer Lab. We say it depends probably more than any little phrase, and essentially that means context. You
gotta put some contexts and some boundaries on it. Um. But if we were going to say, on the average, uh, I think for most people in most places is at three and a half. At three and a half years of age, depending on where you're at, a buck is showing sixty too, sometimes seventy or greater percent of what he's going to be at maturity. And so three and a half is a good age because we now have a reliable predictor of what he's gonna be a couple
of years down the road. Simultaneously, it takes a few years to forgive some of the issues that may have happened to the buck's mother when it was a fawn or while it was a yearling, wasn't born late, wasn't born in a drought year, etcetera, etcetera. It takes a couple of years to grow out of that circumstance. The buck was born into and so just very much in general, I would say three and a half would be the single most important age where you make a decision of, uh,
do I want to harvest this buck? I don't think it has a lot of potential? Or am I going to make sure I spare this buck and we protect this buck because he is definitely demonstrating he has a lot of potential to be trophy class at maturity. That makes a ton of sense. And to piggyback onto that question a little bit of my own, do environmental factors start to playing? Like as a land manager is is
somebody trying to manage the herd? Um? You know, we were in as I keep referring back to my one and only trip in Kansas, they were coming off of a pretty bad drought and and that was going through everybody's mind. Um, you know, times were a little bit shorter things. You know, they had saw a dear you know, five single digit percentage increase in horns you know on
their head. Um, do you take that into effect as you're looking at that, like if you get a good, good moisture here in the drought and they're able to get the minerals, you know, back out of the ground and the water sources whatever. Um, you know that maybe
are you are you gonna let that play in? And maybe you know, should we should we hold off on managing those dear knowing that they may have a big rebound, maybe they'll come back bigger because of a drought situation or you know, they also were talking about their their beans didn't come up, you know, and so they missed uh you know, a quarter or their their typical food source. UM that fattens them up. Is that going to play into too when you're gonna harvest or maybe give them
that extra year. Yeah, and let's say that's gonna be man infested in two ways. It's it's going to affect the deer on the hoof that year. So if you're talking about drought or beings, you're talking about something during the summer during the antler growth period, and it is going to influence uh their maximum antler size uh when when they harden out shed their velvet that that fall. Uh. It's also going to influence uh buck fawns as well.
And so that again that early environment they're into can put them on a different trajectory of growth for several years. In their life, so two different ways. But I guess Jason, one way you have to think about that too is how big is big enough? And so you always have to think about that opportunity of you know, hey, my goal is a one eighty or one seventy or one ninety,
whatever it is. I have this buck in front of me at twenty five yards bow in my hand, and he's twenty inches less than what he could be, but I have the opportunity right now for for a lethal shot. So you got to play the probability, the odds. Yeah, you're playing that game, and you know at that point, yeah, he's twenty inches less, but he's still got smarter to dear that was you know, if that's what you're trying
to do, you're out smart at him. He's still the same deer regardless of what's on his head, and um, you know that well. And you have to factor in a risk that there is no guarantee that he's going to be around next year. There's a lot of other non hunting mortality sources that could take him. So you're
rolling the dice when you let him go. And now I'm gonna you may not have an answer for this, but you you kind of um, you know, we have a lot of winter kill out here out west, you know, big snows, and you have age classes of deer missing.
What you just touched on there a little bit is in a drought year, do people manage to the point knowing that their bucks at you know that in four and a half years or four years are going to have those bucks may not have the potential I mean, are people managing to that level that that that buck or that buck fallen was born during a drought his genetic potential or not it wouldn't be genetic his potential because of the mom's health is now going to be
lessened in four years when I want to hunt, you know, or five years and I want to hunt a buck of that age class. Uh, probably not any I think that's more of a biologist look at it. When when they're have an aggregation of data at a very large scale,
you can kind of explain from year to year. Uh, you know what, what proportion of the very the annual variation and average antler size is explained by the events this year and what can we go back to the year of birth and you just kind of partition that there's probably Jason not that many in the southeast that would take take that into account. But but if you
go to a situation like like in South Texas. In South Texas, it may not be looking at hey, we probably have antlers or five percent less than they would have been. It's that you literally have cohorts of dear missing, much like what you described out west with winter kill, and so you you you may have two or three years where there was no cohort of bucks coming through you know, the population, and so that that's probably the
biggest effect. I see, that makes sense. Um, yeah, this is this is playing a big impact on my life. Um for a sheep hunt right now, I've got planned for twenty four is they had you know, some bad winners. Um, you know three or four years ago, I was planning on the twenty four and there's a band of sheep missing. Well, when you're going sheep hunting, you need a certain age, and there is a complete band miss. So you know, I've I've got way more familiar with um, you know
years and bad years. But um, yeah, we'll roll into this next question from our listeners. Um, everyone is interested in what food the plant during that deer season, you know that September, October, November, you know even in December when you're gonna be hunting them. What can you bring that dear? Um? You know, in front of your stand, in front of your blind But what should hunters really be looking at to improve the overall health of the herd?
And by that I mean you're round food like and if it makes it easier, maybe break it down by season like we know they're they're you know, enzymes change their ability to break down certain foods change. Um, what what's like an ideal feeding plan or a crop plan? Look like, well, I'm gonna give you my typical speech here. Um. So if it sounds a little scripted, it's because I've said it before many many times. Uh what what? What we preach because we know it works, is that the
focus should be on habitat management. The focus should be on habitat and the number of deer utilizing that habitat. So your density has to be appropriate. Well, once you address that, you move into you move into habitat that encourages, promotes, facilitates the growth of the technical term for us is called a forbe f O r B, which is just a broad leaf plant, a non grass or basis plant
that is the majority of the dear diet. And when you produce that and the diversity of all those forbes on the landscape that, by the way, are very drought tolerant, so you see a lot of resilience in your habitat and deer herd when you provide the naturally a ring foods that that they want to eat. So now let's let's take care of that, or or say we have taken care of that, now we move into we say food plots. I like to call them supplemental food plots
because they should supplement that the habitat. And this is going to vary from region to region and latitude and etcetera. But but the bottom line is you gotta get you gotta grow plants that grow in your environment, whether it be you have you have a really wet area, you have a really dry area of cold, etcetera. Soil types all that find the group of plants that grows really well.
And typically it comes down to this, You're gonna be able to find one of several cereal grains, wheat, oats, ryot, etcetera. They typically grow well everywhere couple that with some type of clover, and again that depends on where yet cloth do you love them? And there's always a clover that works really well. And then also a brassica typically some
type of brassica's well. And when you mix those together literally either in a mix within the plot or spread them out in different plots that I've never seen a case where that didn't work well. That they grow well. It attracts dear high nutrition. It's just win win win. Yeah, And and that makes a ton of sense as a as a good mixture. And I like the idea of supplemental It's like they should have what they need on the ground and then your plot should just add to
that nutrition, add to that. Um and then you know, for hunting purposes, maybe drawn to that area, you know during the season. Um, because I was driving around, you know, this area of Kansas and kind of scratching my head because you would have a tunered acre, you know, tillable filled with hedgerows. There were deer in that. And then you'd go to my buddies place that was timber with you know, ten percent food plots there were deer in that.
You'd have his neighbor that didn't do any management to their land, but maybe an old CRP field and there were deer in that, and I'm like, well, maybe these combine, these deer use all of them. But it's three different scenarios with with properties stacked together and they all had deer on them, and so I'm like, well, maybe there isn't a a magic solution, like as long as they have enough of what they need there, you're gonna hold
deer and you're gonna you're gonna keep them. I didn't, you know, I'm sure there are there's probably not the magic answer, but there's probably things that they prefer or things that will you know, keep those deer healthier, going a little bit you know, bigger on your land. So it's just one of those things where to see three you know, different landscapes all whold deer um, you know. Yeah, and then you've got another way you can kind of
qualify that as well. It might have been on one of the properties you described where uh, it may not have been managed as well, and there was just an old CRP field for for one thing, deer are gonna eat what is available to them, So you could take the deer and move them to a different property. They may not eat the forage they were eating on the first property, but it's the only thing palatable they had available to them as well. So they'll make they'll make
do with what they've got. Well they have to, Yeah, they have to make do. So so I guess I'm out west. We can see meal deer. You go three or four miles a day. But these white tail they don't have that home range. They're gonna stick to a little bit tighter range. They're gonna make you know, like you said, they have to make do with what they've got. That's that's right, that's right, and we you know, uh,
they can definitely move along ways. But the way generally there's always exceptions, but but generally that they have seasonal home ranges and and generally that's gonna be you know, depending on buck or dough age, etcetera. You know, about a thousand acres, some five hundred, some twenty hundred. But yeah, so it's like within that home range. Well then that season they know what is on the landscape and is available to them, and they're gonna pick the best. Got
We'll talk about it a little bit um. You know, some of the research I've read. I can't remember if you specifically, you know, but some deer moved nine hundred yards and then some deer you know up thet nd yards during the rut, and I'm like, shoot, I've had meal deer like blow through that you know, in in a in the evening or or a night, so, um, a little bit different. But UM, I appreciate you answering
those user questions. Once again, if you have questions of your own, please submit those questions to C. T. D at Phelps game Calls dot com and we'll do our best to either have myself or one of our guests answer those. So now we're gonna jump into some of my personal questions I have, and I'm gonna apologize ahead of you, you know, to you Dr Strickland and all
of our listeners. These are gonna jump around, but these are like my personal questions, things that you know, as I'm sitting in a tree stand trying to relate what i know about hunting, what I know about um animals, and just some of the stuff that goes through um, you know, some of the stuff we've heard. So I'm gonna kind of just go through this list of questions
and see what you got for answers. Um. I was mentioned to the previous of the podcast kind of you know, I I get things stuck in my head from what I've experienced, and um, this first one it kind of piggybacks on some conversations I had with Kevin monteth On. Uh. I was talking to Steve Ronnella about this when we were on Accoused Deer Hunt, and I'm like, this, it doesn't make any sense from what I've seen and and um. But but my question will be how much of a
buck's potential is genetic? How much is that mother's health during pregnancy, the available nutrition both food and minerals, environmental conditions, et cetera. Um, And I know they all it probably varies. It's determined. But if you if you had to kind of break those out, what would you say or the factors that that give you that potential of you know that buck has the ability to get to two inches,
but environmental effects it Um. I know it's a big loaded question, but if you can try to break that down for us, Yeah, well I'll certainly try. Yeah. And and you know a word we use in the science fields, as you know, we we think about variation and partitioning. How how how do we slice up the pie? And you know, we we can and there's a lot of different ways to look at this, but we we we can start with what what's heritability? What's the heritability of
antler characteristics from father to son, etcetera. And you know that that can be twenty or thirty percent um. We know, of course the mother is half of the equation. So you can have a father with Boone and Crockett antlers and a mother that sire's offspring that is half that and we're gonna get something in the middle. And that's what makes you know, the culling for genetics and so forth that people try to do is you know, I shot that buck to get it out of the gene pool.
Uh that that's why that doesn't work. It's because you can make no selection with the female. So so there is a baseline genetic component of of course, the example you gave is two of antler. Well, yeah, that that that buck has genes that are coding for that amount of antler growth. But that antler growth is influence and either suppressed or enhanced by the environment, but by its food.
Is it dealing with a disease issue. You know, all those things are very influential and so um, I guess Jason, the way we think about it is we we probably say half and half is there's a lot of this about half of it and that's buck and the you know, the mom and the and the father, etcetera. But then the other half is is the nutrition available to the deer that year. And you mentioned Kevin Monte something uh
he did when he was a graduate student. Something we've done at the m s U. Deer Lab is demonstrating the influence of what what we call the intergenerational you know, generation after generation after generation of nutrition and and that is also what is influencing. The term is epigenetics, but
that is also is an organism. In this case, a deer may have the genes for a hundred and eighty inches of antler, but because the mother was a experiencing nutritional or environmental stress while this little buck fall and wasn't in womb um her her signals are basically telling the fetus or the genes that you don't need to express yourself fully, and so that buck will never reach its full potential because of these cues in the uterine
environment of its mother are suppressing the expression of those genes. And I hope I didn't go off off the rails that they're too complicated. But it is a complicated question. Yeah, no, And and I'm super interested in you know, It's like I don't want to say we're out there chasing you know, horns, but we're chasing mature deer. And it's one of those things that I always try to wrap my head around, like what what is the genetic potential? Like are we
shooting a deer before a genetic potential? Could he ever got bigger? Um? So I'm gonna I'm gonna roll some things by in and you can either correct me or
you know, maybe agree with them. So as a buck, he's got a genetic potential and is for my understanding, like years one, you three, he grows that skeleton out, he's in that he's growing, and then years three to five, three to four and a half, he's typically trying to add muscle onto that skeleton become the biggest, baddest buck, which genetically yah um ensures that he'll have his chance to breed, right, That's why he's putting on muscle, he's
packing on muscle that gives him the ability, um, you know, in the pecking order to be able to breed, and so are we going to always experience and so they're using energy, they're using effort, they're using fat stores, they're using uh, you know, I guess energy for lack of a better word, to grow skeleton, to grow bone either in their body, or they're using it to grow muscle on their body to pack on muscle. And then are
we always gonna get that buck's best potential? Now? You know, I guess let's assume environmental conditions have been the same every year he's been alive, so we can take that out, no drafts, no, you know, the food has been the same. Are we typically always gonna get their best horn growth you know six and a half and seven and a half years old? Or can that very as well? Like or you know, I use the example of you know, your buddy Dawn's you know, Don Higgins is Buck how
that was over two of the three year old? Like that Buck was just destined to be a giant. But I don't want to knock on it because the year he let it go to the year he shot it, but it didn't grow percentage wise much more than it was less than ten percent between three and four. You know, Um, how do you guys, how do how does the research support that? Like? Are we you know? Is there is there a correlation that you're gonna get your best horn growth at six and a half or seven and a half. Yeah,
And and I gotta qualify here. What we always have to say is that that we deal with the averages, what we deal with the population response, and not individuals, because individuals do wacky things, just like human beings. But but yeah, on on the average, um, five, six, seven is gonna be the point. And this is I guess the point I'd make Jason. Not not that they're reaching their peak and then soon after there's gonna be a decline. It's for they reach their maximum. That is the plateau
for many many years to come. Um. Now, there are definitely some individual dear, and I think this happens more often in the Midwest, and even in Mississippi and our agg regions versus our forested regions, you will see them maximizing their antler size about a year earlier than you will. So in other words, in our southern part of our state, you need to you need to let them get six to seven. And in our agg region of the state, the delta region, probably four or five is plenty sufficient.
But the thing that's interesting to me, Jason, is that, and I can say this because you qualified earlier. Let's take nutrition, the stability, the availability, nutrition of the equation. If you're in our deer research facilities, Uh, basically you will have from five to six until nine or ten and to where antler size hardly decreases at all. And so you've come four or five year window where they maximize. So you hold that it's it's not a peak, it's
a plateau up there. And then one thing you see is you know, maybe some kicker shorter times, longer times, no kickers. They clean up, they add on, but they typically stay. You know, like you said, um, you know they say about the same amount of inches there, you know, plus your minus a few percentage, but change configurations a little bit, add mass, lose length. Um, you know, the
combinations there. And that's one of those things that's very visible that doesn't get as much credit on Boone and Crockett's score is the mass and specifically the mass and the times. You know, there's no measurement for the circumference of the time. But man, that really looks impressive when you get a six or seven year old old buck. And then also the character points, the splits, the drops
and stuff like that. Yeah, you see that at maturity more often I've heard things, you know, a spike is always a spike, which kind of blows my mind, especially growing up here in the Blacktail Woods, because it just in my opinion, doesn't hold true. But you know that that same deer talking about I think I called it how earlier Mail or whatever the name of that deer was.
You know, Dawn had video of it, is a one and a half year old and he's already a ten point And that kind of blew my mind because around here it's like, you're a spike at a year and a half, you're a small two point at two and a half. Um, how much can we tell from a
deer at one and a half years old? Like, is that starting to show genetic potential or I mean obviously in this case it was, But can that same you know spike with eye guards that's running around on a on a piece of property blossom out to be a great you know, dear horn wise, you know, at four and a half, five and a half. I think the safe way to deal with that is that if he is really big as a yearling, I would say ninety nine point nine percent of the time, he's gonna be
a monster when he when he's mature. But you can't say just because it has below average or a spike or a fork or whatever at a yearling, that in no way guarantees that you're not gonna have a one fifty or greater buck at maturity. But but Jason, let let me circle back around to UH, individuals versus population averages. So even here at the deer lab, Harry Jacobson years ago, our predecessor, he had a great example in the Southeast where it was the uh, if you see a spike yearling,
it is always gonna be terrible. You need to shoot every spike. Well, he had an example of a little spike yearling that ended up growing over two. That was an individual. But what we have shown is that on the average, if if you have below average yearling antler size versus above average yearling antler size, the above average will at maturity be above average and the below average at maturity will be below average. What you have to decide is is blow average still a good enough buck
for you? In other words, I'm okay with the hundred and twenty buck. That's okay for me. But but if your sole purpose or goal objective is only want one fifties or above, then the best bet you can make is an above average year. Link is going to be that. That makes a ton of sense. I mean, like you said, you're just going with what you know. The average is um and what typically will happen. You know that bucks probably a little bit of an anomaly you know, in
the in the data, but it proves that it can happen. Um. You know, so I know the place I was hunting, they don't. They don't manage it the one and a half year old, as we talked earlier, they're managing more. They're not even managing at the two and a half year old. Um, you know, at three and a half year old and you start to have six points or you know, small eight start to come out, that's when he decides, you know that those bucks e to be
manager taken out. So that makes a ton of sense. Um, we're gonna move on to managing does and coming from out West, especially um, the black those that are in my area southwest Washington. Now we we aren't near carrying capacity. So my thought has always been those are the baby makers.
We don't manage does here. And then you hear about people managing does you know, whether it's me watching uh a white tail show on you know, on TV or on YouTube, whatever it may be, and they're just you know, laying out does And it never made sense to me until you go out, you know, go back to the Midwest and just see just how many deer or on the landscape compared to what we have here, and it starts to make a lot of sense. So my my first question on this is, and I know you're gonna
you're I know how these are. I'm in the same boat, you know, when you're when you're doing you know, scientific type stuff, and it's gonna depend on where you're at landscape, food availability. But what is a typical good bucket door ratio to maintain you know, good good heard health. Um, Probably something like I mean, if you can achieve and maintain one to one, then then that's fantastic. Um. It probably also enables you to keep the population under control
more easily. If you can do that. But but we commonly see fantastic properties where they have one point five to two does per buck. Uh when when you start getting above that, and that's a little bit of a misnomer, Jason, is that you you hear and and read that a lot that the sex ratio is just really out of
whack and there's tin does for every buck. Well that that can only occur if you're looking at adults, not including fawns, and at the end of the deer season, because mother nature has a self correction built in there, because all those does are gonna put fawns on the ground and half of them are bucks. So numerically it's really hard to maintain some five to one, six to one, seven to one because it's a self correcting, you know
type system that makes a ton of sense. Um, yeah, I guess my own concern is that, well, what if you know, you leave those dose on there, they get bred and they're the ones to produce the next two buck. But also understand, like once again we're going back to averages. You know, your best bet, you know that the research probably shows if you can keep those those that doda buck ratio you know, or buck the door ratio one
to one, one to two. Um, your bucks are gonna be healthier, They're gonna be able to realize their potential a little bit better. UM, you know. So for me, I'm like, I want as many deer on the ground as possible, as long as the food supports them. But I guess you know, rut, you know other things, Um, you know, uh, competitiveness for that ground, all that comes into play and probably isn't that healthy, um, you know for your herd. So nail on the head, Jason, Just
I just want to emphasize something you said. You said a little clause there. The thing's important as long as the habitat will support them. That that's the single most important thing. What's the optimal density, etcetera. Well, it depends on it is dear quality going to diminish incrementally as the number of deer increases. And so if the deer population increases and simultaneously deer quality increases, you've got too many deer. You need to take some deer off. All right,
there's a that's a great segue. We were rolling right into my next question, which once again you have to preface all of this right because where you're at in you know, southeast Mississippi. UM is going to be different than what we're doing in the midwest, you know, Kansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Illinois, whatever it may be. Um, let's just assume we're in in the middle of Kansas. You know, we've got a good mix, a well managed farm, you know, good at good cover. Um. You know, we've hinged cut all of
our bottoms. We've got everything that a big white tail needs. What's what's a carrying capacity? Because one of the things we were going out there, you know, with our dough tags and we were shooting the dos that that we needed killed. But there was you know out here we do you know, aerial studies, helicopter flights on the winter range. What's the right number? Uh? What you know, what is the carrying capacity on a on a well managed hundred acres?
And then how do we monitor that? As hunters are good stewards of our form, what what's a good way to to manage that and be somewhat scientific about it? UM? So you you're you're right. I am gonna respond with a you know, a contextual It depends and and I don't really have a numerical response for you, because there have been places I've I've been to and and people express deer density differently depending on where you're at in
the country. If you're in the East, it's deer per square a mile here, And in Texas and other places, we use acres per acres perier. And I have been to properties where they might have seven or eight acres per deer and they are in superb condition. I've been to other places where you might estimate at twenty acres perier and the deer herd is in terrible condition. So
so it's all based on on habitat quality. So I'm often asked, Jason, is you know, uh with without having a lot of familiarity with the property, how many doose do I need to kill? That's just kind of the default the response in the southeast, how many do dose who need to kill? And people probably get frustrated when I say, I can't give you that number, but because I don't know what the habitat is telling me. And and most importantly, and you said a moment ago, how
do we scientifically go about determining that? I don't think you need to learn about population estimation techniques. I think you need to learn to examine what you can learn at the skinning shed after you harvest deer, look at their condition, look at their body weight, and and make it relative to what you have recorded over time and what your neighbor is doing. That's how you determine how many to kill. Yeah, and um, just you're what you just hit on a point we'll talk about a little
bit later. Um. A matter of fact, it's it's right here. Uh. You know, I was talking to my buddy Randy, who owns these properties, and you know, I I showed some interests and wanting to buy some Midwest property and he's like, the main things like, don't worry about what you can do with your property, Like pay very close attention to what your four your four neighbors are doing, you know,
or whoever touches your piece of property. Um, because that's gonna be the biggest thing, the biggest factor on on uh on, you know, being able to keep big bucks on your property, not letting them you know, if they're shooting everything that's three and a half. You know all of that that that plays in. But I had one more question, which does tie into neighbors as well? Is
as I was sitting in the stand. You know, we're trying to shoot these doughs, um and and you know, these seasons are long in the Midwest compared to our two week seasons one week season, so you don't see the pressure spikes like we see. But I'm like, the neighbors don't appear to be hunting at all, Like we get to see their roads on the way into our places. Um, if they're not harvesting their doughs, are we're gonna lose you know, this well managed piece of property. Are our
bucks gonna leave? Or do they have enough dos to deal with? You know? In my mind, well, if there's you know, the neighbor has twice as many doughs, are we gonna lose our bucks to them? Like? Is there is there any you know, anything that supports that buckstan on his home range and and being completely um content with with breeding the doughs that were available, or is that gonna start and ridgelines and leave my property or leave the property? I think it's very difficult, uh to
manage that situation. And and uh, I have thought and thought, and Steve and I have gone back and forth with for years about this and the way I would advise someone is uh, I would be just making sure that you manage your property with the appropriate density as we as we said earlier, to maximize the quality of But both your bucks and does that is what is in your control. That is what you can do. It is absolutely going to be successful. Your your neighbor running a
higher dow density than maybe you. Yeah, it is going to happen. You can take it to the bank that one or two or some fraction of your bucks are gonna spin off because they've put their nose in the air and the prevailing wind and they can tell a doze and heat and they're gonna leave your property and they're gonna get shot. They absolutely are. But but I think that I think that is a of that is
a short term negative. What I think turns into a long term negative is now I'm going to manage my property with a whole bunch of deer and a whole bunch of dose and diminish the quality of the entire herd because of that instance that may happen every year every other year where your your buck leaves of property and gets killed. Now you've shot yourself in the foot. Management wise, Yeah, that makes it I mean, you're you're just you're calculating your you're you're betting on what has
the best, you know, potential to produce big bucks. And so like you said, it sounds like herd hells number one. Um, and you just have to accept that you're gonna lose maybe you know a buck or two that you wanted to tell guill to it to a neighboring property, but overall, that's gonna give you the best chances on your well managed piece of property to take that you know, same butt or or the term sustainable way to do it. Absolutely. Okay,
so we've sided, We've got a harvest dose. Um. We we had a few conversations in the blind, Um, what is the right dough to take? Um? You know. And once again, I don't want to say that I was above shooting a yearling, but you know, it's like going into it like, oh, you want to shoot the biggest, oldest dough, you know, get some meat off of her, um, you know. And and Randy kind of alludes like I
don't mind shooting the yearling dough at all. And for the reasons of you know, I'm you may want to elaborate on whether there's a second rut or a later up. But my understanding is the older dose or the more mature does will come in you know, earlier, all kind
of at the same time. And then we get those you know, two and a half year old, year and a half old dose that will maybe come in later, you know, late November, early December, and and and Randy's frustration was not frustration, but his concern was it now has his bigger bucks chasing you know, dose for an extra month. And we've all seen it where you kill a buck, you know, mid mid October, you's got layers off at on him. You kill a buck mid November
and it's completely on. Well, now you've got to add an entire month of chasing onto that. So Randy was like, I have no problem shooting a mature dough. I have no problem shooting a year ling dough. What's your thoughts on is there a right age class of dose to take out or or my my other concern to Randy, not to ramble on with my question was if you leave the mature does, you've now just taken a band of a certain age class of dose out, Like do you want to me? It would seem like the best
ways just to be pretty random about it. But what's your thought on is there a prime candidate or or what should the management strategy be on taking dose out? Well, I'm gonna one up your buddy Randy. Not only do I not mind shooting a yearling dough, I'll shoot a dough faon um that that does not even come into my thinking about pulling the trigger. I've got to ensure it is a dough fallen and not a buck fawn. But uh man, that's some good eating right there. It
gets you a couple of dough phones. That to me, Jason is um. It's one of those things that makes better discussion than practically you can you can implement. So here's a couple of scenarios. For example, let's let's say I'm on a property or area where fawn recruitment is an issue. So think of your more arid places where you might be skipping some fawn crops, or you might have an average of uh one fond four dose then uh in that case, if you even needed to shoot
a dough, you probably don't. But let's just say you were going to make a decision, I would be wanting to shoot the dough that did not have a fawn at heel, whether it be a yearling or two year old um. Because in that context, those older mothers with fawn at heel have demonstrated that they have the cover and food, that they know how to to raise a fawn, they know how to recruit a faon into the population.
Now you can turn right around to an area, like a lot of places in the southeast, where dealing with dear density is always a problem, and I can only shoot one. Let's say, for whatever reason, I can only shoot one out walk three, there's a doe fawn, there's a yearling or a two year old with no fawn, and and there's an adult dough with two fawns. If I'm trying to slow down the reproductive engine of that population,
it's probably wiser to shoot that older dough. I'm probably gonna because next year I will probably have recruited less fawns the following year by killing that older productive dough. That makes a ton of sense. So you're you know, maturity of that dough doesn't necessarily matter. You're looking for, you know what your management needs to be, whether it's less does or less fawns, more fawns in your basing that if you had to pick, you know, one way or the other. Yeah, if I had to another way,
depending on what state you're in. Another way to say it is, if you need to kill a bunch, shoot all three, shoot the dope, fall in the yearling end of the adult, take out the whole, the whole group. H m hm. Now, I didn't go into this episode intending to leave you hanging, but there was just so much good information we had to break this into two parts. Tune in next time for part two of my conversation with Dr Bronson Strickland. M hm hm