Ep. 29: Whitetail Science with Dr. Bronson Strickland, Part 2

the Deer University podcast. If you'd like to go back and listen to Part one, we cover listener questions on at what age would you start making decisions on buck management, what year round food strategy should you be employing for the healthiest deer, as well some of my own questions on genetic potential, nutrients, mother's health, and environmental factors and how those all add up to a buck's potential and how you go about managing those for better heart health.

If you enjoy this conversation with Dr Bronson Strickland, make sure go back and check out part one if you haven't already. All right, we're gonna digress um from Doma a little bit, and uh, this will be a little more universal amongst all areas. I know the times may change, but you know you hear everybody with their systems like this is how these are the phases of the rut. This is I'm gonna ask you to kind of break down.

You know, whether it's the beginning of September. Shoot, you you know down in the South, you guys are probably going, you know, the rut. You know, parts or portions of the rut go all the way into January. Breakdown kind of what you feel or you know, major milestones in in buck behavior, you know, from throughout the rut, you know, starting in September ending in late January. UM, and I know it's going to change a little bit based on

you know, where you're at. If you don't mind, I'm gonna back it up another month then include August UH. August September UH. That is when bucks are typically still within their bachelor groups, and so they are tolerant of one another. They are typically still in velvet or coming out of velvet, and biologically what is going on there is the level of testos drown in their bloodstream. So bucks tolerate each other when they're in velvet because testosterone

levels are very very low. So when the velvet shedding process begins, that is when testosterone begins to spike. That is when antler hardening happens. And that is also when these bachelor groups start breaking up because they don't want to look at their buddy anymore. They just want to fight, and so that is when they're gonna go back and back to probably the previous fall, the area that that

they occupied it and that home range. Typically, let's just say now in the southeast, if if you peek your ruts end of November December, then you have a couple of months to where those bucks are again gonna be setting up their their social hierarchies. They're gonna be refamiliarizing

theirselves with their territory. And then when you start getting about three weeks, two weeks, et cetera before the peak of the rut, that is when you're gonna see the most scraping activity d That's when they're they're running their trap line and they're putting their calling card out there on the landscape. And that is typically Jason when most people think that the peak of the rut is most often that is the pre rut that hunters think is

the peak of the rut. The peak of the rut is gonna be two to three weeks later when there's gonna be less visible dear activity because bucks are engaged in courting dough, so they're they're locked up, and then that's gonna go on. If you're up north, it might be two to three weeks. If you're in the South, it might be about a month. And then after that of your dose have been bred, and then bucks are gonna start focusing on uh rebuilding their their tissue. They've

lost ten of their body weight. That's when we see them focusing back on food again. So that's a good hunter's tip right there, as you always include food in the equation after the peak of the rut um and then they'll start taking advantage of those stragglers. It might be a dough fawn that's coming into heat for the first time. It could be an adult dough that was bred during the peak of the rut, but for whatever reason, just like humans, she was bred but didn't conceive and

become pregnant. Thirty days later, she's gonna cycle and come back into heat again. So that's when you'll see that that trickle or that second rut is occurring. Then, yeah, thanks for thanks for breaking that down. We got to hunt Kansas kind of i'd say, right on the front end of lockdown, and it was a little bit frustrating those guys like to kill their their bigger bucks. I would you know, October and maybe even earlier because they're

more patternable. They they're starting to you know, like the like you said, they're they're scraping pre rut, they're marking their territory. There's still somewhat patternable. And then when we got there, like it's very very fun to hunt the rut, but the deer that we're on cam's a week ago, just we're gone. They had found a dough ranner off somewhere didn't care to be out. Like I say, it's a it's a little bit of a love hate, like

I love being out there during the rut. But it was also like Randy, we have all these pictures of bucks on camera, like they're around, like we would see them maybe one of the four or five days, but then they were just you know, off again. They'd get on the dough and and then take off. So no,

thanks for breaking that right down. That that helps, you know, me understand kind of those phases versus you know, some of these people out there have got twenty eight phases of the rut, you know, like they're gonna between this day. I might, well, that's so hard to manage. You know, if you can break it down to like just a few phases, like you said, and what you should be focusing on, makes it makes it a little easier for a hunter to they don't have to think that hard.

And that's what's that's what's fun about the rut, but can also be frustrating is what we we think about the rut and anything can happen. I think that the rut equal random. Anything can happen any time of the day. Um. But but at the same time, you're you don't have that reliability and the patterns that are that are established. So but Jason, if you were gonna see if if now you were going to be that person to shoot the neighbor's buck that they've been managing all these years,

it's probably gonna beat dround the peak of the road. Yeah, it's yeah, it's the one time you could if you had a dough that crosses on Yeah, you can pull in. And I you know, I I I'm very um, you know, curious, So I asked all kinds of questions. Randy probably got Randy and and Chris Parrish was a hunt with us

there at the place at the same time. And you know, ask those guys that have spent a lot more time in a white tail stand these same questions, like what are the chances you know, have you guys killed bucks that? And they the numbers seem to be low, like it

can happen. But they said, you know, Randy's couple of properties or you know, a couple hundred acres apiece scattered about and you know, very rarely does he say they end up with a buck that they didn't cut, you know, know about It does happen, but but not very often. You usually they know what's there, they don't they don't

have the scragglers. But you know, I also see the advantages I'm looking for property there, like you can get the right eighty acres and you know, a smaller piece with different landowners, and the probability of killing the buck that's not on your place probably goes up tremendously because you can't hold all those, dear all the time, and you're, um, that makes sense, yeah, and and you know you're getting back to the whole uh patterning, dear, you know the

one thing that you can never account for, and that is these excursions and it's these things that uh, you know, as a researcher, I didn't put a lot of faith into when when hunters were reporting this a decade or more ago, evidence they were getting from trail cameras up we've never seen this buck. And he was here for a week or two weeks and then he was gone, and then a year later at the exact same time, I mean literally down to the week or three days,

like this buck is back again. I didn't buy into any of that. I was like, there's no biological reason for that to occur. But when you put a GPS caller on a bunch of bucks, that does occur, absolutely happens. Yeah. I I think Mark Drewy had he called a buck, you know, he had the same thing. It would disappear like almost to the date and then wouldn't come back until the fall. And it didn't even come back one year at all. And it's just to me, that's mind boggling.

And I'm gonna ask you a question. I'm sure you're probably maybe you'll have answer, like, is there any understanding on what just makes that buck say, you know what, I'm gonna pop up today and go a mile away on a different farm, just completely leave an area I've been for the last nine months. Um uh that that that that's a tough one, you know. So we think of um, I guess I think of it as short term, long term. You know, in the short term, could there be some kind of que like I'm getting a whiff

of an extra dough, so I'm gonna move. Uh man, I'm hungry, you know, I'm not getting what I need. There's a whole bunch of hunting pressure right here, so so I'm gonna leave. I would call those, you know, short term. But but then we also, Jason, have some longer terms. Where why every single year on November does this buck get up and move five miles away we gotta bucking in Mississippi. That in February every year he leaves the Mississippi, swims the Mississippi River, and spence his

summer in Louisiana. Now, now tell me why try to be logical about that? Why invoke all this risk moving that far and swim in the river, and and then come August that same buck moves right back to Mississippi and spends his hunting season over here. I don't know, I don't know. I think it I think it all be speculation. Unless you know, we could somehow figure that out. You know, I me wanting to have an answer. You know, as a as an engineer, there should be an answer

to everything. So you know, what goes through my mind is like, were they at four and a half? Was he not that you know they're going to definitely be in the rut, but maybe there was a pecking order issue. And then by five and a half he's like one mature enough and there's another buck that's hanging around here that just won't give me the chance, and I'm gonna go find my own spot where maybe there there isn't a morem You know, it's like we could speculate all

day long why does it? But it's just always intriguing on how you could have such consistent, you know, patterns on a deer and then just you know, that excursion takes place where, like you said, a deer that's whims the river at a certain time and comes back. It's just yeah, I guess that's that's what makes it fun. They do things because they're dear and we may never understand why why they do it? What what we think?

We have no way to prove this, of course, but what we kind of think it's a biologist would call it kind of a vestigial trait. It's just something buried pretty deep in their genome. I just think there's a fraction of deer, just like within human beings, there's a fraction of humans hundreds of years ago that wanted to be explorers, their risk takers. The grass is always greener, they're going for the gold, etcetera. And they're willing to

risk their life to do it. And white till deer, we always say they're a colonizing species, are always you know, moving, expanding, looking for the better food, better cover, etcetera. And I think there's just always a small fraction of individuals and in this case bucks that are just willing to pick up and move. But I can't say it's even just just bucks. This was uh, definitely exacerbated by floodwaters adjacent

to the Mississippi River. We we had to do also pick up and move twenty miles away and set up camp. So it happens with both of them that that's crazy. That's starting to get comparable to the western like winter migrations, you know, at the point that moving that far and yeah, like I said, it's all speculation. Another thought is like, you know when is that where he was born? Where his mom Like, you know, it's like and and he

moved off and just is coming back. Well, we may never know, so I'm gonna digress because we could probably talk in circles on that one all day. Um. The next one is a western hunter. Um, you know, an elk hunter that's on the ground trying to get very very close. You know, wind is always key, but to piggyback on wind is sent um. You know, being a brand new white tail hunter one of my biggest things. What you know, these the white tail hunters are you know,

they're spraying their clothes with all this stuff. They've got some sort of scent locker, scent crusher, some sort of a cabinet with ozone, and you know, I'm like watching what seems to me as a Western hunter is a little bit crazy because we just like, I have to breathe. I'm gonna sweat to death out here in the West, climbing mountains. I'm just gonna keep the wind in my face at all times. But stand hunting, it was very obvious that you can't get into your stand, you can't

protect the wind at all times. You got deer on the ground, You're letting them come to you, So wind and and scent becomes a little bit You're I don't want to say you're giving them the wind, but you were. You had to risk the wind a little bit more than I can't elk cunning, because elk cunning, I can hear a bowld bi aggling. I'm just gonna walk a

ninety degree you know. Uh, I'm gonna walk ninety degrees to my left and get the wind better, so I can, you know, play it right where I'm not worried about what's behind me or what maybe in the adjacent betting area whatnot. So what with that all said? Uh, my understanding or just from what I've read, maybe even a research that you've done, is that you know, a dear sense of smell can be anywhere from tune and fifty two a hundred times more acute than than human smells.

So you're right off the bat, you're not gonna get away with much. But I'm gonna I'm gonna have multiple questions here, but like what smells matter was was always you know, I'm curious about is it human odor? Is it um? You know the the laundry detergent I washed my clothes with is at the breakfast breed I may have build on my hunting pants that morning on the way to the stand um in your opinion, due to the types of smells matter and and is there any

research to support you know what smells matter? That that that that that last little part you said there is tough. Um. I would say there is, there's research to support that absolutely smell is gonna matter. But but it's really difficult for us to disentangle exactly what that smell is. What you know, why is this particular of molecule gonna elicit a response in a deer that another scent molecule won't.

And one example that that I can give you that for me open my eyes and too how complicated this

is is? Uh? Steve and I did did an experiment here at Mississippi State where we worked with the chemists with all the sophisticated equipment where they could they could detect the the acronym they use or v O C S volatile organic compounds that we emit, and we would put on this suit and they would extract the air that came off of us and and it was literally over a hundred different compounds, and it could vary from

individual to individual as well. And uh, that just I just remembered something I saw on the news a couple of weeks ago regarding um this new research. But that is showing something humans have noticed for a long time. You know, Jason, why is it whenever you and I are together? Why are mosquitoes all over you? But they're not as much on me? Well, end up this this same kind of study. They actually were able to isolate it down to a particular compound and this particular genome,

this expression of this gene, and this person. They manufacture more of this compound and the mosquitoes queued in on it. Now, that kind of got off track a little bit, But the bottom line is that it's hard to define what is human scent because it's a whole bunch of different compounds. And is there any way to truly and effectively suppress or eliminate all those different sense that a deer can detect detect. I can't say from a research per sective, yes or no, but I find it very very unlikely

that that you can do that. And another example, Jason, Uh, this seems to resonate with people very well. When I talked to him, is if we want to compare a deer's nose to a dog's nose, which I think is a really good comparison. We all know a bloodhound and that you know how how good they are. Um, But but we have dogs now, like cadaver dogs. We have dogs that can at least there's a lot of research showing they can tell if some one has Parkinson's disease

or not. We we have and I know this intimately in my family. There there are service dogs Jason, that could be in the room with you right now, and if you were Type one diabetic, they could tell if your blood glucose level was above or below a threshold. Now, to me, if we're how how do you completely cover that up? I just don't think you can. But what I think you can do are the odds. You put

the odds in your favor. You know, of course, you don't want to be eating a bacon and you know, sausage biscuit and smoking a cigar and have diesel fuel on your boots and all that kind of stuff. Um, but it's it's it's really hard to manage for that yeah, and so it's just to be over and that's where I kind of got to is is just being over critical on sense like just I may never know, you know, in in the you know, you the moment, what matters

or what doesn't. But if I control and take care of as much of that, you know, so when you get back to the house, you take all your hunting clothes off before you cook breakfast, you know, and and just try to manage it to the highest level possible. I figure that's the best bet because you know, you're always gonna have to breathe, and if that's what they're picking up, you're you're gonna be you know, you're gonna get picked off. And um, you know that kind of

leads onto the better or not the better. The safer play is just make sure that the wind is always in the right the right place and your stands in the right place, um, and make sure that they don't have a chance to smell you. Um. For that that's the that's the proactive thing that you can control, is positioning yourself in the wind. Yeah. Um. One last question on on sand and and I know this is a very a very nuanced question because you know, a one to two mile hour winds different than a seven to

ten versus a eighteen to twenty. We talked about this a little bit before we we got hit the record button. Um, you know, out west, as I'm approaching Elk, I'm always wondering, like if I need to cheat the wind or or give them the wind completely? Is five yard loop good enough? As a seven hundred fifth yard loop good enough? Like? When can they smell me? Is there any data that kind of supports that? And I know it's going to be variable on the wind, you know, the concentration of

the smell. So it's like, yeah, everything I'm asking an answer for it gets very very complex. There's so many variables and you know each one has its own um. You know, I guess it's probably weighted differently as well, you know in that that answer, um uh, there's no research that I'm aware of that that can answer that

question definitively. But but I'll give you my opinion. The way I think about it, I think about it as um, even though it's microscopic and we can't see it and it's hard for even for us to comprehend it, but I look at it as uh, for that, dear. You know, stimulus and response, there is probably has to be a threshold number of particles to elicit a deer saying I gotta get out of here. This is very very dangerous for me. Um. And so you know, I'm not a

mule deer hunter. I'm I'm a white tail hunter. If if you've hunt a deer down here long enough, you've definitely seen those situations where like you're saying, the wind is swirling and a deer comes in, whether they're fifty yards away or a hundred fifty, but they caught a whiff. They know it's swirled by. And I look at that, Jason, as there was a particle or two or a hundred or however you would enumerate that, but there was enough to say, you know, I need I need to to

be careful here. Something's going on. And then they get that next with and it exceeded that threshold where they said I gotta get out of here. Yeah, yeah, or the number i've I've smelt it once and I've smelt it twice, I'm I'm out. Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm gonna ask why I lied there a little bit.

I'm gonna ask you one more question on set, which if you were you know Dr Bronson stricklands headn't do a stand and you've got you're going to hunt target buck number A, but target buck B might be downwind of how you have to get into your stand? What what would be the safe distance? I'm gonna put it this way, just like, what are you gonna do? How far away are you gonna stay? But in order to hunt buck A, you're gonna have to let your wind

go to to be on your approach. Um, what in your mind, what could you get away with, you know, for that that scent hitting you know that that betting area or where you think that bucks hold up at. I don't think it would be a couple hundred yards I would want it to be a thousand or more away. Yeah, just once again, just played on that conservative side, a little extra effort, a little farther walking, just to make

sure that that when so. Yeah, not I'm not putting you on record, but over a thousand yards away you feel like you may be safe, you know, And it sounds like I wouldn't even put a number on it. As far as possible. You're gonna stay away as far as possible as you can, as long as yeah, yeah, as long as it doesn't you know, turn your half mile hike into the stand into a five mile hike. You know, within reason, you're gonna stay as far away as possible, exactly, and make as little noise as possible.

The list goes on and on. Yeah. Um, we talked about the run a little. It we mentioned some you know, nine yards versus yards. Um. You know, we know that deer move you know, October November, they're moving thirty three percent. I think some of your research says three percent of the time during the day during lockdown, they're moving their movements during the day. Um, but we noticed, and I come back to my people a probably getting tired of

me of my white tail hunt in Kansas. But it's what I know, it's it's it's it's my experience, so I'm gonna dive back into it. Um. You know, he's got cameras spread out all over his you know, thousand acres, a couple of different forms, and you know he may have one camera that only gets a picture of one buck. You know that buck doesn't leave his core area of I don't know a hundred two hundred three hundred acres. I'm assuming, you know, he's or even tighter than that,

because the farm is bigger than that. He's got cameras more you know, closely closely spaced out than that. But then there may be a buck that is on all ten of his cameras and all of his neighbors twenty cameras, and you know, in the next neighbors over his cameras. What what lead to that that? I guess, uh, you know, habit or what leads to to that deer's movement patterns um for one buck to sit still, in one buck to travel all over And I've got some follow up

questions on that as well. Well, I don't think we know the answer, but but we know that it exists. We know that there's a lot of variation, uh, and how they move and the area they cover and how often and what we kind of call it personality, we call you know, bucks have have different personalities and some of it, Jason, can be Some are just very aggressive. Some of them are always out there, always looking for

a fight. They're always looking for a breeding opportunity. Some of them, and this can be mature bucks as well. Some of them just are not programmed that way. Some of them are just gonna what we call them norm if I'm showing my age here, but cheers Norm. I mean every Friday night, you know where norm is gonna be. And there are are some bucks like that, And to me, we got to think back into But the currency for

an animal is an evolutionary term we called fitness. Fitness is basically for you to win and mother nature, you gotta live longer or you've gotta have more offspring. And so I think you have this diversity of buck personalities where some of them are going to be very aggressive about breeding opportunities and some of them are gonna be more conservative and are gonna stay at home and stay

close to cover and just try to live longer. That their game is the long game of i may have less breeding opportunities per year, but I'm gonna live till I'm eight years old. This other little whipper snapper, you know, he's gonna have maximize as many breeding opportunities as he can, but he dies at three and a half. So both of those are acceptable solutions. And and so you know, without really knowing why, you know, maybe it's it's just intrinsic and genetic a little bit and it's just who

they are. Um, is there any any data or you know from your own experience, have you seen that change with maturity like well that you know you mentioned whipper snapper in the in the last example, does that deer settle down as he moves up the pecking order and maybe knows he'll be able to breed those doughs clothes? Or is there any correlation between maturity and how how

far a deer wants to go? Um, we don't have a good data to assess that, simply because we we don't have enough the the longevity of a deer retaining a collar, at least the way we do studies is you get about a year, sometimes a year and a half out of a collar and the batteries exhausted and we drop it off. The I think the best explanation I can give is like in our deer pens and our research facility, we we will see some of the

aggressiveness change over time. We will see sometimes that a buck at middle age that was just really really aggressive, by the time he becomes a mature it's almost like he settles down. It's almost like he realizes the risk I am taking and every time a buck locks up for a fight, for example, they're they're taking a risk with their life. Uh, they're taking a risk with getting an antler. You see it all of an antler in

the eyeball, wound in the neck. And so it's like some of these bucks just learn over time that the ruts not here, there's not an estraus dough right in front of me. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna run all over the place and pick fights with everybody like some of these other bucks do. That makes a ton

of a ton of sense there. Um, moving on to my my final question before we get into the vocalizations a little bit um, you know, looking at a piece of property aside from seclusion and absence of human pressure, which in my quick research, um, is maybe the number one factory to keeping you know, bigger, more mature deer on your property. What do bucks need to get big and stay big and and and stay on your property? Um?

You know, for elk out West, we always talk about when we're looking to find elk, we're looking they need to have they need to have security and using north facing benches in timber or brush, and they need to have access to water every day. How do you relate that to like the white tails and and where, uh, you know, not where what you need to keep them on your place? The essentials food. Of course, food is really really important until you get to the rut and

food is less important. Um. I would say during that time of the year. It's kind of like what we talked about earlier. It's something you can't really manage for. But there they're roaming the landscape looking for for breeding opportunities. Um. But but one thing that we neglect a lot is

is cover. It's having a really good cover. And so you know, I'll get an email or a call and I'll get the question of what do I have to do on my property, you know, my small acreage, my fifty two to keep and you know, hold more deal on my property. And and the way I always end up is you need to go to Google Earth or some program like that, and you need to zoom out and you need to figure out what is the most limiting factor on the landscape, not on your property adjacent

what is limiting is food limiting? If so, then you can be the destination food property around you. But just as easily think of the Midwest. It could be cover. You know, so if you just have this wide open landscape and you have all this food, well you need some cover adjacent to it to hold deer on your property. Um. And then once you address those, don't mess it up by uh, disturbing the deer all the time. Be sensible about about how you hunt and how often you hunt.

Don't just go in there and blow them up every afternoon or they're gonna leave your property or certainly not move around during daylight hours. And that makes a lot of sense. And coming from out west, you know, we've got it's brush. You we've logged everything, you know three times now, you've got stumps, you've got brush, you've got black very brush. You get into the creek bottoms, we've got devil's clubs, you know, whatever it may be. There's

just we have brush and and everything for days. And so heading out um, you know, to the Midwest, you know, to to realize that a little cedar thicket that created some sort of like thermal barrier for those deer. And we hunted very close to to a cedar um thicket there, and you know, coming from out west, it's like, why

would these deer want to be in it. But you realize really quick that you know, when it was eight to fifteen degrees, those bucks were moving some of those deer into that and they wanted to be in there during the middle of the day when they were going to bed down so they could have an extra tenor.

And we walked to farm and walked through a couple of them, just looking at new properties and just kind of doing the walk around, getting the whole you know, first white tail experience and um, you know, just seeing the amount of trails and the activity on the property going in and out of there at different times of

the day. What was eye opening. And then I remember walking through we walked from you know, one I guess would be agg section to another, but there was a we were in bluff country and we had to maybe drop a couple hundred feet down through a creek, and you know out west we clear cut everything. We cut it off of the stump. We either turn it into lumber or we send it overseas his export logs. And I looked and on this property, Randy had cut everything. I heighten, just let it lay and it just created

this tangled mess. And you know, he explained hinge cutting to me, which coming from out west made zero since it all like left tree was worth money, you know, and he's like let trees with more to the big bucks. And it is you know, in a in a sawmill. And so you quickly start to look at you know, all right, don't go in here. But then this is like that big buck you know, betting area. They can be secluded. There's no reason for anybody outside of hunting

season to ever go into here. Um. You know, it's literally set aside for for bucks. Um, you know. And then fast forwarding to a different piece we hunted, uh, you know, he left a twenty acre circle between his dick timber, his open oaks, his food plot of CRP and um. I was amazed how many deer would pop up at three thirty in the afternoon out of that stuff. Like they didn't want to go head in the thick brush, they didn't want to go bed, you know, up in

the timber. Um, they were just going out in the middle of theirp And so it quickly started like there's no right answer, um, you know, aside from maybe leaving these things loan or not bother them all year or bothering him, you know, pre hunting season, during hunting season. Um, you know there's a there's a security they want, you know, like you said, thermal thermal breaks from from cedars and and and it kind of opened up my eyes. You have to think a little bit more about what those

dear need, you know, right? And I guess it is an aggregate. They don't just need one thing they wanna. It seems to be a combination to me at least that that they want a little bit of everything. Yeah, and think about the adjacency as well, Um, you know, where where can I put this cover relative to where food is gonna be? Think about your hunting strategy. Am I going to be able to get in and out of being in between food and cover? Can I get

in and out undetected? I mean there's a Um, you can be a lot more intentional, uh and and successful with where you put cover. Then. I think a lot of people give credit for I think we give so much attention to the food plot, where we're putting the food plot, etcetera. I think you need to put just as much of where you are intentionally putting cover, and

it's just gonna increase your success hunting. Okay, now we're gonna kind of close us out with you know what, what I'm interested in and my job designed deer calls is just vocalizations. And you're your opinion what you know about deer vocalizations all, um, All add in bits and pieces from what I've seen in the stand um, but go through like a deer's vocabulary at at a high level.

And then we'll break it down into you know, grunts, rattling bleats, in your opinion what those means and how we can you know what they mean to the deer, and then how we can maybe use those um in hunting situations. Um, from a hunting situation that you know, there there are a lot of vocalizations, and I didn't do my homework to rattle off all twelve of them or whatever. The ones that are are are you know most meaningful? Of course, distress you know there's a problem there.

They blow you know, really hard. Uh, And that's just to alert everybody something's wrong and get you know, get the heck out of town. Uh. Grunting or the tending grunt is the one we think most commonly, and that is just communication. Uh. A buck is tending a dough. He's he's on the on, on the chase or the pursuit.

And then more of a territoriality part of that is in the grunt store at WESE and that is more of a you know, hey, buddy, we're about to tangle here and I'm just I'm letting you know, you better back off real quick. Um, I've had so so so there's no doubt Jason that grunting and work. Um. We wouldn't have this industry producing grunt calls if it never worked. But everybody that has used them enough has also noticed, Um,

it works sometimes and it doesn't work others. And the way I think about it anyway, is it's gonna depend on um Number one, and this seems really silly to say this, but did the buck even hear it? So the but the buck has to hear the grunt before it can respond to the grunt. And and then number two, it's probably gonna depend on its mood or physiological state as to whether it's gonna respond. So everybody that's grunted a deer has grunted, and you like, why in the

world it didn't even pay me any attention? And you can have that exact same scenario two days later with a different buck and they come charging in. UM, it's really hard to determine exactly what was going on there, but we see the same thing with rattling as well. It can be UMH is very I'm sorry, I'm kind of going down a side road here. I was very lucky to work with a buddy of mine UH named

Mick Hellickson years ago. This would have been in the GALIUH mid nineties, and to to my knowledge, it has been the only kind of scientifically studied UH rattling experiment. And we went to this This wildlife refuge has these observation towers and an even buck age structure, and that's very important. It was a classic South Texas deer herd where you had just as many bucks were mature as or immature. And we looked at pre rut, rut, post rut, etcetera,

and different rattling sequences and so forth. And and Jason, the single most important thing about a buck coming in and responding to you was did the buck here you or not? So with with the with then where you're at, there is a certain rate us around you that there has to number one be abut to hear you rattling. And then number two, are they in the mood you know to to respond? Yeah, And that was one of

the things that I sat in the stand. What I would consider, you know, similar age class dear, you know, similar level of dominance or same level on the pecking order, on the same trail. So whatever they think they're smelling as they go by. I could grunt at one and he he heard me, he'd pick his head up, you know, I always always that's I guess my indicators. He snaps

his head up and looks at your direction. If not, I assume he didn't hear me, and then he would put pick his head up and go right back down to sniff. And the next year, three and a half years old, same age dear gets the same spot, I grant, he picks his head up and turns and walks six yards under the stand, And I'm like, gosh, dang, I don't know why, and maybe we never will know why. It's just that first buck didn't have, you know, enough want to come back and and you know, pick up

the trail that I was on. You know, you gotta assume that's what they're thinking that I was on. You know, a dough or grunting. Um, you know, that didn't work. And then there were also times where mature deer. We got some mature deer to stop and look and they would kind of angle our way. And then it seemed to work better on those three and a half the four and a half year old deer. If we were dealing with the five or six and a half, they

weren't near as interested in coming. Now. I know that might just be a coincidence on this hunt, but it seemed like it was easier to to grunt in those three and a half to four and a half year old bucks. Um. And yeah, I I don't know. I always just wonder why and how come? But you know, similar to a lot of our discussion today, it may just be that deer and what that deer wants to do.

And you know, if he's that bully buck that wants to come try to you know, whoop my butt to to take my do over, So the other one didn't have that much you know, interest and and a lock up or a fight or anything like that. I thought, I think it it depended on that buck's personality. You know, see a lover or a fighter or a dancer or whatever. And then did you catch him in the right mood? You know, is he ready to jump up and come fight?

And some are and some aren't. And you and I have been in the exact same experiences, whether it be a grunt call or rattle and antlers, where you were simultaneously looking at two different bucks and they're about the same distance away, so it's not because they didn't hear. And one of them lifts his head or just twitches his ear and for the most part ignores you, and another one picks his head up and comes running in. And I don't know, that's what makes it fun. I

don't know. We got to hunt out of a ground blind a couple of days, and you know, we we do that. Let's get up, make sure there's no deer around before we grunt or rattle, and we do our little secret, you know sequence. And there would be times where you would grunt and you would have a buck just coming real slow. You can see him out maybe your blind side window. You're coming real slow. There were other times, and I'm using these simultaneously grunts or rotting.

There other times we'd smash the horns together or grunt and you would have a deer come fly into the woods, and once again you were trying to figure out, like does it matter how hot of dose are in the area if he's just completely looking for one, I'll probably go to my grave never knowing the answer. But it isn't it, you know, whether it's an engineer me just wanting to know if I can be a more educated hunter.

It's like, why did one dear you know, take his time very cautiously come in, and then why that other deer like charge the blind, you know, come flying by it five yards and run past us, and um, yeah, I don't know. Um if if you know, we'll ever have the answer, it sounds like the probably no, we'll probably never zip that up knowing the reason why. But um, here's a cool little story. Is very similar to what

you're describing. But again with with rattling is in that experiment Jason, we had of course, we did this for days and days and weeks and weeks and replicated what we were doing over and over and just what you're you're describing. We we have some bucks that completely ignore what you're doing. We we have some bucks that come charging in and it's kind of like some of these old videos are the guys on the ground rattling. The next thing he knows he's getting knocked over by buck,

you know, just on top of him. But but then you also on the exact same rattling sequence where you know, to your left, this buck came charging in over to your right. When you're done rattling, you look and they're one had tiptoed, you know, one wasn't gonna come charging in. They come circling around. They're just very cautious. And then I had one example I still vividly remember, and again

this was in Texas. You could see a long ways, but I see a buck about three maybe four hundred yards away, and I'm wearing these antlers out, you know, breaking a sweat, going as hard as I can. And while I was rattling, you had to be making the sound. While you were rattling, that buck was coming towards you.

But part of our protocol, our experimental protocol, was you rattled for X amount, you you didn't for x amount, you pick it up, and when you would put the antlers on on your lap, that buck instantaneously would stop coming. There was no memory in his head, like I'm gonna keep going there as long as the stimulus of the rattling antlers was taken away. He clipped and in three rattling sequences, I brought him from that far away. Three different times. He would stop and just go back to feeding,

pick him up, rattling again. Here he comes again. But because he had to close the distance of four hundred yards, you know, it took that long. Yeah, that's very similar to predator calling bears they get they get uninterested very quickly, so you have to stay on the call forever. So it sounds really similar like they would move when you were um, you know, rattling, but but not so. Uh. One last thing I calling and then we'll we'll wrap this up and put a bowl on it. Um grunting.

So in your opinion, I'll just maybe you can either agree with me or disagree with me. When when we got there, you know, Parish and Randy like, we're not ever gonna grunt at a buck that's on lockdown or that's chasing there, Like, we don't call to that, dear. Um, they don't like to call first thing in the morning, So we were doing morning in and evening sits. You know, some people don't like to hunt mornings at certain times,

you're only agg at night. But we were. We only had a certain amount of time from out of state. We had to be in the tree at all times. So um, you know, we tried not to grunt on a buck that was locked down or chasing or chasing hard. And then um, we didn't typically grunt in the morning. Would you say grunting every thirty minutes is about right if if nothing's around. My only concern is when I looked at the pace that these bucks were running, if I didn't say anything, if I just observed that dear

would be out of ear shot. Like you said, the most important thing is he hears me. So then my mind triggers, do I should be calling maybe every ten minutes because that buck's gonna leave? Leave my you know, radius that that you can hear me? What in your opinion, what would be the And I know this may maybe more of your hunting opinion and not necessarily research base, but what's the right there? You know, cold calling, cold grunting? I guess, um, yeah, and you're right, yeah, the sitting

research basis is just biologists that hunt's opinion. But but but I think The single most important thing is as you mentioned, is you know, a buck's got to hear it, and and I'm not gonna sit up there and just where a grunt call out the whole you know, every minute. You know, I think that's just disturbance and all. I

think everything's getting alerted to your presence. But but I would want to think of, like the example you mentioned earlier, is that every fifteen two at the most thirty minutes, I want the opportunity that, however, whatever that distance is, based on the configuration of the land, uh, the wind, noise, et cetera. I want to be sure that if there is a deer within say two hundred yards of me, is that and not maybe I don't see him, that

he can hear me. So I'm thinking probably every fifteen to twenty minutes, I'm gonna do that a couple of times and just see if I get a response that That's kind of what we did, and we kind of rotated our grunning versus rattling, like you know, maybe a

bucks more interested in rattling versus grunning. So whether now you're only rattling every thirty forty five minutes and grunting every thirty five mixing him in it seemed to be a good mix and it kept you know, enough action or enough dear coming to the to the location to keep us interested in and not get get bored. Um. Uh rattling the type time of year are you rattling from?

You know started pre rout all the way through you know even post rut um is that is that the ideal time you're gonna get dear to respond to that? Then pre rut number one, post rut number two is all about Yeah, it's all about being lucky that a dove buck tending a dough is has finished breeding and he's on the search, and the probability of you catching him then is just last versus in the pre rut when all the bucks are roaming and looking and searching,

you just have greater odds um bleats. Where do they have their place and calls or should we just leave our bleak calls at home all the time or is there a place where they can be effective? And and how a dough would you know naturally use that sound? Um? It definitely works and uh I've I've used it and gotten a response um like a lot of people have. In terms of a dough coming in and charging in. It's just difficult, at least for me. And maybe I'm not a good enough hunter um where I could manage

that and try to get a shot under undetected. But to me, it's just that the dough is coming in on high, high alert and is focused in where that sound is coming from, so trying to get a bow drawn back is difficult. Yeah, it can be effective. I had about an hour loll on the day I actually killed my buck um and and just bleeded. I had granted a couple of times or nothing. Time. I'm just

gonna switch it up. I got the call in my in my pocket, and whether it was that or not, or whether they were already coming, that's a hard part. You don't know if they were already on their way, you know, two days showed up, uh you know, five seven minutes later and they had four you know, two bucks each on them, and it's like, well, I don't know if it worked not, but I'm not gonna not do it. You know, we'll have to test it more

in the future. But you know, those dose did show up, they did turn and it took about a half hour for the bucks to finally come back. But um, you know bleats, we we don't use them a whole lot. We didn't use them a whole lot, but we did use them, you know, just a few times to see how um and when we were trying to get you know, does to come to come to our location. And that last sound that we're we're gonna use in hunting, um,

that snort weeds? Are you going to load that up more in the pre rut um and avoid it during lockdown? And and are you gonna come back to it in the post rut? You know that that's one I've never never used before. Um, I've seen it used before and it can be effective, and I would think I would, Um, I think that might be more of a post rut for me doing that. UM, I probably have to put

more thought into that than I am now. But I guess my logic is that during the pre rut, bucks are just moving around more often, and if they get challenged at that time, uh, maybe they're just gonna move on and keep looking the versus Uh, in the peak of the rut or post rut, they might be more willing to accept the challenge and fight. But that's a good question. Yeah, I know, you know just and like I said, you can read anything on the internet, so

whether you've proofed it or not. But people that you know, I know, they use it more pre rut. And I know you know the guys that I was hunting with in the Midwest, they were like, I we don't sport we is during the middle of the rut. And um, you know which it sounds like you don't do a whole lot in the middle of it, like you said, besides, get lucky and hope you just put your stand in

the right place where. Um, you know, either he's chasing the door around or he's returning from chasing the door around and passing through trying to find a new one. All right, Well, I really appreciate having you on an inclosing Um, Dr Strickland, I'm gonna I'm gonna leave you with this one. If if you could give advice to hunters by using you know, a deer's biology or their instinct against them to find successful would that one hip, B Well, that's that's a good one. Um. Probably a

pretty boring answer here. I would probably just go back to my to my fundamentals of don't disturb, don't constantly disturb where where deer or bedded? Um, think strategically about where cover is at, Think strategically about where food is at. Uh use the wind, try to get get in and out. Um. So I guess in terms of the biology against them, it would be their stomach that makes a ton of sense. So I'm gonna I was gonna have you clothes on that.

But now I've got another question that popped up. Um, would you say, just as far as I even checking cell cameras like that, deer may not see you, may not hear you on that day, but he may pick up you know, as you said, one or two or ten molecules, whatever that number is. That's that's a low amountain. It just puts some want alert. Are you saying just completely?

You know, we should be using cell cameras, like unless it's some farmer agg that has to happen, you know, harvest, we should just kind of leave those things alone as much as possible. Well, I guess I would say that, UM, disturbance isn't just a gunshot, you know, disturbances your present, your scent, the sound of your a TV, the truck door.

You know that. I think it's though all the collection of those events over time, alert dear at the population scale, does something's changed, something's different, And so you know, I'm still gonna run up a trail camera and check it throughout the year. But I think you just have to treat those as almost like a hunt. Um. I don't think everybody can run twenty cellular activated cameras, you know, but I think it's not going in there and checking

it every third day. It might be every couple of weeks looking at it and and even treating the wind approaching your camera set up much like a hunt. Stand. Yeah, you don't go in the middle of the morning when he might be on that plotter and that you go in the middle of the day where you think he's moved off. And yeah, that just taking all of those precautions, like you said, make sure you got the right wind,

even check your camera. Um, all that stuff seems to just add up and and just like everything we've talked about, I think it's a decision on you know, you have to weigh the benefit versus the detriment, right, Um. You know, I looked at like the hinge cutting of one of these areas, like you're gonna go into a Bucks area that he's probably already using. But does hinge cutting make it that much better? Um? Is it worth the week

or two of of hinge cutting? You know all of these oaks and you know some of that stuff is what I'm still trying to get my you know, my head around, like what's worth it, what's not? What's you know, what could push that buck out of there versus what may you know bring two more bucks into the area. Is I think that's that game that everybody plays, trying

to keep big bucks girl, big bucks. Um. Yeah, And I think like the example, you gave a buck maybe using it, but you want him to who use it differently? So the buck maybe using that wood lot by just passing through, but but you want him to bed right there, or you want multiple deer to bed right there. That's where being manipulative like that and hinge cutting or or just cutting trees could help a lot. Yeah. And there

could be a short term negative effect. There could be a short term negative effect, but years later it's gonna be positive. Yeah. Play play the long game and right you get you'll get the benefit out of it. So I really appreciate having you here. Dr Bronson Strickland a wealth of knowledge. I probably could have talked to you all day about white tells, but I appreciate the time. Yeah, yeah gave us and good luck now that your seasons are just getting going down there. Yeah, I'm looking forward

to it. Time to get out and hunt some more. Thanks so much for the opportunity and enjoy talking to you. Yeah. Thanks. M