Thanks for being back on i appreciate it yeah absolutely so i want to i guess start off here with we've had a pretty warm winter so far a couple cold spells here but how how does a warm winter impact deer i'm assuming that it's good because you don't have the high snow that you know wolves might be able to track down deer but as far as a warm winter goes how does that impact deer that's a good question several ways so first and foremost is access to food and forage, the lack of snow allows deer
to access forage in a lot of different areas and what is typically a big problem for them is when you have low access to food from accumulation of snow so when snow gets to a certain depth deer essentially can't reach that snow or the forage and that is when we get things like winter kill when we have that snow that lasts like a long time into the spring, also with a lack of snow you just have lower energetic costs for things like thermal regulation.
And locomotion we found that when snow gets to about brisket height for deer that that is a spot where they're going to avoid we've seen that collar data and just tracks i'm sure a lot of people can see that if you have a lot of snow accumulation at an open spot like a muskeg there's not a lot of deer tracks across it when it gets too high because it's just tough going to get through it and it's the long the accumulation of snow that really and
long into spring accumulation of snow that goes long into spring that becomes an issue for deer but we haven't had that so far you never know it could we could get some dumps here so it's it's it's not over yet yeah we tend to have, it seems like the last couple of years, we've had some brutal snows in February and even into March. How does those later snows impact pregnancy?
Or do we know anything about that? Like when humans are pregnant, when you get closer to the due date, you might not want to exercise or do things that are as difficult physically. So do late snows impact maybe when the fawns drop or the fatality rate of deer?
They shouldn't necessarily dictate when fawns are going to be born because that's kind of a set clock and when the rut happens does get pregnant the timer starts and it doesn't stop for anything, but when you have late snows kind of related to a few things that i said earlier you have increased energetic costs towards the end of the winter which is particularly taxing on deer because you can imagine you start with a full gas tank from the end of the summer, right?
And as you go through winter, you're using that gas, but you're not putting a lot back in. You might somewhat maintain, but usually it's a net loss of energy. And by the time you get to late winter or early spring, that's when you're going off of E.
You're just barely going along. And if you're pregnant doe you have increased energetic costs because of the fawn that you're developing and it's compounded when you have lack of forage and also having to travel through snow that is deep in places so that also goes back to you know the forest the habitat type that you have as well So if deer have access to, say. Mature or old growth forest, those big branches on trees are going to hold back that snow and allow for access to a lot of that forage.
And in an old growth situation, you're going to have openings and areas that are well shaded and away from a lot of the snow accumulation. So you have some of that edge effect where you're going to have access to forage compared to, say, in a clear cut or something like that, where when there's no snow, it's great because usually there's a lot of forage, at least initially, but then that goes away.
So it can definitely impact does, and I don't have any information directly on, you know, how many fawns are born versus are not and survivorship related to snow for sick of black-tailed deer, but I would almost certainly assume that it would have a negative impact on the fawn.
And regardless of if the fawn is born or not, or if you have a fawn that is born, if the doe is in better condition when that fawn is born and when it's developing, the fawn will usually have a higher weight when it's born, meaning it's got more energy reserves. And typically, when that's the case, they do better. So lack of those hard winters, as I usually call them, when we have that deep, persistent spring snow, is directly going to benefit deer.
How do you get numbers on that? I know I have some friends that live down in the Wyoming area and they're able to, just because of the landscape, they're able to really track and figure out winter kill numbers pretty easily comparatively because like I said, the habitat is so open and everything. Are you able to get pretty good idea of winter kill or is it just kind of based on the alpine or whatever hunts or counts that you do in the summer?
So the department in the past has done transects, so that's areas that we get on shore and do a walk down the beach fringe area consistently year after year. And that was to get a sense of what kind of winter kill occurred during that winter.
But what we found is that when you have a hard winter so again the deep persistent spring snow that really affects deer you know it you have just tons of snow all the way down to the beach and it's pretty obvious so we have not done those types of surveys for quite a few years now but they're more prevalent in the north and as things change they might become less and less and prevalent Yeah.
It also seems like with the habitat being so much more intact here outside of obviously logging and whatnot, but down south, everything, the migration corridors are cut multiple times by roads, by private land fences and all that. Whereas here, it's much more, much more intact. So it probably makes it a lot easier to think that the populations are well within or undulating back and forth in a more reasonable sort of way.
And you don't necessarily have a crash. have there been many like instances in which there was maybe a population crash by southeast alaska standards because of winter because of other circumstances yeah absolutely and that was heavily dictated by snow so the one that i'm most familiar with was from late 60s to early 70s there was a series of winters across Alaska that was hard on the. Basically every animal, there was cold temperatures and there was abundant snowfall.
And as you know, here in Southeast, we're always kind of on that line of, are we going to have snow or are we going to have rain? But those winters in particular, we got a significant amount of snow. And that led to a huge decline in the population of deer and the population of goats, in particular to Southeast that really kind of put a hurt on the population for a number of years after that.
So obviously things have recovered pretty well. What is it about Southeast that makes such great habitat? And even though there's been an extensive amount of logging of the old growth, the population still appear to be fairly healthy. So what is it specifically about the habitat here that's so good and that needs to be protected so that the numbers can stay stable?
Yeah, it depends on where you go, right? So the biggest land disturbance that we have here in Southeast has been logging in particular when we're talking about sick of black-tailed deer, like habitat, carrying capacity. And that's probably most pronounced on Prince of Wales, where when industrial-scale logging happened in the 1950s, there was a lot of really good timber on POW.
So naturally, that was where folks that were looking to remove some of those forest products concentrated their time and effort. And aside from that, the habitat is pretty productive. We live in a rainforest, so there's abundant forage. There's lots of rain to keep the plants healthy, and there's quite a few areas across southeast that weren't hit as hard by logging, so that has been a key component.
As we know, habitat is key, and regardless of other things like predation, disease, accidents, and other forms of mortality, if we have good habitat, we can maintain a high deer population. I don't know, argument, but a good place to find deer is in the clear cuts after about three or four years when you have really good, rich forage for the deer.
But then after a clear cut ages out, it just becomes, in many cases, same aged second growth that ends up creating this, you can hardly even make your way through it and then eventually creates a canopy where you can't get the forage that deer would need. How have things changed as far as management goes from those decades in the 50s when it was just clear cut it and then it would grow back and it's going to be renewable?
How have things changed management-wise to ensure that we're doing a better job going forward of managing second growth? Yeah, that is something that we're working on right now. So management has changed in terms of how clear cuts are okayed by whatever respective land management agency is in charge. Here on the Tongass, we have a lot of federal lands, so that's probably the primary owner. But we still have state, municipal, and private lands as well.
And the challenge, as you've alluded to, is we have a fresh clear cut that comes through. A lot of sunlight can hit the forest floor. We get a flush of vegetation. And as long as that's available to deer through no snow or lack of slash, that it's pretty good. And deer do really well in that.
As you continue through the successional stages of forest, the forest to a point where you have lots of young stems coming up and you can barely stick your arm through it or the second growth stage, which Southeast is having a lot of that pop up right now. That's where the challenge comes in, because we have these forest canopies that are so thick and evenly aged. Sun doesn't penetrate through the canopy down to the forest floor.
And without that sunlight hitting the forest floor and giving an opportunity for the important forage plants to be able to grow, it's not very productive for deer. And we've had some researchers measure this in the past and compared. So kind of your best case scenario is old growth habitat versus second growth. And we found that it can sustain roughly 50% of what the best case scenario that old growth can hold.
So it's a significant decrease in what the carrying capacity of the land is for sick of black-tailed deer. And we had a meeting that was called the Deer Summit on Prince of Wales Island to tackle some of these issues and talk with the public across a number of agencies across.
Non-governmental organizations on what the situation was specifically on prince of wales, and one of the things that really stood out is you know we've got hundreds of thousands of acres, that are either currently in stem exclusion or working their way into the stem exclusion stage so again all these even um even aged stands that are coming up and growing and shading out that critical understory that deer need for access to forage.
And that got myself and others into the mode of, okay, what can we do about this? And recently, a collaborative group of folks from different agencies, including Fish and Game, the Forest Service, other federal agencies, and non-governmental organizations have got together to try and tackle this issue, specifically to try to figure out, okay, how can we treat some of these second growth stands to benefit deer and deer hunters?
And we're trying to do this in a way that will really target the areas of greatest need. And the effort is called HERDS, or Southeast Alaska Habitat Enhancement and Restoration for Deer Stewardship. Kind of a long acronym for you, but it's an effort to look across Southeast at all the areas where we've had these cuts and determine through a number of different variables and factors, where can we treat some of this.
These areas to again just simple simply put is benefit deer and deer hunters so we're going to be working on that over the next couple years and we have four major steps to that the first is we are looking at mapping out some of the areas that have the best potential based on deer habitat, first and foremost, and looking at things like snow loading, looking at things like the age of cuts and the stands that are available via road.
So taking together all these different factors, we're going to kind of filter out the landscape and figure out some priority areas.
And at some point in the future, we'll engage with the public and have some meetings to talk about okay you know here's some of the areas that we have found might be advantageous to do some of these treatments what does the public see as you know kind of being a priority so in the future we can look forward to that and implementing some of these cuts and hopefully bringing back some of that opening up the canopy in some of these
places and allowing that sunlight to come down to the forest floor and grow back some forage and open up access yeah so you said that there's a up to a 50% decrease in carrying capacity in some of that poor second growth. What is a healthy carrying capacity for maybe an old growth area with some good muskeg and some blowdown, but you have all the stuff that you need versus some of that second growth that's not as good?
Yeah, it depends on where you measure it, of course. But there was a, student from uaf who's now a professor todd brinkman that through his phd work measured this, using dna mark recapture method that he developed to look at that and what he found was there were i think it was a 12 deer per square kilometer in an old growth forest versus about seven.
Per square kilometer in thick second growth so it's it's roughly half but it's pretty stark difference and you can see that if you walk into a second growth stand if you can walk into one that it's so thick that you can barely get into it and the forest floors it's just kind of a moss desert you know there's not much going on for for food yeah i've walked through a couple when you you scout something online and you think oh this is going to be a great great clear
cut hasn't aged out yet but then as it's it's way more overgrown than you think it's right on the edge it's marginal and if you're trying to go down into it or across it to get the deer that you shot or head to the other side it is horrible and then on the other side of it it is weird and bizarre you say like a moss floor desert when it does grow out of that and if it's a flat area and it's just moss on the bottom, but just this middle zone of nothing. You don't have a bush.
There's no smaller branches on those lower trees because those have all died so that they can keep growing up. It's super bizarre and kind of, I know, eerie.
You can walk through really, really quietly, but you're not going to find much there unless something happens to be moving through, but it's pretty wild right right exactly and todd also in his work over on prince of wales found that in particular pre-commercial fin stands are the least favorite place for hunters to hunt and also you can imagine you know if if deer can't even touch the ground uh because there's 20 feet of slash they're
not really going to hang out there so it makes for a pretty challenging situation for deer and deer hunters. So it's like going forward, what might be some like management goals? You talked about. Your acronym there, I forget what it was, but is there a way that you could say we want to increase this by this percentage by this time, or are you not really at that phase yet? Or in 10 years, what are you maybe hoping, or do you have 10-year goals, 15-year goals?
We don't have anything stapled down specifically in terms of goals for numbers, but we are We're trying to work our way towards something that's going to be realistic. So when you talk about doing things like pre-commercial thing, there's a price, right? You have to get an operator out there on the land and you have to be able to do those cuts. One of the things that we're hoping to do is to also do some slash treatment. So when you do a pre-commercial thin, you are left with just tons of slash.
But if you can there's different methods but if you can do things like bucking up that slash so it makes contact with the forest floor it will it will kind of melt away into the landscape a lot faster compared to if it's stood up and stacked on you know tree on tree and things like that so.
When you do that though the price increases quite a bit and those are things that we are looking to work with our partners for funding and things like that to be able to help, do a certain amount of acres per year. And we're getting close right now. Right now, we're kind of working on the mapping portion, working through all of those different variables to kind of hone in on the best deer range by using the latest science, you know, looking at things like, well, where's the snow level?
What sort of stand condition is this? What aspect do we have? You know, deer like southern facing aspects in the winter. And that's some of the most important habitat for them is that winter range. So focusing in on that is our goal right now. And the Herds Initiative is gaining partners and we're doing a lot of good collaborative work. So I'm very hopeful for what we can do with that effort.
Part of having a population that features healthy, mature bucks, you can't really separate that from also thinking about antlers. So as far as antler goes, is that mostly genetics? Is that habitat? Is that age? Is it a combination of all three? People talk about certain lakes they fly into where there's no four by fours, it's just three by three. And some people say that's a genetic thing. Some people say that's a let them
grow more type things. What is what is kind of the, What goes into antler growth and size and all that? Yeah, definitely all of the above, which you just mentioned. Genetics plays a role. Nutrition plays a role. One point that we talked about earlier is the condition of the animal when it's born makes a huge difference how it processes through its life.
And all those things kind of come together to dictate things like antler configuration, antler size, spread, height, all the different metrics that hunters might look at in terms of an attractive deer to harvest. So it's heavily dependent on a lot of different things. And you get into things like density dependence.
So if you have an area that has a certain amount of forage available to deer and say you put in five deer per square mile well you might get antler size of a certain a certain antler size but say you pack in 50 deer per square mile well you're going to be trying to feed more.
Mouths and it's more difficult so you're going to have less nutrition to spread around to all those deer and what could happen is you might have smaller antler sizes as a result of that so do do you happen to know if because things are the ecosystem is much more intact which means it's going to be not much more natural predators than maybe some of the deer hunting in the lower 48 when it's regulated mostly by like cars do we have a lot of deer that reach the age where you
might have regression of antlers and about what age might you start to see that regression you know i'm not exactly sure what age sick of black filled deer might have antler regression i've seen some examples of it where you have a skull that a hunter might bring in where you can tell by the teeth that oh yeah this is these are very worn down this is an older animal and yeah they don't have really great antlers but typically Usually bucks might make it to around eight or so.
And then after that, they're probably on a downward track compared to does. Which usually can make it into their early teens, depending on a lot of different situations. It just kind of depends on what they have available to them to make it to those ages. So when you think about age class, you might think about predation and hunters that are trying to access a deer and all the other different factors that might remove a deer from the system.
Um, so when you go into some of the country that's harder to get to, whether you fly in or you go hike way backward, not a lot of people get to, you're probably going to see a lot of more of those older age class deer, as I'm sure many hunters have experienced. Yeah. Whenever I always have a couple of friends that ask me and they're familiar with mule deers or whitetail.
And I say, it's so hard to tell because you could set up game cameras here, but it's, it's almost rare to get the same buck on the consistently. So you might be able to get the same whitetail on your game camera two or three times a year, every year for eight years. And you can see, and you can collect the sheds from the same animal that you've seen years in year in year out. But here it's, it's so tough to tell because it's an intact habitat.
And to, to know if a, if a buck is, is regressing or not is very difficult. And like you said, it's probably just check the teeth but even then it's hard to tell yeah and deer movement here is somewhat similar to whitetail but you know we can still have zingers you know we can have deer that disperse whitetails also disperse like this as well where you might see one for a while then all of a sudden it takes a 10 mile walk and doesn't come back and there are so.
Well, there's definitely color data, and I've seen it on game cameras, too, where you can see the same buck, for instance, moving through the landscape and kind of hitting a couple spots if you have multiple game cameras out. But then all of a sudden it's just gone. And seasonally, you have different movements, too, right?
So when the rut is coming on, bucks that you might never see because they're way high up all of a sudden flood down and they're looking for a doe to breed and they might pop up by your camera for a while and then leave and be in the high country as long as the snow doesn't push them down. So there's a number of different factors that might change that movement pattern.
Yeah i shot my uh buck on in october on the 16th and it was at over 2 000 feet and i'd never even for the most part even really bothered going you know any higher up once october starts then some of the muskegs a couple hundred feet maybe a thousand feet above sea level but i just kept going on the trail kept going on the trail and kept going up up up and all of a sudden i was like wow and it makes a lot of sense they don't have to migrate they don't have to go
down if we haven't had a snow then you know you don't they don't have to go to the muskegs just because that's where we hunt them so it was it was it was interesting but also a data point i guess i should have assumed there's no reason for them to just move you don't have the same migration that you do where they might be going tens or hundreds of miles around here it's just kind of up and down the same mountain unless they choose another one yep yeah that's exactly
it and this weather patterns change you know and snow loads change we could see them definitely staying up high a lot more of the winter as long as there's access to forage they can be up pretty high as far as management goes are there any antler.
Restrictions anywhere would it maybe make sense in certain areas like off the top of my head maybe gravena some people it's it's you know the unscientific observation but people talk about maybe because gravena is a small island there have been a lot of deer but a lot of deer taken off there and so if you were to put on a must be a fork then that might help some of the younger ones grow a little bit more is there is there much talk about antler restrictions
here or around the state you know i haven't heard a lot about it it might not be a need for it either. Sure, sure. Yeah, well, and so there's two major reasons that you could think about bringing in an antler restriction. Number one is you're trying to protect that younger age class of deer, right? So if you say that only such and such number of points on one side dictates a legal animal to harvest, you're going to be getting a lot more of those smaller
bucks running around. Yeah. And the other reason is to, it's more of a social factor, but some people are interested in increasing the antler size. And you learn there's programs in the lower 48, like QDM or quality deer management areas that people will elect to adhere to some of these standards to grow their bucks a little bit larger, mainly from the standpoint of trying to harvest larger antler deer.
And in Southeast, we haven't had a lot of that. You know, we've got a very large area with a very small overall footprint of where people are and can access. So if you are willing to go far enough, you can find quite a few different age class deer. And yeah, I've heard about it every once in a while. People come in and talk about it. But no one has made a push to write a proposal to the board of game to make that kind of change.
Which is another good time to just mention that the next board of games cycle for southeast Alaska is going to be in the winter of 2025, 2026. And that will be actually in wrangle for this next go around. And proposals are due May 1st, and that's all available online. But if people were interested in talking about antler restrictions and putting in a proposal to maybe implement one, this would be the time to do it. And that's the process.
What do you wish people would know? I guess maybe two parts. What do you wish people would know or what would you recommend for them if they want to put together a proposal?
And then as far as in general, if you could just address all deer hunters in Southeast Alaska or anybody who's interested in black-tailed deer what would be one thing you'd recommend as far as proposal and then also as far as history or habitat or fact or misnomer or myth or whatever sure sure so the board game proposal is pretty unique in alaska it's how we change our laws so our regulations in terms of things like season
length bag limit methods and means among other things If you're interested in doing that, a great way is to get involved with your local advisory committee. Advisory committees are a body of folks that come together and they want to. You want to talk about different proposals to create, whether it be by yourself, or you can make a proposal jointly with the advisory committee. And that's something that they will vote on. And it's definitely well supported.
And it looks pretty good if you can write a proposal that is sponsored by the advisory committee because it lets the board of game know that a number of different people that represent folks in the community represented by that ac that this is something that the folks say in catch can want there's a catch can ac and then over on prince of wales we have craig east pow and cloacaceae. So there's a number of different ones to get involved with, and I highly recommend that folks do.
It's a great way to get into the process and make change and just talk about wildlife management in general. And I, as the area biologist for Units 1A and 2, am happy to talk with folks about the process and help them with portions what they need to write that. So this is all done online, but it can help to get a couple pointers on how to go about that. And it's available on our website. I usually just Google ADF and G board of game.
And that is available for anyone who's interested in to make a proposal to change any of the things that you see in the regulations. And then kind of a fact or something that I would want folks to know about sick of black-tailed deer, I think kind of goes back to our herds initiative. You know, we're trying to address some of these habitat issues that we've seen pop up across Southeast Alaska to make.
Make a difference in the habitat and all the second growth that we have and to address those issues in a way that will benefit deer and deer hunters so look forward to when we do have those public meetings we don't have those set right now but i will put out um what's called an advisory announcement to local media and a variety of different folks to participate in those meetings and looking forward to working with the public on looking at those areas and having a good conversation about how we
can do some of these treatments to benefit deer awesome well thanks a lot ross i really appreciate your time and have a good rest of the warm winter so far yeah yeah we'll see it's not over yet you never know oh i we're gonna get slammed in late february early March, just right when I'm starting to get excited for steelhead, it's going to get cold and, and snowy, but it's, that's the way it is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's hope for a good one. And yeah, appreciate your time.
Yeah. Have a good one, man.