Ep. 670: The Secrets of Blacktail Deer

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I know how to use your rifle, I just choose not to.

When did you?

When did you quit?

Nineteen eighty six? What happened? I decided I want to get close with a single shot, but.

You still get closer to singing. You wanted to force yourself to get closer to the setter shot. Would you shoot prior to shooting a mussloader?

I got my dad's thirty at six seven twenty one that he bought in nineteen fifty Premington seven twenty.

One nows you're gone.

I still have it. I still hunt with it. I take my dad with me every year we go out and do a hunt together, and then I put him away and I take the muzzle litter.

Out, so you you house his gun for him.

My father's passed away, and so my oh I I made a promise to him the day died him, and I'd go hunting together every year.

So you take it out, I take it.

Out, and we go hunting together every year.

All right, works, But another than that, all musload all the time.

I try to. Sometimes I falter some days. It's really wet up in Southeast Alaskaay makes it really hard to do flintlocks and percussion and stuff like that.

Yeah, because you live in the worst place to be a mussloader hunter in the world pretty much.

But you know, I figure all those the people that came before us, the English and the Russian trappers and the natives who got muzzleloaders for strade items and stuff like that, they figured it out. Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I use a wool bag. I placed my firearm in a wool bag, and the wool swells up, keeps some moisture from getting in there. And I think I've had one or two times in thirty five years of being up there that that cap hasn't gone off. No kid.

Yeah, Now it's our friend in common. Jim Heffelfinger said, if you look at the Alaska muzzleoder records, it reads like a beach Tel phone book. That's a great line.

That's a great line. And they're all named Jim.

H.

So you submit how these state records you have quite a few. Well, well, just brag up for minute, I asked you. So you're not bragging. I'm just asking a question. I have over thirty deer.

I have the world record SIIC of black tail for a muzzloader and number two somebody's got number three. And then I have four, eight, nine, ten and a bunch more.

That's incredible, man.

And you shoot flintlock or cap cap, but I'm experimenting now with flintlock. That's where we've been talking back and forth. And so because I worked for Alaska Department of Fishing Game for so many years, the gentleman that was the wildlife biologist, Dave Person, was a master gun builder and as a thank you for all the years of darting deer and following deer and stuff, he built me a beautiful,

So do you have a fouling piece?

I do?

Do you shoot ducks with it?

I have killed four turkeys and it doesn't have a choke, and so the best pattern I get is about fifteen yards, So I set twenty yards is my maximum. I won't shoot beyond twenty yards when I call those birds, it got it got to be close, really close.

Yeah, there is a fouling piece what you call a gun shotgun.

Yeah, specific to just birds. But one of the during my back and forth with Gym, and it makes absolute common sense. So it's not like a big epiphany, but like the the reason that the round ball and smooth bore stuck around for so long, even when technology was readily available and far surpassed it is folks just could only have one firearm. So they'd take a smooth bore fifty eight caliber hawking or whatever it got bored out to, and they use that for small game birds, like.

Whether you're pouring shot down or you're jamming a lead down it.

Or yep, exactly. So using it for with one piece of shot for big game, the big, big solid ball, or pouring a bunch of small shot down there.

I mean, Gus, you have a tremendous versatility. I've hunted moose with a smooth bore, flint locked interior, and it's a sixty two caliber French fusel fin. So if we would have been French voyagers, we had have been issued this gun. M M. And you take the round ball and I stitched the patch on and I set it down and urn in the morning I would go and

Yeah, there's nothing more efficient than that.

No, when we were doing all of our research for our Mountain Man audiobook, we'd read these guys at night would take in a at night, they would put five buck shot in their gun and then they'd cap it with a or maybe vice versa. They'd take their rifles and put five buck shot in them, and then they'd cap it with a ball their nighttime home defense home to fetch thing home defense system.

I'll tell you what they had. Must have been pulling that ball then come morning, because you and years and years ago, I was in the interior and I was hunting ptarmigan and I came over a ledge and there was a beautiful bull caribou twenty yards away, and I backed off, and I had an ounce and a quarter of shot, number five shot, and I just set a round bawl down on top of that, and belly crawled

Grads what you did.

I didn't think about the equal and opposite reaction thing to recoil. It killed the caribou, you did, yeah, actually, And I had like four or five pieces of shot in the heart too. It penetrated deep enough I could have killed him with the shots blowed. He was really close. Uh.

You always worked as a geologist.

Yep.

Where'd you grow up?

I grew up around Mount Saint Helen's Country, southwest Washington. We had a small farm there and by we had about one hundred and twenty acres of timber. That's where I disappeared into once my chores were done.

Houdge get in geology.

I was a kid. My folks decided we needed to have some kind of a family hobby, and they picked rock counting or lapidary, where you go out and dig up petrified wood and agates and jaspers and opals and obsidian and other stuff and fossils and somewhere I don't know. Eleven twelve years old, I got to think, and this can't be random. We're finding this aggat here because of a process, and we're finding this thunderregg here because of a process in the petrified wood. And basically that's geology.

How'd you come to be doing it in Alaska?

Luck? Yeah, I grew up listening to my grandfather. My grandfather on my father's side was in Alaska in nineteen nineteen, nineteen twenty and twenty one, and then he was back again in thirty seven through forty two, and I heard all the stories of Alaska.

What was he doing here was a trapper.

He soloed all the way down from basically the Yukon. He sold it all the way down the Yukon Drainage in nineteen nineteen and nine nineteen twenty and ended up in Katsubu and the winter of nineteen twenty trapping along the Yukon River that at a kadoo and was by himself going down there. And I grew up listening to all those stories and had a huge fascination. And so in nineteen ninety there was a position opened up with the Tongas National Forest to be a geologist there, and

Why is that important to map that sort of stuff?

If you have an idea of the geology, it's kind of like a soils map. It's a productivity thing. Where's the vegetation, what plants are there? Why are those plants there? How did the glaciers interact with the landscape. Why does landscape look like it does? And that's all controlled by the bedrock geology, and Southeast Alaska is bits and pieces of continents. It's been added on, so it's like this little pile up of pieces. I think we'd call it

You meet running around and I remember you showing me about how the trees grow extra big over the cave networks, but I can't remember why you took what it was you told me that.

Well, there's two in southeast Alaska, there's two incredibly productive forest areas. What is alluvial fan or riparian spruce riparian area down along a stream of gravels, well drained gravels but nutrient rich and the other ones on the carbonates. And so the fractures of the limestone are open down maybe fifty feet, little teeny hairline fractures, and the roots can get down into that and they access the non acidic waters then because the limestone has buffered the rain

That always blows my mind when you see that and they tip and you're like, what in the hell is the hole? Non too? Anyways, but just keels away and you're look and there's a rock sitting there and it's got like a never ending disc of shit. That was a hand deep, hand deep.

It's amazing.

You wonder how it ever stood there anyways.

And the limestone, it can get down in those fractures, grab on and it's holding on. And so you'll see instead of a rootball tip over, frequently you'll see it snapped off forty feet up. When the and that sail in the top of the tree gets big enough that it can't take the wind pressure of our storms, it'll snap off instead of turning over the roots because it's still holding so tight. So a lot of the trees

It's a big trees.

I explored those areas, locating the caves and the rivers going underground, the streams going underground, and the vertical pits and that kind of thing. But then I also put together expeditions of folks who would come and explore those caves, and we had paleontologists and that, and we basically started when I got to southeast Alaska. Any published document that you read said we were a blanket of ice to the edge of the continental margin until ten thousand years ago,

What was the old ass deerbone? You found.

Hekata Island in a cave called Nautilus Cave, and what used to be a vertical pit. Coming into that cave that had filled with sediment and a little alcove, I found tree. It was leg bones and those were basically nine two hundred, nine thousand, five hundred years old. Somewhere in that vicinity right there.

Blacktailed deer we now know they're black tailed deer.

We did know what it was then because we'd actually found a bunch of caribou bones in the caves. So there were caribou on Prince of Well's Island until ten thousand, five hundred years ago. But recently working with Charlotte Linquest and her students back in Buffalo. They did the paleogenetics and it is a sick of black tailed deer. Apardon me, it is a black tailed deer. So they all the first deer to show up. So we have three bones.

Can you talk about how those bones get caught in the caves? I mean you may have the opportunity to go look just for people listen.

When we're filming our show Hunting History, we spent a day with Jim in caves.

So Jim was able to show me how they function. But can you tell people how the caves trap shit?

And also just a it'll come out in your thought process, I'm sure. But like when you find a bone in a cave versus like the shell midden bone, there's probably some conclusions that you jump to from one or the other.

When you find a bone in a cave, you absolutely don't know how old it is. They usually turn slightly brown from the tannins and the organic waters of southeast. You've seen that many times around your place there. But the bone itself, twenty thousand year old bone look like a one hundred year old bone. You cannot tell by picking up the bone all right and just looking at it. And mostly what happens is either a predator was in a dry portion of a cave and brought part of

It the shit out of me.

I mean, we were safe looking at it, but I was like, man, I didn't know there's shit like that around here.

We were on that boardwalk, you remember, looking down that hole. So that was a hole that was roughly the size of this room. That the entrance was about three feet across, and that was an organic mat. So if we would walk on that, you'd go right through. Well, that's what the deer.

You would never know how on some of that stuff you would never if you were just about dicking around, you would one hundred percent walk down in air. And just god, how many dudes must be laying in those holes we have.

We've actually had a few vertical pits that have a little pile of bones deer and bear and stuff right where they one I can think of one hundred and fifty feet deep. We called Bear's plunge because the entrance is about the size of this table, but at the bottom it's one hundred feet in diameter and it just bells out. So when you repel into that, you're like a spider coming down off of a web. And here was this mound of bones at the bottom that had accumulated over several.

Thousand years What all was in that pile?

That was mainly black bear and deer, but there was a few small rodents and stuff like that. No people, no, no people in that. So yeah, it's uh so either a vertical trap or somebody brings it into the cave. They can wash into the cave hang it, but it's really hard to the bones usually then get washed on through the cave if they get into a stream course or something like that. Uh.

I want to jump out of this a little bit to get to something with them. After you retired from geology after thirty years, right, yes, and instead of just kicking it and hunting with your muzzle loader and everything, you got involved on a volunteer basis with meald your foundation.

I'm actually a contractor for the meal here, okay, but there's also some and there's there, there's I am kind of going out and getting other things, and so I'm not always working for him, but I'm still working for him.

Yep. God it.

And in particular you became like particularly focused on blacktail deer.

So Miles BURRITI was the CEO for years and working and had I had started going down in two thousand and six and I manned a booth at the Hunt Expo in Salt Lake City about Siica blacktail on the Tagus National Forest, which is kind of funny. I was a geologist representing the Tongus National Forest talking about sick of black tail deer. They weren't sending they weren't sending

Let's back up to that question though, why do people think of meal deer and black like talk about the taxonomy of a blacktail. Ah, right, I mean it's like, uh, they're like not brothers, but cousins, meal deer cousins cousins.

And so it was Emily Latch and Jim Heffelfinger who we talked about, had did a genetic paper that showed that starting about at the beginning of the last series of ice age, the Great Last Ice Ages two and a half million years ago, probably because of snow levels and glaciers in the Cascade coastal mountain range there of Washington, Oregon, Idaho down to California, it separated whatever was a proto deer from what we now know as a mule deer,

So they got separated by ice.

They got separated by ice in time, and they also was a slight divergence as you moved north through Oregon and Washington away from California. So if I remember that paperwrite that the Californian blacktail are a little closer to deer, are distinguishable, but there's still Columbia blacktail, so that's one of the separate subspecies. And then Sica blacktail exists only from halfway up the British Columbia Coast through Prince Rupert

But they're native to Prince William Sound. No, they were natives to Prince Williams.

They were translocated to Prince William Sound, they were translocated to Yakitat. They were all the whole Prince William Sound area, and there were several other places they tried to plant or Sica blacktail that didn't take.

So what was the northernmost if you go back on I don't know what the hell two hundred years whatever, some time stamp two hundred years ago, what was the northernmost sick of blacktail deer?

It was probably in the Juno areas.

So people I've been telling people the wrong thing.

Yeah, So Gus Davis, the front range of Glacier Bay National Park around maybe up towards Skagway and Haynes a little bit up in there. I'm not sure how far they the historic range was. I know they were on Admiraltreet, Chichikov and Baranof Islands and around they were there naturally, naturally around there.

Why do they look like? So? Why do they have such a vibe like they kind of got to look like a little white tail deer.

Kind of thu'se are badass?

No, But what is it like? Why are they Why are the sick of black tails look different? Why do they because they you look at them and you look like that they look like they got some kind of like a white tail deer influence. But that's not true.

You're comparing them to a Colombian.

Yeah, they just like their antler configuration.

I think it's environmental. I think it was that tight coast range force that they all did. And so overall body weights, they're not much different than Colombia and some of the other stuff. So, like, I did a study with Alaska Department of Vision game where I waged stuff with the state over a two year period, and it was nothing to have a sick of black tail come in field dressed at one forty five to one sixty five, and there were a few big outliers, so I mean

Oh, a little squatty little suckers man.

And their tail is not ropey at all. It is more white veed with a black top and that white and they'll use it the flag, just like a white table flag. Of course it's not quite as dramatic because it's not as long, and they're just there. I think they're the perfect rainforest animal because their antlers are probably more close in because of that vegetation and stuff they evolved in.

Yeah, so it's not because a white tail deer love make and it's just like it's convert it's convergent evolution, right, rather than divert or whatever.

Yeah, there was a val geist years ago suggested that the blacktail were a function of real deer and white tail breeding or something like that.

Yeah, and now let me tell you the whole idea that he had. It was that do you remember this?

You just offered this up, not me. I don't remember that. I don't remember that.

Like there was some period in time he proposed this.

So Yan Yanni's a big val Geist disciple because Yanni likes his shirker buck theory.

Val Guys proposed this idea is he's still live.

He passed away that white tails of white tail deer have been down in like the southeast for millions of years, southeast US, and that sometimes climatic conditions were such that white tailed deers spread all the way across the continent.

Okay, and then uh, the middle dried out, and then you developed mule deer in white tails.

Then something happened and all of a sudden, these white tails came back out, made love with these mule deer, and somehow maybe I'm screwing it up, and that produced like a black tail.

It was elaborate. Yeah, it was elaborate.

You're not far off. I actually had beers with Bell one time, and he and he and in later years he chew genetic anals. He said, yeah, I had that wrong.

Oh he did.

Yeah.

Okay, do you know what his shirker buck theory is, Yan, you'll tell.

You no, you don't know.

No.

I think he said he applied it to any uh servid, but that that a buck. There are certain bucks that he deemed as shirkers because they would shirk the responsibility

He's like, I'm gonna lay low for a couple of years and I come down.

I'm coming down, that's right, and I'm gonna be bigger and badder than everybody.

It'd be like if you never went to the bar and you just worked out and did drinking, just did like skin treatments and worked out and worked on your hairstyle until you were read.

A lot of books and you were ready. Yeah, and then one night you go to the.

Bar just witty witty and pumped.

It. Just lay waste.

No, he didn't share that with me.

It's insulting to hef a finger.

I know it is. I could see. I could see it too. I asked him how to pronounce cus or cows?

Oh, real quick on heffel finger, I said, we were somebody, somebody in our somebody in our camp was using a app to predict deer movement. Sure, and uh was saying that this app was so good that it could be within minutes that when when it said excellent time for movement, you just look at the watch and just start looking across the hillside and here they come. I didn't see it proved to be so good. But I asked Hefflefinger. I said, because he was talking about these pages of

That's one of my favorites.

I mean, I joke about the one that that red squirrels bite nuts off big squirrels.

But the moon thing is just never. You're never going to convince people. Otherwise, if Mark Kenyon, you present all the evidence to Mark Kenyon, like Mark Kenyon's I don't know if he is now Mark Kenyon tradition was a big moon guy. And you present all the evidence to Kenyon.

Radio collar data from deer that don't change their groove because the moon. Deer car collision data that doesn't show differences because the moon.

Like on harvest data, like on and on and on and on and then Kenyon, he one day says to me, well, if it affects it by a minute, science like I'm paraphrasing. He's like, science might not be able to capture.

Or the capture but they but to me, that minute matters lot because it could be the last minute of daylight.

There's also the what question are you asking or or solving four? Because Jim went on to say, he's like, now if the moon's bright enough, deer may bed in a more open area or feed in a open area at night because there's increased light. He's like, but that's not the moon phase so much as it is a photo of all taic.

Is what he was saying.

It's like, if it's brighter, they're more active.

I'm like, well, we should do in the whole damn water up.

We need to get back to gym here, but we should do a podcast carenn on and bring in Mississippi Deer Lab. They just recently processed a bunch of collar data speaking speaking to, you know, because so many people like these believers, we're just continually emailing in and just being like, yeah, but you guys aren't asking the right questions.

Can you guess produce this segment.

Segment?

We should do a whole podcast.

We guest produced the whole episode.

Uh sure, okay, I'll help kore In with it. I don't think she wants to be a take over.

It be liked be like an internship.

You'd be interning at your old job. All right, call it back in the saddle and then it'll be the episode. All right, back to black Tail, dere.

Our black tail, he got black tail deer don't even know there's a moon.

One last thought on the moon thing. For a while, what I thought was this. For a while, I thought, when it's bright out, you see a bunch of deer because it's bright out, And maybe that's where it came from, meaning when it's pitch black, you can't see shit.

When it's moonlit, you're like, oh, look at that deer right like picture walking out when you're snow on the ground in a full moon and you're walking out, you're also aware of all kinds of stuff you didn't know what was going on.

Yeah, there's no such thing as end up shooting light.

All right. Back to black tail deer. So, uh, Columbia blacktail.

Let me ask you this question about black tail deer because this is something we've mused about a fair bit.

I shot.

I've shot one Columbia black tail deer in California. Dude, I mean it looks like a meal deer. And I've often talked about just went and talking about the sort of arbitrary nature of certain classifications of wildlife. I've talked about how, according to the Boone and Cocker Club, if a if a deer is standing on the west side of I five in California, he's a blacktail. If he were to run across I five, he's now a mule deer.

What is a mule deer?

Actually? Vooted Crockett is offering genetic tests that you can send in your deer and get that answer.

To get the real answer.

And Jim and Emily Latch and Jim Heffelfinger came up with a percentile graph looking at at at deer samples that they had, and they cut it off at zero point nine percent. In other words, if it's over ten percent mule deer, they're not calling it a Columbia blacktail.

So are they going to go in and start kicking all kinds of mule? You're out of the Columbia blacktail record book?

No, because it depends on location. So the record book is a line that comes down. It doesn't always follow I five. It takes off on one meridian and it comes down two through Medford, Oregon and down in there.

But there has to be a bunch of meal deer in the clumb Like, there's got to be the top end. Yeah, there's got to be some fakes.

There's got to be people that have records with Columbia blacktails that they just shot a meal deer that had to be on the wrong side of the road.

Yeah, and we as when I grew up in Washington, we used to purposely go up and we called them bench leg mulees. They they were these We would shoot them in the field dress at like two twenty five to two forty. They were these beautiful black tails, little tinty racks and stuff like that, with huge bodies, and we went up into the cascades and targeted them. I mean that's where we headed because they were much larger deer.

And you're saying that those were blacktails, that they were.

They were cross Okay, I'm kind of across in there, got it.

But then a Sika blacktail is like much more distinct.

Right, Cica blacktails.

They don't have any exposure like siic of blacktails, don't bump up against any other kind of deer. Yes they do, Oh they do. Okay.

Uh, there's mule deer moving into Skagway. And in nineteen ninety one I took a photograph of a mule deer dough with a fawn inside of of Alaska up by Hyder, and so there is the possibility of some contact. There's mulder just outside of Prince Rupert, so they could come down with a Skina river in there and come out of the interior. And so I think that's probably the first batcheteer that made it out to Prince of Wales Island.

So is it fair like I know, we're talking about valgeis theory is sort of like pre genetics theory, But is it right that that at a time you just had these little pockets of deer that were bound in by glaciers and they survived along the Pacific coast.

That's what the idea is that that was kind of a what they referred to, kind of like a chain of pearls of habitat that wasn't overridden by ice, that if it wasn't so severe, if the winner's so severe, that they and they could have existed there. Got to realize too, we had much lower sea levels. Our sea levels were four hundred feet less than they are today. So there was a lot of land between seventeen thousand and about thirteen thousand that was exposed on the shelf

And that's what which means that these deer could have existed in a landscape that we basically can't see at all, Like, yeah, those could have changed dramatically and they could have evolved to be like their high alpine tundra environment could be closer to what they evolved in as in flat brushy in areas versus any any of the stuff that we hunt them on in the slopes like the rocky, mossy, dark timber terrain.

Absolutely in fact on it looks like this according to the I've did a lot of coreing with pallinologists and links and looking at also at the Speliothim's and the caves hold a record a climate that somewhere at about eleven to ten thousand years ago, a very dry spruce and hemlock forest started to appear on the landscape, replacing a herb dominated tundra that had willows and alders around

Oh yeah, oh yeah. So what does that mean like the overall picture of black tail to your conservation? Right, so, just just as an example, we this would be months ago, right, we talked about Arizona offering moose lottery draws to hunt moose, and part of their reasoning is, like moose, aren't they're a remnant of a population in Arizona. They're they're here right now, but long term, they're they're not going to be here more than likely, is one of the arguments

The biggest thing that controls sick of blacktail populations? In my not that predation doesn't, but it's bad winters, a bad weather can do more to wipe out a population two thousand and six and seven on Admiralty Island and by whuno we lost like eighty five or ninety percent of the deer. I was working with doctor Sophie Gilbert on her PhD and we had a bad winter on Prince of Well's Island in twenty eleven. At control like junction right there were you split either go to Thornbay

That was going to be a question of mine earlier. You mentioned you know timber management is generally is it good for blacktails.

As long as long as you maintain what they need to survive in a bad winter they need to so they're an animal of the edge, like all deer and they'll they bet at their little knobs and stuff like that, and when it starts getting snowy and stuff, they they

So can you walk through what just as part of a broader conversation about timber management in harvest. Can you walk through the sort of life span of a clear cut only like in terms of deer, because for it, I've watched them where I've watched them where they're fresh, nothing's really going on a couple of years into it, they are getting loaded up with deer. And I've been fortunate now to see one get to the point where

The food that's produced is incredible. The amount of forage that's in those clearcuts at about year three, three and four and five, crazy nuts like the blueberry. So the primary theory the thing that the deer eats are the vaccinium. So there your huckleberries and your blueberries, and especially the red huckleberry. They love the red huckleberry.

And some of the eating the leaves and twigs and stuff.

Right right at the very end of the new growth. And you've seen that stuff in the clearcuts up there where it's browsed back to where it's a brush you can hardly push your legs through. So you start out we don't have any of that for about two years, and then that finally starts really taking over. And then so you got from year let's say year three to

And if you're wondering listener, neither can a hunter. It's not fun to walk through.

You can't go through that with a D eight cat. Oh brutal. It is amazing stuff. And besides effect, because that was commercially thin, you've got all of the usually about twelve to twenty four inches high, the bases of the trees that they cut like pungee sticks sticking up through that stuff. So you fall through that. If you're up walking on that mess and you fall down, you gotta watch where you land anyhow, But deer deer don't

Oh, that doesn't speak well for the deer hunting around my little spot. No, So I got an eighty ninety year dry spell coming up.

Was actually actually what happened what I did years ago as I saw this coming. It was the wave of green that was going to be there, and I stopped hunting any managed areas and I started moving out into the unharvested areas and learning how to hunt that. Yep, because I knew this was coming. I mean it was. And so what's happened?

What you wanted to step outside of the clear cut system, right?

And good lord, I have killed hundreds of deer in harvested areas when when they're productive, and it's crazy. We used to go into clearcuts in the early nineties and you'd blow on a deer call and forty deer stand up. It was. It was totally different than you have today. And it was there was you virtually went out and selected what size of buck you wanted kind of a thing. It was totally diveryent thing. Yeah, alpine areas you were talking about when we were first doing that in the eighties,

With so much of the island that hasn't been logged or just not not even that island that you happen to live on, but all through blacktail deer range.

Okay, yep, a.

Lot of it hasn't been logged, big wilderness areas. So why are blacktail numbers down?

No, they're down in Unit two. They're down where you, ok and I both have explored.

And you think that is because all those old clearcuts have entered the shitty period.

That's right. But Unit four, so Admiralty Chichikov barandof Island, they're doing really good. They haven't had a bad winter since twenty eleven that the deer population is going nuts and they're starting to get age class on bucks. I'm seeing four points being shot out of Sitka, which I never saw before. So they're doing good. Unit three, which is qu Mitkalf and coopernof Island nineteen seventy two was

Tell me what that means.

We are and we're not cutting second growth. We're not cutting, we're not going into those stands commercially thinning those stands or doing patchwork of small clearcuts, or we're just not cutting those trees. Yet some of them are ready to harvest. Now there's rules on how you can harvest, but most of it's going to reach critical mass in like twenty thirty and twenty thirty three that there's going to be a bunch of stuff that could be ready to harvest.

What's the situation, like, go way down to California, what's the landscape look like right now. I mean, where do black tail deer stand down there?

I am by far no expert in the Columbia blacktail in Washington, Oregon, in California. I will tell you from what we learned from that summit in Oregon, and I'm going to I won't do California because I don't have enough knowledge. But what I picked up from the wonderful folks at the Oregon Department of Fish and Game and they took us out on field trips is a lot of that as a checkerboard of ownership and Southern Oregon,

Like it makes it hard to have a cohesive plan plan.

It also makes it hard when they're trying to get of course they say, I guess this is across everything is how do you do population estimates of a rainforest deer? You can't fly over they don't have winter ranges where they congregate and stuff like that. So doing population estimates

What might be what might be blacktails per square mile in southeast Alaska.

I've heard things of twelve to twenty.

And that's figured man says.

That seems positive.

Because holy can go a long time and not see one.

They're sneaky little guys. Yeah, I you know that. And to twenty might be winter range where they get a little more oppressed and stuff. So there's definitely areas that it's not twelve to twenty.

Oh yeah, like those areas where within one hundred yards you're crawling as flat as you can on your belly to get under a tree, and then you're also fifteen feet above other trees that are tipped over those areas. It might be a little hard for deer to travel.

Hard for us to travel. It is what it is probably the most challenging landscape that I have ever traveled. I have a particular place that I like to hunt that's super hard to get to. And when you get off on the beach to gain twelve hundred feet in elevation a mile and a quarter from the beach, I've never done it in under six hours.

Oh oh, that's misery. So what's optimal or is there an optimal considering? Just like the huge variance of optimal habitat density.

I think you're probably in that twelve to fifteen range like that. But they get, I mean they get when you get into even yet today, when you get into really good alpine habitat, you may have twenty five deer per square mile, but that's just a seasonal thing. And then then they then they as the snow comes and fills that up, they start moving down that slope, they get into those crumb Holtz trees where you can never find them, just below the the beautiful vegetation in the alpine.

The best buck is on the best.

Spot, just like the best bearer goes to the best fishing hole. You know that that best buck knows where that best stuff is. And I that's that's the theory that I apply. And I in fact, I'm not hunting traditional alpine much anymore. I'm kind of hunting those lower ridges and stuff and finding those little pockets that's going to hold two or three really good crackerjack bucks.

I want to get back to conservation work. But real quick, what percentage of the bucks you killed you call in and what percent do.

You creep up on.

Fifty?

And how you creeping up on them?

Just creeping alpied mostly or dumb luck.

No, I'm talking those those low nasty, those low nasty muskeg ridges.

How do you hunt.

Them, hi cup, put a head up because if it's if it's nice weather, because we're not generally up there when it's really lousy weather. By seven o'clock in the morning, those deer in the timber, you've got between four thirty in the morning and seven o'clock in the morning, that's your window to get success. If you're not there, it's not gonna If you're starting out at the truck at four thirty, you're not going to be there at seven. You've got to be there when they get.

Up at four thirty.

So they're already out feeding, yep. And what I usually I usually find them they're either bedded right on the edge of the timber, kind of chewing their cut and thinking about the great night they had out there forging on those forbes and are just taking those last few things before the sun gets too warm, and then they

Do you get an evening period of movement as well?

If you have an overcast day yeah.

Full moon.

Yeah, no, full moon, which we'd never see, no, because I go up with my tent and I stay there and I glass, and I don't see anything before I go to bed. Interesting and bed then at those times, so our season opens up the twenty fourth of July.

Interesting because knowing that most of these deer get up every four to six hours, right yep, to do some sort of feeding, moving around, they must be then doing that down in the timber where you've got to be him.

Yeah, yeah, you just I always take something good to read, because you're going to have long days up there. You're just not gonna have There's some places I've found patches of snow and stuff like that where they'll go out and dig holes and they'll bed in the patches of snow. If you've got a snow that persists. But the last few years, since twenty eleven. We haven't had snow in those so it just hasn't been there.

Earlier, you talked about starting the black Tail Deer Foundation, right, that's what it's called.

Yeah, So actually we actually hadn't got to that.

Well, we were going towards that, is that what we'll get to it.

Yep.

But you'd mentioned it, and you'd said that the Meld Deer Foundation had looked for a long time and they hadn't been doing black tail deer conservation work.

If I had to take a guess, like a stab at why I would picture that if you came to me and said, what can we do to improve muld your habitat and meld your numbers? I feel like you'd have a you'd really quickly generate a list of projects, meaning, well, this place, we have a huge amount of highway deer collisions. This place. They like to move from this mountain range down into this sage flat, but there's a bunch of fences and developments that are impeding the movement. So we can do some.

Micro work to help the deer in that area or in this little basin. Some well timed predator control would help in May when they're dropping Faunds right, and you can kind of go and do these little distinct projects that improve meldeer in these funnel points or these focal areas of activity. But then you go and you look at this just seemingly never ending sea of timber that's very hard to access, very hard to tell what's going on.

I feel like you it'd be like out I pray for weather?

Do you?

I mean, like, like what do you like? Where would you even put money? If you had it right?

That would be my explanation of why no one's doing anything on blacktails, because like what do you?

How do you?

Where do you begin?

I think that there was a lot of truth to that. I think you'd hit the nail on the head and you know, and you've got to look at it is absolutely quality of habitat driven if there if there is a lot of places out there, we don't need to do anything. Habitat is just fine. But because of past timber management and in Washington Oregon land ownership changes and stuff.

So what would be a thing you would do if you identify is this part of the project you're working out where you're running all those cameras.

No.

The camera thing started out with Sophie Gilverrett and I had an idea. So the Forest Service would go in in the past and they would log most of a drainage, but they would leave where you'd have a huge bunch of creeks coming down in alluvial fans. They would leave

They're climbing five eight hundred feet every time.

Want to eat, yes, sir, And you could almost set your clock by it. They're so nocturnally driven. And then as it comes into October about on where I have my cameras, this changes. So as you move north in the Tungus Petersbergen wrangle, they run twelve fourteen days before Prince of Wales, so that the load and more higher latitude,

Down into what the bottoms.

The females are feeding down in the thut completely in the valley floor, but in the lower elevations in the valley, and those bucks are coming down that they don't know why they're doing it. They're too young to probably do much of the breeding. I also have found sick of blacktail do not make scrapes, but they have marking trees.

Okay? Walk walk me through all that. I like it, walk me through all. So so you're saying that there's about.

Three year, three days of the year that you should be in the woods.

So they're running all around. Okay, you got dose on your cameras. Then a sudden you start seeing bucks showing up because the rut's coming.

Yep.

Then you see all this buck movement and.

The first bucks that show up or the spikes in the forking darts.

Then you start then you see a bunch of buck movement that.

You have that you see the next age class.

You say the two to four years old, their timing is a little better.

Yeah, they're closer to Estris. They have they're not putting that much energy into chasing because they pretty much know when the first doe is going to come into heat cause of the moon fase mm hmm. That we never see and then bang they disappear and they're lockdown.

That means they're on a dough.

They're actively on a dough. Un Tell she's receptive.

That's when I must be always hunting lockdown.

And at that at that moment, so that's the key thing for me. At that moment, her head is not switched from save the faun, save the fun. If you're doing a fun and bleat call, he wants to chase her and you call her in, and he's going to come in behind her because he thinks she's just running away from him, or you will have bucks coming to the call. There's no doubt about that. But at that moment, that just before the.

Estris date, what date, you know, the.

Fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh of November. Okay, these are days I'm never not in the woods. You got to realize this is Jim Bachtel's.

Belief system understood. Well, you're here, but you're here for a reason.

I'm telling you there are certain days that you don't you're there because magic can happen.

Then tell me the next thing that happens. Now, explain to me why happen. Alson all these big bucks.

Are running around again for three days.

So you have really good two to four year old bucks to the initial breeding, and I think there's up at the higher elevation there's also a population of deer that don't come down, and I think the really big, huge, dominant four year old and better bucks are up there taking care of that. And as soon as they've taken care of everything on the rest of the landscape, they come down to see what was not taken care of

And you're in the woods man.

And I don't, I don't hardly ever care anything because I am I am absolutely locked into I know that the possibility of me and they actually become less nocturnal and a little more reliable that they're going to be out sometime during the day.

Kay, I like it.

I have this tattooed on my arm.

No, no, it's uh and it's but that transition time between estris no estress right in there, that shifts seasonally.

It might be slightly earlier. It might be third, fourth, fifth, sixth of November. It might be eighth, ninet, tenth, eleventh of November. I think I've killed more deer on the eleventh of November than the other day.

Kay, Now get back to hyde fixed black tail deer problem.

Right for real?

When you got huge thousands of square miles, you know what I mean, like, what are you gonna do? Really?

So, just roughly on Prince of wale A Ballpark, I think, just on the for service, there's like three hundred and sixty thousand acres of young growth that's at or approaching steam exclusion phase. If you do the math with twelve to twenty deer per spare mile, that's somewhere between six and eight thousand deer that ain't there. Pretty simple math.

It won't be for eighty years or yeah.

And tell something is done with that second growth. And so we need this is my perfect world. We need a active young growth management industry, and that industry has to be good enough. There there's gonna be some clear cuts made, and they're going to go in and do

I don't know how you're going to create, like if it's rare when you say, like for the conservation of a species and proliferation of a species, we need to develop a timber industry.

I mean how do like, yeah, how do you incentivize and industry? And what specific like is it the heating fuel would pellet camp chef trigger industry?

Right? Like?

What what is the market for that growth that that is currently like being ignored waiting for maturation or further maturation.

Oh, call, I got share something with you. There's two things that have thwarted Dirt's dad that he cannot make himself. Well, he can make anything himself, making his.

Own dip, growing his own dip, making his own dip, and then making his own pellet grilled pellets.

There it is.

So there's your opportunity.

He just can't figure it out. It's killing him.

We actually, because my wife works in biomess and I love it. We hate all of our house with wood pellets. But I'm shipping them up from Idaho with all that red alder. I do the red older firewood stuff. So we also have a fire wood stove, and so I cut red alder. In fact, I'll probably be cutting it ip if I can get out in the woods when

And the free market economy is not going to take care of this.

I personally think if the if the management strategy shifted from the old growth strategy that occurred is on federal lands to a restoration economy based on we're going to do better for the deer and water and streams and stuff like that, but we're going to also support some large scale timber management. And this is what we're going to be putting up. We're not going to be doing old growth anymore. We're going to be cutting second growth.

God, but that initial harvest is winding down.

Man, it is winding down. And do you think they.

Ought to quit all together?

I hope not. I hope I hope not, because there's a lot of specialty mills that they don't need very much wood a year to produce an incredible product. So, you know, small old growth timbers sales. I hope they continue, and I think sustainably they could, but on large scale timber management that could be steered very focused towards improving deer habitat. We need to change to a young growth industry.

And they can do all that young growth on old infrastructure.

Yes, there, but so very selfishly. I don't want to take any habitat ear mark dollars and rebuild roads and bridges and log transfer sites at saltwater and stuff like that. I would like to see a viable timber history that keep those roads and bridges and stuff in good working order that we can benefit from for deer. And that's why I think they need to be there together.

Is any of the stuff we're seeing, Is any of the stuff we're seeing with the incoming administration and like the tariff wars and all this stuff that might be starting in on Is any of that going to have a positive or negative impact on getting the industry you want established established? Or is this stuff play out too slowly?

I think it's going to play out too slowly, and I actually don't know what's going to come out of this because the agencies and funding and people and all that is in flux right now, and we've got to kind of let the dust settle here for a few months to find out where we're at before we could pick back up.

Yeah, but some well placed tariff isn't going to all of a sudden spur the industry in the next few years.

I don't know. I don't know what those answers are. I know what I'd like to do on the ground if I had the if I was king, tell me what I would do. I mean, that's habitat work, focused, habitat work in the right places. That there was a a bunch of folks that have put a lot of thought into why we want to improve that place for deer and what would we do there?

Do you feel that you're going to be able to start doing this? Like, what does it take to start doing the work we actually.

Have right now? We don't know. The Black Tail Deer Foundation and Meal Deer Foundation does not know the status of the funding dollars that we had agreements in place for right now because of the changes that's happened in the last couple of weeks. So we have to let that settle and the people that we were working with withinside the agencies, we hope that we are solid in the agreements that we have and so we actually have four projects in southeast Alaska that will impact close to

But to make a that money might not be there.

We don't know. To make a meaningful impact on three hundred and sixty thousand acres of young growth that are sitting there ready that is going to steam exclusion phase, we're going to have to do several thousand acres a year to start making a difference on the deer population.

It's a lot of work, it's a lot of cash.

A lot of cash, a lot of work. But it can also it can be if the philosophy of management of the forest was such that it was focused on making those changes, we wouldn't be relying on habitat enhancements. Dollars to make that that would be normal timber management practices and focus change in the way they're doing work on the landscape. Yep.

And then they just have to sign on to adhering to some areas of exclusion or kind of like they did with like stream bank setbacks and that sort of stuff like that, right.

And a lot of that's a lot of the early management virtually again not passing judgment, walked right up the bottom of the streams with cats and removed all the large woody debris. So as we're doing this young growth management strategy, we could provide the logs that the stream actually trout and limited and a few other folks with the forced earth where they're putting them back into streams to get those pools and the riffles and the stuff

And then we got to tack all what about the Washington and Oregon folks.

Yeah, so we've got a group of folks.

In California, I guess.

Yeah, So we got work. We have a group of folks that are working for the Black del Deer Foundation and Meal Deier Foundations there. I just and I know that there's some grants and some funding coming along. I just don't know what opportunities exist. I don't have a breath of experience and know enough what's going on there. And that would be working with Oregon Department of Fishing Game, Washington Department Fishing Game and stuff, and state and BLM

M Do you feel that all the money do you feel that the habitat is the way to go, or do you think that the all the energy that people spend talking about predation, do.

You think it's a waste of energy. No, no, no, no, no, no no. There's a balance between those two. And I totally understand the predation aspects of this, and I've one of the things I've learned from my trail cameras. Yeah, it's when wolves moves into that valley, the deers shut down. The deer don't come down to the lower elevations for two days. When the wolves go through. There is a

Yeah, I mean, no different than seeing a bunch of human boot tracks.

Yeah.

So our conclusion that we draw is there's nothing but predators on the landscape and there's no deer there, when in fact, there's probably quite a few deer there. They just for that time period of slowly changed where they're at on the landscape. So there's a definite impact. I mean, I've got the graft. The rut was in full swing. I had wolves move into the camera area for a two day period and when I finished plot in my rut. Usually the rut is a big bell curve of activity.

Not here, but I imagine there's like a more effective time of year for predator harvest wolf and you guys are So they're right, mountain lions are starting to creep in and.

I'll tell you one of the So, yeah, So I've been I've been involved in three studies with telemetry callers where we monitored fawns right at birth through the first two weeks of their lives, and the last one that that Sophie did and it basically agreed not quite fifty percent, but like forty eight percent of all sick of blacktail fawns are taken in the first two weeks of their

So one half of the deer by black bear in two weeks two weeks were gone.

And what we found out was which we had no knowledge of, because then we got doze on collar that had twins that were on collars. She would take a geomorphic some kind of a structure like a ridge or a hill or a river or a road or something, and she would put one fawn over here two to three hundred yards away, and one fawn over here two to three hundred yards away, and she would live in between that and nurse both of those for that two weeks.

That's amazing.

So if she lost one, she lost only one instead of losing both of them. And so there's a natural So there's always been black bear there. The deer have grown up with black bear on the landscape. The deer have changed their habits to reflect the predation that the

Yeah. So more effective from your based off of your research, more effective to target black bears in the ahead of time, right early spring.

Well, so this is what why I get back to the habitat, and that the fact that we have a habitat challenge. Again, this is Jim Bitchetool's world. I moved there in nineteen ninety. We had tons of clearcuts, tons of food, young clearcuts of that two to fifteen year age. We still had all kinds of old growth and we had good conductivity even though the landscape was fractured, lots of deer, unbelievable number of bears. I can't even fathom to tell you how many bears were there. And wolves

Harvested bears.

Harvested bears. Wow, that was like the nod residents could take too.

Yeah, the whole air of like bringing in truckloads of dog food and hunting stations off the road system, and that crashed in.

Two thousand and five and the state started managing it, first with a registration and now with a draw and they're actually, I think they're doing an incredible job. I'm starting to see those older age class bears. So the first thing we lost was the big bores. Then we lost the older females. And when we started to losing the older females, you start losing the knowledge of where to dead, how to did, where to fish, and all that kind of stuff, And so there was an impact.

Are you going to roll sick of Blacktail dot org into black Tail Deer Foundation.

What you're looking for?

Wait, no, we might put it up on the page. But if you look at the Blacktail Deer on the Blacktails Foundation thing, that's what Sophie and I have on our webpage.

Okay, we said they were the same photo.

Now that know that drawing the characterization right up there. That that right there, that's on our web page. They needed something and Sophie and I agreed that that was a good thing to allow them to use that so.

Well, the black Tail Deer Foundation sits separate outside of Meal Deer Foundation, or is it just like a wing of the Meal Deer Foundation.

It's with them, kind of like the difference between Peasants Forever and Quail Forever kind of thing.

And so who's the director?

Greg Shean came on as director. I don't know if you know Greg. He's awesome. He wasn't there very long. And Steve Belinda called me one morning and said, you need to get on a call. Steve's got an idea. And Steve says, what do you think if we created the Blacktail Deer Foundation? And I said, I said three years ago. I told Steve I would give him two and a half to three years on the emphasis that

So what will your role with black Tail Deer Foundation be?

To try to be an advocate for deer in Alaska? Dear habitat work in Alaska and the work that we could do. We have a full time wildlife biology trained employee for the black Tail Deer Foundation, Lizard Judis Cu Leonora Scott's awesome. Scott has been working up with the Laska Department Efficient Game to do the modeling thing to answer the where so they're doing across all of the

Which keeps you learning?

Right?

No, it is you know, like I like wow, I wouldn't have thought that, you know. And every once in a while I the licking branch thing. There's not a lot of I went out in the snow to start gpsing trails because if you go out there, there's a hundred trails, hundreds of trails. You go out in the snow and.

I found you put a camera on one of those trails and there's a trail there, But it doesn't necessarily mean something's going to come down that trail.

But go out in the snow and GPS the one or two trails that are really ran and go to and you'll see they go like this, and they'll come to a node. Put your camera at that node. That's where three or four of the really used trails come together.

They come together in the high spots.

No, they come together. They they just across the landscape. The deer trails will kind of mingle and sometimes they intersect. Oh and when they.

You're not saying they intersect at a particular type of feature.

Just where they intersect, and at that intersect, I'll almost guarantee you there's a licking branch somewhere.

Right there, saying it really surprises me.

Sorry, did you ever sit the licking branch?

Huh?

Do you ever? Do you ever set up and just sit on the licking branch? Oh?

Yeah, if you go to I got a YouTube channel and if you go there, I have tons of videos I've put together of licking branch as. You can watch buck after buck after buck come to these things.

Have you done like mock scrapes and mock licking branch. Have you set up a totally synthetic one yet?

No, I've thought about it. Well. First off, it would have to be a synthetic lure because all natural lures are forbidden in Alaska. That's been outlawed because they're so worried about CWD getting there, and uh so they're they're gonna have to. It'll have to be something a deer attracted. I know several people that choosed. Uh. I can't remember the name of the company that does the rope hemp rope and you you soak it in some kind of

Do you ever hear of a thing called buckman juice? No, the urine from a man named Doug Durren. No, it might be worth checking out. I could try to get you a bottle of buck Man juice.

I can tell you that I twenty by thirteen. I had a really beautiful four by four with eyeguards coming through one muskeg between two and four for three days and I hung a tree stand. And I'm not a patient man. I hate being sitting there. But I went in and hung a tree stand. And I got out of that tree stand because I had to backpack it in three quarters of a mile and it got cold.

Whoa all right?

In fact, I'm not this good. It was an accident. But my camera was set on a three shot burst and he ran by the camera and it set it off. My mouth growned him to a stop, and I didn't know. You could actually see me in the tree stand. And next thing you see is a big puff of smoke. He's dying on the edge of the picture. It happened that fast, that.

Fast, unreal.

Now, we were told that she did not she was not wigged out by where I had peeded it all. Just absolutely did not care. She was curious, really curious, but had not She wasn't wigged out by that at all. Jim.

We were told that you end up shooting a lot of bucks head on in the chest, and then you what's your aiming.

Spot, the bottom center, the bottom throat patch, and you recovered the round ball against the rear leg bone. Hopefully you'll find this out someday.

I hope so too. I hope so too.

But why how does it end up head on so frequently?

Because they're coming to the call?

Oh god, yeah, they're coming to the call.

The other thing is I try to set up and blind call all the time, and if he's sneaking in, what I do is I tried set up so if there's a ridge over here or a travel way that I think they might be using, I set up here knowing that the wind is blowing across me this way with an opening on this side, so that he's going to come and he's going to try to circle behind me.

You catch him crossing that opening, and I catch.

Him crossing that opening, And that's a lot of times. They'll still turn and look at you. But you can get them broadside if you're just don't man. You like when I start calling, I don't move because they're locked on. They know the minute you blow that call from five, six, seven hundred yards away, they know they know the stump you're sitting by, that that that I've watched them across large open fast BUSKEG systems come at full tilt run

When you set up to call, how long you sitting there?

You should be there between thirty five and forty minutes.

God give you a little bit of math that Mercer Laing is a man named Mercer Lawing gave me but so similar situation. Call him Bobcats, Predator, call him Bobcats. Bobcats will sometimes show up like forty minutes later. So most guys that call Kyle still sip for fifteen minutes. That's kind of the rule of thumb, right, fifteen minutes, everybody gets bored and you want to leave. But a Bobcat might show up at forty minutes. And I was talking to my friend mercer who calls tons of bobcats

So you're saying, when you run it, you don't sit there forty minutes, but you should.

I should. You can if I time myself and make it happen. I have tended to kill better bucks at the thirty to forty five minute period. That is a long which means Steve, I look around, be like, man, and you and I both know sometimes you call in there poop.

That's what I'm looking for. The one that just is all of a sudden in your face.

Yeah, and we love that. That's exhilarating. Man, my god, you're talking to an animal and all of a sudden, it's like smack in your face, like at five feet it's like crazy stuff. Later, yeah, and.

You're calling it, what like how often you call him?

I usually start out with a really aggressive uh call sequence. I'm much louder, and I've been told that I'm too loud. Oh no, that's half the volume. I really crack cut it.

But this is all the classic black tail deer whistle that's sold in Alaska. That's what you're using. No, Oh no, I don't know.

Can I use brand name? Sure?

Oh, you don't have to give away any secrets.

No, there's no secrets. You know the cow talk that came out of years ago, the first cow call that ever was made. Oh yeah, rubber band, the plastic thing. That's what I've killed all my deer off of. I tighten that rubber band and it's got you use it like the thoro axe in the back and could change my pitch. I start out really quiet, just make.

The noise of your mouth.

Okay, I cut it. I started out really really quiet, and then I crescendoed the louder and louder and louder. I'm reaching out for I.

Know what you just used crescendo right, I've always I've used it wrong my whole life. It's like I thought the crescendo was the top.

No, it's the build.

The build. Someone told me that one time, and my whole life I said when it reached a crescendo, meaning the cap the apex like, no, the crescendos is the climb. Good jobject.

It's like throwing a pebble into a pond. Your your sound waves go out. You never know what's going to how it's going to come back to you. And so I I imagine that. I know in my mind every time I call some deer hears it. They may not choose to come, but they are hearing it. And so I start with a really loud bang. I try to get them to stand up okay and start Now. They may not complete it, but I try to get them to do that, and so I start that. Then I

This is getting me excited for a huh yeah for sure.

Yeah go on. Anyhow, Now that rattling stuff is interesting.

The other part of that is when if a buck responds to a rattling sequence and you decide not to shoot him, keep it going. Numerable times, I've had a smaller buck come in first and mister Holy Jesus walk in later, like, oh my god. It's just like five minutes later. You'll see these really big antler chips out in the brush moved around, and a lot of people will bang kill that buck and go over and deal that. And they didn't realize that there was a smoker buck coming in.

Hmmm.

I had. I had Sophie with another biologist there and I called it a beautiful three point and Sophie took that three point and she jumped up. I said no, no, no, no, let's keep calling. And they were like, no, let's take pictures and they ran out across the muskeke and I'd

A little off topic. But sixty yards blacktail broadside. Is that an offhand shot for you? Or do you look for a rest in that situation.

I almost always try to take a knee. I tried. I don't care if they're five yards, I try to. I can do it. I've done it. I mean seventy yards, eighty yards. Last two years ago, I killed a bucket they olpine. I had none of the rest on it. I was like, suck it up, buttercup, and I aimed and just did a perfect shot out him. But I am small abisball. I tell you you already got one shot. You're not going to reload, and any kind of lifetime of that deer running off or anything else, you've got

You've been married to hell a long time, haven't you?

Twenty six years? On the fourteenth.

I think I asked you, like your marriage advice. I can't remember what you told me. I did ask your marriage advice. Did you tell me that you always treat your wife like a princess?

No?

No, no, that.

Was Randy, that's right.

But I did ask you in that parking lot on the island.

We did.

Yeah, what would you tell me? Your plan was?

Oh, I went through the whole thing about why we got buried in February. The fact that you know, like trappid and bear season started in March and through April, the trapping fell off, but then there was field season, and then it was hunting season for deer all the way down through into November, and then trapping season picked up again. And usually things were froze up in February

That's cute.

So i'd be home on anniversaries.

So have you have you guys got all those years of marriages because good luck? Or do you got like a strategy?

I think she's tolerable than me.

You just got lucky.

I got lucky. We got together and gardens. I said, I hunt. She says, oh, I've known guys that hunt before it. I said, no, you don't understand. She does. Now we get a lot good. She allows helping processing. She's got a few hunts with me and stuff like that. But bainly I go out and hut by myself and she does all the helps, all the cutting up and stuff when I break it home.

Okay, had she shot a deer?

Nope, not even interested. So he's watched me kill a bunch.

But other than that, what she say when you get one? She get excited. Oh yeah, she doesn't feel bad for the deer.

If she'll point out every once in a while, like we don't have any elk in the freezer.

Yeah.

I love those kind of statements like go forth and kill elk?

You know, like, hey, what's up with uh? You know how you're allowed to kill a elk? On Prince Wales if you run into one, as long as you have a deer tag or something like that.

I've seen tracks and I found you haven't.

Laid eyes on one.

No, I know.

I had a guy who was feeding me a lot of intel about where it was somewhere, but I never looked into it.

I can honestly tell you. In about ear two thousand, Karen saw a cow and a calf in the middle of the road just before you get to Goose Creek Thorn Bay intersection there coming to Thorn Bay. She came home and said, I just saw something, a deer that I don't know what it was. She had never seen a winter calf with the kind of that brushy mane, and I think I went to a bugle magazine and I held up so it looked like that. She said yes. I said, let's get in the truck, and we drove

So they swam over.

They were because Brushy and Shrubby's not very far from Jarembo, and so they went from Atland to Zarembo and then they can come straight across brushy and shrubby across snow Pass there and down to Prince of Wales. So there was dozens of sightings there. So they first planted Roosevelt elcover on Atland Island and then they came back with rockies and the rockies went off, I don't like this.

Stuff, and they went so that's what was happening. They banded and there was the rockies would strike off swimming.

There was a three year period where we had a lot of elk sidings on Prince of Well's Island, and I know three times during that period that I crossed

So do you think right now there's none on Prince of Wale's Island.

I don't think so. I think they've got to settle down and they have a population on jer Inbo now and they've all erbred and they're not striking off. I don't think they're striking off. I'm sure some young male thinks that there's a whole island over there that might be full of cows that I don't know about, so they might come over.

But you know, buddy mine, he one time, this is the same body was telling me about where to go look for help.

But he one time found two. He pulled two blacktail fawns.

Out of the water, couldn't find their mom andy where little fawns they had swim they were swimming.

He got both in his boat. One died right away.

He got one wrapped in a space blanket, got it all warm back up again, brought it up to the beach and it ran off. So some number of those things die like that.

That and also when they're walking on the beach, a bald eagle will take them and they'll grab them and sometimes they let them go, but they've punctured their insides with their I've found several that has the talon marks. But I've also had like twelve mile alarm the back road down towards your place down there. I've I've saw where e was swimming across. You know how they'll get a salmon and they can't take off. Yep. Well, when it came out, it had a fun and it's challenged.

No ship, there's a grabbing about in the water and drowning them.

So there was there was quite a there's quite a We don't know what percentage of funds get taken by eagles, but it is a predator of funds, especially when there those first two or three day wobbly leg kind of things. There's definitely a definitely a thing.

You know what you get like you get sort of this idea.

You know, think about turkey hunt if your turkey hunter not but people you're calling turkeys and people like, oh, you know, he's not gonna want to cross the he's not gonna want to cross the ditch, or you know, you're trying to call him through the fence.

You won't want to try to cross the fence.

And people talking about stuff like that, like these little perceived obstacles. You know, when you're trying to call something in when you get up there there's so much water and you think of like you think of a bear deer coming down to the water and he's gonna like kind of psych himself up, get ready.

You know, and then go for it. When you're watching them, it's like they don't even think, man.

If you're a rutting buck on, they just like just like in the water, swim, wow, don't.

They're not like, you know, not like who I gotta build myself up for the swim. It's like they don't even they seem as comfortable swimming as they do walking.

I've had wolves swimming in front of my boat and get out on the beach and just shake off, sit down and whatever.

It's wild to watch deer like come down and bop into the salt.

Water and just fast.

They're fast. You can't catch them in a canoe, have little webby things or nothing. It seems like they really go.

Well yeah, it's just they don't give a ship.

They just go.

They just swim. You see him on these dinky little islands now, and then you're like, what the hell are you doing.

On the island. Actually, I think a lot of times right about the end of May, the dose go to those little islands. They have funds because there's less predators out there.

Well, I've seen that time of year you see black bears striking out for little Teeney Island.

You know, yep, I absolutely agree with that.

Well, how do people get involved with Blacktail? To your foundation?

Go to the web paite black Tail Deer got org.

Yeah, black you guys are gonna start chapters. People can start chapters.

We've got chapters. Uh, I think we we had a lot of the meal Deer chapters. We went to them and said, do you want to become a black a dedicated black Tail chapter? And I think most of them said yes, Some of them in California that have meal deer close or in Washington, Oregon that that also care about meal deer in eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and stuff like that. They were they were trying to figure out how to go both ways on that stuff, which is totally cool. At Alaska, it's a no brainer.

Well, is there going to be a chapter in Craig?

Yep, there he is really I'm the Tripperson.

Oh can you join if you're just opposer from out of town, Yeah, we'd like you.

Okay, Yeah, So you could go to the website. There's the and that's the easiest way. There's several options on on what how many years you do it and what level of chapter and whether you're a sponsoring and and we'll eventually have a deal on their for life memberships and stuff like that. We've already done some chapter awards stuff on Kodiak. We have a really functioning, really good chapter on Kodiak, and uh, we're not going to do anything on Kodiak for habitat and habitat is fine on Kodiak.

Well that's cool, Yeah, that would be some good volunteer and we're gonna.

We're gonna be doing that in other areas. So we've got we're gonna have a chapter in Judo. We've got a chapter in Cisca, Prince of Wales catch a can uh palmer withscilla. We want one in Fairbanks, we got one in Anchorage. I'm trying to think I might be missing one. And of course those guys don't have deer, but they go to Kodiak or they care, you know,

I got a lot of buddies that are in the interior that that's a part of their annual cycle is because things wind down, right, and so guys go to Kodiak Prince William Sound Southeast as part of the annual deal is to get like another hunting you know, every year, which for them hunting November, it is very late season.

Right, but they're also out of that by that time the weather's deteriorating up an interior, it's really cold and come down and be warm.

Yeah, yeah, so.

Yeah, it's a I'm really excited to see the emphasis that Greg and the board on the Fielder Foundation Board and stuff, and Steve and his conservation group is putting on this because it's to me, it's where I wanted to get to starting in about two thousand and six, and I think it's exciting. It's just for me. It's really exciting to see this focus on a deer that really had nobody focusing on him in the past. And

Well, think that if you are able to promote like you can definitely promote research, you can promote awareness of issues right, and you can unify groups of people who love the animals to you know, look out for their the best interests of the hunting even outside of the habitat work that you want to do. I think that doing those things and making a sort of like political body, so to speak of like of blacktail fans who are educated and aware, I think that in and of itself is valuable.

One of the questions that come to us all the time. But you would be supportive intensity management programs on predators, and we focus on habitat. I want to be very clear about that. We don't take a stance on there unless some management would come down that would greatly negatively affect the deer population. But mainly we're looking at habitat and what can we do is there is there truly

On and give them a way to get to the salad bowl.

And I want people to be able to have access to the areas that we create those opportunities for deer so that they also can hunt those areas. I don't want to leave I don't want to leave that rural resident or non residence or anybody else out of that equation.

Okay, thanks for coming on man.

And you've got to do it with a flintlocker.

That's the new rule. Don't let that rumor get out there.

Yeah, that's true.

No, So I called for my best flintlock story that I called for an entire hour. I had trees like this that were being rubbed in this area, and I called for a whole hour. It was cold. It was like fifteen degrees that morning, so you're about.

Thirty five minutes past your usual tolerance.

I tied myself for an hour, and at an hour I was starting to get really cold. I stood up and I kind of brush around, and I put my backpack on and I reached down. I picked up my flintlock, and I come around my tree and there's this huge five point walking down the trail right at me. He's about eighty five yards out again, steam rolling off of him. I remember the steam out of his nostrils that morning. He was so beautiful. He was all vivid, vivid alder

Heck, yeah, I'm fired out. Sign me up for the Blacktail here Foundation as well.

All right, thank you, guys man, thanks so much for coming out with Jim Blacktail.

Dear dot org.

That's right, that's easy to remember, dud org. Start a chapter, join a chapter, and go.

Check out sick a Blacktail dot org. That's Sophie and Toddenmind's web page.

Learn about some researches. Yep, thanks dude.

All right,