Ep. 543: What Whitetails Really See & How We Know It with Bradley Cohen

is not the voice of Mark Kenyon. He sent me an email last week and said that he picked up a new hobby, which is learning fictional languages, and he's off to a convention in Omaha to really become and this is his words, not mine, fluent in Wookie. That's no joke, and I don't know what it means, and at this point I'm too scared to ask. So anyway, today I'm speaking with Bradley Cohen, who is a dear

biologist and a researcher. Cohen is also a passionate bow hunter, and he happens to be an expert on dear vision. He's responsible for developing and seeing through one of the most comprehensive studies on deer vision that exists his findings, which we discuss in detail throughout this episode are fascinating and some of them will directly help you become a better deer hunter. Plus it's just really interesting stuff to learn about our favorite game animal. Brad, Welcome to the

Wire to Hunt podcast. Ma'am, hey, good to be here, Tony. You You come highly recommended from our very own Patrick Durkin. And I told Pat that I was looking for somebody who was an expert in deer vision and he said, there's only one place you gotta go for this, and so I really appreciate you taking some time to talk with me today on on white tails of what they

really see and what you've learned about that. Yeah. Man, anything I can do to help share the information we have and the science we do, I'm happy to I'm happy to be part of it. So can you just before we dive into this, can you get the listeners just a breakdown of you know, where you're doing your research, what you're doing, Uh, how you got into it A

little bit right? So? UM, I originally am from New York and then I got a master's degree at the University of Georgia working under Carl Miller and Bob Warren, and as part of that research, we started to examine uh, deer vision a little bit more into what colors can they see? And a lot of it was focused on getting a behavioral measure or having them basically tell us in their own unique deer way what colors they could see. And then I stayed at University of Georgia working on

deer during my PhD doing something completely different. But during that time we had several other students coming through working on deer vision and I oversaw that research. Um So basically we've done in total, I've been part of about four studies focused on deer vision, anything from their color to their visual or color sensitivity, of their visual acuity, to their movement sensitivity. So let's let's back up a second here. Out of all the stuff that you could

study out there, why how did you settle on? How did this become a relevant topic of research? So let me back up a little bit more and just tell you that when I went I got my undergrad degree from a general biology program in up state in New York, and I went to this college it was called Singing Genes CEO, and I went there because it was right next to my hunting spot that I grew up. Deer hunting my whole life, so like hunting has always kind

of been a big central role in my life. And I actually just put into Google scholar the word dear and Carl Miller came up, and that's how I kind of met him. But when I went down there, my degrees were actually got biology or bachelor degrees in biology and psychology, all right, so that's gonna be important when we talked about how I understood how to kind of get these measures. But we went down there and had

a unique opportunity. Most students that come into the wildlife profession they get money from a grant or from a grant, and that granting agency typically has specific objectives. I want this, this and this done well. I was on a on money that was basically left over from the project like they had. There was a lot of money and there was no direct deliverables to be associated and I was so lucky in that. Uh. Dr Warren and Dr Miller were just like, let's talk about some of the things

we don't understand about dear biology. Now, in this case, the money was coming from the Georgia Department of Transportation, which it's kind of weird to think about that, but they were interested in dear vision from the sake of how can we build mitigation devices to get her off the road. And some of that comes back to just basic biology of deer. And so the world was my oyster.

I kind of had the experience to understand like this was a cool study, and the funding agency had to want to like know, and we just took off from there. So you you kind of you kind of looked into sort of an open lane there with that money already being there. And this was driven by I'm assuming that the d OT was looking at this going how do

we prevent vehicle collisions with deer? And you thought, well, we've we've tried the little whistlers on the bumper, and we've tried some you know, oral A U, R, O A L methods. But you're you're like, well, how do we how do we make something that's a visual deterrent

to them? Yeah, So, like the the Georgia Department Transportation been funding research for a little bit of time trying to be like, you know, what do fences due to dear behavior, Well, it just creates a little hot spot where they can cross the fence on the front and back end of it. Uh, hey, do deer whistles work? Do roadside reflectors work? And the answer was always no, they don't work. They don't work because it's not based

on dear biology. So Georgia Department Transportation said, hold on, let's take a step back, let's tell us what dear ken see what they can here, and then let us kind of work with you to design these devices that would mitigate it. In this case, it was and we wanted to understand things like how does dear vision affect

a deer in the headlight look. So one of the applications of our research was working towards building a better headlight that would be less bright to a deer, but similar brightness to you and I. So they don't get like, oh my god, they don't know cars there, They just know that something very bright is coming at them. And so that's kind of the application that Georgia Department Transportation

was in. But then, being the wildlife biologists and hunters that we are, we're always thinking about, Okay, what are the other applications. So you looked at this and you said, this is a perfect opportunity. And I'm assuming as soon as this this opportunity came up. You looked at to see what other studies had been done, and you saw there was kind of a pretty big gap there in

our understanding of dear vision. It was kind of it's kind of stunning when you think about one of the most well studied animals in the world and yet how little we understood about their just basic biology. What do they hear, what do they see? All of that. And typically it's because the people that study dear tend to be more application minded. We're always trying to say, Okay, let's go out and ready them in their natural environment

and then we'll make hypoths and based on that. And coming from that general biology background, I was more interested in the Okay, well let's go back to the physiology point of view, and then we can project out to why they act like they do. Yeah, so you had you had a unique opportunity to use penn raise deer and design a I mean it looked like almost like a Pavlavian path towards uh, you know, training deer and then using that that food reward training to start to

figure out their their vision. So before before we get into the design of that study, when you when you were like, all right, I'm gonna do this, or you're you're really kicking this around. You're talking to Carl Miller

and a couple of other people. Did you kind of have it in your mind where you like, I think I know how dear c or did Was there like a basic biological understanding of the rods and cones and the design of a deer's eye were so you went into it and you're like, I think I got this already or not really, so back about don't quote me on it. Maybe twenty years before that, J Knights and a bunch of other research. Now. Ja Knights is is

an interesting character in and of himself. He's he's now at the University of Washington, and he's like the expert on animal vision. He's single handedly is like working to cure color blindness and humans working with monkeys. I mean,

the guys like way above my pay grade. But he had actually come to the University of Georgie about twenty years before that and basically done a study where you simply hook up electrodes to an animal's head and you flicker lights in their eye and you're looking for an electrical signal pulsing from the retina. Every time you pulse a light, you get that that signal, that cellular signal, and from that we can at least tell um how many cones an animal has, and that's cones are what

seeks color? Uh do we have rods which are basically the more light sensitive black and white type um photo receptors. And then also like what are the peak sensitivities of

those cones and rods? So he already had laid that out, but you have to understand oftentimes that cellular response isn't always the same way that an animal perceives it because and the truth, perception is both mediated by the cellular responses of of your retina or something like that, but also your brain right and you know, for example, you and I, if we just looked at our cellular responses would be very sensitive to blue, like we're But the truth is we have so many different ways we inhibit

blue in from being uh perceived by us, and that we are very poor at perceiving any type of blue color. But that same type of study, just looking at the cellular would say, hey, we can see it pretty well. So there's often this disconnect, which that's where we were going, was, Okay, we have some guests in it on what we think, dear my colors they might be able to see, but we need a behavioral confirmation. We need them to tell us that they're perceiving this color in real life so

that we know, hey, they see it. Does that make sense yea. So essentially the four year study we we you could kind of say, Okay, this is the spectrum they can see. These are the colors they're they're picking up. We think, we hope, well, okay it appears that way, but that's as far as it goes, right, Like, you don't know to what degree, and you don't know what that means to them, right bingo? And so what did you do with that? He said, that's not enough, dude,

Let's let's let's dive deeper. Yeah, so we had we had tried to train. I was like, listen, I think we can train dear to respond to light. In other words, it's just a classic have lobby and dog type experiment where we're gonna say, hey, um, there's two troughs with a treat. One of them is gonna have allow you to have access to treat, uh, and it's gonna have

a light on over it. The other trough will still have the treat, but if you try and approach it, it's gonna shut the doors and you're not gonna get that treat at all. I said, that's just a it's actually in psychology called the skinner box. It's it's a

super basic way we train animals. And to be honest, I remember very distinctly Carl Miller kind of laughing it off because we had tried to train dear before and when your hand raising dear, and because he's have to be tamed deer, and you're trying to do this in a non automated way, it's it's impossible. You can't get the control that you need, the number of repetitions that

you need. You know, I think the student would before me, you know, took fifteen dear home and raised them by themselves, only to have one that even like kind of could do an experiment with vision. And so the first thing was like, could we even get this to work with the deer? Understand that if we presented them to to troughs to eat out of both with the treat, but only to approach the trough with the light on, just a bright light, would they go to it? And boom.

We did it automated. We basically had to learn computer language. It was just it was fun, but I never want to do it again. But by the end of it, we had shown very clearly, at least with one dear, hey, we can at least train a dear to respond to a light being on. Does that make sense? So the first hurdle that you bumped into was just the people thought you wouldn't be able to train dear for a

measured response. Yeah, and it was very difficult prior to getting the type of technology that you needed to automate the process. And basically all I did, along with David Osborne, who's a research coordinator at the University of Georgia, is we worked actually with what we call the Instrument Shop at the University of Georgi. These are people that make fancy instruments for specific purposes and they made an entire set of devices that allowed us to automate the process entirely.

I would hit a button on my compurece ays start and then I'd show up two days later to collect the data. And during those two days I didn't have to be there, but the deer was constantly being trained on the series of trials where the troughs open up the treats there, the light turns on. If the deer picks the lit trough, you get to eat the treat.

If you don't, it closes and and very quickly, within a couple of days though that first year learned okay, I'm going to approach the lit trough and then it was off to the races. So to say, how long did it take those deer to start figuring that out? Generally we were able to train them within a week to two weeks, so and that means that they were getting they were going to the trough with the light on over it over eight percent of time, very quickly.

Now for animals, that's pretty good, you know, you and I would have figured out in minutes. For an animal to do it in a about two weeks span was pretty impressive. Yeah, I mean it's I I work in the dog space a lot and trained dogs a lot, and it's so it's just you know, people will argue whether treat training is valuable for puppies or not. I'm like, so valuable and so easy, you know, and that's an

animal that's been bred to work with us. So you get the eye contact, and you have some benefits over deer in a multiple different ways. But so you you look at this and did you did you do this first stage just as a proof of concepts It was

a proof of concept. Uh. We came together as a group and kind of said, Okay, we've got a little bit of money that we're willing to put towards this divide us and uh, they gave us the green light to Dr Miller in particular, was skeptical about the idea of it, and he's like, okay, not in a bad way, just like, prove it to me. And when we proved it, it was like all thumbs up, let's go this is this is great. So it's what did you do from there?

We then so we wound up training a total of seven deer so to the same process, and they and they were all adult does, right, all adult does. And And the reason is, let me just tell you why we did choose Does versus Bucks. We had team Bucks. Um. But the thing is that Bucks, during the rut or just most of the time, they're angry, and when they're tame, they're dangerous because they see you as just another deer.

So they'll happily attack every single thing that's around. So females a lot easier to work with and and there was no reason to believe that would buy us the results at all, Right, No, not at all. No, there's no there's really no difference across sexes in animals as far as what they can see or can't see. UM. So we we train them to that and then we get very We worked with Energizer to get very very specific wavelength l E. D s. Now, this is this

is where it kind of gets interesting. So you get these LEDs and their specific wavelength, Like it's not just like this is a blue color, it's like, this is a wavelength in the blue color. And we started off the light starts off as intense as possible, very bright, and we trained and the deer instantly adapt. They're like, oh,

it's not a bright white light anymore. It's a bright blue light, and so they start to um actually trained to that, and then once you get them completely good to go, then you start to actually have the intensity because your ability to see something of a color, right, isn't just the wavelength of the color itself, it's the intensity at which it's being presented to you if that makes sense, right, And so we have the intensities until

basically they were performing at chance. In other words, they stopped being able to see the light and they were just randomly approaching the tropicals. They couldn't see it um. And so we did that for a bunch of different wavelengths of light, both in the blue wavelength which is like um in the four hundred nanometers which doesn't matter for here, but in short wavelength and the long wavelength, which is the reds. What did you start to find?

I was? I was fascinated. So with deer, deer we're able to see blue much better than we can UH typically something like twenty times UH enhanced sensitivity to blue colors than we have. So there were times when I was testing blue wavelengths where I couldn't see that the light was on, but the deer could. And on the other side of it is they could not see reds hardly at all, very low sensitivity to reds. And so what it what it did is enables to confirm those

kind of previous anatomical or physiological measurements. And now we can go from there to figure out, okay, this is how a geer precedes its world. So there before you did this, there was the suspicion that this is what it was gonna show, that that they were very sensitive to blues and not reds m m m m. Yeah, so that's what we thought would probably you know that that was what the anatomical measures had suggested. So what surprised you about it then was it was it like

the degree at which they could see the blues. So the degree it wasn't just like, okay, actually seeing it play out by your own experience, just how difference the sensitivity is. But also we expected subtle or quite large differences actually in the anatomical structure or the anatomical measurements versus the behavioral measurements because time and time again that's what we see in the animal world. But in this

case they almost overlapped perfectly. So um, whatever is going on in the cells is being transferred perfectly to the brain. It's like a beautiful synchrony, and there's no um like for us, our lens is clean up a lot of light, like they get rid of a bunch of different light that you and I would otherwise process. For deer, that's clearly not the case. You see where I'm going with this was there was almost no difference. And so now we have a really clear sense of what they can see.

Can you explain that further? Like how do you well, first off, how do you know that? Like? How how did this show that that was that clear to them? Oh? Okay, all right, so we take let me back up a little bit here, and I don't want to go in the weeds, so if I go too much into it, just play with me here and say, okay, that's enough. But you get these measures, all right, So you actually have the intensity of light that they no longer can see right at each wavelength. Then there isn't a crazy

equation that has twenty three different variables. Don't ask me to understand them or explain them, but it has twenty three different variables. And you input the data we collected, which is literally this wavelength at this intensing. You just basically tracked it over time, and it spits out a beautiful curve. Eve okay. And these curves are basically curves for your photos, your actual true sensitivity to different wavelengths

of light. And so we're taking our real data and taking what we understand about how photo receptors actually work, and we're projecting that onto Uh this kind of sensitivity graph? Does that make sense? Sort of? You gotta remember I write squirrel hunting articles for a living, so this is this is this is heavy stuff, but I'm not Yeah, I don't mean to make it that heavy, and it's

still heavy stuff for me. I mean there's a lot of stuff that a lot of heavy lifting that occurred behind the scenes with Dr Knights and all those people. You know what I'm saying, Well, I love it. So you you start to figure this out and you and by having the wavelengths, you start to go, Okay, we know where the limits are on there. We know with the with the deer's range. And you didn't see any variants in those seven deer that were the test subjects.

They all were consistent across each deer. Yeah, so a deer, we're remarkably similar. You know, there's always variation, right, There's some there are more trainable and others. You know, you always get the one dear that's the exceptional performing, you get the one that's like kind of dumb. But they

were pretty similar. And um, then we go, okay, well, this is the actual women's we understand the outer limits on both sides, from the reds to the blues, and we understand, now, okay, based on how we measured it, they definitely only have two cones. They definitely have their cones peaked at these wavelengths, and we understand now what the different colors they can see, how the different intensities

of those colors in their play. Well, we can lay out almost with perfect or with precision, how at least a color world looks to dear. So let's let's talk about that. Where where like evolutionary wise, where's the benefit to seeing those those blues so vividly and not seeing the reds? All right, let's back up a second here and just understand that Dear do not perceive their world anything similar to like how we do, especially with colors.

But what you have to understand is that you're very sensitive to blue colors, which we are not sensitive to. Dere are not sensitive to red colors, which you and I are more sensitive to. So the blue coloration being sensitive to that makes a lot of sense from kind of uh an evolutionary perspective, if if only because if you look at the light that's available during sunset and sunrise. A lot of that is actually the blue spectrum. So

here's the crazy thing. I want you to sit back and think when you're sitting there, thirty minutes prior to sunset, and that just twins of highlight, twilights coming over or on sunrise, right, just a little bit. That world is lit up for a deer. But because you and I don't see blues very well, it's dark to us. I

don't know. That's kind of crazy to think, right, but our own our lack of sensitivity to the light that's most available during sunrise and sunset is why it's dark to us, and theoretically wide dear most sensitive to it because it's the light that's available when they moved the most. This is going to be a crazy So I just Mark, the host of this podcast, recommended and uh a book about by what was it called? It was about evolutionary

biology on islands. I can't I can't remember the technical term for it, but in that book there was there are some examples of studying baboons and some other primates and how it tied loosely to us being so you know, like so reliant on daylight and so scared of nighttime predators. That our eyes evolved for lots of daylight coming in because that's when we're most active and we have to get our stuff done before the things that eat us

come out at night. And what you're saying is dear, because they their primary movement periods, their first and last light, their eyes have evolved or their vision has evolved to take advantage of the wavelengths they're most popular then or the most think most available then. So in times of perceived darkness for us and other predators, right before nighttime and before like you know, not peaked daytime, deer see a well lit environment where they can easily distinguish predators.

No problem that, Okay, So then let me ask you this if if that's the case, or that is the case, how does that tie into their ability to see it at night in the dark. Uh So, that's a little bit different. That's an anatomical feature of their eye. They have what's called they're taping them loosen them, which is basically nothing more than a reflective lens on the back end.

You know that like when you spotlight deer and they their eyes glow, that's actually the light being reflected back into their retina, so it hits their retina and goes out and then gets reflected back. So what they're doing is like they're supersizing the amount of life that's there, so they're super efficient about gathering light. So while things might be an absolute darkness to us, it's actually a little more lit to a deer. So that's how they're

able to see it at nighttime. So well is that they're able to more efficiently harnessed, for lack of a better word, available light. So that that's I mean that sort of just plays off of like, you know, we we just launched that James Wood Web telescope into space and it's got a you know, it's got mirrors on it that are the size of a tennis court to be able to look, you know, at light that was

created thirteen billion years ago. This is a mini version of just bouncing light back and forth and taking advantage of it. Man, I'll tell you what. It's the coolest part about being in this field is the crazy stuff that you learn about how creators have adapted to live in their environment. But that's exactly what they're doing. It's nothing more than reflective merit and get more light at nighttime. Is that considers we don't move during during night? Well? Sure,

I mean is that consistent across all you know? I mean you see raccoons the same thing, walleye the same thing. It's all. That's what that is. Will nocturnal out any animal that has some kind of peak activity at night. Most animals tend to have that kind of feature. It goes by a bunch of different names. But yeah, a

reflective layer in their eye is there? Is there a Is there some kind of loss in their ability in the daylight because of that then, like in in bright daylight, because I know, I know there is with the blue light to some extent, right, but also you know that ability to harness that much light when it's dark. To us, is there a sacrifice on the daylight side. Not necessarily. All they do is similar to us. They just contract

their their lens and everything real, real tight. So if you actually look at the pupil of a dear's eye during the daytime, it'll be really, really really small, but during night that suckers huge. So basically all they're doing is controlling the amount of light that's coming in during the daytime by just letting them very little amount of light come in, if that makes sense. Do they have a greater degree of dilation that they can do with

their pupils then than us? It's it's quite a bit bigger, right, yeah. Yeah. And they also have a slit eye, so they have more surface area that they're exposing to their eye as they dilate, So as they constrict there basically lift their blessing and lessening to a much larger extent your than yours and eyes I would be all right, So what is what does this knowledge do for us as hunters? I know everybody's listening. There's all right, getting past this side?

Like what kind of what? What color should I be wearing out there? What should I be aware of? Just color wise? Not movement yet, because I want to talk about movement. Want me jump in the movement? Well, don't wear blue jeans or any of that stuff. And you gotta all right, so you've already made me go like way down the rabbit hole here, I've got a mighty there was a tect terms through out there. But let

me just tell you this. You gotta understand that, like they only have two cones and a surface by I don't think it's easy to appreciate what that means. But we have three cones, and uh, it means that we can see about a million variations in color, subtle variations, right, dear, Just by having one less cone, it means that they see much less variations in color. They basically only see yellow into a yellowish green color and blue. That's it. So your red is yellow, your orange is yellow, You're

blue is blue. When you start to think about how everything we see out there, for even just something like camo is you know, a variation of green and brown and all this, and then you kind of throw that into Howard deer season, it's all just the same yellow. Like you're basically in a lot of different camo patterns, one glorious big blob of yellow. Then we'll explain why

that really probably doesn't matter all that much. And when you get to movement, So is this when you you know, when I started hunting, and you know, you can kind of follow the evolution of camo patterns to some extent. For a while, there was a huge push for photo realistic elements, right like, how do you take a high resolution image of the woods or the leaves of the oak? You know, oak leaves or whatever, get it right on a on a shirt or a jacket, whatever, and it

looks just like that. And we've sort of moved beyond that to these abstract jumbold kind of shading. That is that a direct response to what we've learned about dear vision. No, it's the camouflage world is simply just what people think is cool in the moment. It's just sales in here, yeah, I mean, it's all sales. I mean, but you know, it's not to say that like SITCO type years aren't based on some biology. They certainly are. Like they worked with j Knights to come up with that pattern. Um.

But there's a couple of things to understand that. Let me just continue with this one thing, all right, So everything's kind of green. And then also when deer are most active sunrise and sunset, there are a lot of blues in the environment. Well, we I've done spectral reflectance patterning on a lot of different camera patterns. Any type of white color. Um, just through the dyeing process that

camouflage companies use, a deer would perceived that as blue. Um. The other thing is like, so you have a bunch of blue stuff. And then also like definitely don't use any type of detergents with the typical detergency you guys would use, because there are like you v your blue enhancers in there that you and I don't see is blue because we can't see it just brightens our shirts. Deer would see that as is certainly some kind of

bluish hue or coloration. So all that comes together, Like if you look at my count sol like I made, I made a camera way back when after I did this, and I kind of just use subtle variations of that, like I just make my own camera nowadays, because it doesn't look like anything you've ever seen. It's got a ton of different colors on it, it's got different brightness is and and it's all related to also like I just bow hunt, so like it's also related to increasing

my movements. But it doesn't look like anything that's out there, because most of what's out there is literally just based on making it look cool, so hunters by it. Uh

I have have you ever? I'm sure you have uh paid attention to you know, the fishing industry, and there's very similar arguments for phishing lures as well, and the colors that they think that you know, bass can see for example, you know, like they see orange really well, they think and they you know, red disappears pretty quickly underwater, and you know, and it's it's made to catch. It made to catch you know, your dollars and not fish necessarily.

But so is there is there any benefit then? Uh too? You know the new wave of patterns that you see out there, Yeah, I think they're a little bit more efficient and kind of you know, they have so they'll talk about this macro pattern versus micro pattern. That's that's fancy words were saying, big blobs versus small blobs, and the bigger blobs do tend to be like, um, more differentiated. But yeah, right, it's all about and this isn't a bad thing, right people. A lot of people are trying

to do their best. But you know it's like, you know, shark true stor is my favorite law in the world to use a shark trees And I found out like two years ago that best can't even see that color. I'm like, you know, so this is just some kind

of variation of silver to them. It's all a matter of like you're selling the people on what they want just to um to wear well, isn't there sort of kind of like a who cares you know, component to this because we know I mean, so I was just writing a piece about getting turkeys to shack Gobble, and you know, lately, especially Michael Chamberlain has been out talking

about turkeys a lot. He's I'm actually gonna have him on one of these episodes too, and talking about how, you know, we're reversing the order of turkeys right when we when we go out and call a bird in, you know, a long beard, inner town whatever, we're kind of like reversing what the nature has you know, designed this to do. But at the same time, thousands and

thousands of turkeys are killed that way. So part part of it is like an is just an academic exercise when we can go out and I can call in turkeys and go, well, this one didn't follow the rules and that one didn't. And we know that the camel patterns that we use, I mean, regardless of what dear c we still kill a lot of them wearing them. It's it's all right, all right, I'm a big turkey hunter,

big duck hunter, big deer hunter. When you hunt, it's not just enough to be like Okay, I've killed a deer. You know what haunts you is the time that one time that big deer came in and busted you. And that's the stuff as hunters that we obsess over. It's those little variations of like I shouldn't have moved, why did I stand so early? Why you know, why didn't

I find a better background? All of these things. So yeah, in the end, I think hunting has evolved into like we know of what works right, it's all these little things that we want to find out to make it better because we're obsessive and where it's our you know, our hobby, and when we think of it that way, then maybe it does matter when you're talking about just trying to tinker with things. But overall, no, you know what, people could walk on the blue jeans and a white

shirt and shoot the crap out of deer anyway. You know, Well, isn't there isn't there some level of a benefit to from the materials they're used? Is it like a softer material better as far as light reflection or not. So there's different types of materials that go so the materials themselves and don't quote me on everything here, but Basically there's different materials go through different processing on the front end to basically how they're going to be colored white

before they're actually camouflaged. And you can in that process ingrain these ub brighteners into the fabric. Okay, and those gonna be a little stiffer to the touch, They're gonna be a little bit harder, but they're gonna last longer. They're gonna be brighter longer. And that's why the kind of everyone kind of went that way originally was like, Okay, we're making a better quality product, but certainly to a uh hunter, they're less comfortable and to a deer they're

more visibly blue. And so now they kind of switched the other way around, which is a different eyeing process that cuts down on that makes it more more subtle. Got it, all right, let's move on from dear colors? What what do we I think this might be more important and to correct me if I'm wrong here, but what did we learn about dear vision as far as catching movement? All right, let me let me start off

with something first. Let me cover that movements related to also their visual acuti or basically like you know how you and I have vision all right, you've gotta understand that, like Dear have about visions, so everything is blurry to them, all right, So when you think about everything being blurry to them, what they're trying to pick up on is a blob that moves around. Okay, this is important to understand because it also comes back to camouflage and being

one big blob. If you think about what their whole job in life is to basically see that predator on the horizon or see them in the woods, and it's just a blob moving around, detect them and haul. Uh, there's a couple of things you've got to understand. Dear's eyes don't overlap that well, so they don't have good depth perception, but they have a really good field of view. And the way their rods are kind of spaced out across their eyes, they can pick up detection like that.

Now it's not just a pick up movement, just like that. And here's the thing. They also process this. This is like philosophical, but it's actually important. Are just time with me. We've done this experiment. It fascinates me. But like they and if you want the details, if you want to go down the rabbitable, I think it's awesome. But what you have to understand is that they pick they perceive time, to perceive time twice as slow. In other words, they

pick up movement twice as easily. They pick up movement twice as easily. Okay, hold on how slow emotions them? I know you won't believe me, but things happen in slow motion. To them, they react twice as fast as we do. They see things twice as quick. They detect things twice as easy. How do we know how dear perceived time? I gotta know that? All right, this is this is crazy. All right? Look, okay, look up flicker fusion rate. If you want to go down that rabbit hole.

Look look this up. But basically, you know, back in the day when you when you had a TV before LEDs and all these other TVs came out, you know, basically you're stringing together these still pictures on TV, and all TVs have to have what's called the flicker rate,

and they had to put it above sixty. And the reason they had to put it above sixties because you and I also see things instill frames and our brain refreshes that still image at sixty times per second and creates a holistic movement pattern, but that is not the same across animals. And so um, this is why, like a dog actually has a higher flicker fusion rate. And back in the day when you had an old TV, a dog wouldn't watch TV with you because it looked

like a bunch of still pictures to them. Okay, so here all right, But that also flicker fusion rate is also how fast you're refreshing time or movement or all of these things. So like have you ever wondered how the hell of bat can catch a bug? Or like how a bird is able to in you know, hit another bird in in air. It's because they're they're like rapidly processing these images like super fast. Now, that relates

to their lifespan. Like if you look in the literature, there's only so many flickers and so many times you get that that refresh and then you're dead. So like short lived animals refresh a lot, and long lived animals don't. And if you want to go into the crazy world, it's like, yes, a proof flight that lives twenty four hours, even they perceived like an entire lifespan that in their own theoretical world is as long as ours. So yes,

you're picking that stuff up twice as fast. So I read something recently about that it might have had something to do with space travelers, and but it was about it was like from a fruit flies perspective on what it would see if you were going to smash it. And it was like a description of this hand coming down forever, because that's their entire existence, even though to us it's twenty four hours. Yeah, it's it's crazy, but yeah,

that's that's happening in absolute slow motion. So like they've done studies where they've looked at like how does a bird catch a fly? Like that should amaze you to begin with, right, flies move so fast to us, No to a bird that flies going in slow motion? All right, And that's the same thing that's happening with dear. When you're moving and you think you're moving fast, you're moving subtly.

You're doing that's slow for them. There's they're able they have twice as long to pick it up, if if that makes sense sort of, well, it all comes back to this movie, this idea of like all they care about, their whole eye, their whole all, their whole brain is wired simply to pick up motion. That's how they detect predators. You and I we don't. We're not made to pick up motion. What we're made to do is discertain objects. Like I see a person, I look at that person,

I discern who they are. Dear, don't care out that they just wanted to have a basically scan of their environment and just be able to pick up something that's moving. That's what worries them. And given that, it also means that quick motions are jagg emotions. Are you just trying to be more subtle with your movements? That's not subtle to a deer, that's not best to a deer. So

if you move, don't be surprised when they paid you. Okay, there's gonna maybe be way off here is this is this part of the reason why we figured out how to throw stuff to kill things, because if we just took off after a deer, we're not built for it.

It's one hunt. It's it's well, if you look all right, you want me to go into this, But if you look at like basically our perception, it's all about social interactions with each other and a lot of our stuff, Like you know, our eyes aren't necessarily just made to be good predators, but also like the social interactions between us, and so we had to at some point become good at killing them without actually chasing them down and ambushing them,

because we're nothing compared to prey species that actually is hunted all the time. Has have have has anyone done any studies on so we're talking white tales, and you know, we can we can go back through you know, the last a couple hundred thousand years and figure out probably what was the major predators for white tales and why this would evolve. Has anybody done anything like this with like access deer from India and the you know, tigers or any of the other deer subspecies. So they've done

it with fallow deer and they're they're they're similar. Um, you know, you gotta keep in mind that white Teldia are pretty late evolutionarily, like they're they're one of the more recent kind of additions to deer family. If you look at the more historic ones or even something like fallows, you know, it's still ancestrally held that it's all about detecting, detecting, detecting, yep. So this this refresh rate and them sort of living

in this I don't know it. Maybe it isn't wrong, but like compared to how we perceive stuff like a little bit of a SlowMo world where they're, yeah, where they're picking up stuff instantly, you know, we think of it like if you look at it from the perspective of what we're talking about, it's like, Okay, if there's a tiger or a mountain lion or something crouched in the grass and that sucker takes off the earlier detection system you have, the better your chance you have to

get away. And now we can take that as hunters and go, okay, well, just if I dumb this down. When I'm sitting in my tree stand and that deer's you know, approaching fifty yards away, and I think that I'm out of its field of view, and I stand up and that sucker catches me, it's over. I mean,

it's it's that. It's it's why they jump an arrow, you know, like you and I are like, literally, I can't even see that arrow go, and yet they can hear and process that they're in danger and start the duck within the time frame of an arrow getting to him in twenty yards. I mean, just think about that, and it's because that is actually happening slower to them.

And there. You know, that's an interesting example because every buddy, we we say, oh, you're duck in the arrow or jump in the string, and all they're doing is just getting away from a perceived threat that they can perceive real fat It's not like they're sitting there thinking an arrow just got shot at me. They heard a noise that alarmed them, and they loaded up their legs to take off, bingo, bingo. It's just instinctual. It's like, Okay,

I didn't see it, but I heard it. Yeah, And they're hearing isn't much different than ours, so you know, it's about identical. So you know, just it's some kind of spark, you know, some sound that doesn't sound natural time to time to haul off. So they're hearing is the same, but they're are you know, similar, but their reaction time is way faster. Yep, that's exactly right. Uh,

how do hunters use that? Just don't move? Well, it's nothing that hunters don't already know, you know, if you're gonna, you know, get above them, right, if you look at how deer basically see their world. They're meant to look kind of down and scan the horizon, uh, straight ahead of them. They're not used to being hunted up. You know, you get about about up, you're out of their line of side unless they're lifting their head. If you're gonna move,

always have something behind you. They have poor depth perception. So this is just basic hunter knowledge. One oh one. Get you know, get your silhouette covered if you're you know, that will help them not see the movement. If you don't have a silhouette, if you're silhouetted at all, be really really tight with your movement. Don't be surprised when they pay you there. It's basically like you hunt for a couple of years and you know everything that I'm saying.

You know what I'm you know what I'm getting that I know exactly what you're getting a man. Can we talk a little bit about the difference between them perceiving movement, you know, on the ground around them versus above them, because that's that's an important distinct it right, So they

are anatomically made to perceive threats on the ground. Okay, their biggest predators back in the day were some type of you know, wolf and cougar type, you know, combination, right, uh, And so when we think about that, it really comes is no surprise that they have a hard time seeing up above them. And it's not just like they have a hard time seeing it, but actually their vision gets more blurry. If you and I, like look straight ahead of each other, actually on the periphery of our visions

quite blurry. And it's the same for deer, right, So they're looking straight ahead, and like as you get further and further higher up in the trees, if you will, it's blurry and blurry or so you're able to camouflage in more and more. But again remember that all these nice fine detail camouflage patterns, that nice fine detail that you're talking about doesn't mean crap to a deer that's yards away from you. And already you're blurry. It's all

blending of those colors. So you want to you know, if you're you're either got some good blobs going on or you don't. At that point, that's where it comes into. If you're one solid blob or you don't have a really strong counter player, and that has big differences in that those shapes. Then don't be surprised that that they'll still trigger them to see you because you're even though they they're not made to see you, you're still in

their field of view. Um, if you have a couple of decent camel patterns or a bunch of bigger macro blobs, if you will, you can get away with a lot. Yeah. So, I mean what you're saying and what you alluded to before with people hunters with some experience that definitely understand this. When you know, when you get up there and you're in a little tiny tree and you're silhouetted against a bright sky or you know, the sunset or whatever, if even something that had terrible vision would be able to

see the movement, they're better one million percent. You know. That's that's what they're gonna key in on. It's all about taking the blob I keep saying blob, but you know, the figure that is yourself, and either hiding it behind something or moving ever so subtly that you don't cue them. But in the end, I can't stress enough the importance of covering your silhouette that will break up the movement pattern because it will basically, can they have poor depth perception,

it will converge. That tree basically converges with you into one thing. Does that make sense absolutely? I mean I set my stands to be behind the tree and shoot around it. Um yeah. Those those those saddles, you know, the saddle harness and all that, they make a really big difference in that. Um. I remember, you know, the first time I ever sat in a in a tower deer hunting, I kept getting pegged by deer. I was like,

what I'm covered? Why am I getting And I realized real quick I when instinctively, when I got into the tower blind, I had put a bunch of twigs up behind me to like stop my movement. And then well the deer we're used to like seeing nothing there, since all of a sudden, now there's a freak them out.

It's all about keeping with your environment. So I want to ask you about that then, So when you know, we we we've talked about how they can see certain colors and what and what what light positions or what light is beneficial to them. We've talked about movement, But what about that, dear, when you know you're you're up

in your stand, you don't move. It's not a deer, you want to shoot and it's just walking by you feel like it's it's over, and that your stops and looks right up at you and you haven't moved, right. That has everything to do with your that you're not blending in with your background because your camera pattern doesn't remember it's almost like a bright yellow color. You've got to remember that all your camera patterns are basically looking

at some subtle variation of yellow. When you start to realize that, well, then you're not blending in with your brown tree. In fact, most camera patterns aren't blending in with their surroundings all that. Well, just do you have really shitty vision? Right? So like yeah, at that point, it's just they paged you because you're sitting still silhouette

against the tree. Well, isn't Is there an element to that of just you know, their their life is condensed to you know, say a square mile as their home range, and they know it real, real, well and something new? No, yeah, no, I mean anyone that's ever hunted, you know, out about

ground blind or something. They'll tell you like it's a yeah, like all of a sudden, I know they can't see me yet their snort and old day at that ground blind, like, no doubt that there's something unique about it, but they have to be able to pick up that it's something unique about it. Uh. You know, ideally, what a good pattern would do, or a good set would do is you could sit up there and they wouldn't be able

to tell if there's something new going on there. So it all comes back to again, like them being able to detect you is the problem, not that you're something new. Yeah, that makes sense absolutely, Um, what what about the deer? What what are deer doing? When you get that old doll that comes in and she's she looks up at you and she's ups and does the head bob, what's she doing? So it's like, um, so you got she's actually trying to unsilhouette. You are getting depth perception from

her environment. So like, I don't know if you ever see it, but when like squirrels jump trees, they'll move their head a bunch before they jump a tree. And that's squirrels have the same thing as dear. They have a really good field of view because they don't want to get by hawks and everything else. But that means you only get good depth perception when your eyes actually cross over each other. That's why you and I have excellent depth perception. Our field of view on both eyes

crosses over for a majority of the view. Dear squirrels, most pre animals don't have that. They they'd rather have an expanded field of view, but not a lot of overlap between their two eyes, say a terrible death perception. So what they do to get that depth perception instead is roll that image over their eye by moving their head. And what they're doing is you're trying to get different images of the same kind of picture, if you will,

and it enhances some kind of depth perception. So what they're trying to do is see you versus their background. They almost they almost have to like build up a map of what they're looking at because of the way they're that's interesting, so in some way, you're in some ways if you want to think of it so simple as like they're trying to make you a three dimensional object from their two dimensional world. But it's not. It's

not that simple. But that's really kind of it. I think it was in the study in the in the uh, the original study we were talking about that you did where the blue light gosh, I think this was what what you had written about. When deer spooked and they take off, they flip their tail up and that's a very uh you know, we look at that and that's

a white flag going through the woods. But to them, that's tied to their blue light sensitivity, right, yeah, So if you look at what they're sensitive to, uh that that tail reflects a ton of blue and so that tail when it goes up is visible even the in the darkest of dark two deer. So yeah, it's a bright white tail to us, but to them, it's probably a bright blue tail or a very like you know what I'm saying, and it's gotta end. And so when they throw it up there, it's an alert at any

light condition. So it's reflecting exactly what they're most sensitive to. So this what makes me curious about that is a lot of people will take a deer decoy and they'll tie a little you know, paper towel or some kind of white flag to the ears and the tail, but they're probably that's probably not reflecting the same light as a deer's actual tail. Huh, No, no, it's not. I mean you're probably getting away more with you know, dear coming into it because they're curious and it's another dear

and there's movement. There's a bunch going on there. But it's not that doesn't necessarily have the same color as a dear tail would to them. What's an X man? So you do this that you've done and you said you've done what four studies on deer vision? Now, yeah, we've done four different studies on deer vision looking at their color discrimination, so like things like it's not just like we want to know just how well they can pick out this color of green versus this color of yellow.

Things like that, the movement, the refresh rate, all of that. Um, you know, we're working with a bunch. Are some companies actually to deter deer vehicle collisions, like you know, trying to make a headlight that actually you and I see as a normal headlight, but deer can't see. That's that's

the main application for a lot of this stuff. And then you know, spreading the word about thinking about how you're actually proceeds its world versus how you perceive its world and why those are so different, and how you should kind of incorporate that into your hunting strategies. The other thing. But the research is basically more or less wrapped up. We know, we've we've gone and been there and done that for almost all of it. So what's next?

Maybe just professionally, what are you like? Man? I want to know, I want to work on this. So I'm so I've pivoted completely, and I do a lot of work now with I work with Mike Chamberlain and a lot of turkey stuff. I do a lot of duck work, and I do a lot of deer management stuff at like broader scales and stuff with like working with state

agencies to set regulations and stuff like that. So I've I've had my fill of all the dear physiology stuff, and I love to tinker with it, But professionally I'm onto more of the like applied management behaviors and animals type stuff. All right, what what drives you the most nuts? Knowing what you know about dear vision and dear biology, what drives you the most nuts that you hear just the average hunters say about dear There's there's there's a

couple of things. So, Jill, I'll tell you what the worst thing with the toughest thing as a biologist is the general skepticism that hunters have towards scientists and regulators. Sometimes that's warranted in in the political world that we live in with decisions that are made, but oftentimes the people that are helping make decisions and inform science got

into it for a reason. It's because we're obsessive hunters ourselves now from a dear physiology and all this other stuff, all the science I've done, And what bothers me the most is, uh, two things. When I go out there and I see a state that's the Department Transportation that's spending millions of dollars to put together here to turn stuff that simply won't work. That's frustrating and a waste

of money. And then hunters that that basically latch onto a specific brand of clothing that they think the camouflage is somehow superior than another one when it's really all the same. And what you really just want to buy is a quality garment, not necessarily the camel pattern that's behind it. Yeah, you want something that's a you're gonna keep you warm and have a nice way to warmth ratio and allow you to draw your bow and move and stay out there in the cold, and all that

good stuff. And we've moved. So you know, there in the last ten years, there's there's several really excellent camouflage brands that I don't care what color they are, what squares and circles they put together, but the quality of their clothing and the comfort that you have in the field is a game changer, and that's what you should be focusing on. So you you I wanted to ask you that you kind of just brought it up there.

I kind of I kind of wanted to bring this full circle, you know, to ask you if you were keeping deer from getting hit down there in Georgia by cars now or is this this is still I'm guessing a work in progress. Huh. So there's one study that followed up on our study and all right, so you put together a headlight, right, and you say, okay, let's see if this this will work. Let's put together a headlight and uh see if dear, if the lower deer

vehicle collisions. Well, the way you do that is you've got to drive a car at deer going fifty five and like, yeah, that's good luck with doing that through uh you know, your approvals. But hey, there's one group that did it and they found they didn't actually change

the headlights. They instead did something which was interesting. They took a light and actually showed, reversed it and actually flashed it onto the car so that you and I it wouldn't you wouldn't see the light, but it basically puts a glow of a vehicle around while they were approaching Dear, and they found that a decreased the aralical collision.

So there's ongoing work there, but it's a slow process anything that you ever want tinkerd not just with the science but the actual you know, it's a federal level regulation of like, let's change headlights. You know that's that's gonna be like a thirty year care year goal. Well sure, I mean there's a ton of money at stake there, which you know, I guess could go either way with it.

But so when you talk about that and you say, okay, we're working on like a headlight with certain colors that you know, humans perceived as bright as we need to see them. But Dear don't see that. Why why do you want Dear to not see that light? Oh? Yeah, so it's it's because the deer in the headlight looking is a real thing. So they're so sensitive to light. We talked about that, that mirror reflectance and stuff like that.

They're so sensitive to light at night, right, So, like I said, they're reflecting like like crazy, all of a sudden, too bright or a bright light that's combined literally blinds them. It shuts down their photo receptors. It's not like they just, oh, they don't know what's behind the cart. It's that like they don't know what what's behind those lights, that's no doubt. But they're literally standing still because they're temporarily blinded. They

have no clue what's going on. So if you can get something that they're less sensitive to, you're less likely to blind them. They can then perceive that a car is coming at them sixty mile and get out of the way. It's that simple. Yeah, And and this would be something that would you know, if it worked, would reduce you know, dear vehicle collisions by you know, a certain degree. Right, Like, it's not gonna fix all of them, because they're gonna run out under roads, you know more.

Most of the deer that get hit or I won't say mark, most a proportion of the deer that could hit are simply running bucks that are running around and are just got one thing on their mind. And it's not even a matter of them being blinded. They're gonna run straight into your car anyway. Like, Yeah, it's not the solve all, but it's all about small mitigation efforts,

you know. They found that basically the best thing to gear vehicle collisions and simply put up a sign that says drive slow deer crossing, you know, and like flashing in front of people. It's a human it's a human problem more than it is a deer problem oftentimes. But our hope is that this can make a small incremental change to a pretty big problem. Yeah, I mean you you look at the driver awareness is a huge component.

You know, how close the woods are the cover is to the road, or how much of a ditch you have to see them. There's there's a lot of things going on there. But what an interesting I just think that's a cool opportunity for somebody like you who's who's a die hard bow hunter to suddenly get that professional opportunity to dig into a problem like that that has all these ancillary potential discoveries beyond a pretty admirable goal

of keeping people from hitting deer. You know, in general, I've lived the dream ever since I got in this field. You know, like I'm an obsessive hunter, and everything I do I won't lie. I related to how I'm hunting and how others are hunting and all that. What to be able to turn some of the information that we're getting and apply it to real world issues that are much bigger than just can I kill a deer more efficiently? It's very very satisfying. It's a it's a good feeling.

So if you had, if if there was unlimited funding and no real oversight, you're just free. Man, this is this is you just do your thing. What would you study with dear? What what's one thing that you're like, Man, I want to learn this or or you do you feel like we're kind of tapped out on dear? Absolutely?

I think I think we're tapped out onto your uh c w D, and questions regarding c w D are going to be ever present and ever important, and how c w D interacts with predation, hunting, all these other things that are killing dear super important to me. The more pressing issue, or what I'm more and more increasingly interested in, is how are we gonna aggregate and use that data to actually make a more robust UH management approach besides just kind of being like, Okay, coyotes killed, dear,

what does that mean? Should we kill what? Two less? Those in the bank limit? That sounds right and just go with it. Instead, it's like, how are we going to integrate all of this science into some kind of holistic management practice that responds to conditions on the ground quickly. That's where I think science is gonna head, so that it's transparent, clear and quick to the actual population needs at a local level. That's probably where we're at with

dear management. That's by the way, that that was sarcastic about people saying like, oh, yeah, just to let those but more or less you know, no, no, no, I get it. Uh. I mean that is one of the things I was I was just talking to a buddy of mine who's a conservation officer here in Minnesota, and so he deals with a wide range of you know, questions, and you know, he deals with the d n R as far as their biologists and their science research, and then he deals with the end user, you know, the

wide variants of hunters and fishermen out there. And one of the things that we just kind of got to talking about is how easy it is as a hunter to be like, Okay, I look at deer management through my forty acres that I've hunted because my grandpa owns it,

and that's what I care about. And then you look at you know, just take Minnesota as an example, a state that's pretty big, really diverse habitat wise and human population wise and deer population wise and predator wise, and then you start looking at an animal like the white taille and how there you know, there's a billion dollar industry built around this animal, and it's one of the

most interactive species that we have out there. And so as far as like the science around it and what we have to learn, this is a complicated situation because we're so involved with them and they play so well with man in so many different ways. It's not you know, it's not quite as simple as an isolated population of some animal, you know, largely unaffected by man. I guess I'd say sure. And and in the dear ecology world, a lot of it is we're building off things that

have already been done for many years. You know, each study is a is a logical step wise progress towards a better knowledge of how deer being affected by multiple processes, you know, And back in the day it was like, okay, how does this affect here? How does this affect here? And then we started to do how do this end this combined affect here? And now we're like three, four

or five layers deep in it. And the whole goal here is, you know, nowadays, in a world of social media and constant information at your fingertips, how do we be as transparent with the science as as possible and how do we be as happidly responding to issues as possible? And that is where I think, dear management, it's already going there. I mean, like, I'm not saying anything new, I'm not saying anything surprising, but that's where we're heading.

Is the process getting there might be painful because it takes a lot to get there, but that's where it's got to go. And is that are you? Are you so emphatic about that? Because without you know, support from the hunting population, this is a real this is a bit. Yeah, it's all about It's all about I think I told you from the beginning, is or when you said like what bothers me. It's the idea that the hunters don't buy into what we're talking unless. And I grew up

in New York, uh On, Pennsylvania. I know what it's like to have you know some I've heard a lot of different people being skeptical about decisions that are made. And so to me, I'm only emphatic about it because I know these people. I know the good they're trying to do, and I know where the message get or you can see where the message gets lost. And so to me, the the idea is in a day where data is that can be at your fingertips, I want you to see that data. I want you to understand

why we're doing what we're doing. It just makes sense to me. So that's where you give me unlimited money. It's it's promoting transparency, it's promoting data collection, and it's promoting sound management. It's not necessarily going to another spot to do a different type of iteration of the dear

Vision study. If that makes sense. Yeah, there is. There has historically been a pretty significant disconnect between a lot of state game agencies and the end user and what's really going on there, and that has led to a lot of problems. Yeah, well it comes back to a bunch of different things. Right, one is messaging, but it

also comes back to scale of management. You've talked about the guys forty acres, what that gout is forty years and me on my forty acres, what we see is a microcosm of of something that dear biologist isn't imagined for. They're imaging at best. You know, a region that's where we all want a head. You know, a lot of states have that already, but theoretically we make that region as small and small as possible so that the two

match up. But oftentimes it's so misaligned. You've got somebody that's managing and doing their stuff well and an otherwise pretty desolate landscape for deer, and they have to suffer those consequences, and see what I'm saying, or vice versa, somebody's not doing the right thing and a place that's got a pretty liberal season. So in the end, decreasing

the scale of our management and responsiveness. It all comes back to sound data collection, And honestly, that is not something that that's every that's something everybody wants, but time, money, effort, there's only so much you can possibly do. That's why

I say it with an unlimited budget. Part all right, man, last question for you here, So as a as a passionate hunter and a and a dear lover and a guy who's involved in the science, what is one thing, Like, what's one thing that pops out into your mind that you've learned through your research or somebody else's research that you've been studying up on where you're like, you know what, I'm taking that into the field with me, and I'm never going to forget that. How sensitive deer are all

animals are to hunting pressure. It's not I used to I used to know like, Okay, well, um, I'll just hunt this spot, my favorite spot with the right wind conditions with this, With this, I can hunt it when when I want. No, there's like a legacy effect of you going in and like and just being in that area. Like, I completely changed how I access my properties. I only

go in from the edges. I minimize the servants, not just on a good wind, but like I take as few freaking steps as possible, like and because are the science has clearly shown that just like your presence in that area is a tangible thing that deer can pick up on and they'll they'll start to avoid it really quickly. And that's probably why so many many bucks are shot during the ruts. They give up that that awareness to

chase those around, you know, plus being more active. Well yeah, and this is I love that you said that, because we are so I kind of look at this like it's really easy to spend somebody else's money, right, Like it's really easy to be like Jeff Bezos should pay this much in taxes, or he should spend this much or give this much a charity. But we don't look

at ourselves the same way. Typically. We do the same thing with hunting pressure, right, like we're always like, oh, this asshole came in and he walks around at first and last light and scares him all the way. But we don't think about the thing we can control, which is our pressure in a situation, because we're so biased towards what we want to do. And like you said, well, if I go in here in the winds, right, it's

all good. It's it's crazy, like you know, just even with the stuff we do with ducks and turkeys and what we see with deer and just about everything I mean, animals respond to hunters, and it's because I now realized you're coming sense like they have to. There's no other animal that they can interact with from eighty yards away and be killed. Yeah, like you know what I'm saying,

Like they've got to be on it immediately. And so you know, them turning nocturnal, them shifting their patterns, it's immediate, it's quick, it's lasting, and so it completely changes how I approach almost every situation. I I'm very strategic and where I go, I'm very strategic, and how I approach it um strategic. And if I have to leave when things go differently, and I've seen you know, I've harvest more dear, bigger dear because but I think for sure, man, uh,

such good stuff. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. This. This was a blast man. Yeah, I appreciate you having me. Thanks again. That's it for this week, folks. Be sure to tune in next week for some more white tailed goodness. This has been Where to Hunt and I'm your guest host,

Tony Peterson. As I always, thank you so much for listening, and if you're looking for more white tail content, be sure to check out the meat eator dot com slash wired to see a pile of new articles each week by Mark myself and a whole slew of white tail addicts, or head on over to our Wired to Hunt YouTube channel to view the weekly content we put up m