Ep. 545: The Science Behind CWD, Fawn Mortality, and Mature Buck Movement with Mike Chamberlain

Mark shot me a text last week and said he was off to a Segue Polo championship where his team, the Swinging Rollers, were bound to bring home the hardware. I don't know. Then he used a bunch of fist bumpy mode geez, which is how he ends all of his text So I guess good luck to Mark with a sport. I'm pretty sure he made up anyway. Today I'm speaking with Dr Michael Chamberlain, who is most well

known for his wild turkey research. Seriously, this guy knows more about wild turkey behavior than just about anyone, but he's also studied a bunch of other animals, including white tales. Topics throughout this episode range from currency to b a d researched fond mortality from black bears and other predators, as well as research into mature buck behavior and how they are so good at avoiding you and I throughout the fall. This podcast goes all over the place, but

it is just rooted in white tail research and so interesting. Michael, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Not a problem. I'm glad. I'm glad to be here. You have you been on the Meat Eater podcast. You've been on a whole bunch, and you are You're and I don't think this is crazy to say, but you're most all known for blowing people's minds. As far as turkey research, Yeah, i'd say that's that's probably accurate. Yeah, I'll do a lot of work with turkeys and have been my entar career.

I would say if anybody thinks they know a lot about turkeys, they should just find some of the stuff that you've put out and listened to it because it's fascinating. And I know this is a dear podcast, but I want to ask you one thing. This came up um earlier in the spring. I was I was out with one of my ten year old daughters and we were scouting birds and we were just sitting kind of glassing

waiting to photograph a little bit. And we where I live, the Mississippi River is only about ten miles away, and the Rum River and a couple of other rivers are really close. So we have a lot of bald eagles, and those bald eagles will fly over those birds, you know, the turkeys out in the field. The turkey's go nuts and they start making a bunch of noise and run for cover. And my daughter asked me, She's like, they must, you know, eagles must eat turkeys once in a while.

And I'm like, I have no idea, honey, but I bet I know the guy who's gonna tell me they do. Yeah, and they all, I mean, they'll attack and harass turkeys quite a bit. Um. It's hard to it's hard to quantify predation by eagles, um because most of the a lot of the sites I work on, we don't we don't have bald eagles, and if we do, it's they're they're not common, right, so Um, But they do absolutely occasionally prey on birds, and they certainly they certainly harass birds.

I've seen them harass birds several times. Yeah, I mean that's kind of I gave her more of a weasel word answer because I wasn't sure. But we did see an eagle up at the lake one time, grab a grab a goose, which was traumatizing for some of the kids because it was it was pretty rough. But I told her, I was like, you know, if they get the chance, they're gonna take us wipe. Yeah, you know, yeah, the one, the one eagle we know is pretty efficient

at killing turkey's as golden eagles. Yeah, they they'll they'll crush a bird and they're so big and they're so fast, and they the way they hunt and you know, the height that they come down from, you know, turkeys don't I mean, they don't stand a chance really. Um by the time the eagles there and the bird, you know, bird realizes, oh you know, they're going you know, over a hundred miles an hour, so it's, uh, it's lights out for the bird. So they'll do a dive like

a falcon. They'll get way high and then come down just smoking some Yeah. Sometimes that their flight speed is ridiculous. Um, So from a turkey's perspective, you know what I mean, you know, those turkeys they use their vision to be able to avoid predation. That's the primary line of defense. And if you've got an animal that's above you, you know, that's different than if it's on the same playing field

as you. You know, turkeys have that periscope head. And if what I've noticed in areas where turkeys are dealing with a lot of aerial predation or just harassment, they constantly look up. You'll see them, you know, constantly glancing up. Whereas here, like in the southeast where I live, in the in the forested areas, you don't see that a lot. You don't see birds that are constantly glancing up in the air because they're not used to seeing danger from

from above. But like I've I've watched Miriam's a number of times out west that they almost constantly glance up in the sky um at times, which to me just says there's a concern, you know, for the bird. They know danger it could be above and not just on

the ground. You know. I wonder, I know we're way off topic here, but I wonder if there's a similar parallel between trout that live in you know, maybe maybe a river that meanders through open ground versus you know, maybe a smaller stream in wooded territory if they're more spooky out in the you know, more open where there's

a better chance for aerial predation. Yeah, I mean maybe, I mean turkeys are you know, what we've seen is from a predation standpoint, they you know, they they have a suite of things that harass and attack and you know, so they I mean, that's that's one of the reasons turkeys are so weary, is they there's so many things that want to eat them, including us, that they they're hyper vigilant. You know, they're constantly vigilant of the of

their surroundings. And um, that's why, I mean, predation is structured the bird that we love, the chase, and the reason they're so fond to hunt in many ways, it's because of the predators that they've interacted with for you know, for eons. Yeah, all right, let's let's I could talk to you for about turkeys for a long time, but we should talk about dear Can you can you just give the listeners, uh, you know, kind of a summary of what where you came from and what you're doing

for research right now? Yeah, So I grew up in Virginia. I was a I was a suburban kid got to hunt on the weekends with my dad. Add Um. I went to college at Virginia Tech major and wilife science, and then I ended up getting an opportunity to go to graduate school at Mississippi State. I did my master's research on on wild turkeys there and um volunteered with some with some other students and was able to get involved in dear research actually a little bit. And then

I went to UH. I stayed there and did my PhD degree, which also involved turkeys, but also uh dealt with predators. I actually radio mark turkey's at the same time as bobcats, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, and I tracked them all simultaneously to see how they were interacting with each other. And then when I graduated with my doctorate, I was hired at l s U Louisiana State University, and when I went there, I started studying literally everything uh UM.

I was fortunate to be supported by agencies that putting me under, you know, on contracts to do research, so I literally I studied. I started studying deer, I continue to study turkeys. I did wolf research, kayak research, raccoon research. I mean just a bunch of different things, and um, but as I've as I've gone through my career, I've been fortunate enough to be able to kind of specialize now and the work I have now is only basically turkey work, except for one large deer project that we

we have in Arkansas right now. UM, looking at at c w D and some of the impacts of that disease on that on that population. So so yeah, he's that ongoing right now. Yeah, we're in our second field season. What's the goal of that study. We're actually we're looking at um differences in behavior of CWD positive versus presume negative animals. We're looking to see what in fluences the

disease may have on fond survival. We're looking at how these animals are interacting with each other, because we have positive animals that were that are we're GPS monitoring, and we have animals that are negative when we catch them the first time and then at some point they become positive. So we're tracking this to to see how these animals change their behavior so that we can inform the agency as to what the future looks like for you know,

how is this disease spread? We know it, we know in a general sense, how it's spread, but what does that look like from a movement perspective. We're estimating deer density in the in the area, trying to tell the agency how many deer out there, uh, And then ultimately what we're going to do is is model what this population is going to look like five years, twenty years, fifty years down the road, so that the agency can understand what the fields going to look like as this

disease progresses. Because you know, we all know, you know, in areas where it's prevalent, and it's very prevalent in northwest Arkansas, these the cw D zones tend to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Not in all cases, but in many cases they do, and the agencies have to continue to expand the zones and the and we want to be able to inform the agency what that's going to look like in the future. And so you're just building, I mean, and you're you're taking something that wasn't probably

possible that long ago. You're monitoring healthy deer and infected deer and watching how they interact, how many points of contact they have, the density, and just to see like what does this tell us about the future of what this is going to turn into. Yeah, exactly, did I scare you? Um? In some ways? Yes? And I you know, as a deer hunter first and foremost, you know, I've seen what's happened two deer populations and in areas where

with a high prevalence. One only need to go to where we're trapping to see the area of the zoom that we're trapping in that has the highest prevalence. Deer density is very very low, um, and there's there's obvious reason for that. This is a you know, a fatal disease every time. So as a deer hunter, that really

i'd say it it very much concerns me. You know, I hunt deer and in a number of states, but my you know, the two states that I hunt the most in would be Georgia here where I live in Louisiana, where I've been in a camp for for many many years.

And c w D has not been detected yet in Georgia, but it was recently detected in Louisiana, and that changes everything, as you know, when that disease is encountered, Uh, everything changes from that forward, you know, that point forward, um, when you when you talk about there being a lower

density in those the high c w D areas. Let's I want to talk about that a little bit because I think it's like very easy for for the general hunting population to kind of be dismissive of CTWD because you go, Okay, well it's not gonna kill it till seven and a half years old or six and a half years old or whatever. And you know, most of

the deer we're hunting are way younger than that. But there has to be you know, not only the like you said, it's fatal, but are you seeing you know, CWD infected deer when they hit a certain age, Uh, you know, the fecundity of the of the entire herd drops a little bit. Like I mean, are they producing as many fonds as healthy deer? Probably not right. That's well, that's one thing we're trying to learn. We're trying to

figure out what this research, what that looks like. Um. And you know, there's obviously from a logical perspective, you would think, yes that there there would be some impacts. But but that's one thing we're trying to quantify for sure. Yeah, so you you assume that, but you're you're waiting for the data to show you that it's true. Yeah, never assume anything. I can assume it. Um, I've learned my lesson with assumptions. They're fraught with with getting your butt

in a sling. So you know, I wait until I have silent information in hand for sure. How many years are you doing this study before you will be able to sort of model out, you know, into the distant future.

And we have four field seasons plan, so we're in our second field season now, so we'll trap two more years and then you know, there's a there's a PhD on student on the project now, he'll finish up two years from now, and a post doctoral researcher will come on and kind of wrap the study up and we'll start disseminating information, you know, probably actually next year because the student will have some information that we can start publishing.

And uh, I'm really interested in what work. I mean, I've I've kind of get bits of what we're seeing, you know, Um, but it will be really interesting once we have the data crunchton we can explain it to people. Is this the most Uh, I don't know if comprehensive is the right word. Is it the most advanced study on CDWD in that in that capacity that's going on right now in the South. In the South, is somebody up north doing it. There's been you know, there's been

ongoing CWD research in other areas for years. Um, it's just not you know, in the southern US, there just hasn't been you know, until very recently. If you just look the number of states that have reported detections in the South within the past few years, it's it's pretty dramatic.

So so I think there are some agencies that are looking at this study with a keen eye because we we will not only provide Arkansas Game and Fish with information it's relevant obviously to them, but other states will be able to benefit from the same information, particularly states that are have recently detected CWD and they're trying to understand what what is it that's going to look like, what's it going to look like five years from now,

ten years from now. And you know, a couple of the states that have have recently documented detections are also seeing pretty high prevalence rates, you know, like you see in northwest Arkansas. So I think there are a number of states that are looking at it's the study and and hoping that it's going to provide relevant information to them, and that's that's ultimately our goal is to not just benefit the agency that's funding the work, but also other

agencies that are dealing with the same problem. Yeah, well this, this, this work that's going on there in Arkansas, is this going to be a way to kind of Uh, there's an argument made often amongst hunters. It's like CWT has always been here, it's always been on the landscape, and we're only just finding it now because we're testing for it. Will this kind of be the nail in the coffin

to that argument? Uh? No, No, because, like you and I talked about before we got on air, Uh, you'll never put a nail in any coffin um in our society, I don't think at this point, because there are naysayers regardless of what topic you come up with. Even when science provides answers, there's always the argument that, well, what if, what if? This? What if? That? In science is not absolute and we change things change I mean from a

scientific perspective. You know, I've published work myself that discounted work I did previously. That's I mean that's just part of being a scientist. And so I don't I don't ever look at what I do is and think that's that's it. That's we're shutting the door on that because it's just not reality dealing with people and in dealing with natural systems where there's a lot of there's a

lot of chaos. You know, we work in outside and there's a lot of things going on and and the you know, in the environment, that creates noise in our data. So we're constantly learning new things or determining that we didn't know what we thought we knew, and that creates skepticism, as you know, with with people in the public, despite the fact that you know, from the start, we're simply trying to provide information under the recognition that sometimes that

information contradicts other pieces of information. That's the way science works. Yeah, there's a the problem with the system is science is you know, science in and of itself is to prove things wrong, and it's going to prove previous science wrong. And that gives that gives people sort of an out for taking it seriously because they can look at and goal, you, you did this wrong. For it's like we're just leveling up information a little bit at a time and learning

more and more stuff. And it's you know, it is really inexact, but it's it's so interesting to see, you know, when I I'm pretty fortunate to get to talk to people like you quite often who work in you know, dear science and deer research and wildlife biology, and when c w D comes up, there's always a different feel to the conversation with somebody who's studying it versus somebody you know who who is whatever they are in their

life and just likes to deer hunt. There's a big gap there, and I don't know, you know, I just look at this issue and I I'm like, man, we better learn as much as we can about it. Yeah, because that's important. It's a polarizing, contentious topic. And I think part of that goes back to the way that agencies typically react to c w D. You know, there

have been somebody and sees that liberalized deer harvest. There have been, um, you know, the way that this disease is handled creates in many ways contention, you know, And and I get it. I understand as a deer hunter, I understand, like we were talking about when I when I got a text saying, you know, c w D has been detected in this parish in Louisiana, I thought, oh, damn, you know what I mean, my heart sink. I was like, well,

that's it. You know that everything changes today. Um. And I think a lot of hunters feel like like that, and they they're like, oh, you know, the the sky is falling in it. And I get that because it's hard not to think like that given how serious this disease is. Um. If you don't believe that, you just have to understand that deer don't survive this disease. I mean, it's it's like Alzheimer's and you know in humans. I mean I watched my father deal with Alzheimer's for years

and it's just unbelievable. So you have this disease that's out there that they do not survive. Period. Uh. Anyone that can look at that and not think that's problematic to me, that's that's a that's an odd point of view. Frankly, Well, I mean I think part of the part of that issue is, you know, a lot of the current hunters have only known really pretty good times with white tails, you know, I mean, like We've been just really really lucky,

you know. I mean, I'm I'm forty one, and you know, I can remember starting hunting when I was twelve in Minnesota and there weren't as many deer then, but we could still go out and see deer and just you know, we it wasn't very long before we had a lot of deer and we could shoot you know, four doors in a season, and it was, you know, kind of unprecedented times. And that's happened in a lot of places, you know, I mean bigwood stuff, and you know, our

North different story. Uh, but so many, so many people out there who are into this don't really know any different than those deer are always gonna be there and we're always going to have him to hunt, right Yeah. I mean, I'm fifty and I remember talking to my dad when he was in his sixties and we broth. We both grew up in Virginia, and I can remember him telling me that it was front page news when

he was a kid to see a deer track. And you know, I was born in ninety one and I remember as a as a child how special it was to see a deer if you went to hunt. I mean, I can remember sitting for days and not seeing an animal, and much less killing one. I also remember many many seasons where if I killed one deer, I was that was it. I was tickled. And now you know, on most weekends I averaged one. I mean, it's between shooting dose and killing bucks. It's I mean, shooting a deer

is It's just commonplace now. So I've I've seen it from both perspectives, and the thought of going back to what I grew up doing, which was not seeing dear. I don't know how I continued to be a deer hunter, frankly, because it was hard to get through a season and and I can remember several years killing a deer on the last day of a long deer season and just being relieved, almost relieved. You know that I did it, You know I did it. I finally got one, and

I hunted a lot. It's not like I went three or four times, you know, days and days and days. And I think back to if I were trying to take a kid and recruit that person into the hunting ranks and make them as passionate as I am about deer hunting, and they didn't see dear. It's a tough sell. Yep, that's a that's a tough sell. So so yeah, I

see I see it through both lenses. Yeah, I mean that that not just the promise or the optimism that you'll see, dear is worth so much to a hunter and going out, you know, I go hunt, uh the big woods in Wisconsin quite a bit. In northern Wisconsin. The deer population is low and the predator population is high, and it's you know, the same story in a lot

of places. And you know, it's I might go a week without seeing a deer or two weeks without seeing a deer, or sometimes I'll go over there and I've got a dough tag and I'm like, I'm gonna, you know, do in a buck tag. I'll be like, the next one that comes down the trail, I'm gonna shoot. And

it might take me weeks to make that happen. And I look at that and I go, Man, if you know, there's an awful lot of people who don't have the time and the you know, the abilities that I do to get out there like that, that would go no way, this is so not worth it, because it's just it is not that much fun when you go out there and you're like, I'm probably not going to see anything today. I'm certainly probably not gonna have anything come within range.

It's a tough thing. Yeah, alas sure is. You know, at this point in my hunting career, you know, the harvest is is one thing. It's much less important than it used to be when I was young. A perfect hunt for me, honestly, and this is this is no

this is no joke. I've said this before. Getting in a stand and just being snowed in with deer all afternoon, you know, looking over a green field or something and just having deer act like deer um and being able to get out of the stand in the dark, not have to clean a deer, go and have a beer and turn the grill on. That's a perfect afternoon of hunting, seeing lots of animals and just being able to sit there and relax and watch them beat themselves. That's that's

awesome for me. And I just from remember back when I was a kid, I never had that possibility and and like I said, it's a wonder that I continued to to deer hunt because it was tough, you know, and when my when my kids were growing up, you know, they were fortunate to have access to two really good properties. We're seeing deer. It was just I mean you they were going to see deer every single hunt, I mean period,

and sometimes they'd see a lot of deer. And you know, it's it's a lot easier to get a kid hooked on the you know, the experience and and let their passion flourish if they know they're going to be successful. Um And talking about c w D. You know, for instance, some of these some of these folks that are hunting and in our study area in northwest Arkansas, they they're ready to quit. They aren't seeing dear and then when they do see deer and they harvest bucks, they're all positive.

They all they all test positive. And you know that's really frustrating. One you you're you're trying to see animals, you finally see animals, you kill an animal, and then you can't consume it. Um. You know, there have been a number of hunters expressed, have expressed to us that they're just ready to put their hands up. Uh, and I understand that very frustrating. Do you think, I mean, I know this is I know, you don't want to

make assumptions but I'm gonna ask you to anyway. Is there is there a way out of the c w D thing? Is there is there any way you see that this works out, where we figure something out that we can kind of end this thing or or lock it up a little bit. Um, You're probably asking the wrong person. I'm an eternal pessimist, UM, and I don't I don't say that lightly. UM. I tend to be very, very skeptical of of everything in life these days. And

this is just a an impossible situation. It really is. UM. In areas where the prevalence has gotten as high as it is in some areas, it is a tough, tough situation. I don't think there's going to be a light bulb that turns on. No. I think this is something that we're going to have to deal with. I'll be long gone and we'll still be dealing with it. Agencies will be dealing with it, Hunters will be dealing with it. I hope that it is less impactful than I think

it's going to be. But the pessimist in me UM is concerned about what my passion is going to look like ten years from now, twenty years yikes. I But I get it, man. Uh, let's let's switch topics here to something less less heavy. It's morbid, yea, yeah, maybe a little more hopeful. Yeah, let's do something that's that's more lighthearted. Your research, your dear research, it seems to almost all take place, or probably has all taken place, uh,

in the South and Southeast primarily. Is that just because that's where you live and you grew up and you're like, well, that's where I want to be, or did you recognize a hole in the research game somewhere and go, you know, those northern deer have been studied enough, let's figure out

the southern deer. No, it's just opportunity. I've just had the opportunities where I've been housed the work in Arkansas, you know, that's the That's the only dear study that I've done that I've been involved with that was outside of of my home state. I mean, I did the work that I sent you that we did in Louisiana. I was technically here in Georgia, but you know, I've I've spent a lot of time in Louisiana. I'm very familiar with with that state and the deer herds that

are there. So no, it's just been a thing of opportunity. Yeah, just just it is what it is. Uh, let's can we talk about the fawns and the bears in Louisiana. Yeah, because you know, I hunt two places or two states with you know, Minnesota where I hunt, has a decent bear population in some of the spots, but Wisconsin where

I hunt, has a real high bear population. And I know I'm probably gonna totally miss quote this, but the d n R there did a fawn mortality study in one of the counties that I hunt quite a bit. This was probably eight or ten years ago now, but I remember looking at it and the the mortality rate for fawns was up to eleven months old. So all the fonds that hit the landscape, you know, nine out of every town of them died before they made it past eleven months, so basically a year. And the number

one predator was black bears. And you know, this is this is an area with wolves, bobcats, coyotes. You know, we run trail cameras over there, and it's like a one to one ratio of deer to predators. I mean that you get, you know, and I know that's totally anecdotal, But it's just I just say that because it's a it's a predator dense region. Uh. And people when you tell people that about the bears, they go, no, way, like not when you have wolves and coyotes and stuff.

And I think people underestimate how good bears are at at at snatching up fawns. Yeah, and that that work we did in Louisiana that was a that was a bottom lane of hardwood forest. Uh. For people that are listening that are not familiar with what that means, it's wet, wet soils, hardwood, all hardwoods, mature forest interspersed with agricultural fields and regenerating forest areas. UM. And it has superproductive deer herds. And in that part of the world, the

deer herds are very very productive. They produce a lot of faons. But in that particular study, UM, bears are very very common in that part of Louisiana. UM. We actually had three predators at eight fawns in that study. We lost fawns to bears. Of course, we lost fawns to coyotes, and we lost fawns to bobcats. And by far,

bears were the most common predator of a fawn. They took about half of the fawnds that that died were killed by bears um and we what we ended up seeing is that most of that predation was very very early after the fall and hit the ground. You know, at that point, Mom's off somewhere, other fawn is is hanging out making decisions on its own. And that's something a lot of people don't think through is you know,

she's not standing there saying don't move, don't move. You know, those fallings, they get up and they move around on their own. They may not move far. And we saw that's when the bears got them, was you know, that first handful of days after they were born. And a lot of the predation occurred in areas where it looked to us like bears were actually foraging on other stuff, soft mass that was available, fruits, you know, berries and

that was really good fawning cover. And those dose were you know, those were putting fawns in those areas, and then bears were just meandering through there. And you know, bears have an exceptional sense of smell and it's not difficult for a bear to catch a fawn. I mean, they're they're walking along. They you know, people think, well

they're there's big lumbering kind of you know thing. No, when they decide they're going to attack something, they go and they were they were a primary predator fawns in that study. And um, we actually have seen that in other work. There's some ongoing work here in Georgia also showing that bears are taking fawns as well. So they're

I mean, they're an efficient faon predator. So I had always assumed that, you know, with the bear's nose and I had always just assumed they were they were focusing in on fawning grounds and they were coursing back and forth until they ran across funds. But you're saying that a lot of the faun predation from bears is just sort of you know, right place at the right time for the bear and just an incidental encounter. No, I think there's probably truth to both both lines. That you know,

fawns are that's a rich price source. I mean, if you it's a huge protein pack, and you know, bears are in the summer, they're breeding, you know, and females that have cubs with them are lactating and there I mean they need energy. So I think in our case, it was a combination of a lot of the good fawning cover happened to be in areas that bears were also foraging in, and that just happened to put fawns in places where they were very likely to be, you know,

interacting with a with a bear. Of course they're going to lose um our, falln survival rate. And that study was about twenty seven so you know, more than almost yeah, seventy plus percent mortality, which is pretty consistent frankly with what we're seeing and a lot of studies in the South. You know, it's it's tough being a fawn for sure, in these predator rich communities like what you described were.

You know up north, you know you have a not only do you have a lot of different types of things that eat fawns, but you have a high density of those animals as well. And that's what we saw in Louisiana and that study you reference. We not only did we have three primary predators, but the density of

those predators was high. Yeah. Yeah, and up where where I was talking, you also have but once every five years, you have a winner that's really really working hard, to set them set the overall herd back to and I have to imagine that has a pretty big effect on it as well, as far as you know, maybe having singles versus twins, and you know overall fin production as well. Sure. Yeah, And and in our part of the world, at least

in Louisiana, it's obviously it's not a winner issue. As far as snow and cold water is is the biggie um are super wet springs where we have a lot of flooding, and that's been very common the past decade, um much more common than it has been historically, and those deer herds. Flooding during the spring and summer can can really negatively impact falling production UM through a variety of mechanisms, ranging from just condition of the dose too.

You know, those fawns being dropped in areas where either there's very little fawning cover and everything's concentrated, separdation rates increase, so it's it's not it's not really winter in the in that part of the world, it's actually spring and summer that can be really problematic for falls. I was I was wondering about that when you were talking about the water. Is there you know, I had a I

had a lesson in that when I hunted. I hunted white tails in Florida one time, and you know, it was it was first week August and it was pouring rain. You know that that monsoon rolls in every day at three o'clock and you get you know, it feels like four inches of rain in an hour and it's done and gets super hot. But what it was what made it so miserable was the high ground where we were hunting. Everything was there, all the bugs, all the snakes, you know.

And is is there a component of that with the that you see in the Louisiana fons too, because I have to imagine it probably concentrates ticks and stuff as well or not. Oh, it concentrates everything, yeah, I mean, and it's just such a cumulative effect of floodwaters like that one. You know, mosquitoes are absolutely insane. Um during those flood years like that, you've concentrated everything on small patches of ground. You have stressed. Everything that's there is stressed.

So from a deer's perspective, their stress hormones are off the charts. Um. You know, at at fawning time, you know, does are designed to go be alone and drop those fawns, and they space themselves in a way where they're not hanging around with other does. And when flood waters concentrate animals, they can't do that, so their entire ecology breaks down

during these flood events. And what we've seen, what I've seen anecdotally on my own on my own camp property, uh, is you know we want I can tell you right out of the box. If we have a prolonged flood event in the spring and summer and fawning there is in August, late July and August. If we have flooding into early in midsummer, our fonds take an absolute hammer. Um, it gets really really bad. And you know what you mentioned,

you know, your winner events up north. What that does, other than just kill a bunch of faons that year, is that age cohort progresses through time. So in other words, okay, well this year we lose, let's just say our fond survival was ten. Well, next year we're going to have a dramatically lower percentage of year and a half old doze and bucks then we're normally supposed to have. And now when they get to be two and a half

and those does start becoming more productive. There's fewer of them, and then that age cohort goes through time and by the time they reach four or five or six years old, you know at the point where at least from a quote unquote trophy deer management perspective, you know, you start harvesting some of these animals, there aren't any there's very few in the population, and so these effects are not

just a one year effect there. You know, these they become a cumulative it's through time and um and that's really tough from a management scenario, you know, a management perspective, it creates some challenges because you're trying to think out what's this hard going to look like years down the road that you know up here where I live. The the age class situation comes up most often with fish management,

right like walleyes. Uh, you know, big topic here and you know the perch to some extent some of the other game fish, but you hear that a lot where you know, yeah, a poor spring or a poor spawn sucks. But where you really start to get hit is when those fish should be like prime spawning age and there's a big gap in the year classes there and you

see it stretch out. It's it's such a good reminder of how difficult game management really is when you when you talk about just the whims of mother nature and the weather that you're gonna get, and you know, you get three of those real wet years in a row, like the challenge to manage that, you know, three years beyond that or five years beyond that. He's really tough.

And a lot of people have short memories, so they think, why don't I have these deer now, or why don't I have these walleyes now when you're when you're wrestling with what happened, you know, half a decade ago. Yeah, yeah, And it's really frustrating for for landowners, you know, and managers as well, because you do everything right and then mother nature bite you and there's absolutely nothing you can

do about it. And you know, again, I'm I'm speaking specifically about my experiences in Louisiana, but it's um it can happen anywhere, you know, like here in my backyard this winter, for instance, we had a very poor mass crop and what that did was obvious to our dear herd. I harvested a buck about it was the second weekend of November, no, first week in in November. And he was way way underweight compared to what he should have been. And he was a six year old. And of course

I was tickled to kill him. But when I stood there and looked at him on the ground, I thought to myself, this guy would have been in trouble come late winter, um because and and we our body weights were down uniformly, they were down, and and that matters, you know. So it may not be a catastrophic event like a flood, but even these subtle environmental changes they change your management because they alter the herd in ways. It may not be very dramatic. They're more subtle, you know.

But a deer going into winter fifteen pounds lighter than he should be, that's a problem. Yeah, let's maybe there's a weird jump here, but that that's what always amazes me when you get to observe, uh, you know, deer on a food plot somewhere. You know, my my experience is more up here. I've hunted down south a little bit, but I hunted up north a lot. And you see sometimes if you have like a little kill plot, you'll see one great big doll sort of claimant and she's

fighting everybody that comes in. I mean, she's she's swinging hooves at everybody. And it's so it's it's a behavior that you like, you're not you don't witness very often, right, and you look at it and you go, it's the

same thing with turkeys, especially fall turkeys. Like you see how territorial they get over a food source, and you're like, yeah, that's because they need every freaking calorie they can get, because if they don't get it, you know, and they go into the winter in the wrong condition, it's over for them. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's you know, they're wired to reproduce and survive. That's what these animals are

wired to do. And um, surviving is is calories and predation, you know, So you have to forge and you have to be successful, and when times get lean, you have take matters in your own hands. Like what you just you know with turkeys is really obvious because you can just see them fight each other constantly when they encounter prey in the in the fall and winter, and and

dear do the same thing. Obviously. What I've noticed is on larger you know, on smaller plots, which I try not to even plant, but on larger plots, you'll often see these matriarchal groups kind of separate themselves. You'll have a you know, a doe and and her last year's

fawn and then this year's fawn. They'll come in over here, and another group will come in over on the other side, and they'll kind of they'll kind of keep their distance from each other in a way that, um, they avoid strife, you know, they And that's that's one reason I actually try to encourage people that I've worked with that, you know,

if you have the capability of planning larger plots, do it. Um. One, you'll attract more animals, But to you, you end up, I've experienced, you end up with a lot calmer animals.

Um if you can kind of separate everybody and let let them do their thing, and it's a lot of fun if you can sit there and watch you know, four or five different groups, those that are that are foraging, rather than one that comes in a tiny, a little plot and when her buddy shows up, she runs off, and that type of thing, and it's not as enjoyable.

I've never ever thought about that from the perspective of how you could how you could calm your deer down a little bit by giving them some more space to self segregate and you know, not not be as on edge and competitive all the time. Yeah, and you can see this, I mean, you you see this. You know, there's another contentious topic, but hunting over bait for instance, well, trapping over baits the same thing. I mean, we trap

over We trapped turkeys and deer with bait. And there is no question that if you have a food source there in times or lean, when one animal decides he or she's going to come in there, if they're socially dominant it over another animal, they're going to displace that animal. That's just the way it is. So when you've got a praise source, that's that's local laws and it's just right here, that's that's what I'm using, then you should

expect to see that displacement. Whereas if that praise source is stretched across five acres, for instance, that you don't see that social strife. That's what I've noticed in my in my own hunting experience. Well, you see that with bears, you know, when when you're baiting black bears, you see that. I mean, I think The best example though, is that fall Turkey. If you figure out where you know a group of hens and poults are gonna feed every day, and you go in there and put one single feeding

hen decoy in there, he starts squawking away. You see hen behavior that's wild, and they they get so in and that the groups of tom's doing the fall as well. But you see it's it's almost it's more striking when you see hens come in like strutting, a chest bumping, and you know, I've arrowed birds in the fall that go tip over and then the other ones go stand out here and stop here, just like the times doing the spring, and it's it's just pure dominance. Man. Yeah, yeah,

it's pretty that's pretty cool behavior. Yeah it is. Let's talk I know everybody wants to hear about this. Uh, let's talk that Louisiana study on mature buck movement. Yeah. So what we did there is that was actually the same study site that we did the fawn work that where we saw the bare predation, but that other aspect of the study as we captured bucks and we put GPS collars on them and we collected locations so that we could obviously describe, you know, how they were moving.

And on that study site, we we had the luxury or the fourth fortune, I guess, of having an area that was that was very very lightly hunted. This was public land, uh, a section that was essentially a sanctuary basically, um. And then the rest of the area was open access. So we were we were able to see how pressure influenced buck behave of yours, which was cool and just anecdotally,

we were able to observe some really cool behaviors. For instance, you know bucks that took excursions and we're gone for four or five months and then came back. Bucks that maintained two different home ranges each year. You know, they had a fall winter home range and then they had a spring summer home range, and literally they were miles apart from each other. So we yeah, we we've had some cool data that we got out of that study.

And you know, as hunters that really you know, the fawn predation stuff that's obviously important, but the data on bucks, you know, just people eat it up, you know, and I get it. I did too. I look at them like, oh wow, that's that's really cool. UM. We also saw a lot of individual variation in behavior across bucks, irrespective of age, and that's something that we're seeing in turkeys as an aside, and a lot of studies are seeing it with with other species, that there's no such thing

as an average deer. They all they all have behaviors that are that are kind of individual which, you know, kind kind of makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense. It's intuitively makes perfect sense. It's just harder for us to sort of wrap our brain around because we'd like to just generalize. Oh sure, yeah, it's like, yeah, of course, hey that Yeah, there's only two kinds of bucks. The way to kill this one is to do this, and the way to kill the other one is to do that,

And in reality that's not the way they function. So with with the the deer that had to home ranges, those those bucks where you're saying, okay, they got fall winter and they got spring summer. Not not all the bucks have that, right, No, that was just a handful. What what do you think that is? Why do you think some bucks are like I'm gonna light out, you know, eight miles away, and I'm gonna spend my springing my summer there, and I'm gonna come back in the fall

of this spot. But some of them are like, no way, I honestly have no idea. We we speculated that, you know, maybe there was there was some genetic you know, this animal was from animals that had made similar behaviors before. But who knows? And what was really crazy with those the two in particular, I can remember where they went when they left to go to a different home range. Didn't look anything different than where they left from. Like I just, um, it just didn't really make any sense.

It was almost as if they pulled the you know, the the vacation card, if you will, like I'm just going to go over here and hang out. And they did it multiple years. It's not they didn't just do this once. Uh. In fact, one of these bucks he

did that every year. He went to the exact same spot when he left his one home range he went, I mean took him about a day and a half and he went over to the other range, so he knew exactly where he was going, and he walked straight over there to that spot and then hung out there all spring and summer. Um, no idea why that is there? From a you know, an ecological perspective, there there's some mechanisms that may be going on there, you know, animals

that we think maybe they're prospecting for other areas. Maybe the fact that bucks did that outside of the rut kind of destroys that theory, because what are they prospecting if they're not, if they're not taking these excursions during the rut, which most of them were not during the rut, then seeing does well that that argument shot, you know, well, is he going somewhere that has some abundant resource you

know that he can't get where he was? Well, in our case, the answer was no, he left the bottom land four that had agriculture and he walked over to another bottom land forest that had agriculture. And you know, we were kind of dumbfounded, to be honest with you, um and you know stuff like that. Honestly, Tony, we'll never we'll never know, we'll never understand some of that.

And that's good. That's I think it's kind of cool, as like, you know, I don't honestly know what the answer to that is and maybe I never will, And that's okay. I think that stuff's fascinating when you so when you say that and you go, okay, the the dough availability of dose same in both spots, the abundance

of food same in both spots. So you just think, all right, is that a genetic carryover where at one point it was beneficial for some deer or some of the deer's ancestors to move, you know, to where they were born or some some other spot for half of the year. And some of them still carry that and it's still expressed in their genes, and some of them don't. And then you're like, okay, well, if that's the case,

what is it, like, where did that come from? Maybe he was born there, you know, Maybe these bucks were born years ago and they you know, and and one of these older one of these bucks was was an older guy. Um, for all we know, maybe he was fawned over eight miles away, and when he dispersed as a year and a half old buck, he dispersed to where we ended up catching him, and for whatever reason, he was just predisposed to go home each each summer and go back to an area that he was his

natal area. The problem is we obviously we would have to catch them as fawns and then track them for a number of years to be able to determine that and you and we couldn't in that study, but that's a plausible hypothesis, is that he was he was born there. How often in your research in your career do you just just have those moments where you go, there, there's so much left for us to learn every day, every

single day. Uh, And that in some ways is is maddening. Uh, And in some ways it it's Uh it makes me smile because there will be work to do long after I'm gone. Um. I would say probably most days I think more about, Okay, I just we just learned this. Um, well, now that we know that, we now don't know this, this and this or I can't explain what we just observed.

What's it going to take to get an answer to that? Well, I'm going to need to do this, this and this and this, this and this is going to take two years and just every day it's like we just know so little, and as we learn things, we create more questions than answers in a lot of cases. And that's what I see with with with a lot of my Turkey work right now, is we just everything we learn it's good And you're like, oh, that's that's interesting. I'm you know, and then you sit back and think, why

is that? And that doesn't make any sense? So let me think through that. And then I think through it for a week or and I come to the conclusion that, uh, I don't have an explanation for that, and to get one, it's going to take more information. Okay, well I can get more information, but that takes time. So you're in this catch twenty two where you're constantly learning things and questioning things, and you realize the solution to to some of these questions is just time and data. And we

are an instant gratification society. You know. We want answers now, we want answers yesterday, and that's just not the way

my line of work, you know, functions. But what I what I love about it when you talk about those bucks in the in the you know, the two different home ranges, or I had I had John McRoberts on here talking about that Missouri buck that that went like a hundred eighty miles that they had collared, you know, and it makes me it's this is probably sounds super weird, but I sort of feel like the deer are just throwing up a pair of middle fingers at us and

They're like, you're never gonna know what we're doing. Like, you're never gonna know, no matter how many cell cameras you have, no matter how many different ways, like we get to tip the odds in our favor where there's still so much we're just never gonna know. Yeah, and that's the way it probably should be. Yeah, you know, I think about you know, dear, I'm a fanatical I'd say I'm I'm a passionate turkey hunter. I'm a fanatical

deer hunter. I mean, when it gets to be September, my my mind goes to places that my wife will tell you. She's like, oh, you know, Christ, he's he's about to go into his crazy place. Um. And I just love the deer hunt, and I loved I love the challenge of finding a buck or an area that that I know I'm got I've got a good chance for encountering a mature deer. The the chase to kill that animal is is it just fuels me in the fall. That's why I get up in the morning. I think

about it all the time. And I have run across bucks as you have that I think are just they're not killed, They're just I tried every possible thing across a number of years to kill them, and I just didn't. Now a lot of times I've been successful and killed animals I was after, but I've also gotten my my ass kick too. And that's honestly now in my life, is as much, if not more fun than harvesting one, because they show me that I just know so little.

You know, even though I know everything, I you know, I think I know enough to get him. I did, I still didn't. In fact, I give you an example. This was at my camp in Louisiana. We had a deer on camera. This was years ago, a beautiful, beautiful ten point, just a gorgeous hundred you know, hundred sixty animal. Had him on camera in October, and man, he was my he was my guy. I was like, Okay, I'm going to hunt that deer and I'll kill him. It

may take me all season, but I'll kill him. Nobody ever saw that, dear um cameras everywhere, you know, hunters everywhere. There's about ten of us that hunt the property routinely. A deer was shot twelve miles away, and I thought to myself, I wasted a lot of time hunting a ghost. He wasn't even there, and I don't know where he had been. I don't know how he got to where he went, and I don't even know when he did it. Maybe he left the day after we got pictures of him.

For all I know, I was hunting an animal that didn't exist, and it made, you know, at the time I got you know, I was frustrated. I was like, man, I can't believe I waste all this time. And then I was like, yeah, you didn't waste a minute, you know. You you were out there doing what you love and and I saw a lot of things that year. I didn't obviously kill him, but I ended up killing a really nice buck that year that was about the size

of that dear um. So I was I had to step back and remind myself that I was fortunate to be in the game regardless of who I was chasing. Yeah, well, and what do you do? I mean, even yeah, when you when you make that decision. I mean the buck that taught me that I used to be really cocky about this and be like, every year is killable, every year is going to give you a chance. And I ran into a buck on a farm in Southeastern Minnesota. I just had permission on it's just dairy farm. They

let a lot of people in there. It gets hunted really hard and shotgun season pretty hard in both season, and but you know, hunted a long time and I found this buck that when I when I first saw him, I was glassing with a buddy of mine and he came out with a bachelor group and he was like a one sixty, which is a big, big deer, and he had a really unique look to him. He looked like a mule deer. He was high and tight kind

of you know. And I followed that deer for several seasons and hung multiple cameras, multiple stand sets, and that deer what was so frustrating about him was he was very predictable as far as like how he'd come into this valley to bed and how he'd leave it. Like I could get pictures of him all the time, but it would always be an hour after dark and an hour or two before first light, and I never saw him no matter how much I crept in there, I'd

never get him on certain cameras. And it was just like this dear knows what he's doing so well that he's just got me beat like, I don't I got I got nothing left, and I think I don't know

this for sure. I'm I'm about sure. He got hit by a car after I had chased him for like three years, because he was crossing this county road quite a bit, and I heard the one of the neighboring landowners was in tears when he found a buck on the side of the road, and I think it was probably him, but you know, and you know that that's sort of being facetious, but maybe not, because that's what

that's what the story I was given. But anyway, they they do teach you that like you do when you spend enough time out there, you're like, man, yeah, you think you're pretty hot ship and then you started dealing

with one. I mean I just as an example, I had a doll one time on a property that I had permission to hunt here in the Twin Cities, and she was just real dominant, real aggressive and big old dough and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna I'm gonna kill that because every time if I make a mistake with her, she busts me and she lets everybody know. And I hunted that dough super hard, and she beat me every time. You know, I have a Partiley Pieball dough on a property here in Georgia that

is now five. And I saw her when she was a year and a half and I saw her when she was two and a half and since then, I've tried to kill this dough for two seasons. Now, I have thousands of pictures of her. I've not laid eyes on her except coming back to my truck to go retrieve another animal. She was standing about eight yards from my truck one afternoon. That dough has. The pictures of her are every single night. She has not moved at all from where I saw her when she was a

year and a half old. And she's now five, and I've never laid eyes on her. And I've intentionally been trying to kill this dear because I want to tan her high. She's she's beautiful, and that just goes to show you she's living right under my nose and she but she knows what I'm doing. She knows when I

get in there, she knows when I show up. She's got some strategy that I don't understand that allows her to figure out when she's being hunted, and she she goes completely nocturnal, whereas before the season I get pictures of her in the daylight all the time, and I never get daylight pictures of her after the season starts. Ever, I had I had a deer in Louisiana. I called him slick that this deer. I hunted him twelve different times. I'm I hunted this animal, and I had pictures of

him twice of the twelve hunts. The two pictures I got of him were between hunts when I did not go to hunt him, and both of those times they were like four o'clock in the afternoon. He was on he was walking by the camera. That deer knew exactly what I was doing. And I ended up killing him

on the hunt. And the only reason I did is I was I had decided I was going to go in midday, and I had been leaving around ten ish, ten thirty ish and coming back if the wind was right, uh for an afternoon, you know, two o'clock or whatever, because we usually have a lot going on at my camp during the middle of the day. Well, I was by myself, so there was nothing going on. I laid down in the bed to take a you know, try to nap for a little while, and I just couldn't.

I just couldn't. It was like twelve fifteen. I was like, the pastor's there, he's there. So I got up, I put my clothes on, and I went out to where I was. I thought about parking, and I was like, you know what, this deers bedding right here. I'm gonna have to walk farther. So I took all my clothes off, down to literally long underwear, put all my stuff in

my backpack, and started walking. And no kidding, when I got to the base of the stand, he crossed the right away in front of me, climbed up in the stand, put my clothes on really quick, got situated in Twenty minutes later, I killed him. And the only reason I killed him is he was chasing a dough and I'm convinced that he was. He had been betting to where I could not get to that stand or another stand that's nearby, on either wind. I could not get there

without him knowing that I was there. He was betting in a tiny little sliver of cover, and he had a strategy, and that strategy was there's no way to get in here without me knowing that there's danger, and that day he was not there. He was off chasing that dough, and he was a little farther north than he had been the previous twelve hunts. And I'm convinced that's the only reason I killed him. It's just because

he made a mistake. He had my number. If he had not, if he had been betted there where he had been, I would never have killed that deer, because there's no way you couldn't get to him. Yeah, I think we I think one of the biggest things we underestimate about deer and their abilities is how how even as good as we think we are, how many clues we give them that we're there and we were there, and how quickly they get in tune to that, you know.

And I mean we talk about this all the time, but I think we just really underestimate how good they are at just knowing us so well in our patterns and just going and reacting to them in a way that we really have a hard time beating. Oh sure, yeah, man, we we do so many things to tip our hand, you know. And I do it all the time, and I don't try to. I try to avoid everything, you know. I'm fanatical about scent. Uh my my kids have UM,

we'll tell you. You know, when you walk behind me, I'm like, you know, put your foot right where my foot hit. You know. I try to do everything to be as quiet as I can. I don't talk and I stand. I turned my phone off off. I just sit there motionless. Um. I literally was sit in a standing like a statue. I just sit there and I do everything. Yet I had to get to the stand. Well, I just tipped off somebody, whether they blew at you or you saw him or heard him or not, you

tipped off somebody. Uh. You know, I had to drive to the you know, I had to drive to where I was I was going to hunt. Well, that gravel roads clicking, clicking, clicking click. You know, there's gravel clicking. There's all these things that we do that are accused to them that tips our hand and there I think there's just some animal. I know, there's just some animals that,

uh that you're not going to kill. We had a turkey like this years ago on a study that turkey spent his entire spring season within a hundred yards of the primary access trail used by hunters on that site. Hundreds of people walked by this bird, and I have no idea how he how he did it, but he did it. He just stayed there, he dealt with the pressure. Did he squat down and let us walk by? I have no idea, but all I know is that bird survived in immense pressure and he had a strategy to

do it. And deer are the same way. There are just some animals that they have a strategy like that pob all do. I will very likely never kill her, and that's okay, um, but I'm gonna try some different tricks next year and see, but she'll probably win. Well.

What's what's really cool about that in the in the in the Turkey too that you're talking about is we we tend to think, Okay, you know, I hunt tons of public land, right like I go, I wait till hunt public land in a bunch of different states every year, and you know, the goal is kind of treated like an elk hunt, right like get to the spot, however far you gotta go, how much work you gotta do to get to the spot. People don't go that's where

the deer will be. And sometimes it works, and sometimes you find those concentrations of deer sign right by the parking lot and you start hunting there and you realize like there's to survive strategies, kind of like a bass fish a lot. And you notice some bass, especially bigger beast tend seemed like they're ambushers, right they get in the shadow of that stump, there's waiting for food to come.

But then you see these little wolf packs of the fourteen fifteen inches, they're out hunting, you know, like they're they're not just you know what I mean, like, and it's two different strategies. And then you look at the white tails and you go, Okay, some of them are finding those places where people are just ignoring them because they gotta you know, climb up to get them across a river or something. The other ones are just like, you know what, you guys are so predictable. I'm just

gonna use that to my advantage. I'm gonna let you walk right by me, and because I know how you're gonna come in, I know when you're gonna come in, I know where you're gonna leave. And they just use that to their advantage until you throw them for a loop or like you said on that one deer, you know, the dough gets the best of him for just a

little bit and you get that edge. Yeah. Yeah, And research has shown that, you know, GPS work on bucks has shown that, you know, some of them have certain strategies. For instance, during the rut, you know certain some bucks do a certain thing and others do something else. And but then when you when you look at these behaviors or these strategies, you also see that how one buck does it is not identical to how another buck does it.

So they may have the same broader strategy of well maybe i'll move more, I'll course through my range, I'll try to find as many those as I can, But how they do that looks a little different by you know, by individual. Just speaking to that that you know, variation across these guys and and how they behave and um, you know, and again research is showing this on all

sorts of species. Now you know these behavioral strategies, elk, wolves, coyotes, I mean, they all have these strategies, but there's a lot of variation within those strategies. Yea, yeah, you kind of have to. I mean, so we we we filmed a project last year called One Week in November and one of the places they hunted as a farm in southwestern Minnesota. It was my first story of south western Wisconsin.

It was my first year hunting this place. You know, I scouted it quite a bit, and it's bluffy stuff, so there's really nice pinch points and funnels and you know, pretty this stuff. I grew up hunting, so I was like, you know, I got this. And after hunting there and seeing how some of those bucks crews and how they use the highway and some of these places where I was like, you know, this is gonna be almost a

non factor. It just makes it makes you realize when you do that stuff, you're like, man, they even though like there is that individual variability, like you said, with all these deer and all these animals, they just have these tendencies that a lot of times we don't we're either not aware of or we just kind of like downplay it because we want to sit somewhere, like we want to sit where we can see or we you know, like we don't want to be on that hillside right

over the county road. And those deer they're playing that game where they know us so well and they know where they're visible from the roads they know where they feed in those fields, or you know, the does are responding to that, and the bucks are responding to that, and they're they're up reading on a level that's so freaking cool that way, Yeah, which makes hunting them fun.

That's one of the reasons it's you know, we're from fanatics about doing it is the uncertainty, you know, if it if I kind of see this, and I've talked with other people that I hunt with about this. You know, at some level, we're supposed to lose most of these battles, you know. I mean, we we have so many tools now available to us to help us be more efficient hunters and more effective, but at the end of the day, we're not supposed to win more often than we lose.

And and so losing and failing is that's part of hunting. In fact, I believe that's one of the most important aspects of hunting is failure, is failing at at the hunt and learning from the experiences that you have. I've said this on other podcasts. People have asked me, you know what, what's an important take on is like fail

failing is a is a good thing. Failing get in your ass kicked over and over and over can be impactful if you let it be, if you let it drive you um to think more, to be more reflective, to be more introspective about what you're doing, how you're doing it. Failure becomes the seed of of passion, I think, and I think that was the case with me. I lost. Like I said, I grew up. I didn't have a lot of animals to hunt that, you know, But I

kept going. I kept going. I kept going. Finally, you know, I'd started being more successful, and then I started creating opportunities for myself because I was a better hunter. I was. I was a student of the animal, not just killing the animal, but learning about the animal and their ecology and their behavior. And that made me a better hunter. And then as I became a better hunter, success was not so fleeting that I was concerned about it anymore.

I knew I was going to be successful at some point. Joy the experience. Now, get out there and learn as much as you can and just relax and let things come to you. And I've told some quite a few younger hunters that I've interacted with in my life that that's that's my hunting philosophy and the nutshells. Don't push it. Just let things happen as they're going to happen. Be smart, you know, like we're talking about dear the winds wrong,

don't hunt him, don't go there. If if you don't feel like you're comfortable accessing a place, don't go in there. Figure out a better way to do it. Um understand that your first hunt is often your best shot. So if you're after a particular animal, sometimes you need that first hunt to be the the odds need to be tipped in your favor that first time after him. So sometimes that takes being patient and not going to a

you know, to hunt a certain animal. That's what I've done in my in my career, uh is just try to slow down sometimes, try to try to let the process work out and be patient. And if you have time to hunt, and I'm lucky enough I have, you know, I will often have a few days in a row or a week in a row at at a particular spot that I can hunt. I can I can afford

to be patient. When I'm not, That's when I usually screw up when I when I'm not, when I'm trying to force the issue that's when I usually make a mistake. And then I stepped back and go, you know, Mike, damn it, you knew better than that. You did it anyway, you know, so try to try to slow down. If you don't have that happen to you about three thousand times in your career, you'll never be a good deer hunter. Yeah.

I did it this this last year too, and um, this past year season was quite a challenge for me. Um in a lot of ways. But but I screwed up one hunt and and I just thought to myself, I was like, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing? Why did you even go to this stand? Like you shouldn't even be sitting here? What were you thinking to do this? And I even had a friend of mine text me and say where you at? And I told him to stand that I was on. He goes,

the hell are you doing? And I was like, yeah, I just realized that. You know, He's like, man, that's You're smarter than that. It's just I had it in my head I was going to force the issue and and I have terrible hunt and I probably ended up educating the deer I was after. And as an aside, he wasn't he was not killed last season by anyone, maybe because of me. Well that that's what happens man. Uh so so so many words of wisdom there, Michael.

Let's let's wrap this sucker up. Um. I really appreciate you coming on, and I hope you had a nice little break from talking turkeys and talking deer today. But it was a pleasure, men. Yeah, no, I was. I was glad to join. It's it's uh, it's good to talk about deer during the middle of spring turkey season. Uh. I've certainly been talking about turkeys a lot, so I'm sure. Well, thank you. Not a problem, not a problem. That's it for this show, folks. Be sure to tune in next

week for more white tail talk. This has been Where to Hunt, and I'm your guest host, Tony Peterson. As always, I can't thank you enough for your support, for listening and for checking out our other white tail content, which is available at the meat eater dot com slash wired, where you can see a bunch of articles by Mark myself and a bunch of white tail addicts, or on our YouTube channel, the wire to Hunt YouTube channel, where we post weekly how to videos.