Ep. 549: Whitetail Management and the Future of Deer with Jason Sumners

of Mark Kenyon. He sent me a text last week asking me to cover for him so he could attend a Yosemite Sam Mustache competition, where, not surprisingly, our own Clay Newcomb is one of the guest judges. Feel free to wish Mark good luck on that one. I know he really values his facial hair, so this is a big opportunity for him. Anyway, today I'm speaking with Jason Sumners, who is the Science Branch chief at the Missouri Department of Conservation. Jason has been involved in a pile of

deer studies and dear research over the years. He's a devout white tail and turkey hunter and it's just a not only a good guy, but he's a wealth of information on white tails, and this podcast covers I don't know a few different topics, including how he approaches the management of hard science of white tail research while factoring in the social science aspect, which is which is a weird dichomic, which is a weird dichotomy that a lot

of state game agencies face. The podcast also covers a lot about c w D. This guy is real knowledgeable about c w D um where it came from, how they found it, where it's going, what the future looks like, pretty in depth stuff. They're not as pessimistic of an outlook as I would have expected, so it's actually pretty interesting to hear how he feels about the future of this might go um. And we also talk about some management practices like Antler point restrictions and how you know

they have their place in different parts of the country. Now, overall, such such an interesting guy to talk to. I think you're gonna absolutely love this one. Jason, Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. You come highly recommended from a fellow that I had on Oh gosh, this was months ago now, John McRoberts, who

talked all about that wild Missouri buck. You guys had down there that lit out for like a hundred eighty miles and kind of broke, you know, most of the rules we think about for deer and he was that that was a really interesting episode. He's a sharp guy, but he he recommended you. So you you come here with a gold star by your name. Let me put it that way. Well, I pretty shape that. Yeah. John is a great guy and we've had the opportunity to work together quite a bit over the last several years.

We we took a turkey biologist and are trying to turn him into a servant biologists. So yeah, yeah, he's he's into birds big time. Yeah, learning the challenges of having to to manage a four legged creator versus a two legged one. That's a different deal. Before before we get into it, why don't you let the listeners know what you do? Yeah. So, um, I'm a science Branch Chief for the Missouri Department of Conservation and that's a

fancy title to say that. I lead a team of about eighty five scientists biologists, you know, real researchers um that are focused on gathering the science based information that helps our agency inform um resource management decisions. As well as social um science kind of related issues as well. So we informed policy through through human dimensions work. And that's a that's a big department probably compared to a lot of state game agencies to be you know, dedicated

to science around game animals and non game animals too. Right, Yeah, so agency wide, you know, we've got fourteen hundred full time employees. We have a really large agency, but we do, you know, pretty unique in terms of having UM eight plus folks that really are working on everything from fish and wildlife health related issues to invasive species systems, you know, ecology and management, watershed protection to also our you know, big game UM wildlife species as well as sport fish.

So yeah, we spend UM a pretty significant amount of staff, resources and dollars to again just try to provide the information to help make UM as well informed decisions as we possibly can. Well, where does that come from? Down there in Missouri? Where? Where? Where did the emphasis for the science behind all this stuff really really take hold? Like?

How how does that happen? It? Really the science based management or informed management really dates itself to the beginning of the agency in ninety six and the first action of the Conservation Commission in fact, was to establish the Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Missouri, And so very early on, UM, folks here recognize the need

of science. Aldo Leopold was very influential, UM, working with the Sydney Stevens and some of the folks who kind of really helped shape the Missouri model of conservation and its citizens based approach, and and recognize that proactive science and research was was what was gonna need to help guide resource management in the state, across the country quite frankly,

and would be a big foundation for helping build public trust. UM, you know, really trying to make it is a transparent as possible how the agency was making decisions and what information they were using to do it. And so it's been a long legacy of the department. Yeah, and we'll get into this a little bit later, because I do

want to talk to you more about that. But there's a weird balance there of just hard science based around the resource whatever whatever you're studying white tails on down or whatever, but there's also the social science aspect of what you do because you need the you know, you need guys like me to buy licenses and go help you shoot a you know, your deer every year or whatever whatever the goal is. And so it's it's a

weird it's a weird balance to strike. Yeah, no it is, and it's again it's another one of those that the the agency has been very proactive in doing. We we had actually the first social scientists employed by a state fish and wildlife agency was hired by the Missouri Department Conservation in the late nineteen seventies. And so even from that time forward, you look now there's still state agencies are just now adding and growing their social science capacity.

So I often say, you know, I managed the dear population is for biologically and socially acceptable levels. I mean, there are many things that as you mentioned, we do this cooperatively with the public and specific segments of our public, and so ensuring they are a critical part of our decision making processes is key to the success of any action we take today. Have you have you worked for

other state game agencies? I am not UM. Missouri Partment Conservation the only state fish winelife agency I've worked for UM. I went to grad school in Mississippi, spent some time doing research and in South Texas, so those times I had opportunities to engage with the folks that run those places. But yeah, I've been at Missouri for thirteen years. It seems like that that school downe in Mississippi turns out

a lot of dear biologists. It does. Yeah, yeah, I I graduated from University of Missouri and had the opportunity to go to Mississippi and work with Dr Steven Maris and you know, Bronson Strickland and Rainy Deng was there at the time. Um so yeah, some folks who were really moving and shaking the world of deer mamanagement and and and open up you know, my eyes to how things are done in in different places. Are you I know that you have colleagues from different states and are

you know, you know, you're plugged into this scene. And it's an interesting it's interesting to hear you talk about the MDC down there having such a focus on this, uh, you know, it kind of speaks to where you know, even like you talked about fifty years ago placing the value on hunting and the tradition of hunting fishing game. And I guess what I want to ask you was like, do you talk to people in similar positions in other states, Are they jealous of what you guys have going on?

Because I know, I've interviewed a pile of uh, you know, state and federal, you know, employees involved in game management and different capacities, and it almost seemed like some states they're just like struggling to even get noticed at all. And you know, MR's see that seems like a different case down there. Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, there's there's no doubt we because of the sales tax also

that went into place in nineteen seventy six. You know, the the citizens of the state of Missouri have been a long term vested party in the work of conservation and how that happened and we can we can speculate all day, but but the founding in the commission was based on initiative petition so y six. It was put to the citizens of the state of Missouri, how did they want their conservation department of function? And and at that time I think the citizens really took real ownership

of what conservation would look like moving forward. It wasn't just something put into the executive branch of state government. So from the from the very beginning of Missouri Conservation Federation, stood up led the initiative petition to get the Conservation Department created, and then in nineteen seventy six, after a number of attempts, also led UM a petition to get the one eighth of one percent sales tax put in place. So again the citizens driving UM and saying they value

and have strong commitment to the work of conservation. So at that time we got one eighth of one percent UM sales tax generated that goes straight to the Conservation Commission. Another unique thing that many folks don't recognize is that we have a second conservation and State Parks sales tax.

We get one tenth of one percent that goes to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and state Parks, and half of that is also split out to the county soil and water districts, and so you're not only paying the one eighth but also the one tenth. So it's really reflective of again the kind of the citizen led commitment. And so from the very beginning, the department is always in the Commission has always placed great value in that strong,

strong relationship with the public. So I think it has built support. Not only is the built capacity through the funding, but it's just built general support report trust. So we're always talking about how do we maintain the trust of the public. And again it gets back to this science based decisions, but then also using social science to inform those as we move forward, so that the decision making

process is really open and transparent. Yeah. I mean you you would have a hard time catching me lobbying for lots of extra taxes. But I really love there's there's some success stories in the outdoor industry around like what you're talking about, where it's like this is dedicated funding. It comes from here, it goes to there, and that's it. Now. I just think when you know, when you look at the problems we're facing that some of which you and I'll chat about here, and you know you hear you

hear people throw out different solutions. I just look at this and I go, man, I think the way that we save this, at least as long as we can is just through access. And I really wish we could get something going, you know, state, state level. There's you see these walk in programs in different places, and I love them. I would love to see more of that, even even at a federal level. Somehow where some little tiny chunk of some kind of sales tax or something

goes into just access. It's just we're gonna we're buying more land open to hunting and fishing. We're buying, we're leasing more from the private landowners to encourage this, and just you know, had your bets against this urban sprawl, keep some places that aren't gonna you know, become mcmansion's, and just keep that going where it's like we've got we've got access. We're always moving towards that target. I would just love to see that. Yeah, I know, you're

absolutely right. And there's been some you know, some federal programs that have helped kind of stimulate that. We were kind of late to the party in terms of of leasing lands for the purposes of providing recreation, you know, from private landowners. But most of those things have come in short temper every buckets of dollars from the federal government. So yeah, you don't get that long sustained kind of process.

When we got some of those initial funding, then the Commission the Conservation sales tax was allowed us to then continue to support it and move forward. So there is no doubt continued and consistent funding streams is really really

critical to the work we're doing. It's also part of why we're working so hard to get recovering America's Wildlife Act through Congress again to support kind of that third leg of fish force and wildlife and then kind of the diverse fish and wildlife species to be another pool of consistent funding that isn't just relying solely on the backs of hunters and anglers through you know, excise tax

dollars or license revenue to support the work of conservation. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of ways we could address this, and I know even some of the some of the opportunities that you know, for those private lands open to public that we had before, they're they're not enough anymore. I mean it just as an example where I hunt in northern Wisconsin. Uh, there's a lot of MFL open land. It's a it's a tax incentivized program where if you if you enroll your land, you basically your your tax

bills cut down to almost nothing. But it's public and so I mean, you can still use it obviously, but so can everyone else. And man, I'm starting to see at least one or two places that I like to hunt go out of that program. Every year, and you know, there's a lot of reasons. Right when you get a hot real estate market, people are gonna sell, and you know, people want to keep places for themselves, and there's a

lot of reasons for it. But you see that and go, man, that worked for a while to keep access out there, but it sort of feels like that one slipping and needs a little bit more love. And I'm sure there's examples of that all over the country where you know, not not just white tail hunters, but all hunters are looking at it going, man, we're losing some stuff that

we should we need to have access to. And I hope we really make that front and center as much as possible in the next few years because I think it's really important. Yeah, it's an ongoing challenge, and as you mentioned, the way we hunt has changed, the way we value land and in bringing others along with us, uh to hunt has certainly changed. Specially in the white tail world, is more emphasis on being very selective in harvest decisions and stuff like that. Limited access and it's

only gonna get worse, you know. We just continue to see the challenges have a tap fragmentation, urban sprawl, all those things, reducing the acres in which we have opportunity to hunt, and knowing what regulations are and access are d two single biggest barriers that that most folks face when trying to get into the world of hunting. For those of us that grew up doing it, we we

trudge away and we we figure it out. Um. But but if it's not if you don't own land or you don't know somebody who has land, especially in the eastern part of the US, and it's certainly here in the heart of the Midwest, having having public land is certainly a challenge as well. Yeah, yeah, it's important. We should we should probably talk about some deer here. What uh what do you guys? Let me ask you this first, what are in your position there at MDC. What are

you most concerned with with white tails right now? Well, certainly right now, chronic wasting disease is always at the forefront of the biggest challenge we face in terms of long term management and sustaining deer populations. Um. Yeah, And then the second one would certainly be what do long term hunter numbers look like? As we talk about this access issue. Um, it's not only access for individual hunters to hunt, but it's access to deer populations to manage

them through hunting. And we struggle here with with urban deer management issues. We struggle with quite honestly, with the leasing of large chunks of property where you know, the folks leasing it that might have a different object if then than what the landowner leasing it might be. So so again, you know, certainly access and population manage. But but no doubt the emergence of chronic wasting diseases is at the forefront of that. Well, we're gonna talk about

that in a second. Well, I want to I want to touch on that what you just said about that, the challenge of managing deer with such diversified interests out there, and you know, you see this, you see this a lot where there there's like a tendency to want to claim ownership over deer if you're if you're running a private place and you've got that lease or you've got your own land and you've got the hit lists and all that stuff, and then you've got you know, maybe

you've got somebody like that on a couple hundred acres next to you know, Union Ridge or something like that down there in in Missouri, that's gonna get you know, piss pounded during you know, rifle season in both season. And so you're looking at that, going, well, we've got one landowner or several maybe soaking up a ton of these deer and being very selective. Then we've got another spot where, you know, if it's brown, it's down just

because of the sheer numbers of people out there. It's gotta that's gotta be a real challenge to manage white tales with that, with the way things just are. Yeah, yeah, you look at the natural things that occur, just the arrangement of habitat on the landscape from a county by county basis, but yeah, we we do have just tremendously very hunter density um in counties and no doubt difference in personality and in you know, what the local hunting

culture might be and what they desire to have. And so all that does is they add the complexity of regulations makes it harder folks understand how we're going to manage a deer population. And so it is certainly, um without a doubt, probably one of the most challenging species that a state fish wildlife agency has to try to manage.

To balance all those varying interest is it. It's gotta be I mean, there's gotta be a positive sight to that though as well, just from the you know, there are a keystones species, right, Like everybody loves white tails. You know, you get into the Midwest, this is what we have and you know alutia, same thing, and so you have that passion around it and that history and

tradition and the desire for it. So that's a plus because you you know, if your intentions are good, you can probably get some funding for this, and you know,

like people, people want white tails out there. But at the same time, you've got the other end of that spectrum that you're dealing with, and it's it's just got to be difficult, yeah, you know, and this is why I really worry about chronic wasting diseases that you know, folks do value the opportunity to chase them, to know they're there, to have them on the landscape and appreciate them.

You know, they produced millions of pounds of food every year for folks to eat, and you know, we talk about food insecurity, things that happen, and so they're just

a wide range of the way folks value them. And then there are certainly folks who who they compete with, right you know, road crop farmers and others who are trying to trying to make a living to so that that dichotomy is challenging the kind of long term from a broader conservation perspective, you know, stay fishing wildlife agencies oh much of their success of the restoration of white tail deer and turkeys, but the value folks place in

recreational lands, the value and the amount of work habitat work that they'll do to manage for white tail deer benefits. A whole wide diversity of species protects our waterways and our watersheds, provides cover for the whole host of ground nesting birds and and and everything else that occurs within

the ecosystem. And and so my concern kind of, you know, like microscopically long term with the conservation community is that as chronic wasting disease continues to increase, as folks choose not to hunt in areas where chronic wasting disease is really prevalent, as the potential value of the white tailed deer resource declines, then what happens to much of the rural Midwest where folks have been not pushing out timber to grow fish, uewing cows, not you know, doing some

of the habitat management things they've been doing to protect and manage for white tailed deer. And so, yeah, no doubt we worry about the loss of this really important resource. But to me, it's also kind of the trickle down effects of of what comes from that and the benefits

that we get from folks managing for deer and turkeys. Yeah, in in reference to CWD, do you think that we take by we, I just mean, like the general hunting population, we take white tails for granted because most you know, I mean, we're aging out, you know, sort of the upper echelon of the white tail hunters. You know, the boomers are going away kind of just just from their age, and so a lot of people who are you know, picking up the reins have only ever known pretty good

deer populations. Like I mean, even even when I started hunting, and which you know it was you know, it wasn't hey day stuff, but it definitely wasn't like nine seventy, right, Like, I've never known a world where you couldn't go out and count on white tails to be in the woods with you. And I always wonder about that in in reference to CWD, like are we just are we taking this for granted that they're always going to be there and this thing goes this thing breaks bad in a

real bad way. You know, we might not have any choice about this like this it might be too late. Yeah, I think you're really right, Tony. You know, in the individual conversations you had with folks there, there tends to be a greater concern with the older hunting public because they do remember the days when when when you when you expect you you were excited to see a dear, not disappointed when you didn't see a deer, you know,

And and it's so shifted. When I took over the deer program in two thousand eleven UM, the paradigm across much of the Midwest was there was no way we were ever going to get top of deer populations. They were gonna be ever growing. Hunters could never shoot enough deer to control population. So yeah, we're living in this

world of abundance. We had the twelve hym ragic disease outbreak and on the tail end of years of shooting lots of lots of antalysts deer, and in some places deer numbers went down and folks went, whoa, wait, maybe we can so we started to shift that paradigm. But but they've always been very resilient, right. We just backed off the harvest and deer populations come back. And so I I do think that we take for granted, you know, kind of the resiliency of of this species, and they

certainly are resilient. Um. But but the long term consequences CWD are real. And as much as we would like to wish them away, reality is that kills deer, and it kills them at much younger ages than they would die otherwise. Um. And it's a real it's a real challenge and a real challenge because we don't see it day to day. We don't see deer find deer in a pond er cree did from CWD like we do. E h D. It is just a slow trickle. It's

like a pinhole in your tire. You know. It's not like a screw where it just blowing air out and you know the problem is there. It's like this this small little penel that you can't figure out where it is, but you walk outside one day and your tires flat. You know, you don't quite understand why. So it's a real challenge for perspective to get your arms wrapped around. And you guys are pretty heavy into studying a bunch of these aspects of CWT right now down there, aren't you. Yeah, Well,

yeah we are. And I think at this point, you know, our biggest focus really is trying to do intensive surveillance to inform management, and so we've been doing is intensive of CWD sampling, is is anybody in the country UM to try to really inform management is be aggressive as we can to try to limit the spread of it.

So we we implemented targeted culling UM in two thousand eleven, shortly after we had our first detection in the in the free ranging herd, to try to again limit the spread, try to limit the distribution UM lengthen the timeline in which c w D has an impact on the deer population, and I think to this point we've been successful at

doing that. But our challenge now is that it is it is so prevalent in free ranging populations across the country UM as well as had been in captive facilities that we're getting new introductions of the disease, so we have it popping up in new places, and the continued spread in that challenge that it poses UM is almost insurmountable. Well, what do you say to people, because I know what people are listening to this, They're gonna say, well, that's

you're they're popping up because you're testing. What do you say to people when they say that, Well, yeah, that's not true. You know, it just couldn't be farther from the truth. So in two thousand two to two thousand four, the state UM tested twenty two thousand deer statewide, and so we elected almost two hundred deer from every county across the state. And that what that did was that told us that if the disease was there in two thousand to two thousand four, it was there at very

low prevalence. So we should have detected it if it was at a county scale at like two percent. So if we look at some of the most heavily infected core areas of Wisconsin, where it's maybe at the county level it's ten or fifteen percent, within the buck segment it's you know, it's fifty we would have detected those. There's just no doubt in my mind we would have

detected those. And so as we continued, we we we continued to sample deer through that time, and our first detection of the free range of population was in where we had already tested close to seventy thousand deer in the state up to that point. So we never stopped testing. We've been testing through time. So the other side of it is is it follows a very predictable pattern. It

increases in prevalence and increases in distribution. If we were just detecting it because we were doing more testing, we would find sort of a stable percentage that the disease would be at. We would go test everywhere and we would just finally find it. But that just it's just

not the pattern that it follows. And it's an easy narrative for those who don't want to believe to just kind of throw out that um that suggestion and then we have to like provide the evidence to refute it, right, And so it just doesn't follow the patterns that we see. So you guys down there, we're testing for almost a decade statewide before you had the first your first positive pop Yes, yep, were you were you also testing uh,

captive servants? Yes, there was testing occurring within captive facilities as well. Yeah. So our first, our first free ranging in our first captive positives both occurred about the same time. Our first captive positive occurred in two thousand and ten in Lynn County and a hunting preserve um in two thousand.

Fall two thousand eleven, we detected it in another captive facility that was associated with that original one, about about ten miles of the crow flies, and then the fall of eleven we detected it just right outside of that

one in the free ranging population in Macon County. And so again at that time we went in and we started doing mandatory sampling in a six county area and on opening weekend we started just very intensively sampling and you don't find it right, you don't find it, You don't find it, and then a couple of years later we pick up another spot, so it's it's evidence of introduction. And then when we have those spots, we go in try to do very intensive removals with the cooperation of

landowners to keep prevalence low. And we see different patterns based on where we've we've been in the state based on participation. Um. But yeah, so we continually, year after year after year, are looking at that. One big change we made in the mid two thousands was to shift to testing adult bucks, which increased our likelihood of detection,

increased the power in which we would detect the disease earlier. Yeah, so you you might have been skewed a little bit, you might have been skewed to fewer positives testing the general dear population without a focus on mature bucks. But it's still would have that still doesn't disprove that that it just wasn't there and then it showed up and now it's there, right right. Yeah. Another perfect example is

you know the border with Arkansas. You know, we we've tested along the border of Arkansas for a long time, and over the last three years we've detected positives and that's because of the spread that is occurring throughout northwestern Arkansas and so those animals are starting to enter into Missouri. It's not that we hadn't been testing there, it's just the diseases now been there. And so as as we look, you know, in free arranging white tail populations, all communar

populations across the West. Hunters are now moving more UM infected animals across the landscape, and no doubt, you know, there's more where the disease exists to make some of those long distance movements that are introducing the disease to new places. And then again, the continued you know movement either in the back of tructs will again dead or alive. UM just represents an opportunity for the disease to get to more places more frequently now than we were we

were fifteen years you know. Yeah, well, and what's what is pretty frustrating about this issue that I'm I'm sure you're well aware of, is it's there's always an attempt to just boil it down to either it's really not an issue, or it's this, you know, this person's fault or this segment of the you know, serving industry's fault.

And you see that game going on, and then you know, like that that study that we referenced earlier with about John, you know, and the buck that takes a real, real long walk, and then you know, if you're in the captive servit industry, you can say, well, jeez, the wild white tails are walking eighty miles away. Maybe it wasn't us moving these year around and it's like, no, do you understand it's probably everything, Like you can't just stick your hand your head in the sand and be obtuse

about this and be like, well, couldn't be us. And when you look at these issues and go, man, this is spreading around for a lot of different reasons, and we're all in the same boat, like this is not something where like it doesn't do us any good to just fully blame you know, one segment or the other when this thing is out there doing what it's doing. Though, no,

I couldn't agree more Tony. You know, early on there is no doubt that the distribution of the disease was being spread by confined servants and and that's that's just the reality of how it was getting to some new places and new locations. Proving how that happened, and extremely challenging because one thing, it's it's a it's a really hard disease for us to detect, right, I mean, we gotta basically sample dead critters, and it's not just as simple as getting a little blood onto a tissue or

something like that and testing it. You know, we've got to have lymphatic tissues gotta go to lab. They have had to have had it for a while for it to detect it. So there's all these things that are

inherently challenging when when detecting the disease. But you're absolutely right that as the disease became established in free ranging populations and minimal management action was taken, then populate the diseases increased in free ranging populations, and so that that represent an opportunity for more hunters to be unintentionally moving

the disease around. When they were throwing a deer in the back of their truck driving you know, forty minutes or four hours home or guard us you know where it is, and thinking they weren't doing anything wrong, they bone it out, They throw the carcass out back and let the eagles and the cows and everything else scavenge on. Hey, putting it back in nature. We're not doing anything wrong.

And then it's like, oh, whoops, we may have been contributing to the spread of this disease across the landscape. And and we find ourselves at a point now where it matters not how it got there or how it started. This is where we are now are we taking a holistic approach of trying to minimize the risk of continuing to introduce it to new places and the risk of

it it expanding where it does exist. Do you do you feel sort of a you know, damned if you do, damned if you don't situation here, because there's really when and when you get a new you know, a new flare up somewhere, or you finally they start popping positive. You really only from from your perspective at the state agency, you really only have two options. Let it go and just cross your fingers. I hope you retire before it blows up, or you go, we gotta knock this population

down to buy ourselves some time. And that's kind of what we have going on. I mean, that's gotta be tough. It is, it really is, and I often I greatly appreciate, you know, Doug Dern saying we're buying time and paying for science, and that's really what we're trying to do because it elimination of the disease once it's become established, which by the time a lot of the modeling work we've done, by the time we detected or able to detect it, it's there and the ability to eliminate it

from the landscape is so hard. But if we can detect it really, really early, and that's why I think our continued diligence and really intensive testing has allowed us and many of these places to detect it very early, we can go in and do some of these really challenging management interventions like tarted cohling asking a landowner if we can come on their property and shoot a bunch of deer or ask them to shoot a bunch of additional deer, we can minimize the impacts to everybody else.

And if you look at a lot of the survey data that's been done, Illinois has done some great survey data. They're hunters within the places where CWD is at are like, leave us a lung, We don't want to do anything. Well, they've already got it, so we understand. But you look at the places where they don't have it, and they're like, do everything you possibly can to stop it. So you even have these two great dichotomies that exist. That creates a ton of challenges in terms of what are we

asking folks to do? And and I've talked to many of those landowners. It how hard could it be to go through the decision making process. Say I bought this property to hunt and manage deer, and you're asking me to shoot a bunch of additional ones. You're asking me to make my hunting worse to benefit the guys that are five or ten or fifteen or twenty miles down the road, or for something that may really not have impacts for me for the next fifteen years or twenty years. Yeah.

So that's where it gets back to be real challenging about the age of our hunters. You've got really old hunters. They're like, I'm worried about my hunting for the next ten years. Yeah, unless the forward thinking, they're not thinking the long term. It's hard that that's a that's a hard one because we we don't think fifteen years down the road. We just don't. I mean, you can see this in so many aspects of hunting that that get

pretty frustrating. You can see this in the resident nonresident fights out west all the time, where you know, you know, there's a lot of non residents out there, and I totally get why they would do this, But if they could wave of a magic wand they would keep you know, the non residents out forever and keep the hunting for themselves. But long term that's not a great solution for a lot of reasons. It would be beneficial to some people. Then,

you know, like I get that. It's the same thing with this, and I think maybe maybe the hardest part I'm curious how you feel about this is we can do all these sacrifices. We could do everything that that you know, the MDC asked the hunters in the Minnesota Department. You know, like, we could do it all to the best of our ability right now, and it might not change the thing. Well, I think it would. I think I do. I guess that's the glass half full. You know.

Mindset is that we've been in north central Missouri doing tarted culling on landowners for a decade now, more than a decade right today, right so, ten or eleven years of remaining tarted culling. They're still deer there, They still have hunting opportunities. Is the disease spreading, Yeah, yeah, we're getting geographic change, it's spreading, but our prevalence is still really low. We still have only you know, four and a hundred deer that we test are testing positive for

the disease. So you still have a preponderance of the animals that that hunters are harvesting and have the opportunity to harvest. We're saying are safe to consume. They can still enjoy them. And and and it's been it's been a slog, right. We went through the early stages of all right, we're on board, we'll do whatever we can. Two then I don't want We're tired, we don't want to do it anymore. And I would say that was the mid middle, like five years of doing this too. Now, well, yeah,

you guys have been whacking deer for a while. We still got a few deer, So maybe it isn't as bad. Maybe we will go ahead and try to continue to sustain that. And so there's there's no doubt that long

term successes is really really challenging. But there are real actions we can do today to try to not make the problem words and help again by us a significant amount of time, and we got a couple of places where it's stayed tight, it's stayed small, and the neighboring properties and and you know that that circle around is still really small. And so I think there is reason for optimism, but it's not easy. Yeah, well, I'm glad you brought that up because it's interesting to hear you say.

You know, if we do this right, we can keep that prevalence to around like four percent, which is, you know, given the current circumstances, is awesome. We'll take it every time. So then let me let me ask you what, like what happened in like Iowa County in Wisconsin, and because you know, they went hard for a while, but did they just stop? I mean, is that? Is that what happened? Yeah?

So this, you know, the story in Wisconsin is that you know, they detected it at a point where I would sk mate and I'm not sure that they've probably got specific members. They kind of think where it was, it probably would have been probably about five percent over

a pretty large landscape, kind of evenly distributed. But yeah, so two thousand four, early two thousands and like two thousand and seven, they were very intensively removing deer over a pretty large chunk and landscape and you can look at their prevalence rates and they were slowly creeping up, but not a lot. And then in two thousand seven, you know, due to lack of trust just great resistance to the management actions. Um, they were the guinea pigs, you know, to be quite honest in terms of what

what do we learn, how do we communicate? What are we trying to accomplish? So those of us that came after had the benefits of kind of learning from the

experience of the Wisconsin. But but they stopped, and since two thousand and seven it's done nothing but increase exponentially, both in prevalence inside of the core areas in the geographic distribution where now there's there's you know, a hundred and you can look at some of their data and say, there's a hundred forty four square mile area, we're literally fifty of the adult bucks that they harvest and test test positive. So you're flipping a coin as to one

of the buck you shot. The CDC says you could or should consume it, and so man, that that to me is is really hard. And so you're seeing ships in their behavior. So you're seeing hunters that want to have deer to eat, shooting more like young deer and not shooting older deer, or avoiding some of those places where there's just really high prevalence. UM. So with cooperation, we can I think manage prevalence to to some extent geographic spread is is just a whole another beast that

that is really really challenging to manage. Do you do you feel when when you talk about you know, the difference between what happened in Wisconsin and I mean, obviously they were different circumstances, and then what happened with what you guys were handling down there in Missouri and actually, you know, like your optimism and feeling like you kind of got ahold on this thing, like you kind of

at least gotta a plan that can work. Do you feel like there's just, h there's just an optics problem a lot of times between state game agencies and the hunters. I think that could be the case. Yeah, there there's certainly an inherent trust that the hunting public or the broader public has in the decision making of their state agency. The individual decisions state agencies may yeah, folks may or may not agree with them, but it's a matter of

whether they're generally agreeable to the agency or not. I firmly believe that, you know, we started this whole discussion of what is kind of the broad public trust and the state Fish and Wildlife Agency, And I don't think there's any doubt that we would not be where we are today in terms of being able to manage c w D without that broad and real deep public trust

that doesn't necessarily exist in other places. So that's a that's kept things from while at the legislature and other places, there has been some noise around our management efforts, it's kept the discussions at the local level. And so we've tried really hard to be in those local communitunities having the conversations with the direct individuals impacted, and not having the conversations in jeff City, Right where do the management

decisions like hit the ground? Where does that matter? And you've got to be there, and you've got to be local, and you've gotta be engaged. And so some of the differences we've seen across the state have been a reflection of where we have more staff in the local community, we have greater trust in buying in those places, they are more heavily engaged. In some of the spots where it's popped up where we just don't have as many staff assigned there, there just aren't as many of them there.

The trust and the relationships aren't there, and so we've struggled to really kind of gain that kind of foothold in terms of management of the disease. But but yeah, there is there is no doubt that US as a state agency having general broad public support, again may not

agree on any general decision that we make. But for the most part, I think folks understand the Department Conservation has the best interests of the resource in mind and trying to do it in a way that's so socially acceptable um to to get it done, and then very proactive in trying to socially engage um with the folks that are impacted by the disease. Yeah, what what's happening

on the science side of things? So, I know, there's a lot of research going into the distribution of st v D and and how it's getting places, and you know what the prevalence levels doing checked versus unchecked. But what what else is being done? Is there is there any promising science out there, any promising research that like gives us hope that maybe we could like actually get a handle on this stuff and you know, maybe you know, not have it be killing every deer that it infects

or is there any is there hope on that front somehow? Yeah, I think there's lots of hope. Um, there's no doubt it's going to take a you know, Nobel Prize winning kind of scientific paradigm shift and how we deal with prion diseases to really get us over that next step to therapeutics or a cure or you know, some inhibitor

to infection. But there's been great progress over the last couple of decades and our better understanding of prion diseases, you know, trying to better connect with pre on biologists across the country that are dealing with preon and humans

and other species. Um. We have invested a ton of time and energy with with you know John you know the group he works with University of Montana in terms of trying to do modeling research to understand which segments of the population we need to target to kind of minimize prevalence and changing geographic distribution, you know, get a better handle on what proportion of the population, which particular segments of the population and where on the landscape can

give us the biggest bang for our buck. Um. You know, one of the biggest criticisms we all often here is what, You're shooting a lot of healthy deer to protect them from a disease, you know, And so it's like, well, yeah, we understand that, and we need to shoot a lot of deer to manage populations, but how can we better refine our management actions to to be much more targeted. But then we're also forming kind of unique partnerships with others outside of our traditional group we would work with.

We were now working with the School of Engineering in the Veternary Diagnostic Lab at you Versity of Missouri to implement some really new and innovative you know, nanotechnology and engineering kind of challenges to to disease detection. Right, can we get to a place where a hunter could um collect a bit of blood um and and be able to be that earlier, much earlier detection, much easier to do, much less costly and time intensive for us to do that.

So so we've actually been able to use the nanotechnology to detect preons into blood. What does that mean We don't We don't exactly know yet, but but we're making, you know, incremental progress. And there's been a ton of work on just preon biology to better understand actually the mechanisms in which these things operate UM, and then how might we be able to interfere with them or protect animals from those um from those infections. So it's it's

all sort of an emerging thing preons. In terms of our under understanding UM from a science community is just really really limited. But one of the bright sides of CWD is it's gave It's gave pre anologists another model to work in, right, they can work in dear because they can replicate it many of these struggles they've faced

with humans. We can't exactly experiment on humans, right, and so it is open up the realm for them to really start to ask some challenging questions and there and there has to be at least a little this is a weird one, but there has to be a little bit of a benefit for how quickly generations turnover in the white tail population to just see, you know, which is kind of kind of leads me to what I want to ask you that white tails are pretty amazing

critters as far as adaptability, and I mean, they play, they play well with man, they play well out in the real wilds. They they they're survivors. Uh do you see, is there any reason to have a little bit of hope that maybe just through some evolutionary thing, these white tales will get this taken care of, or we'll get we'll get a certain percentage of them that are just not going to be susceptible to these prions. Yeah, I

think that's I think that's certainly a hope. You know, there's lots of genetics work being done, um folks across the country, UM looking at you know how or are we seeing shifts in particular genes that have been identified as as sort of resistant and I hate to use that term. We we hear resistant genotypes or there's resistant

deer out there on the landscape. At this point, we still don't know that there's any deer that's completely immune to c w D. What we do know is there are some particular genetic makeup of deer that kind of delay progression of the disease, which, on one end, you might think, well, that's good. Their their delaying progression. They're gonna live a little longer. Maybe there maybe it's not as bad from a distribution of the disease and spreading it though, the problem is as they live longer and

it gives them greater opportunity to spread the disease. So there's like this little bit of a tradeoff there, and there's some other unknown consequences of some of these deer that appear to have some level of resistance to progression of the disease. But I don't think there's any doubt that animals evolved and have evolved through a number of

disease bottlenecks and things like that. But those things typically occur over thousands or tens of thousands of years, and we in our short, you know, kind of time frame of looking at things, were like, well that letting it go and maybe they'll recover is something that would Yeah, maybe they would recover in the length of time it's been since we're here now to the time of the you know, into the Pleistocene, you know. I mean, it's it's like those long term kinds of things. So folks

are looking at it. But for management of free ranging population, it's it's really really challenging to think, um, that that's our our only solution or hope. Inside the confined serving industry, absolutely, if we can make those animals less susceptible, more resilient, UM and make it less risky, you know, moving moving those lambs across landscape ensure some of the genetics work

can can certainly benefit them. Um, yeah, we don't, No, we don't know what some of the tradeoffs of the disease resistance might be to other characteristics and survivability of the deer. Yeah, So they're just just to clear this up there. There's evidence out there that some deer with certain genetic makeups can survive longer after infection, but there's no evidence that there's any natural immunity out there in the wild populations, right, correct, Okay, correct, even those that

that appear to be you know, not nearly as susceptible. Um, they've been attempting to do some manipulations and confined facilities and stuff like that, but there's still no evidence that they won't get the disease or that they're resistant from

getting the disease. Because that's that's a common thing that's brought up, you know, even way back from the discovery in Colorado days of like this thing has been around forever and some deer get it and some don't, and it just you know, find some level of equilibrium out there in the population, and none of that's true, right,

there's no way. The only equilibrium I think it's going to find out there in the population is is at what point has it infected all the deer that it can infect versus kind of the new ones that are put out on the landscape. So there is some like if you look at the whole deer population as a whole, you know, there's probably some fifty to six prevalence that we probably can't go above unless they're in a small

pen where they're absolutely touching one another. But animals are dying, animals are getting removed from the population, You got new ones being added to the population every year. Is the female and their social group actually infected? You know, there's there's kind of some of these more complicated things that

would that would impact that that that top prevalence. But but no, I would say, there's no evidence that we've we've reached some low levels stable um kind of prevalence of the disease that animals are going to continue to persist. But you think it's going to lead to population extinctions though, right, one big thing that really happened in the late eighties and early nineties as folks were modeling this thing out,

it's uniformly lethal. You know, by two and a half or three and a half or four and a half, you know, most close to the animals are gonna get in, they're gonna die. Lead us some models that predicted extinction, right I predicted extinction of the species or locally extinct. Back to the resilience of white tails. I don't believe that will be the case. I think there's still gonna be enough ability for individuals to reproduce in the population, to continue to produce fonds that we will have. Dear.

The question is is whether c w D is going to be that governor of the population, which in many places it probably will be, that removes hunting from being necessary to manage deer populations, that they will just simply be regulated by the fact that there's enough cw D in the population. It's killing enough old individuals that we have no harvestable surplus. That is that if you harvest

some you just have fewer deer. Yeah, so I think that's sort of probably, you know, in in five years or whatever, we look out at to what's the white tailed population look like, that's where we could find ourselves. Do you see in your research have you seen that. So when you say, all right, even if you take a place that's got a heavy prevalence and they've just let it go, just said whatever, we're just gonna we're gonna manage white tells like we always did. We're going

in to knock them down. We're gonna just let this thing go. And you see the bucks, you know, mature bucks or whatever, and you see, let's say there's a forty prevalence right just just for the hell of it in the population. Why doesn't it become a hundred or

or does it when they get to a certain age? Yeah, So I think why it doesn't come to a hundred is because you have and it may be in that segment, you still have to have individual deer transmitting it to one another, and you still have to have sufficient or sufficient environmental contamination that they're still exposed to the pathogen.

So as we talk about individual dear behavior, you know those you know if you watch deer on trail cameras or try to map them out on your property or whatever, you know, you got deer that are just like reclusive, like they're always by themselves. They're never in a spot where everybody else is at and then you got year they're everywhere, right, they're always there, they're always interacting with

other groups. And so those deer that are always interacting with other groups individually are more susceptible to contracting the disease. That one that's a loner and it's hanging out may only be exposed during particular times of the year. So there's always gonna be some level of individual behavior or just spatial arrangement on landscape of where they're hanging out

that's gonna make them less susceptible. And then you can add some genetic components to it potentially, So that's why part of why you won't get to and then you've always got you know, maybe up to twenty five or thirty percent of your population being added new every year in the form of funds, you know, and so you've got you've got this new pulse of uninfected naive animals every year that occurs that that sort of limits that ability to push up to But I would say, yeah,

in some places, you probably if you just took out whatever is left of the adult segment of a three and a half and plus yr old segment of of a buck population is some really heavy infected areas, I would guess your prevalence there is going to be pushing

towards at seventy plus per cent. And when when you talk about you know, those loaner bucks out there who don't seem too social and seem to really just be hardwired to kind of be loaners for their survival, you know, you want to talk about what what evolution could do for white tails if you gave if those were the primary breeders over you know, the next couple of thousand generations, you might have a lot less social white tail population that would be less likely to pass this thing around

and maybe naturally get it into some kind of check a little bit. But we'll be way dead before that happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think these are you know, these are like the evolutionary mechanisms that lead to change. But yeah, that takes it takes hundreds or thousands of generations typically for those kinds of things to happen. But let's talk about something more less less depressing than the future of CWD. UM. I know, I know Missouri has been pretty proactive, at

least in parts. I'm not sure if it's the whole state with a PR and some some management which is kind of a you know, kind of on opposite end of the spectrum versus knocking everything down to keep CWD and checking certain hot spots. How do you how do you negotiate or like, how do you navigate that world

of being? You know, because I know you're I know you're a hardcore hunter, and I know a lot of the dear biologists and the wildlife biologists I interview are and so you've got this world of like, you know, we're gonna we're gonna address this disease issue in a way that's not gonna look great to hunters because we're taking we're taking white house off the landscape, like you said, healthy ones, so they don't get six, they don't spread it.

And then on the other end, you've got you know, we'd like we'd like you to shoot bucks with four points on a side, or you know, a minimum inside spread or something like that too. Just increase the the

experience to a lot. I mean, it does have some I believe anyway, the APR and some of the management stuff has some positive biological effects as far as age structure and stuff like that, but it's also just mostly viewed as a social thing to like we're gonna let them bucks grow up, like we're gonna put a value on them. How how do you navigate that kind of dichotomy? Well, I would say first, one of the big reasons there were two reasons we went to the Antler Point restriction

and started it in two thousand four. One was like, we talked a little bit ago ever expanding exponentially growing dear populations and and a hunting public that really shot whatever first legal deer came by, and so could we by implementing a restriction on bucks, get folks to shoot more analysts deer. So that was a big reason why we started down the path. Also knowing a a big benefit of it would be you're letting young bucks pass and age on into another age class, which they then

become more challenging to hunt. And despite the fact we put a little more, you know, still put pretty high pressure on them. By the time they get to those older ages, they're more challenging to kill. Even if there are more of them out there, you get to kill more of them because they're more of them out there, but they're still equally as challenging. So really, for us in many places, the evaluation was on what did it do to antle as harvest, how would that impact it?

And we we've seen some real differences based on hunter density. We talked about some of the challenges accounting by counting management, and some places where you got real high hunter density

went where you don't. In places where we have high hunter density, the antler point restriction really does have a huge impact on the growth rate of the population because that opportunity shoot first legal deer, they were then shooting dose And in a couple of places we actually remove the antler point restriction because we were killing too many dose because of it. You could see the clear shift in other places where we had kind of moderate dear densities.

That certainly helped dampen things down and help facilitate this conversation of managing the population as it relates to disease management.

The way that I've always communicated it is that we're doing everything we can to try to detect the disease in white tailed populations across the state, and it's not there, or if it's there where we have the APR, it's at a very very low prevalence, and so our management for these quality populations that that that a growing segment of our hunting public desires to have, and the cain interaction that occurs with a buck segment of population that's older.

You know, no doubt kind of the more natural breeding systems that would have occurred is a good management strategy. There's nothing wrong with it. How do we just make sure are and effectively communicated? WD is not everywhere and

it's only gonna get there by us introducing it. The flip side of that that we've been having a conversation now is as as we look at our populations, as we better understand the dynamic of the disease, how do those management strategies make our populations more or less resilient when CWT gets there? So I think, and and that's some modeling work we've we've really started to initiate what's the you know, what's the likelihood how fast might it

spread if that introduction occurs? And and so I think that's where a little bit of the push and pull happens. But but I've been pretty staunched that that the a PR is a good rule. It's very popular, it has its place, It does not have a place with disease management if the disease is present. But if it's not present, let's let's keep doing good your management, keep testing and

trying to detect it. But but it's a good regulation. Yeah, And that I think that that's so refreshing to hear because you know, like I said earlier, it's it's really easy to sort of boil this stuff down and you know,

four against or whatever. But when you look at something like a PRS, when you take Antler point restrictions, and from my perspective as a hunter, I hear you say that, and I'm like, hell, yes, I have no problem with you know, getting rid of a little bit of its brown it's down and having some better age class here, especially if you have legitimate options to kill Antler this dear, and on your side of things, you're like, hey, we want to we want to knock back this population a

little bit, balance it out better, and you know, keep the hunters at because they're still gonna be c indeed, they're still gonna have their their venison, they're still gonna have a better chance at killing a big buck, and it sort of feels like a win win, And then you go, well, as long as we don't get popped for CWD here, and then all bets are off because now you know, we don't want a bunch of old

age males in this population. And it really kind of highlights how difficult this kind of push pull is with you know, the perspective of somebody tasked with managing a wild game population versus the desires of the average hunter. There's so much going on there, and it's so not a simple thing. Yeah, it is a huge, complex set of interacting variables, you know, and and and the other side of it is there's not there's not one perfect solution to that. We could do it any number combination

of ways. And that's why I think we see state to state differences right that Culturally, you know, we've we've established cultural norms as to the way that we want

or like to hunt deer. And so how do you then shift these tools around to say, Okay, well, here's the suite that we think will kind of hit that that sweet spot kind of satisfy our population because we can do we you know, I last one to say that we have the perfect model in terms of deer management, and it's since it's just a series of trade offs and and so as we have, as we have built changes into this, I think we have tried really hard

to do it with the public. We talk about the public Outreach and Engagement UM In two thousand and fourteen, two thousand fifteen, sort of as CWD was emerging, we were in the midst of some of these population to clients resulting from the twelve and RAGI disease outbreak, strong shift towards antle as harvest, increasing hunter numbers actually in the state for one of the few UM. It's been

on the downward trend since then. But all these challenges, we actually entered into eight or twenty two public meetings in about an eighteen month period to revamp our deer management plan to say what are we gonna do, how are we gonna make anage the disease, and how do we want to manage the white tail population as we

move forward. So it's just a it's just a it's so critical that we continue to have that agency, hunting, public, other affected stakeholder dialogue on an ongoing basis to figure out where we as a state, I think we want to try to push the dear population. Yeah, there's a lot going on there. I got I got two questions for you to wrap this sucker up. The first one is do you think we should arrange a cage match between Doug during and Ted Nugets so they can fight

over this issue? And I mean I don't mean a debate, I mean a real fight. Yeah, Oh damn. It's it's hard, you know, And I've been in the middle of those, and it is It's just I just wish we could, you know, find some common ground and and and get back to you know what, what do we know and what do we not know? And just be honest about

the dialogue. But unfortunately, when you deal with the public, you deal with the values, the beliefs and everything that comes along with those individuals, and and inherent mistrusted government as part of that, the mistrust of science, the actions of government and of science that have contributed to that.

You know, it's it's a it's a tangled web. But I greatly appreciate Doug and his perspectives, have had the chance to to speak with him, you know what if a few engagements over time, and just really greatly appreciate his perspective. Yeah, all right, last one, are you can you can you make a phone call down there at MDC and and make it so we can hunt turkeys all day. I would sure like to be able to do that. Um. We've had ongoing discussion of that for a long long time, and it really is a we're

missing opportunity by not having all day tay hunting. You know, our research and stuff would certainly suggest um that we're not over harvesting our gobblers, Um, that we still have great opportunities, especially now as I have a son you know, who's whose seven and we only have the mornings during the regular season, and the loss of some of those opportunities to get him out in the field. You know it, It certainly is is an opportunity that we're missing. You know.

The flip side of it is is we've got production problems and and when you talk about increasing opportunity to harvest a species, um, ball of species isn't necessarily doing as well as it had been. It's hard again to get over those humps of well, at least we could just do something, if we could save one more hen, if we could say, one more gobbler, at least we're

doing something. And so it becomes a really really challenging thing just to do um socially, even though biologically UM it would be or or at least our evidence suggests it would not have a significant negative impact on the population. But I just hope we can figure out something that's going to help with production. Yeah, that's that's a whole other issue, a whole another issue with the turkeys. I'm just saying, you guys would definitely sell me a nonresident

turkey tag every year if you let me hunt all day. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely has an impact. You know, early on when turkey it was really really good, non resident could bump in, shoot bird be gone, or you know, show up at the tail end of the first week and shoot one bird and then catch the second bird of the first part of the second week and and go on. You know, I don't I don't doubt that um A half day hunting has has had an impact on nonresident participation in

the state. Yeah, but it has on me. I love, I love turkey hunting down there, but I have a hard time, you know, calling it at one o'clock and then you're just sitting in your tent picking ticks off yourself. Way way to go try to roost one or something. You know, it's tough anyway, Jason, this has been really fun. Man. I'm so glad you took the time to come on here and uh and and speak with me. So I

really appreciate it. Man. Well, I appreciate the opportunity and I never turned down the chance to talk to folks who have an audience who again we can break down those barriers, start to develop relationships with people to understand how and why and the thought processes beside behind those of us who are making management decisions state fish and

wildlife agencies. And so I just appreciate you and everyone else who who opens up the opportunity for us to to speak to an audience in a in a different way and in a less controversial way. We're not arguing specifically about a particular regulation or something like that, and and just share thoughts and ideas and the kinds of things we're thinking about that we just don't get to do in a lot of other formats. So I appreciate everything you guys do to continue to the hard work

of all of us doing the right thing for conservation. Awesome, thank man. All Right, that's it for this week, folks. Be sure to tune in next week for more white tailed goodness. This has been the Wired to Hunt podcast and I'm your guest host, Tony Peterson. As I always, thank you so much for listening and for your support.

And if you're looking for more white tail content, be sure to head on over to the meat eater dot com slash wired to see a pile of new articles each week by Mark myself and a whole bunch of white tail addicts. Or head on over to our Weird Hunt YouTube channel and you'll see the weekly how to videos that Mark and I dropped