Ep. 665: The Evolution of Deer Science and Management Over the Past Decade with Matt Ross

and we are brought to you by First Light. And if you don't know, First Light's got the Spector Whitetail cameo pattern, and with every purchase of our Spector Whitetail Pattern, a portion of those proceeds get donated to our pals over at the National Deer Association. That's relevant today because our guest is the director of Conservation for the National Dear Association. My friend, great deer hunter, wildlife biologist, all

around good dude, Matt Ross. And we're kind of continuing this by accident theme of a look back at the last ten years. You know, I mentioned a while back that Dan and I listened to our first podcast episode ten years ago or so, and have you know started

exploring what's been going on over that time period. And I thought it'd be interesting to take that same theme and apply it to what we know about deer, the science, the research, the many different projects that folks are doing across the country to help us better understand dear behavior, dear habitat the impacts of hunting, management strategies, disease, all

these different things. And Matt, you know, being involved with the National Deer Association and the Quality Deer Management Association before that, in his position, in his role, he has a really unique view of all of this information and research that's been coming to light. So my question to him, and the reason why I wanted to have this podcast was what do we know now that we didn't know when the Wired Hunt podcast started? How have things changed?

What kind of Aha moments have we as a collective deer community received over this past decade. What were some of the things we had wrong back in twenty oh nine or twenty ten or twenty twelve. Where have we seen the most progress? What is it that we as deer hunters today really need to make sure we know about because of these advances in science and research and

data collection. That was our main topic of conversation today with Matt, and some really interesting stuff related to management practices when it comes to you know, trigger management, choosing what deer to harvest, when it comes to the habitat, work we might want to do, when it comes to

the impact of our hunting decisions. All of that gets discussed today, and we also talk about an evolution in the organization that Matt works for, the National Deer Association, and a big piece of that has been some really exciting new work that they're doing related to public lands, making some really significant investments in time and energy and resources in helping improve public land habitat for deer and

deer hunters. And we get to cover that, and I think a lot of you will be interested and excited to hear about what's happening. We're talking big time scale projects that are going to improve the places that you and I can go hunt for free public land owned by us that is being improved because of the work that Matt's doing and the NDA, and we also talk about three different projects coming up that you can actually get out there and be involved in alongside me and Matt.

We've got three of my working for Wildlife tour events that are in collaboration with the NBA and their Public Lands Initiative, and I'm really hoping to see some of you guys out there on the ground doing some of this work with us. It's gonna be a good time, but we'll cover that at the end. In the meantime, let's kick this sucker off. This is a great conversation

with Matt Ross. We learn a lot. If you are interested in dear behavior, dear management, dear science, if you are a dear nerd like me and Matt are, you're gonna like this one. So let's get to it all.

know you guys. And I went to that very first Deer Steward course that was probably not the first course for you guys, but the first one for me, which I don't know, maybe it was like twenty ten, maybe too, you know, maybe like thirteen years ago maybe something like that. So it's been a ride. It's it's been a while.

some longtime friends like you at those. So yeah, it's been You're You've been quite on on quite the journey, honestly, I mean, and developed a national communication platform to talk about deer lot. I love everything you've done. Applaud the look back, you know, honestly, and you you really give a voice to a lot of a lot of folks out there, and I think you've done an amazing job.

scholarship and then got it. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have gone because it seemed like a lot of money and traveled to get there and all that kind of stuff. So that was like a formative early experience for me, building kind of my knowledge and foundation when it came to Whitetails and then the network that came out of that.

And yeah, so long story short, thank you to you guys too, and it all is I guess this is a perfect way to kind of open this conversation, Matt, because this kind of theme of the month happened by accident. I actually didn't have a plan for really where the podcast were going to go this month, but we kind of stumbled into this realization that this is the tenth season of the podcast, and that got me and Dan a few weeks ago reflecting on how far we've come

and how things have changed, and YadA, YadA, YadA. I had a similar conversation last week with Tony Peterson about that, and then I got to thinking, you know, things haven't

just been evolving with me or with other hunters. Things have been evolving when it comes to this entire community of folks obsessed with deer, learning about deer, researching deer, and developing the science and the data around what we think we know and understand about these critics that were so infatuated with So this is a long winded way of saying, Matt that my hope today is to kind of grill you on where the science of deer and deer hunting has gone over this past decade. So that's

my hope. Is that something you're game for?

you know, academia, getting a master's degree. And we pride ourselves at the Deer Association to be science based and just me personally leading our conservation team, our field team that worked with the public and states and all over the country and making sure anything that we communicate through education and outreach is always science based. And so we continually try to update ourselves and stay up to date, you know, on our own working knowledge of the science

and just it's so intriguing. I mean, they are amazing creatures and you know, both of those things my scientific brain plus the fact that I love deer and Huntingham makes me, you know, excited to talk about this. I actually a couple of years ago did somewhat of a similar retrospective look back kind of approach, but it was in an article form where in terms of deer research, said you know, what are the biggest things we've learned

in the past decade. It was supposed to be a play on twenty twenty and then twenty twenty turned into COVID, but it was like, you know, what are the twenty biggest discoveries that we found in the last twenty years. And as I started researching or thinking about the things that we've learned about deer and deer science, you know,

twenty years was just too much. It was actually too long because in ten years time so much had changed, and so the storyline changed from the twenty biggest deer research discoveries of the last twenty years to the last decade. And even that in itself was full of information and every year new research comes out, you know, kind of

speaking of COVID. COVID put a pause to a degree on some of the well obviously the whole world, but it was in terms of deer research being shared, there was a lot of good science happening, and there were still some of the major events and platforms for us to share that research. But it was interesting. As things have calmed down and in person events start happening more often or regularly, again, we're seeing an uptick in the

amount of deer research that is coming out. And even recently, you know, my one of my colleagues was at an event in Colorado and uh just said, the amount of posters that were there and live presentations seemed like it was two to three times the volume, and it must just be this lag effect. So yeah, we just we we learned them. We don't know everything about deer, uh, which just makes them partly why they're so cool. Uh. And every opportunity that we can learn about them more

through science, we love it. And I'm you can grill me. I'm ready, let's talk about let's talk about deer science. But one of my buddies coined the term deer and I wear it proudly and said, you're a true deer nerd, And I don't disagree with that.

of your job is consuming everything. I'm sure you are like constantly reading these reports and you're very You're more up to date on the latest deer science and research than probably you know, almost anyone you know. I consider myself very up to speed on this stuff, and you

know twenty x of what I know. At the same time, you're also a deer hunter, just just a deer hunter too, So you're out there seeing things in real life, experiencing things in real life, probably coming to conclusions on your own based on what you're seeing. And so this is something that you and I have talked about in past podcasts.

How sometimes there's this conflict between what we see as hunters in the field and the conclusions that we're coming to based on our own personal observations and then what the science tells us. And sometimes those things don't always seem to match up or it's confusing. There's a few examples of this where I'm still like man I don't understand how I see this thing all the time and the science tells me this other thing. So that's all

to say, Matt. My question for you then, is, given that weird situation you're kind of in where you're deeper into it than a lot of people, how has your hunting changed over the past ten years as you've been flooded with all this new information, You've consumed, all this new science, You've been a part of all these different things. At the same time, you're also a deer hunter. What's your evolution looked like? What has stood out to you

from this decade? And is that conflict that I'm talking about been a part of that at all?

or don't do. But I will also say and just kind of stepping back from that, and this could this also could come with age, but it could also come with knowing that science is not you know, using the scientific method to learn anything. Typically you need repeatability where you you test a theory through the scientific method and it's been proven in multiple landscapes or disproven and you get accurate, precise results over and over and over again.

And then the culmination of all this evidence tells you the preponderance of what the situation here's above average what you can expect. But even that, there's always outliers that too. It's a theory, and there's also things that can break that that average or not you know, not fall in

line there. And so you know, I'm saying all that to say, science and dear research has driven how I hunt in many ways, but I still have that intuitive part of me that will still follow gut, you know, gut feel to a degree, and I will also expect the unexpected to a degree. And so I might learn that you know, dear behavior says you know. I'll give an examples. The first thing to come to mind is that you know you're not dear. Use of scrapes is

primarily supposed to be at night. You know, when I was grown up, you'd see a scrape, you'd set up a stand or blind or you know, pull pull up a chair or find a stump, and you watch that during the day and you don't see anything. Well, if science says eighty five percent of a scrape use is done at night, you tend to think, Okay, well, maybe I shouldn't do that, maybe I shouldn't hunt over that place.

But you know what, there's still some deer using during the day, even if the you know, the vast majority, and you might decide to sit there and help a great buck over it. And so you know, that's just kind of an example. But I still try to follow, follow my gut, and follow my instinct as a predator. I mean, that's what we are as humans. Sometimes you get the feel that something might happen, or sometimes you get the field that deer are using space in a

certain way. I'll use science to back all that up, and I use science to help drive my my overall decisions, or honestly, I'll use science to justify what happened, you know, like or didn't happen. But you know, there are things like you and I have talked about moon and weather impacts on deer behavior and movement and what we've learned or not, you know, things that haven't been shown. Uh, but there's I wouldn't want anybody. I mean, I I may be a deer nerd, but I'm a dear hunter

and first and foremost. And there are certain things that still don't make sense to me, even though the science has shown it. And I don't know that's you're really in a in a strange world. If you want to believe something unequivocally, unabashedly and say that is the Bible on that one circumstance, that's not a good way to leave, you know, live a life. Never mind, even like go hunting, you have to you have to be to tap into that that thing that's inside us that tells us what

to do sometimes. And so I wouldn't give that advice to anybody. But I mean, we can get into some of the the details of some of the broader patterns of things I've learned. You know, you can kill a deer in the middle of the day, certainly can kill in the middle of the night. That's not legal. But most deer movement, it's supposed to be at dawn and dusk. I mean, that's something that has shown over and over

and over again. Otherwise or except there are some circumstances where deer are going to be more active during I'll give you an example, and I've said this one before, in parts of certain portions of deer range, like in central South Florida where the Florida panther exists, deer there have adapted to be more active during the middle of the day. I actually just saw a report was shared.

Kip Adams, my direct supervisor, our chief conservation officer, just shared an article link with our entire conservation team last week out of the research project that's been going on for about thirteen years in Pennsylvania called the Deer four Study out of penn State. They're sharing some stuff looking at some strange, strange, broader patterns that they're seeing about dear not being necessarily as crepuscular as that we thought. So that that's a new tidbit that doesn't jibe with

all the other research. So you know, there's still some strange stuff out there. So the caveat of don't take one study, uh certainly as truth. You certainly want to see, uh, you know, repeated results over and over again and different landscapes, and then use all that as kind of telling you what the average deer will do. But there's still going to be outliers. There's still going to be individuals that do something different. Yeah, and don't take don't don't lose that as a hunter.

not like an endpoint. You know, a research study comes to a theory based on peer review and all these different things, But then the goal for everyone else is to then disprove it someday right, and keep hammering that theory and try to poke holes and explore where there

might be gaps or where there might be exceptions. And you know, the success I think, you know saying this is not a biologist myself, but as someone who I guess you could say as an enthusiast, I think that success within the scientific world is when you actually do prove one of these things wrong and come to a

better understanding down the road. That's actually an example of the scientific method working that we're not just stuck in the belief we had twenty years ago, but instead we've continued to polish and furnish and explore and poke and prod until we do understand this thing differently. So it's a long winded way of saying I have one more personal kind of take. Curious on your take on this when it comes to these different things you've looked at

over the last ten years. Is there any one study or theory or big takeaway from the science that you think has impacted you personally the most as a hunter. Is there something you can think back on this last ten years and like, man, Yeah, when I found out that deer do X or that deer don't do why that really did change how I hunt? Is there one thing maybe that stands out to you?

what they do based on those resources. So just managing so you know, even if you are a public land hunter and you're using public land and you might not be able to manipulate the ground, you can still pick the locations you go to based on deer need at

certain times a year. I mean, one of the things that we've learned in the last decade was a movement or things that deer do they call deer excursions, which is where you know, they live in their home range, where they're there pretty much all year long, but they'll go on these excursions outside of that. Those are driven by different things that we we you know, have out of our control in some cases, but some places you

can control. So just managing land and working with your neighbors is probably one of the best things you can do to influence deer use and movement and trying to apply land management as best as you can. That's probably the one something that jumps out. There's just so much market it's hard to like sort through all of it.

is the biggest. Have you been able in any kind of way rank them, either personally or if you think there's some kind of like scientific community consensus on what those most important you know, realizations have been.

is how dear nutrition affects. We certainly know that there are if they eat a lot of good things, they're going to be healthier and they're going to be larger and more resilient to disease and even have larger antlers, which is what a lot of folks care about. But one of the things that was kind of a groundbreaking thought for a lot of researchers was how that is generational.

There's some research out around twenty fifteen or were around that time out of Mississippi State that discovered, you know, deer aren't doomed quote unquote, you know, do based on where they grew up, that you can change that through nutrition. But the thing is the researchers that did that found that if their parents were born in a poor environment,

it takes a couple of generations to change that. And so things take time, and so you have to stick with whatever you know management fortitude that you kind of put forth and try to change things over the long term. You can't nothing's a quick fix. And that that was something that was pretty pretty key.

to improve the health of the deer population. This study is basically showing that nothing I do tell me if this is the right interpretation, but nothing I can do over the next two to four years will dramatically change the you know, nutritional impact for or a deer that was living on my farm the year I bought it. It's more so going to impact you know, the fon of that deer's fawn or a generation or two down the line. And so this is is that what I'm understanding.

They raised their fawns, you know, because they were pregnant, They raised their funds and fed them all the same level of high quality forage and measured in the difference in productivity of their next generation, and they all stayed the same. It was like they were within their own units of whether they came from good quality, medium or poor.

But they did that for generation after generation. It took a couple of generations for the deer that came from the poor quality area to catch up, you know, or actually produce. And they were wondering, why did it take a couple of generations. It's almost like their pre programmed.

The technical term is called epigenetics. It was almost like they're pre programmed to not respond to changes because you know, evolutionarily speaking, if they were to stay in that environment, it would be not a good idea from them to like grow quickly from that and then have a time of feasts and famine and where they go back to being poor quality. Think about areas that are super arid, you know, and they have dry year after dry year, and then all of us sudden a really wet year

and there's a lot of vegetation available. If those deer responded the next year, they would be then back to their norms. So it takes it takes time to almost flip the switch on. And what that taught us as managers is that one you can't blame where you're from, you know, don't blame your zip code. Don't say, well, I live in such and such a place that it's always going to be poor quality. I need to travel to go hunt better deer, quote better dear, or I need a lot of money to you know, buy property

to do that. No, if you have access to property that you can manage, as long as you put in the time and the resources you can, you can make a change. It just takes time. That that was something that we learned that was kind of foundational and kind of a big deal.

your you know, your your zipua necessarily. Do you want to expand on that one a little bit because I found that one pretty interesting.

types I guess throughout the country. The thing is, they they collected good to high I mean sorry, poor to very high quality soils in every part of the country. So they came up to the Northeast and found the most you know, dirt poor, you know, pun intended areas that are rocky and low quality soil nutrients based on the USDA's soil map. And then they also went to really high quality, deep rich soils kind of like in

our best ag region. They did it in the Midwest, they did in the Southeast, you know, and they collected the same plants from and when they say the same plants, they plants had grown all they so, for example, red maple is a tree, or you know, golden rod might be a herbaceous plant that you can pretty much find

from New York to Florida. And what they did was they collected all this data and looked at it, and what they found was it didn't matter if said plant grew in Iowa or the sandy soils of the cost of South Carolina, like say pokeweed, you know that that was one of the plants they collected. They all had the same level of nutrients, crude protein, you know, all the way down, all of the things that we need

nutrients out of the plant. And so if they had produced a certain range of it, and the theory had always been you need to go to the best soils to get the best nutrients. Well, just collecting plants across the country and all these different soil types, they found, well that plant pretty much always had the same nutrient levels. The difference was yield, meaning the areas that had the

best soils just produced more of it. And if you think about it from an ag standpoint, you know, thinking about agricultural producers, you know, if you talk in that terminology, number of bushels of corn in central Iowa and the number of bushels of corn being produced in the North and Lower Peninsula of Michigan are pretty different. But the corn plant is probably going to have the same nutrient quality,

and so it just common sense. But until this research really kind of opened our eyes to it was the reason the most productive deer populations exist in these areas that you know, you and I have gotten in trucks and driven across the country to go hunt is not because the soils are producing better food. They're just producing

more of it. And I also know that when I overserve myself, you know, like if I'm going to have a second portion of dinner tonight with my family, and then tomorrow I do the same, and I do the same, and I just do it over and over again. Guess what I'm going to gain weight? It's portion size. It's not like what's in that you know, venison burger that I put on by plate. It's that I had two

of them, and that that's just common sense. But it took a little bit of that to recognize that in the parts of the country that have big antler deer, big body deer, and just a lot of deer, it's just they're they're going back for second helpings because there's just so much food on the landscape and that can be measured, so.

And it made you think, well, okay, well, if you don't live along this corridor where they have this incredible mineral content and this amazing soil is depositive from the the Mississippi pulling stuff down, you were just never going

to be quite at that level. But does this research kind of disprove that and basically says, man, forget that and instead, if you can somehow get the yield in your neck of the woods, So in northern Michigan, if I could somehow, you know, do enough work to get that kind of yield, I could see those kinds of results despite not having Iowa soil. Is that the right read it is?

a population. And so yeah, I mean yes and no. You can definitely make a difference for an individual, but it depends. It's all about scale, right, you know, So the deer that are on your northern Michigan property are likely not living there one hundred percent of the time, and so they have to come and go. You can make a detractor for them to want to be there as much as possible, and they can spend the majority of their time there, but they're also eating and traveling

and going to different places. So it is it is about you know, bigger, bigger than that. You have to you have to work on a on a more landscape scale.

Shoot the spikes, shoot the little genetically inferior books, and you know that will help you, you know, eventually have better deer, improve the genetics. It sounds like in the last ten years that has I mean, it doesn't sound like I know from reading things and seeing things that that has become much much more out of style than it was ten fifteen years ago. And I think that relates pretty well. We're talking about here too, on a different side of it, what have they found on that.

Antler quality. I mean, all we all know that that's kind of the thing there and I always I always try to mention and talk to anybody about culling as saying, well, that's you know, your value system is on the size of the antlers. I mean, there's a lot obviously a lot of other things that bring value to deer hunting

and our organization. Going back to formerly known you know, Quality Deer Management Association, A lot of people aligned QTM or you know the QTMA as growing big antlers, but we always try to push age, you know, and her health and her balance and uh, you know, I personally find a lot of value in just trying to shoot older deer, no matter how big their antlers are. And so my value is the amount of wear on the

job bone. I certainly want to shoot a big antler deer, but if I'm if I'm gauging my steps based on job bone wear or taught tea toothwear, culling certainly doesn't play a role. It's just a matter of letting deer go into they're older. But from a culling perspective, what

we've learned is that we can't we can't change it. Uh, partly because you know, there is no strong haritabill uh, you know, connection between antler size and what the offspring of that deer that you know, if that deer sires deer, what more bucks, what the antlers are going to look like on that And that's because part of the genes are coming from something that you have no ability to assess antler quality, and that's the dough.

But probably the biggest nail in the coffin research was done in the last decade was a project in Texas where they did a scale of one hundred thousand acres and nobody owns one hundred thousand acres that's listening to this, I can almost guarantee you. And they they set up efforts that would be beyond what you know money could buy almost in every circumstance where they had intensive and moderate and then kind of a control area where they were not culling deer, and all all three of those

kind of situations had similar herd and habitat characteristics. And for a series of seven years, they hunted and then captured at a helicopter every buck that they could find, and they had certain criteria that the deer need needed to meet, and if deer did not meet a certain criteria,

they were they were killed. And so dear that the rest of the year were released, including bucks that were captured within the control and they just measured that over time, and what they found was, you know, at that scale for almost ten years, and you know, capturing deer with helicopters, and if you know, for every age class one and a half, two and a half, every adult male age class one and a half all the way up to maturity, and they removed here a year after year for over

seven years, and still there was no difference. And so unless you own one hundred and one thousand acres and you own a fleet of helicopters, you're not going to make any impact. And so anybody listening to this at least should know at that scale culling didn't work at

that rate and at that intensity. So for the average person that hunts whatever, you know, the acres is twenty acres, forty acres, one hundred acres, you're not going to make a difference if if, unless you apply greater pression than that, and even that we don't know if it's possible.

QDM and the you know, the advent of the Quality Deer Management Association always promoted and we still do in some places trying to advance age at least up in two and a half, you know, just letting the yearling age class go because that's the largest jump in the

antler quality. But honestly, you know, you know, one of the things that I wrote about in this other article is and you know, really looking back, it would be probably the one of the biggest things I've you know, just kind of thinking about this, one of the biggest things that we've learned over the ten years is about hunting strategy. You know, I talked about excursions a little bit, but really hunting pressure. That's probably a whole category that

we should talk about. Is you know, how deer react to us. That that there's a whole suite of research that we've learned that I think I probably take to the woods more more with me than anything else. Is just what what my presence does to to deer behavior and deer movement. I started talking about excursions earlier, but really what what I was trying to get at is

just hunter pressure, like our presence. But I would be remiss to not talk about you know, some of the bigger things that we're worried about with deer are things like chronic wasting disease, which I know you cover a lot on this podcast and your listeners have heard about, and we probably shouldn't get into that too deep because you'll fill a whole podcast on that, But you know, thinking about calling and antler quality and selectivity, you know there is this we're I mean, you just had Kip

on your podcast earlier this year to talk about our Deer Report, and we track the composition of deer harvest nationally every year, numbers of deer and age classes of deer and rates that were taking them. And you know, as Kip always says, we're in our heyday right now. You know, age classes are more well rounded and balanced, and more older box are in the harvest now than ever before in more places in the country. And that's

all true. But you know, as I think about national issues and about you know, what we've learned, certainly, chronic waste disease has expanded enormously in the past decade. I mean, thinking back ten years twenty thirteen. You know, if you and I were in Missouri in twenty thirteen or twelve talking to each other, the landscape and what it looked like for CWD back then is very different. Than it is right now, and trying to decide and tell people how to manage deer herds is different. You have to

think about it. It still impacts a small percentage of our total landscape, but it's a big enough issue that you need to be aware of it. You know, every hundred needs to be aware of it and at least be cognizant of managing. For really, herd health is the goal, and so managing deer populations is what's most important first and foremost, you know, just right, making sure that there's not too many deer for what the landscape can handle.

That's that's rule number one for QDM. Honestly, instead of talking about age or sex ratio or some of those other parts of deer management, it's just numbers of deer. And unfortunately we still have. You know, actually, you and I got into some really good conversations probably five years ago.

We're actually a little bit more than that. When deer harvests were starting to crash around the country, you know, we were really starting to come down and it was something everybody was looking at, Well that's it ebbs and flows, and today we're at, you know, pretty good deer harvest we're not at national highs, but we're not far off from them, and so we're at that point where we're starting to talk nationally about you know, you need to do deer just here in general, because we have too

many deer in a lot of places. Outside of talking about disease managed and so I'm true and true a deer manager, and I do try to manage for herd health and balance and all those things. But one of the messages that you know, I think people should hear is that it's our responsibility as hunters to manage populations. That's the first thing that we should worry about. And so if you are withholding harvesting enough deer because you're really trying to push antler quality, that's you're missing a

little bit of the first messages. You need to make sure that the deer density is not too high, and we do that through various methods of looking at their impact on vegetation. You know, browse lines, you can actually

measure this stuff. But if you're just seeing a lot of deer, or too many deer, if there's a lot of car accidents, that's what state wildlife agencies need us to do is manage populations, and so that that's my number one priority when I'm hunting, is if the state, whether I'm hunting in needs, is looking to reduce deer dancy, I'm trying to shoot deer. You know, those would be my goal because they're the one that's producing more deer. But that's that's the first thing that I take on.

And so I know we're talking about research and I'm I'm chasing rabbits here, not deer. But you know, when you talk about calling and what we've learned, I want the listeners to understand don't get too tied up in calling or antler size for one, because you can't control it unless you own helicopters and more than one hundred thousand acres. And then number two, our responsibilities to manage a population first as as a hunter, and we should care about that.

nutrition on deer health. And if someone is worried about you know, there's a lot of people, myself included, who get excited about big Bucks and have wanted to do habitat improvement to try to get more food on the ground and thinking like, man, this is going to be great for these deer and we're going to have more big healthy bucks, YadA YadA, YadA. Well, if one of the main takeaways from that earlier study was that, hey, you're not going to necessarily change the nutrition that the

plants can provide. You're just going to impact the yield. So you could do impact. You could you could look at yield and if yield is the thing that's going to get more food to a buck to make it easier for him to pack on weight and antlers and all that kind of stuff, one thing you could do, which is a lot of people jump to is the easiest option. It's not, but they will jump to this being that the sexy option, I guess is like more food, more food, more food plots, more this, more of that.

Let's spend thousands and thousands of dollars to put in fifty acres of clover food plots and soybeans and all this kind of stuff, because I want my deer to have all the protein and all the whatever they need to grow big. That will get more yield, supposedly, But at the same time, you could take a different approach, which is just manage your overpopulated deer population to cut down on the number of deer on the landscape. That

also gets more yield to the deer. Right that would have a you would if you would take a deer population and cut in half, you all of a sudden have twice as much food available to those you know, fifty remaining deer. So managing your deer population to be in balance with the habitat is just as effective of a way to chase your big mature buck kind of dreams as well. Absolutely so, I think.

we should do. Uh. And when I've managed properties, including the ones I hunt today, one of the first, you know, the first things we did was assess where's the population at and tried to reduce the number of mouths to the point where when we started doing habitat improvements, honestly where I live and where you live as well, and

actually you know everywhere in the country. I guess now that I'm thinking about it, you have a lot of competing invasive plant species that are not eaten by deer, whereas most of the preferred natives will be eaten by deer because they've grown up, you know, volved and lived there for eons eating those plants. And so my goal has always been on a new piece of property before I start doing habitat management is get the deer den

deer numbers in check. That way, when you open the canopy uh in the woods, which is my next you know thing I would jump on is the tree regeneration response from the increase in sunlight is more of your natives. Although you might have some invasive show up, you're going to have those natives show up as well, and you can manage that through mechanical or chemical or fire or something like that. But if you have a lot of deer on the ground, you're going to be fighting two

different things to you know, to push and pulls. Whereas it's not only these invasive shown up, but the deer actually a catalyst by removing the ones that you want to be there, because they're selectively picking those things out. And so that is the first thing I tried to do when when looking at a piece of properties, get the deer density and check. And then the second thing is work in your woods because it's the cheapest and most properties, at least in the Northeast where I live,

they're primarily wooded. And so that's by proportion, the most land is in forest, and you know, by trade. I'm also a forester, and so I know that you can manage trees and make money from it, which then you can go into things like food plots or you know whatever fuel for your side by side or whatever else. And then you're getting the sunlight and the forage or vegetative response in the woods. Those those two things alone, bullets and chainsaw, you know, barloo bin oil and fuel

for your chainsaw. You can change the world, and you can change you can change deer herd health on a pretty large landscape. It doesn't cost that much.

the things that we've learned. And there's some biological things too about like how do you see that I can get into, but you know, from multiple projects that have looked at sites that where hunters start entering the woods and watch how deer change their behavior, what we've learned is that generally, dear deer know that you're out there, and they respond quickly to it, and that it takes them a couple of days they will go back. It's not like they're gonna, you know, leave and never come back.

Because deer have something called high site fidelity, meaning once they've once they're an adult and they're living in this place their home range. They they are stuck there. I mean, that's where they're going to live. They're not going to just leave. What they do is change where they may go within their home range and when they go to those places. So it's not like if you scare a big buck, he's gone on unless he gets shot, you

know while he's running away, but he's gone forever. It's still going to be using that, it just might change change how it uses. So generally the projects have all agreed that within honestly want one visit to the woods, you know, first interaction deer alerted, they're going to change what they're doing, and that it takes two to three days for them to kind of go back and behave

the way that they were before. And those projects have been done in various forms and different areas of the country, not just the southeast, but also in the in the Midwest and in the Northeast as well. And so you think about how you hunt and when you go to the woods, just recognize even if you don't see a deer run, I mean for the most part, that's going

to be throughout the season. Uh, the one time that I personally will not use that science and affect how I hunt is during the absolute peak of the rout, because at that point deer are not paying attention to us as much they as they are during other times the year. So there's about probably a week to ten days where if I bumped a deer or if I'm going in the woods, I'm not really really thinking hard

about where I'm going next. I'm just gonna try to hunt as much as possible during daylight hours because they they are not paying attention as much as they are during the rest of the year. But during the pre rut, even early in the rut, you know, after the breeding season, going into the you know, end of the end of the hunting season. For the most part, I am really conscious of where I walk into a property, how many days it's been, and what deer might be doing because of it.

more during dark. And then another project in Maryland, this is actually one of the first projects that had GPS collars on deer. This was at Chesapeake Farm with under dark doctor Mark Connor and others, where the same thing happened is that deer tended to use the same parts of the study site, but they did it at night as opposed to during dawn or dusk hours. It was just more dark. And so you know, a lot of hunters have always said they're gonna go nocturnal, and those

projects just provided evidence that that was true. Yes, they are spending more time in the dark than they would be during the day. So it's kind of a you know, a duh moment, but yes, that has been shown.

When they find a home, they want to stay in that home, but you certainly can change when they expose themselves around that or in certain parts of that home. Is that right?

deer do? And I would say buy and large. What the average deer does is just shifts its use of its home range to another place. And so they're still going to be active at dawn and dusk, but they're going to go to those corners or sometimes not even corners, but places within their average home range where you're not going. And they could be, you know, a deep swamp, it could be right along the road where you're driving past. It's just the places you haven't been. So what does

the average deer do? That answer is it just changes where it's going to be, not when it is traveling. But that is definitely the average or that it would be my take home for folks. And so I think the smartest hunters and you do a great job of like finding some profiles of people or profiling really successful hunters that do repeatedly, you know, are successful out there even in higher pressure situations. Those folks do shot probably change when they hunt to a degree. But you tell me,

I'm going to turn it around on you, Mark. I mean, you've learned and interviewed a bunch of these guys and gals around the country. Is it more that they are going to places where hunters aren't going or is it that they're going in at different times from when they were earlier in the year.

it not? And that the bucks that didn't find those places, of the bucks that did not have that the pre you know, disposition to be particularly cautious or particularly wary. Uh, those ones got eliminated out of the gym pool early on.

be wide open stands of trees. Uh, they could be a little you know, uh, like an island, or a mot of of shrubs in the middle of an open field, and they just know they can see you coming, and so they'll go there. They know, through their use of their five senses, where we do not go. And if they live long enough, like you said, they've been, they've been. The ones that make mistakes don't last long. But the ones that survive tend to experience those things and learn,

and they end up going. And so the best suite of projects that I can think of that have had GPS collars on deer when in some of them have also had GPS armbands on hunters or even did like aerial surveys of everybody and were able to pick up through infrared imagery where the hunters were and where the deer were. But through all of these projects, in all these different landscapes, deer go to places where we don't go.

That that is the take home. Not necessarily do they shift to being nocturnal, It's just they will they will find these places. There was some really cool projects out there that watched and so how deer did it in some of them that were colored for more than one hunting season would go to the same places you're you know, in the same fall, so like around the same time when guns started going off, they would they would find the same locations and go where they were safe the

year before. And obviously that's a learned behavior.

that from occurring and so follow the rules. I guess you know, from from a hunter's perspective, ravel anywhere to hunt to to you know, bring back your boned out meat, because we've learned that, you know, in the baliant of what past ten fifteen years, how this disease moving is moving around, you know, leaving leaving some of those places, those places will take justin enison and leave the skull and the spinal cord and the bones and all of that stuff, you know, where you were hunting, and then

don't put out things that congregate deer. That's that's the big thing we're fighting, you know, honestly, and there's a lot of research being done on it. Unfortunately we have to spend a lot more on it to learn a lot more. But I take that very seriously. I know you do as well, and as a hunter, I know you have a lot of people listening to this, and

I want people to take that stuff seriously. You know, it's great talking about big antlers, and it's great talking about selectivity and habitat management and even hunting pressure because I use that information. But I want people to leave

this podcast knowing, hey, you can make a difference. You know, we all don't hunt in chronic WASTINGO these areas, but we all, we all have the ability to slow it spread, no matter if you hunt there or not, by just being an advocate and making good decisions and listening to your stay wildlife agency. And that's kind of where the research ends for me right now. Anyway.

Deer Management Association, now the National Deer Association. You guys kicked off something that I just think is really really cool, which is the Public Lands Initiative, And we haven't talked about that here on the podcast before you and I can you update us on what that is, what you guys are doing, what you guys have achieved already, and then we should talk about our little collaboration too.

to do as a conservation organization. I could not be more proud, honestly of where we are as an organization. It's easy for me to say, but you know, things

are things are really good at NDA. We are we are doing a lot of things in policy as you mentioned, you know, a CWD funding a few minutes ago, and part of our transition from qtm A, my former employee employer, to the National Deer Association, and we created a new strategic vision, long term vision for the company, and as part of that we said, you know, we're the biggest issues affecting deer and deer management and deer hunting into the future and what can we do as an organization,

can our members do and our followers do to to effect change, And things like CWD came up, you know, R three getting new hunters out there, and we really think you personally and meat Eater about you know, the donation of the back forty. That was just one small part of being able to advocate for more and new non traditional audiences and getting hunting. But another arm of one of our strategic visions was doing more on public land. As an organization. We we talk about private land management

a lot. We did today, you know. And the fact is most deer hunting, white tailed deer hunting occurs on private land and that was in our Deer Report and I know you you and Kip got a chance to chat about that. But as an organization that cares about recruiting new hunters and cares about the land, our organization has worked worked really well with state wildlife agencies and state game areas or WMAs and managing and providing education

outreach through states. But one thing we have not done, admittedly well in the past thirty five years is doing more with our federal partners and so kind of wrapping

all that up into an initiative. We thought, we need a vision of doing more on federal lands under the guise of basically helping do more management so that if these properties are improved, access is opened, we can recruit more hunters because most new hunters, you know, going back to the R III movement, typically don't own land they're coming from. I mean, some of them do, but research

shows that most of them do not. And new hunters, especially adult hunters, typically live in subourbon and urban areas. They're of college education or greater, and they don't have anywhere to go. And so one way that we could support our R three work is to work with federal partners open up more lands, do more on public land so that those places are better for deer because the reality is that a lot of them are unmanaged or not managed for you know, larger populations of deer or

supporting huntable populations. And so if we did more, it would provide more opportunities, and that's the least we can do. And we created an initiative and launched it in twenty one, so just two years ago. It's called Improving Access, Habitat and Deer Hunting on Public Lands and we have a goal to improve a million acres by twenty twenty six,

and we're already two years into it. And part of that was to you know, state wildlife management agencies own a lot of land, but to really make an impact, we needed to work with our federal partners to scale at that level. And so we're working with the US Forest Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service in many places. Uh and uh. You know, as part of that project, I oversee a team of stewardship coordinators. These are people, you know, uh, people that are educated in

experience and land management, specifically administering work on the ground. Uh. And we are working through the country right now on we're in seven national forests that we have executed agreements in six different states. I got a bunch more that are about to be developed and signed this year. We're working with other NGOs, which is even awesome. You know. Even more awesome is that we're working with other conservation

groups and the go go. There is just fine places that need management to help increase capacity that might help. You know, deer are opportunittunistic and they adapt really well, and so if you're managing land generally, deer respond if you're managing vegetation, you know, if you're just changing the composition of vegetation and creating disturbance and just making it healthier. The great thing about deer is they're resilient and that they will respond quickly. And then there's a lot of

other species that benefit as well. And so we do it under the umbrella of deer management and because there's a lot of support there, but we're helping a lot of other things as well, and we thankfully have the support of our board are really really excited about this initiative. Our staff is really excited. We even have groups like bass Pro and Cabela's Outdoor Fund financially supporting it. And so there's been a lot of energy behind this initiative

and the last two years, and it's growing fast. It's actually taking up a fair amount of my time, and in a good way. I'm not saying that in a negative way. I mean, I am working on this initiative the majority of my weeks almost every week, and it's just because there's a lot of moving parts and we're talking to a lot of different people, and so that's going to create really good things as a byproduct of that. I mean, I think our organization is going to grow

from it. I'm talking about, like you know, from an internal we're probably gonna end up having a staff up and we're going to have to. We are seeing some real opportunities for us to make a major impact, and it's got us all very excited.

you're making it better for dear other critters. But if somebody were to, you know, show up in this new piece of or not new piece, but on this national forest that you guys did work on, what are they going to see that's different than it was two years ago?

twelve months or you know, honestly to the last twenty four months, so the last two years. We do take at the end of every calendar year, we ask all of our chapters or branches, you know, what they've done for education and outreach, and if they've been working on things, if they've donated venison. But by and large, the majority of that is through Forest Service partnerships, and I'll go through some of those here in a second. From the

state game areas. A lot of our branches have done improvements. Some of it could be clean up days, some of it could be planting food plots or just doing work, doing infrastructure improvements, and those vary. But the things that I directly oversee and managed with the US Forest Service is we have something called a Master Stewardship Agreement which allows us to work in certain parts of the country.

It covers Regions eight and nine. And then we have agreements in other regions of the US Forest Service system out west. Each of those agreements gives us the ability to basically sign a what's called a supplemental project agreement, so that's forest specific, meaning pick a national forest, and that's we're working with the district ranger in that national forest and their staff to say what do you need done there? A lot of it is helpful for deer hunting and deer but they all tear up to their

forest plans. Basically, they have these long term ten year forest management plans that they're trying to achieve and change the forest or improve the forest. And so when we start our conversations with them with an individual forest, we'll go and say, okay, you know, we'll go through the document, talk about the different NEPA clear that's you know, Environmental Policy Protection Agency cleared work that has already been gone through the vet vetting process of being able to say

is this environmentally something that can be done? And things that are NEPA cleared that our work that they need to get to varies, it varies from and all. I'll talk about those examples. Now. Our first agreement that we developed was in Mississippi, which you and I will be a mississipulator and this year we'll talk about that in

a second. On the national forests system there, we're working in DeSoto National Forest, the Chickisaway National Forest, and in discussions in Bienville National Forest, three different national forests in the state of Mississippi. A lot of that work is long leaf restoration, but it's not all long restoration. We're doing invasive plant like removal and some fire prescribed burning.

The invasive plant removal is cogon grass springing. That's an invasive grass species that shows up and slows the growth of other natives. And so we're doing a lot of acres of long leaf work and invasive species down there. We're also working up in Michigan in the Upper Peninsula in Hiawatha and Ottawa National Forest. There's two national forests we're working there. In fact, I was talking to one of our stewardship coordinators about an hour ago is there

getting a crew started. They had their first day of looking at things end Up there, we're marking timber to

be cut in areas. We're also doing something called common stand exams, which is basically inventorying the trees that are out there that hasn't been done in fifty sixty years in certain parts of that forest because it's so large and so they don't know what's growing and the value of those species, and so basically just taking tabs on what's out there, and that's our contract there, although that's

supposed to be growing as well. And we are working in Virginia on the George Washington Jefferson National Forest doing some restoration, some mountaintop restoration work and some opening of the forest to create early success habitat. We're working in Kentucky on Daniel Boone National Forest. That project is wide and varied. It's actually on two different Ranger districts on

Cumberland and London Ranger Districts. You and I'll be in Kentucky as well, and that also that includes some engineering work, road improvements and installing culverts so that people can can travel, some timber management, actually cutting some trees. We are also working on something called their open Lands, their Open Lands Program, which is a NEPA cleared process that's looking at basically creating more open space because it's such a closed canopy forest.

We're working in Idaho on the Idaho Panhandle National forest.

That's in obviously northern Idaho. Most of that work is fire resiliency and pre commercial thinning out there, you know, just north of where you are today, there are fire There are fire at risk forests because the trees get like a root, raw and disease and insects, and they tend to be able to carry fire a bunch a lot faster because the preferred species are not out competing some of these other species of trees, and so you get these fuel loads where the trees get very dense

in how they're growing and then their limbs die and these latter fuels are created where the fire can actually climb and make it through the forest really fast, and there's just a lot of acres. The problem is a lot of those acres are not of the size of trees where you can actually cut them and make any money from it. So it costs something. And so that's called pre commercial thinning. And so we're treating like fifteen hundred acres of pre commercial thinning just this year, and

so it just adds up real fast. I mean, all of these places where are amples, but we're talking to forests all over the country at this point. It's quite a task to kind of keep up with it. And that's why it's so exciting. I mean, we're just we're doing a lot of different work. We're else we're working in Arkansas. I didn't mention that, but just it goes on and on.

not achieving that that goal. And I'm excited to see where this goes because I think it's going to become a major part of what the NDA does.

to grow big bucks. And I think this is an incredible example of how untrue that is today in the incredible impact you guys are having on public lands for all those deer hunters and other folks out there who do depend on public land, I think it's going to be hard to make an argument that there's anyone within the conservation space in the deer world at least that's doing more for public land now and making you know, high quality hunting experiences possible for you, regardless of your

own land, regardless if you live in the city or in the country, if you are a new hunter an old hunter. You guys, as you say you know in the one of your taglines is like you are for deer hunters of all stripes and types, and you know this is a great put in your money and time where your mouth is kind of moment So uh, big kudos to you guys for doing that.

you kind of look back. You know, it's about time and place, and I think the one thing that we've done well as a company depend on, you know, no matter who's been part of our organization, you know, membership up to our staff, up to our leadership at the board level, and our partners and sponsors people, you know, companies that support us, is we also are about you know, we're we're always about Isshian sales. We're always about what

what is important now, like what's impacting deer. And you know, we know that close to ninety percent of the deer are in the country on an in the basis are killed on private land. But if you're looking back ten years ago, you know, twenty thirteen, or we were, if

we were having the same conversation, it's different today. Uh not that the percentage of deer shot on public or private land has changed, It's just at that time, hunters across the country were still adopting the concept of QDM of like making decisions and that you know, what we do matters in terms of what we shoot, working with our neighbors, like I mentioned earlier, habitat management, all of these things as science has shown like where we started

the episode. But today, you know, as an organization, we look and all hunters practice QTM. And I'm not just saying that, I mean there is there are not many hunters out there today that aren't practicing some form of deer management, whether they are trying to improve nutrition or get pictures of deer on trail cameras or thinking about what they shoot. I would argue, you know, and the data shows it, and it supports it, that one hundred

percent of hunters are quality deer management minded. That's what they do. They might do parts of it. Ten years ago that yeah, ten years ago, that was probably not that number. It was a majority, you know. I think it was probably closer to eighty percent of hunters, and ten years before that it probably was like less than fifty percent. So those were the things that we worked as an organization. But today, you know, not only has everybody adopted and they're practicing it now, we're looking at

at other things like recruiting new hunters. That is a major issue, and you've done a great job promoting that and helping support that. Diseases are a big issue and public land management is a big issue. You know, there's a lot of things out there that are impeding our US Forest Service managers and staff from getting done what

they need to do. They get litigated a lot the process of getting releasing jobs to get cut mills, and the markets aren't not what they used to be to be able to sell this would and so they are stewarding like one hundred and ninety million acres of land that we can go hunt new hunters can go out and use, you know, because they don't own land, and we need to do everybody that our community needs to

do a better job managing it. And thankfully, you know, not only NDA, but all of our sister conservation organizations are working in this space as well. You know, I can just tell you Mule Deer Foundation, Turkey National Wild Turkey Federation, Uh, even you know, Trout Unlimited, the Nature Conservancy. It's not just game specific groups. There's a lot of groups that are working and partnering with the for Service.

But we all need to chip in because one hundred and ninety three million acres is a lot of land, and every year, every year, more of that land is getting to a state where it's not supporting good wildlife species, plant diversity, and Luckily we can change that, and so you know, I'm excited about it. And it's not to say that we're changing our tune because of we're chasing

the latest golden nugget. Honestly, we need to care about this stuff and it's a focus of ours right now because we need to recruit new hunters and that's where they can go. And in that space, the US Forest Service and federal lands, those places need as much work as they not chip in. And so I'm excited about it because it's real opportunity.

NBA and the Forest Service. I well, I guess I'll let you share whatever you want to share about it, in as much detail as you want or as little detail. We can just send folks to the website and give them the dates, or if you want to give a quick If you have time to give a quick overview of each of those three events, you can do that too. But I've talked about on the podcast before. I think anyone listening should know about what the Working for Wildlife

tour is. But I'll give you the twenty second general overview. Basically, this is a series of events that I am helping shine a spotlight on and participate in, hoping to bring to everyone's attention how many great volunteer opportunities there are across the country to actually get out there and do good work for wildlife on public lands. So been all over the country chipping in, partnering with different conservation organizations to improve habitat or pick up trash or do whatever

it is. It's going to make these public places better for hunters, anglers and for the credits out there. And We've got three really really cool events that I'm excited about with you MAP, So do you want to give us some level of detail about those three I.

with the idea. I remember being as enthusiastic about it then as I am now, and I thought initially, like immediately I should say of places we could tap into because of these agreements that I'm working on with the Forest Service, and in fact, some of them require us to bring in volunteers, and we have our own membership base that where we were already planning on advertising opportunities

to come out. But as soon as you said you're thinking about promoting things, I said, well, even better, because that's just allowed our megaphone to get people to pay attention to it. And so the places that were we lined up to work on this year are late July July twe nin in northern Idaho on the Idaho Panandle National Forest. That location we are working with the Forest Service on Idaho Panandal National Forest as well as the

Idaho Fish and Game Department. And one of the things that both entities or organizations are trying to do is

promote more aspen growth. And they have some places where conifers are starting to grow and out compete and encroach on young aspen stands, and these young aspen are really good game forage they're also good for the diversity of the forest and forest resilience and fire resilience to have aspen growing out there as opposed to some of these other trees that will die out from the understory and

then catch fire quickly. And so we are going to be working with both of those partners to remove those conifers by hand, create some brush piles and brush fences and enhancing and getting more aspens to grow. And so that's July twenty ninth, and then in Mississippi on July September twenty third, we are working with again the Forest Service. This is on Desodo National Forest, but we're also working with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks and

the Leaf River Wildlife Management Area. Leaf River WMA is actually inside DeSoto National Forest. And we also have a corporate partner, Mississippi Power, that's helping as well. Mississippi Power owns a bunch of line right away to cross the National Forest Service there, and so we just actually met earlier today. I have partner meetings once a month to talk about these events and what we're going to do.

That one. We're doing a variety of things. They actually have this old headquarter building that was actually part of the original deer restocking efforts mark back in nineteen thirty eight, and so that building needs a little bit of tender love and care. So we're gonna have some people working on that. We're gonna have some people helping us. They're going to be disking in and applying applying pre emergent herbicide on some cog grass areas prior to us going there.

And we're going to be seeding in clover and some oats in some areas, and then also regenerating some other and then we're gonna be doing some tree planting as well. We're gonna have some fruit bearing trees and we're gonna have a tree planting crew. So that's again September twenty third, and then the last one is October fourteenth. These are all Saturdays, and this is in Kentucky Daniel Boone National Forest. It's on the London Ranger District and actually there's a

WMA there, Cane Creek WMA. So we're working with the Forest Service, Kentucky Department Official Life Resources, but we're also working with the Division of Forestry in the University of Kentucky. And an independent stave. Independent stave is a they make staves for like whiskey barrels, bourbon barrels. They buy a

lot of white oak from the National Forest. And so our objective that day, and this is actually per our agreement, is we're going to be collecting acorns off the ground and we need we have a goal of collecting somewhere between five hundred and thousand pounds of acorns that day, and so we'll be doing some scouting ahead of time, and those acorns are going to be brought to the State Nursery and grown to bare root size, and then those bare root seedlings are actually going to get used

to replant back into the National Forest in areas where they're trying to regenerate oak where they can't get it to oak, so they're using a local seed source with a little bit of help by getting it started at the State Nursery, and those will eventually become trees someday and hopefully up in acorns for deer that our grandkids are hunting, or they'll end up being staves and a bourbon barrel that you know, our grandkids drink out of.

I'm not sure, but that's a local reforestation project. So all three of those are going to end with some really awesome camaraderie and some food and we're just hoping everybody can come out. And if you want to learn more, if you go to NDA's website and go to the menu option get involved, and I know you have a link to that will guide people to the same place. So that's that's how you how you find it.

any state near there, come on out. This is gonna be a lot of fun.

and it's like rejuvenating. So, Man, I'm excited to see you here in about a month and a half up there in northern Idaho. Man, it's gonna be it's gonna be great.

event coming up that's not with the NDA. It's one we have in partnership with backcountry Hunters and Anglers and that is August twelfth, And if you google Working for Wildlife Tour you'll see the website we have over on the Meat Eater website with links to register for that event. And that's in Missouri. So if you're in Missouri or somewhere around there, come join us on August twelfth. We're gonna be doing some really cool stuff on some public

land near the Mississippi River. If you don't want to be there for that one, if that one's too far away, you just heard about the options available to you with matt Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi. Want to see you there. So with that said, thank you, for joining. Hope you enjoyed this one, and until next time, stay wired time