Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I'm joined by doctor Bronson Strickland, Professor of Wildlife Management at Mississippi State University, to discuss the latest in white tail research and its implications for deer hunters. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt pod cast, brought to you by First Light and their brand new line of white tail gear, which I've told you all about.
You can learn more about it over at first light dot com and our CAMO for Conservation initiative, which means that every purchase you make of any of first Light's gear in the Specter Camel pattern, which is the white tail pattern, you buy something in that pattern, and a portion of that sale is donated to the National Deer Association to help promote the conservation of our favorite big
game printer. So that's pretty cool. And in other news, stay two and there is some exciting stuff coming up next week related to white tails in the world of First Light, in the world of meat Eater. Last year, we had a big old celebration of white tail deer for a week called white Tail Week. I don't know if that's a creative name or not, but Whitetail Week was pretty awesome last year, and we're bringing it back.
It's next week, so stay tuned for even more white tailed business than usual, including and I'm just gonna say it. I don't know if this is something we're not supposed to tease it or not, but my first two films from last year are coming out next week, including the film that is going to be the Return to the
Back forty. So I got to go back to the Back forty and spend some time with two of the new hunters that I've been mentoring out there over previous seasons, help them get their first year on the Back forty. So we go back to the Back forty, we do some hunting, we showcase everything that's happened on the property in the year since that, barring some kind of unforeseen circumstance,
should be coming out next week. And the Wide nine film, the film that recaps my four year journey kind of following studying and then hunting this buck we call the Wide nine here in Michigan. That's coming out next week, so make sure you are subscribed to the Meat Either YouTube channel as well. Very exciting things to come. But that is all neither here nor there. Today we are talking dear research, dear studies, the science of what deer
do and why they do it. And our guest today is one of the absolute best people to discuss this kind of thing with. It's doctor Bronson Strickland. He is
a professor of wildlife management at Mississippi State University. They've got this very cool program there called Deer Lab in which they are producing all sorts of different fascinating research, publishing studies on deer behavior, dear habitat, all that kind of stuff, and then they also produce a lot of content to help educate folks on this kind of stuff.
So Bronson is the co host of their Dear University podcast and also active with the Deer Lab TV YouTube channel that they have tremendous resources to go into a lot of the stuff we discussed today, but in more detail. So Bronson joined me today to get us caught up on the latest and greatest in deer research. What the data is telling us about white tail deer and what
they're doing. There's a whole lot of folks that come on this podcast and say, dear, do this, deer do that, and that's anecdotal or that's because they've seen it a lot over the years or heard it told to them by someone, and it's a theory that they've picked up and believe, which is great. I enjoy a good theory myself, but it's great to see what the data actually says.
And Bronson and his team have access to a whole hell of a lot of data which shines a light on some of the many questions that we white tailed deer hunters have about why deer would do what they do, when do they do it, how do they do it, all that kind of stuff. So that's what we cover
with Bronson. We get caught up on how things have changed in the three to five years since we've had this kind of conversation with him last and we talk about some stuff around annual patterns, what the data, what the study is show about how deer may or may
not do the same thing year after year. We dive really deep into new research around deer betting, where deer bed, why they bed, specifically buck betted, buck betting, how bucks are betting, how often they bed, where they bed, how many betting areas or sites do they have, all that
kind of stuff very interesting. We get into some things around the rut, specifically patterning deer during the rut, and then maybe most interesting for a lot of people, I think Bronson shares a little bit of what will soon be coming out around some very interesting new studies about the impact of the moon on deer movement. This is a theory. There's there's several theories around how the moon
might impact deer movement. Many well known hunters live and die by these theories, and Bronson went and did a deep dive specifically into these theories that hardcore deer hunters have and then looking at the actual kinds of questions that we have around that. So will the move get a big buck on his feet ten minutes earlier? Maybe maybe not. Bronson is gonna tell us here today. I'm excited for you to hear about it. I'm excited for the rest of his studies to come out later this fall,
and it's gonna be good stuff. So without any further, Ado, I think we should just get to this very interesting conversation and very applicable conversation. I want to make sure
that's very clear. This is this is applied science. This is learning about the research and then discussing exactly how this research, how this science can be applied on your next hunt for this coming season, as you put together your hunting plans and your strategies, how do you take this new information and arm it or arm yourself in a way that will make a more effective deer hunter. That's my goal today. I hope it's helpful, hope you
enjoy it. Here we go, all right with me. Now back on the show for the first time in too long of a time is Bronson Strickland. Bronson, thank you so much for being here.
Absolutely happy too.
Man, Like we were just talking about before we start recording. Uh, somehow almost half a decade has passed since the last time we did this, which is insane to me because it feels it feels like it was almost just yesterday.
So it's been too long, too long coming. And I've been, you know, following so much of your work over the years, you know, since we have talked in the past, you guys have launched the Deer University podcast and your YouTube channel and really have done an excellent job of making deer research in science accessible for the average hunter and
whitetail fishionados. So I just want to start this off by saying thank you for doing that, and kudos to you guys, because you're you're really making it excess and understandable in a way that not a lot of other people are. So great work on that well, I just want to make sure.
Thank you very much. And it's a little bit self serving, I will admit, because we're really having a lot of fun doing that, and we we really have a conviction of taking all of this really sophisticated research and how can we apply it for management and for hunting. So it's been a blast.
Yeah, Yeah, you guys are taking the applied science thing to a new level when you're actually hunters yourselves and truly taking this stuff into the field with you, I'm sure. So all that said, you know, the plan today is really to look at that very thing, like how do we apply dear research and the science around deer behavior, dear movement. How do we take all that from you know, from the lab from a PDF, document from a podcast, and apply it in the field for folks this hunting season.
Because when this when this one drops, it will be, you know, right at the beginning for a lot of different people's deer hunting season. So so everyone's chomping at the bit to get in the woods, or maybe already have been for a week or two. And now I want to figure out how do we take our deer hunting strategy and not let it just revolve around old wives tales and you know, the trendy idea of the day, but instead have our hunting plans grounded in true data,
research and insights. So that's a heavy burden that we're going to place on your shoulders here today, Bronson, But I will.
I'm gonna give you my best, that's all I can promise.
I trust that you will. So there's a lot of different directions we go with this. There's a lot of interesting stuff that your team's been working on. There's a lot of things I know, folks, other folks around the country have been working on that you guys are always staying up to date on. I want to start at
the very top level. I want to I'm curious about what is most fascinating to you when it comes to the latest deer research, deer science, and kind of looking at the window of the last three to five years or so since we've done a big roundup like this personally on this podcast, what in the most few recent few years has been the most significant break from conventional wisdom that has been illuminated by recent deer research or science.
Is there something that has really changed your perspective on things more so than anything else.
Well, I guess there's a lot of things that have happened, and you know, a lot of it in the past five years has been centered around CWD and including movement data and such as that. But I would say relative to hunting, and not to pat ourselves on the back,
what's soever. I think the most eye opening thing for me and the team here has probably been the betting and the betting affinity and my story Mark, and you know, for a lot of people as well, it's when you go back to when we were cutting our teeth hunting and getting our information from hunting magazines and so forth, there was a lot of information about you know, a buck's bedroom, per se, and that they had this one spot on the landscape, and that is where that older buck,
that mature buck, that dominant buck, that was going to be his territory, that only he was going to be and what we saw and I have to put a qualifier here that's going to apply for probably a lot of the stuff we talk about. The results I talk about are based on a landscape of the Southeast, and so if you're in Michigan, if you're in Ohio or Iowa,
you may see something completely different. But what we generally saw down here is that there are many, many more betting areas and betting sites than we previously thought.
And so.
If we're trying to focus our hunting on there's that one place, and hey, if you're in the Midwest and you're in a cover restricted landscape, that may work very very well. But if you're in more of the eastern US or outside of an agricultural region, we're just seeing that there's a lot more different betting areas and a lot more movement and use of those throughout the course
of the season. So finding that one spot to intercept that buck is probably probably going to take a lot of stand sitting to catch him.
Yeah, and I will say at least in some of the content you guys have put out where you've discussed some of this betting research that that you guys have been working on. You've shown some of the aerial views of the of the sample sites where you're doing this. A key thing is it is varied, right, There's there's a strong diversity in fields versus timber, small food plots, big egg fields, big chunks of timber, rivers, all that
kind of stuff. And and while that is different than some stretches of like the very most open parts of Kansas or Iowa, I also did not look at that as being terribly divergent than what I'm used to in the Midwest. So so I when I looked at what you were showing me there, I still found it applicable to a lot of places I hunt in Michigan or Ohio or anything like that. So I think you bring up a good point, but I would not discount it so much to say that it's not applicable because it
didn't look at that different. That said, there there was a lot of really interesting stuff in the at least the things I've seen so far. We guys have broken down the unique aspects of how deer are actually using betting areas, and you mentioned something that I think is
the key thing, betting sites versus betting areas. Can you elaborate a little bit on what that means, how you guys have worked done to try to differentiate that or measure that, and then maybe get into some of the detail of specifically, you know, how many different sites on average are we seeing a buck used during a day or during a period of time, how many different areas Because I think, again, from a hunting perspective, if I know, well, he's he's got one or two big zones or he
has ten big zones, that's going to significantly change my hunting strategy.
Yeah. Absolutely, so, I guess a little background here. We were able to measure this. These are bucks that have GPS callers on them, and we're getting a low cation from them every fifteen minutes, so that really enables us to fine tune, you know, their movements and how they're navigating the landscape, how long they're bedded, where they're betted,
et cetera. We differentiated this by what we're calling is a betting site is going to be the area where we get greater than four consecutive points, and we called that within a within a twenty yard area. Now you might say, why would a betting site be twenty yards, because there's error associated with the GPS callers, with the triangulation and so forth. So we felt confident that if we're getting four consecutive points within a twenty yard range,
then that buck is probably betted there. And it might be six consecutive points for an hour and a half, et cetera, but we had to have at least four, and so we would call that a betting site, and so we would draw a little dot on the map. Whereas that betting site, now, a betting area is differentiating that the area needs to be two sites that are
greater than a one hundred yards apart. So, in other words, if a buck came in and had a betting site and the very next day came back and had a betting site within fifty yards of where it was the day before, we would consider that the same betting area. So that is how we calculated. We basically grouped sites together and if they're close enough, we called it a betting area. So that's how we broke that apart.
Okay, did you guys look into what the average length of the use of a betting site is. So I'm by that. I'm curious, you know, how long when a buck does get into these zones, how long is he usually there until it gets up and moves to another spot.
Because another key thing that I know that you guess found is that they use multiple betting sites per day, right, So I guess you could you dive into both the average length if you have that handy, and then how many different times they're shifting these locations throughout a given day.
Yeah. So I hate to say it, but this is a this is a context as it depends on the time of the year and mainly with the rut. But if you smooth it out and just come out with some averages, we're looking at four different betting sites and four different betting bouts per day. Now, on some days you might have three different betting sites during the day.
Some days you may have one. And so we see this relationship, especially during the rut, where there's going to be less time in the bed and more time on their feet. So if we were going to look at an average scenario, an average scenario is going to be after the more arning movement about. So before sun up and we have a movement about, and then roughly two to three hours after sun up, they're going to have their first bedding event for the day, and that's typically
going to be an hour or two. And surprisingly, we see a lot of midday movement. Now that is not going to be an extended movement about like you're going to see in the morning or the afternoon. It's kind of like getting up for a snack. So it's not they're not going to the restaurant for a meal. They're just getting up for a snack. So we'll see that around midday, which of course is going to present some hunting opportunity if they're on their fate during mid day.
And start to interrupt you Bronson, but is that specifically happening. Are you speaking outside of the rut or is it just inside the rut.
Yeah, I'm kind of smoothing it all over, so non rut and rut, okay. And so when we get in the rut, you're going to see less, uh less betting bouts, and the duration of those betting bouts will be less, if that makes sense.
Yeah, And then that that snack time in the rut then expands to not just a snack time, but also a seeking time too, right, so that at the same time activity is higher. Conventional wisdom would say, right, right, so I'll continue.
Yeah, yeah, So so we typically see that, So we're going to see that first betting bout you know, after their their morning movement, there's going to be a little bit of movement during the day. We actually even pick that up with food plots, and so we're able to detect.
We have all of our food plots on the landscape digitized, so we know where they're at, and then we'll actually see some visits to food plots at a time when you normally don't think of it, so more than expected they will be there at noon or at one pm. And then we actually see the decrease or the most infrequent use of food plots about three pm, which is good if that's when you're typically you know, going to the stand and going to be in the vicinity of a food plot. That that part is good, but it
also was telling on you. You've probably seen this mark on those days where I'm gonna get back right back out there at noon, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go early and I'm gonna have a long and you get to a food plot area and you and you bump deer off the plot. Well, that's probably what you're seeing right there, is that little snack movement there during midday, and then they go bed down again and then have the longer movement about in the afternoon.
So back to the betting side of things, and we talked about how you guys differentiate between sites and areas, and you mentioned it that at the front end, that there's more betting or diversified betting maybe would be a
way to think about than some of us think. Do we know on average how many different areas most bucks will have or what at least you guys have found, because I think you know, as you talked about, a lot of people think, like, man, this is that Bucks bedroom and we put all of our cards into that one spot. What is the reality there? I'm not sure if you touched on that actual number.
I think it depends on how large you define the bedroom. And so we provided a great example and it's just one buck during the rut, But we selected that buck intentionally because his number of betting sites and his number of betting areas was very indicative of the population average. And so over a two week, over a fourteen day period, a particular buck that was middle aged three and a half, he had forty one different beds during that two week
period and seventeen different betting areas. Now, those seventeen betting areas are spread out over about a square mile, So you got to put all that into context. Is that buck showing an affinity from when he's going to bed down a particular area, Yes, yes he is, but it's not a two acre spot. It's not even one hundred acre spot. It's about a six hundred acre place. So we know where he's spending time. But to be able to go to the exact place where you think he's betted,
that's problem. Yeah, However, think of it this way, Mark too. It also provides opportunity. And so the way I've been trying to tell the story as well is we've got two different ways to approach this. There's reactive meaning that we're taking what the deer or the bucks are giving us. We're trying to pattern them. We're trying to find the
ideal locations. If you have the luxury of being on private land and if you own the land, especially now you have the opportunity via habitat management to create areas where there's going to be a higher probability of bedding.
And so now you go from reactive to proactive or you're trying to relegate areas of your property where there's going to be a greater likelihood that they're going to bed and do those such that you can be able to set up between where you know food is where you have designated areas of cover and set up in between those.
Yeah. So so speaking of that, one of the things that I that I think I recall from a chat that you and your team had about this data was that it was harder than expected to define exactly the key characteristics for a buck to want to bed there because there seemed to be a lot of there' seem to be a lot of diversity and what individual bucks prefer, like one buck really wanted to bet around oxpos of rivers. One buck though was all about you know, two different
cover types coming together or something like that. Is there anything that you could say, like, yes, definitively, this was a much more likely place to pull in buck bedding or any kind of characteristics like that. I'm assuming there's some conventional wisdom here, like the basic things we all understand is still true. But could you, I guess, expand on that.
Sure? Sure, So one of the things I know and one of the things we're working on. And so we got some wonderful feedback from people when we went online with this and started talking about it. So here's what we know, because here's what we measured is we went to many of these areas where these bucks bedded, so these betting sites, especially some places where numerous times a buck was betting there, and we measured the vegetation. And what was revealing was that it really did not matter
whatsoever the type of vegetation. So it could be hardwood stems, it could be grass, it could be BlackBerry, it could be any form of vegetation as long as it provided really good screening cover, meaning visually, when the buck beds down,
it's essentially hidden and you can't see it. Now, the next step that we're literally working on now is if we zoom out a little bit more and rather than just looking at the place it's bedded and the vegetation characteristics around it, are there any landscape features that might be more associated or facilitate a buck being bedded there.
And the one thing that we heard a lot based on our study area is we have a big river corridor that completely bisected this big sixty thousand acres study area. And so for one thing obviously, is that adjacent to that river is we have a lot of cover right there, you know, And it could be switch cane, it could be BlackBerry, it could be a lot of things, but we have some cover adjacent to it. But is the
layout of that relative to the river. Is the layout of that cover relative to the river relative to the prevailing wind when that buck and go goes and selects that area to bet down. That is what we're trying to reconcile right now for any.
Patterns interesting Now correct me if I'm wrong, But I feel like I read something in one of your reports about there also being an increased usage of betting areas that also had food or basis content present in them as compared to a betting area that has screening cover but does not have the food. Is that is that accurate?
That was a different study that was in a different study area, and that was using camera trap data. But yes, if we just if the metric were just use, meaning how many times are we seeing deer photos or buck photos? Then yes, we saw greater use in areas that combined some cover with or adjacent to food. You're exactly right.
So that would that might I I guess, give someone who's who has an ability to manage or and or selecting places to hunt that a old field that has a mix of grasses and forbs and any kind of different kind of low lying, diverse habitat that might be a more attractive bedding site than a purely switched grass one hundred percent field that has that cover but doesn't have the food content.
Right, Yes, but now we have to separate is that what we want from a hunting perspective. So if we break it down very simply, so think mark of a think of a four year old clearcut regenerating, and it is full of cover, and it is full of brows, and there's forbes there, there's a diversity. It's going to be very very difficult to get into that clear cut
and hunt that buck. On the other hand, if we have let's simplify here, and let's say we had a food plot or maybe a managed opening that we maintain with fire but where the vegetation structure isn't as tall, but it is providing a good open area where a deer can feed, and one hundred yards away or adjacent or several hundred yards away is cover. And whether that cover be forests cover with little food, or whether it
be something like switchgrass. Now we have a scenario where we've essentially are going to force the deer to leave cover and move and go to an area for food, and that presents hunting opportunity.
Yeah, okay, Yeah, you make a very good point there. Speaking of that, it brings up another thing that I think I saw you discussing with. I think it was Natasha Ellison, who I believe has helped you with with a lot of this analysis on your team there there have been some discussion around distance or the most common
distance from a betting air to a food plot. So you're looking at, you know what, where these bucks are choosing to bet in relation to food, And that's something that I think a lot of US hunters think about a lot. And there's some commonly held beliefs like okay, you're going to have a layer of does and fawns first betted closest to food. And then a little bit further back from that you might have some younger bucks, and then maybe the furthest back in the prime betting
might be where those mature bucks are. That might be like an over generalized theory that you commonly hear. You have you guys been able to find if that, well, it's to be true or what have you found?
What we have found is we can address that on the buck side. But unfortunately in the study we did not simultaneously have dose collared so that that would be fantastic if we did, but maybe in the future we
can do that. But what we found is Natasha, who is a mathematician so we can trust her math in making these calculations, is she looked at all of the betting sites and the location relative to food and mathematically was able to determine all of the different distances that would be possible from betting site to food and what was the average or most frequent distance that a buck was bedded to the food that he went to in an afternoon feeding bout, and it came out to be
about two hundred yards. Of course, there are instances where it's closer, and then that's going to depend on your local area, where is the cover you know in that particular area. And there were instances where the buck may have traveled over one thousand yards. But if you look at over both these years, over this large study area, the sweet spot that we found was about two hundred yards.
Interesting. So another betting detail that I recall you guys discussing at one point that I'd be curious to hear a little bit more about is we're I think an overarching thing here is that these deer, these bucks, likely have more betting areas than we maybe have given them credit for historically. Because he just described on average, maybe
there are several hundred yards away from food. Generalizing, but one thing you guys measured was circuit time for betting areas, which, as I understood it was how often a buck is returning to a betting air, so he uses a betting site, how long does it take him to return to that site if he does, because I remember seeing some data that showed that. And again, correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, because I'm sure I am trying to recall stuff that I looked at when I was
researching all this. But I think of all of the betting sites, you guys looked at, fifty percent of them were one and done. So about fifty percent of those betting sites where they betted here and they never return. But that means that there was another fifty percent of betting sites that bucks did eventually return to, and three percent of the sites they returned to more than two hundred times. So that was wild to hear that that's
the case. But all that's to say that so fifty percent of the time they were returning to one of these betting airs. Again, could you walk me through I guess, Hey, did I get any of that wrong? Could you expand on any of that? As I try to remember these things?
And then finally, how often or how long is it taking them to come back to these betting AARs for those ones that they do return to, Because it basically, as I ramble on and on here, what I'm getting back to is, as a hunter, I'm frequently thinking to myself, all right, if I think this buck is better than this zone, and if I knew I saw him here yesterday, is is he gonna be back every day this week?
Or is he coming back once a week? Or is he coming back once every two weeks or should I expect that man if I sit this zone for the next three or four days, he's gonna come back eventually. Those are the kinds of insights I'm trying to pick up here. That's a lot of through at you.
Sorry, well, a remarkable job, so good retention there, knowledge retention there. Yeah, you got it right. So about fifty percent of those sites were one and done, never used again. So then we had to look at, okay, for those that are revisited, how often are they revisited? And then that's where the circuit time comes into play. So we have fifty percent or one and done, and then we have about twenty five percent where they revisit a couple times, two, three,
four times. And then we had those supersites, which, to be completely honest, now some of those super sites that is more like what we where we began with the Bucks bedroom. Maybe there are a few places on the landscape where they do come back, you know, more and more and more. But that circuit time was typically for the ones they came back to was one to two days, okay, So wasn't going to be the morning site and then
coming back you know the very next day. It might be there one morning, afternoon somewhere else and then you know, twelve to twenty four hours later coming back to it.
Interesting. Okay, So I suppose with this betting analysis that you guys did, what has been the major application for you? Like, now that you've as you as a hunter personally, have have looked at this data, how have you applied that to your hunting strategy.
I have become I've tried to become more aware of what is going to be quality betting cover for Bucks as best we can. And you know, you always have to think about this too. Sometimes Bucks do things we don't understand why was it betted there? But I try to look at areas where I can at least assume have good reason to think this is probably an area that's going to be very undisturbed. You know, it's going to be a little mini sanctuary place and that's probably
going to be a good cover area. But the hard part, mark is that it's not just one area. There's going to be a lot of these different places on the landscape. So that again is what makes it difficult. I've kind of moved more into picking out some of these betting areas may be more difficult in the landscape, I am in to be able to differentiate and make the call unless we can go in there, like we said, proactively
and make these areas really good. But I've started looking more at how food plots and this could also be a managed opening. It's just it's easy to use the food plot as an example and how these areas can serve as hubs of activity and so hub a meaning thinking of a train station. There's a lot of different routes coming to it. But what we're seeing is that those food plots, if they're good ones, is that there's going to be a network of movement over the landscape
utilizing those food plots. And here's something else that Natasha calculated that I thought was just fascinating. We started looking at how often bucks are going to food plots when we go from the nine rut into the pre rut, into the peak rut and the post rut, and we basically see this ascension of they're using it a lot, and they use it more during the rut, and then of course they're using it during the post rut, so that when you look at it that way, it's just
a tally. Did a buck go into a food plot. We caught him there. Yes, it's a tally of frequency, but when we look at the duration of time that they're spending on the food plots, it is completely different during the rut as compared to the pre pre pre rut, So before the pre rut and then the post rut, and so at that point is there is a greater duration of time. So before the rut they're going to the food plot to eat. During the rut, that is more of a social aspect, and we've if you've hunted,
you've seen that. The buck comes in, he looks around, he win checks heat checks, et cetera, and he goes on and he's probably going to go to another food plot and do the same thing. So we see a great amount of visitation but very low duration. And then as the rut wines down and the post rut comes along, that's where we see a boat feeding about is taking place on those food plots. So that is changing the way I'm hunting. And I guess to summarize, I was
very long winded. There is I'm thinking of during the rut. Maybe I'm not hunting on the food plot, but I'm trying as best I can discern to think of the corridors and the connections linking a network of food plots, whereas in the post rut, I may just hunt, you know, decide I'm gonna hunt directly on food. He's going to be there.
So I don't know how this changes my thinking, but I think I frequently thought when I am looking at a map and trying to think through how deer might use an area, I often think of the of a betting area as the hub of the wheel, and then the spokes are all leading out from a main betting era to the three or four different main food sources that I might think that they're feeding on. So I've always thought of the betting area being the hub and
that being the more consistent factor. But am I right to take the data that you are sharing here and should that make me rethink that? And is it more accurate to think of the food sources as the hubs and that the spokes should be leading to the many, many different betting areas And might that be the better way to think of a strategy?
Well, I think we're both right. I think you and I could sit here with a crayon or PowerPoint and we could come up with a scenario where cover is limited in that landscape, and what you described would be precisely correct. I think we could also come up with scenario that would be common in the South to where
cover is abundant and food is limited. So you know, when we think about Midwest versus the South or the East, we go from a cover rich, food limited environment in the South to a cover limited abundance of food in the Midwest. And so I think it depends on the landscape that you're at.
Yeah, that's a great point. Interesting. So we talked about affinity for betting areas and how often they're gonna come back to a betting area. But before we start recording, you mentioned that there's been some stuff you've been looking into, maybe a slightly larger scale, about how you know bucks might be returning to certain areas, possibly year after year.
Do you want to expand on that a little bit, because this is something that I think ties into something that has been picking up more and more steam within the hunting world, which is this idea of like annual patterns, And I'd love to hear what you maybe have learned about that from you know, backed up by data. Possibly.
Yeah, absolutely, and so this is interesting to me, and this is a classic example of owning up to being wrong. I was absolutely wrong about this five plus years ago.
And so we man say that, well, we have all the.
Subundance of camera data.
Now.
I would get this question constantly before we had this GPS data of you know, I'd get an email, why is it that I have this buck? I have them on camera every day or every other day, and then they would give me a specific week or even a three day period, and they would say, it seems like every time around the seventh of November or whatever day he's gone, or just the opposite, seems like the third week of November, this buck is always back. And what's
going on there? And before we learned about what we're called these mobile personalities and these home range shifts and the stuff, that we didn't really realize what was going on, really had no way to measure that. I honestly thought somebody's batteries in their camera had run out. I thought they weren't checking it, or the buck was still there on the property. He was just maybe not on that camera.
But what we started seeing is, first of all, we have these mobile personality bucks that do these extreme shifts, and they're typically doing this shifting at about the same time a year. One of our great examples was the buck that would fall and winter in Mississippi and spring and summer in Louisiana and swim the Mississippi River to do that, and the timing of when he did it two years in a row was remarkably similar. So that just got me thinking of the bucks that we have
two consecutive years of data. Because remember some of these bucks we put a collar on them. In the first fall, they die, they get shot, whatever. But of our subsample of bucks that we have the collar on them for two years in a row, Natasha was able to look at from year to year. So from the first week of November in twenty seventeen to the first week of November in twenty eighteen, how much overlap? And she looked
at it two ways. If you do their little home range on a weekly or monthly scale, is what is the proportion of overlap of their range use or area use from one year to the next. And then if you go to the very center the hub of activity of those two areas, what's the distance between those two areas? And I have to look at my notes here, because I don't have it committed to memory, the amount of overlap from year one to year two. And this is
great because this is occurring during the hunting season. We see the greatest amount of overlap during the hunting season in October November to Bid November. We see greater than eighty percent range overlap from year one to year two. And we only see a difference from the center or the hub of those activities of only about two to three hundred yards.
Wow. And so in your study area, that time period would be like early season to pre rut, right, because in Mississippi, your peak of the rut down there would be more like December January.
Correct, that's right, that would be pre rut.
Yes, okay, so let me stay that back to you and make sure I've got this right. So what that data says is that for me, on a year to year basis, these bucks were essentially matching up this They were hanging out in the same areas at the same times about eighty percent of the time.
I think I would say it this way, if you let's try to maybe frame it the way what a hunter would do. Let's say a hunter on a property, had a grid of cameras and plodded on a map all the areas that they were getting photos of this buck, and they drew a polygon around that area. It's like, we know this buck is on this property and this part of the property. The following year, on average, that buck will be using eighty percent of the area it was using the year before.
Okay, okay, So these home ranges, these core ranges, have you know, year after year fidelity they're going to stick to that. Now here's another fill up question. I don't know if you guys have had the time to look into this, but has that change or has that level of certainty changed the older buck gets So would we say that that overlap is even higher on a buck that's four or five six versus two three four? Have you been able to dive into that level yet?
We have not, and the primary reason for that. So our sample is primarily three four and five year old bucks. When we capture them they're three, four or five, that's going to be like eighty percent of our sample right there. The issue is we just have two years with them.
In a perfect world, we would get a yearling buck post dispersal and be able to follow it if it lived, follow it to six or seven years of age, that'd be the best way to Thanks for that question, but unfortunately we don't have that.
Yeah, well it's really interesting to see to see that. Now here's another one that I know. I believe your data has supported this, and I know other studies have supported that. Many bucks have random excursions that they take throughout the year, where they will, you know, for whatever reason, randomly take off and go way outside of their home range for a handful of days or twenty four hours again,
whatever it is, and then they come back. Have you been able to see if those map up year after year? Like will do you have any examples of a buck going on an excursion at relatively the same time year after year that might support you know, the people who say, like, hey, this this random buck shows up the first week November every year and then I don't see them the rest of the year. Have we been able to document anything like that in the study.
We have not. Marked that's a good question. We have not, but we haven't looked at it that way. We were able to go through and document the excursions and the frequency of it and so forth, but we did not look at the subset of the data of of the bucks yet where where when they took their excursion and where they excursed too, and see if it's related to the following year. But we can put that on the list. Look at that's a good question.
I imagine you've got a very long list because of this kind of data. I imagine there's so many different questions you'd want to apply to it right right, and and dig into and see see what's there. There's probably years and years worth of analysis you could do with this stuff. Absolutely, you mentioned these mobile deer personalities. Could you expand a little bit on that. I think you guys have differentiated basically bucks into two categories, either mobile
personalities or sedentary. Could you could you discuss that a little bit, how you differentiate them and and what's the proportion of one to the other?
Sure thing? Yeah, so sedentary? Uh, that is essentially what we think of a deer's home range is throughout the year. Meaning if you were to take a bird's eye view or nowadays we'd say a Google Earth view, is that you would look at the points of all his locations and they would just be in one big area. If you took a particular time period apart. You know, for this month, it might be in this part of its annual home range and then this part in its annual
home range. But essentially it's all overlapping, and it's about depending on the buck, it may be five hundred acres, it may be fifteen hundred acres, but essentially a great deal of overlap for twelve months out of the year. But we found out about thirty percent of the bucks have just what we termed as mobile personality, meaning that for part of the year they have a completely distinct
and non overlapping home range. And so very simply well, the buck I referred to earlier that swam the Mississippi
River is our best example. Those are non overlapping home ranges that it had in Mississippi and it had in Louisiana and the river in between, and there's like fifteen to eighteen miles, you know, in between those, and so yeah, what we learned is that there's about thirty percent of the bucks are doing that is they're going to spend part of their year in one location and then they might go a mile or two or ten and move completely somewhere else and spend a portion of the year.
So I feel like at least what I have kind of zeroed in on and without data, have kind of thought that about give or take that amount of the bucks in the places I hunt, about a third of them, give or take, seemed to disappear during what a lotus
called the September shift. So like that first week of September, give or take, you know, most the bucks lose their velvet, And that tends to be when I have seen and most folks I talk to tend to see if there's going to be some dispersal, some shift in range, that's usually when it happens. Is that what you guys are seeing as well with the data, is that when these mobile personality bucks make that range shift, or is there a different time of year that's happening.
Yeah, what what you're referring to there is I would call the the bachelor group breakup, so that that is uniformly happening right there. What we're seeing, I guess, is
a special case of that in two ways. Number One, the distance that they shift to is further, and the time of year can be completely different than during that September bachelor group breakup and what we found on average, And I keep saying on average, because bucks are individual, and we have some that do extraordinary things and we
have some that are very predictable. But on average, if you look at the center of their activity during the summer and then the center of activity when they do the shift, the shuffle that you're talking about, it can be one thousand to fifteen hundred yards apart. That's kind
of a good range. And so when you break that down into normal property sizes, not on a ten thousand acre property, but on a five hundred acre property, when you have that shuffle or that shift, you have some bucks went off your property and you traded them for some bucks that came on to your property.
I guess the only other thing I'd be curious would be when it comes to this, this idea of site affinity for bucks, going back to you know this, this idea of of annual trends or patterns lining up. Has that effected your hunting at all? Personally? Have have you? Does this make you lean more into learning individual bucks tendencies in some kind of way or is there any other application to that for you?
Yeah? I think the uh for me? Anyway, I think the take home is whether it is from observation or more likely it would be from camera data. Is whenever you see a buck using a portion of the property in a particular time of the year and you're unsuccessful connecting with that buck, or maybe it's a buck that is of interest and he's three years of age and I would really like to see him at four or
at five. Is we've demonstrated with with reasonable confidence that you could predict that buck the following year is going to be in that same area. So do your homework ahead of time and be set up so when he starts using that area you can capitalize on it.
Yeah. So another version of this would be this idea around focal areas specifically during the rut. You know, for a lot of years folks have talked about during the rut, you can't pattern bucks. They're all over the place. It's crazy,
it's chaos. And then I can't remember how when this verse came out, but some number of years ago, five to ten years ago, I feel like you started hearing about some data that came out about how I actually there's been identified focal areas for many bucks during the rut that they do return to over and over again, and I'm just curious, did you guys see something similar in your data more recently? Do you have any updates
on that? Is that still something that we can be thinking about and looking for when we develop our rut hunting strategies.
Yeah, And I think the group that first termed that were my colleagues in South Texas and Aaron Foley and Randy DeYoung and those guys. Yeah, they started finding. Now again, different landscape, different landscape, the distribution of cover can be different, but they started finding these areas and I think the way they reconciled it was they essentially started seeing focal areas and a circuit that these bucks were going to
these focal areas. But what they surmised was that in every one of these focal areas where there was cover is a group of doves, and so that buck is on a circuit to go in heat check. Are there any does in Estris? If they are great, If not,
they're going to go to the next focal area. I would say with us, it's similar to what we just talked about with this affinity and them coming back to the same areas every year, and how that's even shifting from year to year, but they're still using the same area. Another thing mark that I thought was really interesting was that we see throughout the year, as we've known for a long long time, the home range, the area used by a buck is going to increase during the rut,
probably by fifty percent, maybe one hundred percent. It could possibly double. But what was interesting to me is that on a daily scale it is absolutely uniform from no rut, pre rut, peak rut, post rut, et cetera. They use two hundred acres per day. If you look at a daily home range, if you encapsulate the area that they used in a day, it's two hundred acres. So how that works out to the home range expanding is that in the pre rut, from day to day, with those
two hundred acre home ranges, there's overlap. Then when we get into the rut, there is a greater distance between two hundred acres here two hundred acres there. That's what makes the home range grow during the rut.
And so that's just the data supporting the generally believed concept that you're gonna have bucks checking out different zones to find a doing heat right, right, But so I guess with that being said, and then what also what Folly in their team saw though, does that still support the idea that if you know of a core a couple core dough hotspots that you effectively to it some degree could hunt for a specific buck by dialing in on that spot or two just knowing that, man, this
is where historically this buck has always wanted to check dose here. And rather than chasing your tail going here, going there, going everywhere, you could hypothetically volume set one of these hot spots that you know historically he's been on, because there should he should continue to return and check those to some bearing degree.
Right, yep, yeah, I think it's right. So let's think of it now, maybe not a focal area relative to cover. Let's think about it as that hub or that focal area relative to a productive food plot or a network of food plots. And like we said earlier, bucks are visiting food plots during the rut, but their duration of stay is amenimal, but more subplots.
A right, right, more food plot visits, but just shorter duration.
Correct, it's actually about the same. Yeah, there's a little bit less visit in the post rut. You're exactly right. But they stay for a long time because there's a feeding bout involved. So they're visiting those food plots. I think that's very akin to what Folly found out, but just the habitat of the vegetation is different. That was
more relative to cover patches. The buck is visiting. I'm talking about them visiting food opportunities because at that food opportunity is there is going to be a group of does somewhere around that using it.
And so in both cases it's actually just where's the dough hotspot? Like where's the dough concentration? And in some areas that's going to be well, let's talk about with the limiting factor is right, and the limiting factor in certain places like for you, it was that we've got these food those are the limited resources. So that's where your best doll concentration will be versus middle of nowhere, Kansas. It might be cover equals your dough hot spot because
that's the one concentration is something rare. That's a really key insight I think for people is to think about that way. It's so easy to get stuck on Well, this person said cover, and so I've got a zero in uncover at this time of year. But again you have to always look at what's the context in your
situation in your place. Very interesting, So I want to give us a little time here at the end to cover off on a few things that every time I get to talk to someone who's so drastically smarter than I am, and so much more grounded and data than I am, that you can correct my preconceived notions myths that I believe in, you know, app of the day, algorithm, predicting trends of the day, etc. There As a diehard whitetail hunter, we all have these different ideas around what
triggers deer movement, whether it be wind and weather conditions, whether it be the moon. Of course that's a big one. So I'd love to get your take on some of those and where things stand today. I know we talked about this the very first podcast we did together, like ten years ago maybe and you basically, if I remember right, I think most of it you said was hogwak. But I'd love to hear where things stand today. Let's start
with the moon. Maybe do we have or is there anything new when it comes to any possible correlation between the moon and deer movement.
So we did a survey mark online. Because we are we're doing an exhaust we are wrapping up a very exhaustive analysis. So a couple of years ago we put some data, a very crude analysis I did of just looking at moon phase meaning new moon, full moon, and then just looking at daytime movements, nighttime movements, et cetera. In my eyes, both as a researcher and as a hunter, I was not motivated by those data. There may on a particular day been a subtle increase, but it was
not enough to motivate me. Well, then we got an, I guess, an outcry. We got a lot of feedback saying, but you didn't look at moon position, you didn't look at moon rising overhead, underfoot all that time. So we we have looked at that to a great detail, and we are hopefully we're just a few weeks away from doing uh, Natasha and I and others, we will do a one to two hour exhaustive, tedious review of those data. But but before that, we wanted to basically mark ask people.
We did a survey and when you when you pin someone down, so mark, I might I might approach it like this with you, I might say number one. Here's the first question of the hierarchy of questions. Number one, Do you believe the moon is affecting deer movement? Yes or no? Do you can you can or cannot answer us? Up to you?
Sure, Sure, I guess I will answer because I am so torn on this because I would say if I had to say yes or no, I gosh, I'm so right in the middle of Bronson. But I guess I'll say yes. But maybe it's a little.
Okay, So eighty three percent of people are like you. They believe the moon has some type of influence. So then once you go into your dichotomous ski there now, So now we go into the yes, I think it influences.
Now, just got to say, I love the fact that you just said dichotomus key on this podcast. That's one of you don't hear that one too often.
So if you said yes, now we've got to ask you, Okay, how how do we measure it? Is it that they're moving a greater distance, Is it that they're up on their feet earlier in the day, is it that they are bedded less, et cetera.
This is the key question. These are the questions that I've wanted to know for so long because every time this moon thing comes up, I've always felt like the studies have not looked at the right things. They haven't looked at the little stuff like that that doesn't maybe matter statistic it doesn't register its statistically significant for most studies, but for a hunter who cares if a mature buck travels fifty yards further ten minutes earlier in the day,
that is a huge significance for the hunter. So, yeah, you're getting to the the key stuff.
And that is precisely the feedback. And so before we did this, I wanted not as agotcha or to catch anybody, I really wanted to understand or you're familiar mark with the term effect size.
That's the yeah, make sure I've got it right.
The difference between a treatment, so treatment or control, the effect size is the difference those two. So you mentioned something a moment ago statistically different. So I wanted to move away from us saying such and such was or was not statistically different. I wanted to wanted it to be a useful effect size of treatment. And what we found is that there were again two groups of people. There was a group that, yeah, I think the moon affects them based on what I've seen and what my
dad and my grandpa said. But when you pin them on, okay, what does that mean? Well, I don't know. I just know the moon affects them. And then you had what I would call the cover slash bed bow hunting out of a saddle sounds like me. Now that's the dialed in person. And what they said what was really really important. It was if that buck is on his feet five minutes earlier, and that buck moves one hundred more yards before sunset, then that gives me an advantage. Heck, yeah,
so what we generally found. And again I don't want to steal Natasha's thunder. I know she wants to talk about all this in great detail on a podcast, but the result will be meaningful to the type of hunter that you are. So we did see some differences, meaning the value of the non moon day. However, we were calculating the effect of the moon the control day versus the treatment day. There were some subtle differences. To me
and the way I hunt. It would not be meaningful enough for Mekay for someone that wanted to get I've got a two minute opportunity before sunset that that buck may be moving through two minutes before then. They may look at our results and say, all right, there's something there interesting.
Okay, now, I know you don't want to spill too many of the beans, and I'll make sure people go listen to the rest or listen to the full scoop on your podcast. Dear University, everybody should go there subscribe like share, But tell me this, Can you tell me this? Can you tell me what variable or related to the
moon seemed to have that strongest connection. Was it overhead underfoot times matching up with the first hour of daylight, last hour of daylight, that kind of thing, or was it moon rising setting times matching with that and anything like that?
If I remember correctly, because my goodness, Natasha sliced this up every way possible, there were just about every one of those categories mark had the smallest difference. But remember sometimes the direction was not what you thought, meaning sometimes the effect was not positive that it moved more, but it was that it moved less. And so everything that we looked at had a little bit of an increase
or a little bit of a decrease. And what we essentially did was we paired together the amount of time that it was in the bed that day, the time of day that it was up on its feet and started moving, and then from when it started moving to sunset the distance of ground that it covered. So we kind of have three different measurements there.
That's perfect. Do you have any of those specifics you could share now or do we need to wait for them?
We got to wait on that boat.
I had to ask, Yeah, well, that's fascinating. That's very interesting that you guys were able to look to that degree.
And what we're going to do with that mark is we went a different route. We didn't write like a twenty page document with a bunch of narrative. We basically went into every one of these theories and gave a heading of here's the hypothesis, here's the theory, here's how we did it, here's the result. Turn the page, here's
the other one. So we've got about ten pages of every type of moon theory with the data and the graphs and the interpretation and all that is going to be free for download in a few weeks.
Amazing. Yeah, So do we have a target date? When do we should look for that?
My target is like October fifteenth, okay, but sometimes at the university the wheels turned slow. Sure, but it's going to be out of our hands and literally in a few days and then it has to go into production and so whenever that gets produced and put online.
Okay. So there's been a lot of people that want to see that. Of course, where should they go to see that and or sign up to be notified of it or anything like that.
We will have a copy of it for download on our website MSU deer lab dot com. We will also as soon as it is available with the download link, it'll be on social media, so MSU dear Lab, Facebook or Instagram, it'll be out there.
Okay. Last couple quick questions. So you're doing this exhaustive moon study, which I'm so glad it's happening. Has there been anything done like this that I haven't heard of somehow when it comes to weather impacts, So exact same questions you're asking with the moon, but you know, barometric pressure being the variable we're controlling for and looking at, or wind speed or delta of temperature change over the course of a twenty four hour period or something like that.
Because there's all these theories around that too. We all love cold fronts. We all think, not all of us, but many people think that a rising barometer gives us an increase in deer moent YadA, YadA, YadA. But again, historically, most studies have not backed that up. Is there anything new on that front that you know of or that you guys may be working on.
Yeah, we are working on that, and so we're going to get the moon stuff out. After that, we're going to get on the home range shifting stuff that the year to year affinity stuff that is out. And Natasha is also working on that exact question. So she is going to be looking at that. And it's more complicated than it seems because with weather there are so many intercorrelated aspects of that. Is it the temperature, is it the wind speed? Is it the barometer? Is it the direction?
And so we really need someone with her capability to really tease all that apart for cause and effect. But that is on the list and our goal it may be January, but our goal is to also get that out this steer season.
Amazing, you guys are doing good work. I'm very thankful that these very nuanced looks at these questions are now being sliced and diced and examined because there's a handful of folks like got like me out there who are dying to know and very glad this is all going to be coming to light so ronson as I knew it would be. This has been fascinating. I appreciate your insight and everything you guys are doing over there at
Mississippi State. You just gave folks a couple good action items there as far as where they can go to get the moon study. But is there anywhere else you want to direct folks if they want to learn more, if they want to connect with your team and the content you guys are putting out there.
Yeah, thank you for mentioning this earlier. But yeah, all of the stuff we've talked about today and in the future is going to be on the Deer University podcast. And just be forewarned, it's a bunch of dorky scientists type people and so we can get into the weeds.
We love it.
But the good thing about a podcast is that you can hit fast forward. You know, if we get stuck there, just fast forward.
But we do that.
We also take that same information, especially when there's a visual context to it, and we put that on our YouTube channel, so go there, and then of course on social where we do little snapshots, little figures and so forth on Instagram and Facebook. So if you go to the podcast or social media, that pretty much captures it.
All right, wonderful. Well, I will continue to be following from Afar and anxiously awaiting the Moon study and then V two of the weather. Yeah, I'm very excited about that. So thank you for doing that work. And man, just thank you again for this. It was great. Catching up is great, getting to get update on where all these things stand and getting all of our understanding on the science of deer up to speed.
So thank you for that absolutely anytime. Happy to.
All right, and that's it for today. Thank you for being here, Thanks for being a part of this community. As we just discussed, make sure you go follow all of Bronson's and the Deer Labs content and resources. Lots of good stuff out there. And I think with that said, I'll lets you all get out there to the woods. Best of luck and until next time, stay wired to hunt.