00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is a me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bog bitten and in my case, underwear. Listen, don't eat podcast. You can't predict anything you want to talk about bug bitten. I've referred, of course, when I say you want to talk about referring to our brand, you know we haven't addressed the brand speakiny new intro. Anyone careous about that music in the brand speakinty new intro. That's by a band. And you can see some good hosting right now, because I'm gonna I'm gonna build, I'm gonna make this work a minute. That that's that that piece of music within that intro, and the tree has fallen down here, tree falling. And and there's an intro song. That's a band called Sheerwater. That's that song is from an album jet Playing and Oxbow. I'm friends with that musician. He's very undecided about hunting. I've taken him fishing, and um, he enjoyed being out there, but he said, I just don't view fishing things the way you do. But he's a he's a wonderful musician. And the reason here, here's where the good hosting comes in because for a long time. That musician was based out of Austin. And we're in Texas right now. See how seemless that was. We're in Maverick County. Which is is it fair to say that this is like, this is ground zero, this is like the bass, this is the heart and soul of like the whole Texas white Tail big Buck world. Is not fair to say, yes, yeah, for a giant, for a giant white Tails. That was the voice of Ben Benyon, Benyon Benion. So it's the same sound as your first name. Yeah, it sounds like he stutter a little bit, Ben Benyon. Yeah, does the voice of Ben Benyon. We're gonna get to him a minute. Also, here's uh Chris Gil Chris Um. Chris already warned us he doesn't have much to say. He's just sitting in and listening. Um and Joannice tell us at this point the show. I normally plug Jannice's teacher company, but I'm not anymore because he won't make me my perch flies. Oh, I asked your honest, He's gonna get him one another. I asked you honest, probably about eighteen months eighteen months ago, and give a shot show to make me a couple of perch flies. I'm talking about flies used for yellow perch um. You take a little bit of you take a hook, take a little bit of bucktail, you take a little bit of thread. I'd make it myself, but I gave my damn what's the bobbing bobbing? Yeah, I gave my bob into a buddy mine. And and uh, because I used to tie a couple of flies now, and then I just got enough things i'd like to do, and that got low on the list of things I like to do, and I just gave it all away. And then as yanned to make me someone, he won't make them for me. Can you explain to people why you won't make them over eighteen months? There's no real reason. All my my five times ships packed away. It must be pretty packed away. But like when you asked me to reload its to MAMMO, usually get to that pretty quickly because that bench is operational right now. But the the tie in bench is not man it's under a half inch of dust. That dust is heavy, really. Also, John's in the process of buying himself a new home. Yeah, maybe I'll set up a bench when I get there. So Ben I can't even get There's so many things I want to ask you about, or have you talked about that you've already told me about that I I can't think of where to start. Give me a little give me the bend, the bend bending bio. Uh well, uh I stow them and you're up. Okay, I'm not doing a good job, Ben, Is that? What? What are? What do you call what you do? Land manager? I consider myself a wildlife biologist, all right, bends a wildlife biology that's a good way of putting it. Bends a wildlife biologist working in the private sector, and you run the wildlife program on a large ranch, large property in South Texas. Correct, Okay, Now get into the whole where you came from, what, what kind of education you sought out, and what your what your dictate is? Your you know your mandate? Not dictate? There reminds me an old joke, what your mandate is? Yeah? Uh well, I started out kind of whenever I was when I was younger. My uh well, my parents split up in my uh my stepdad, my mom remarried, and my stepdad ran a took care of a piece of property not too far from here. No, it was. It was, but it was right on the border in Maverick County. Some of the big Bucks straight over into that county. Pretty much. Yeah, it was one of the it was. It was top top five counties for big Bucks. And uh he took care of that place for I guess my pretty much, Mike, from about ten years old on and uh and I saw what was going on there and I wanted to do it, and I was trying to figure out how to go about it. And uh so so basically what idea is is after high school, I went to college to uh pursue a degree in range and wildlife science at Texas A and M Kingsville, which at the time was the number one UH college in the nation for wildlife program and uh and it's part of that system. But uh, like Texas A and M College station, which is the what you see the Aggies on TV. Uh, this is a what do you call it, a like a branch of that satellite campus. Satellite campus. Yeah, we had our own football team in our own mascot and uh. But and we were way or we were much higher on the on the as far as ranked in a wildlife program than the main campus because of the UH is mainly because of the experience experience level that you could get wild in class um firsthand experience, firsthand, and and every every day we were every class, every every junior senior level class you know, plant, plant, I D and those kind of classes were in the field, and our exams were in the field. Our exams were verbal. Uh, I mean walking through walking through brush, cactus, everything that we've been walking through, uh this week. But so I went there and uh while I was working on the ranch and my stepdad took care of and I was kind of, I guess you could say, just more of a ranch hand than anything. Just did odds and ends, fixing fences and everything. But I developed a passion for for deer. Uh. I always love to hunt, and uh but I really really wanted to figure out, you know, what made dear big and why were they big in this area? And so and kind of we're southwest Texas, I guess you can say. And uh, so I started kind of paying attention to everything while I was in college and getting a degree. And were each each new boat white tail deer in college yeah or yes? And no, it was more uh they were they were giving us the tools to to learn, and they didn't. They didn't focus on anyone species. They didn't focus on quail or white tails. They kind of they did a little, you know, they touched on it. But everything that they taught us you can apply to any species. And then, uh and so what I did is I just I took all that, all the everything I learned, and applied it to white tails while we were going through the courses through college. And uh so whenever I graduated, I graduated in a two thousand and eight. I graduated high school and O four college two thousand and eight in spring, and uh it actually the owner of the property uh offered me a job and uh which was kind of the place you grew up on, the place I grew up on, which is kind of the end all plan was my stepdad was gonna retire and I was gonna take over his his position. Well, I graduated in May. In in April of two thousand and eight, my stepdad had an accident and he, uh he fell out of a deer stand. He fell fourteen feet to the ground on a rocky hill. Uh So it's a hard, hard hill and he he uh broke both of his risk compound fractures, broke almost all of his ribs. UH lacerated a kidney, lungs filled up with fluid, created an induced trauma heart attack. The air life came to San Antonio. He was an ICU for thirty days. This this happened on April fourteen. I graduated May tenth, So I didn't walk the stage on graduation because I didn't have any family that would be there to watch me because they're all at the hospital with him in in the ICU. So uh so what I was doing while I was that last month in college, as I was coming back to the ranch because I knew every we had seven employees. I kept the ranch running while he was in the hospital and just the back of your the ranch. This is a cattle operation. Cattle. It was a It's a cattle operation with a side note of hunting um and the heavy emphasis on wildlife, right, a heavy emphasis on wildlife. The family and the family was the main people that hunted it. We did. We It was not a commercial operation. It wasn't fenced. It was it was just a fun place for the family and friends and guests and UH and some business associates at the owner and Uh. So basically what I was kind of thrown head first when my stepdad was in the hospital. I was. I graduated and took the job and took over his position. So I I was never I never, I never was. I was started from the ground level one of our I was in college. As soon as I graduated, I started. I went straight to the top because I was forced into it more than anything. And uh, and I raged a few things on the wildlife side, and we were we were that ranch that or that property was was under pretty intense management for I don't know, fifteen years maybe eighteen years before before I took over, and we had we had really nice white tails and and the white tails were you know, they were there was big, big antler deer everywhere, and uh, but I I never really intended to make them bigger. I was just trying to kind of fill in. And uh. That was about the time that trail cameras started getting real popular as far as infrared and uh, you know started started getting uh, I guess user friendly and and cheap enough, and so I started running trail cameras and we started we started noticing what deer would do from uh, from a year to year as far as antler development, UM, you know movement, uh, rutting habits. Uh. You know, Forge had it's betting, betting areas, everything, everything you could you could figure out what the trail cams and so you feel that that really uh do you feel that really rewrote people's understandings. I think I think that trail cameras that you know, probably the best thing that's happened to hunting and to managing wildlife in my opinion, uh, in in my lifetime. You know, a biologist in New York just put out a book about the significance of what they call camera trap to the field. He published sort of what he thinks of as I think the three or six hundred like very influential trail cam images of camera trap images and talked about the implications that tool had for understanding distribution and range of wildlife, travel patterns of wildlife. UM. I wanted to continue that about is that this thing a few years ago in North Carolina and it was a deer like a wildlife expo. A guy there was telling me the story about someone. Have you talked about this on the podcast The Kentucky Tennessee Bucks. Everything about this you've told me about it. I don't know if we've mentioned on the podcast. All Right, So Kentucky and Tennessee have different season structures hunting season structures, and they obviously share pretty long border. So a guy comes forth with some big buck that he claims they have shot in one or the other. Let's just for arguing for for discussion. Say let's say he comes forth his big bucks as well, I shot at in Kentucky. Okay, it was probably vice versa, because I think Tennessee has the liberal So comes forward and says, I shot this big giant buck of Tennessee. It winds up being like some state record for the year buck. He gets a bunch of publicity. The buck tours around at a couple these shows I'm talking about, these these wild effexpos. Eventually a guy from Kentucky sees the big famous Tennessee buck and says, I know that buck. I'll show you a trail camp picture that buck hundreds of miles away from where this man claims that he shot it, and the buck had such a distinctive rack they successfully prosecuted the man and seized the head. Yeah, because of this, because of this guy's trail camp pictures of where that buck was on, what day it was there, and he had just shot it oddyseason and Jamaica legal came back across the border. There's trail camp story for you. Yeah. Yeah, they used that one, Chris, You like that one, Chris still not. Yeah, the wardens here he used a similar deal where they like if if if a dear interest comes about and uh, shot by a hunter and uh it's poached. You know, the landowner can knows it's missing, and it shows up somewhere, he sees a picture of it somewhere and he says that, you know, that deer came off of my property and he's surrounded by several other private property, like he didn't travel a hundred miles that day or whatever, right, and they prosecuted several people. Now, uh, from this exact same situation. It's probably it wasn't, you know, not nothing that high profile. But but yeah, the same deal. So yeah, so those guy's got a book coming out about just how much that changed our understanding of you know, all different kinds of wild life. Yeah. Yeah, I saw some I saw some trail cam images that came out of Afghanistan one time where they it was some really rare sheet. You can see it going through a pass. And the next images are a couple of dudes with uh with the you know, the Afghanistan and they were also familiar with now the hats that you know from the Afghan War. You see people wearing in long robes and a couple of klisha coughs going through pass right behind it, going chase it after. Yeah, sony out there, you are also your manage in that place, and you start using trail camps. Yeah, we started using trail cams, and I started noticing, uh, noticing changes changes in antler development that from year to year that uh, we're bizarre to meet because these these jumps are these uh increases in uh in antler size on deer that we thought we we would recognize from year to year, from season to season because their home ranges. Uh and tell me if I'm getting off pointed point, but uh, the home ranges are you know, on our mature bucks are about four to eight thousand acres and uh so you always on a piece of property you have, what do you guys figure put that into square mile be like ten to twelve I think tender twelve square miles at six forties of square miles. Uh So, you know, a buck's home ranges tended to tended to have square miles, and of course you have tons of overlap. And uh our our density was about a deer per acres a deer so, and we had a one to one buck do ratio, so we had a buck per fifty acres. Uh So, square miles that would be uh with ten bucks per square mile, so totally maybe square mile, yeah, fifteen fifteen bucks first square mile maybe, um, you know, all different age classes. But anyway, what I started noticing is these bucks that we thought we knew well, let me let me back up. We were shooting, we were harvesting. The family was harvesting trophy bucks every year that we're exceptional. But sometimes we did not know what that deer had been. He just showed up and uh so, and we we harvest them and we look at their teeth based off of the all the studies that have been done on age by tooth wear and replacement, which you know, some people say it's it's you know, it's the only thing we have to go off of, uh it is we have there is by the teeth it's not very accurate, but it's the only thing we have, uh, but that the teeth would be sharp, so they in indicating that they were a young, young buck. So what I started doing is I started documenting these deer with the trail cameras and uh to uh find out why you know, we're shooting these deer that looked old, but they had sharp teeth and we've never seen him before. Because let me just feel in a little bit, what you're suggesting is you guys felt that you could look at the deer's antlers and it immediately recognized him again the next year, because he'd just be a little bit bigger version, right, But then all of a sudden, here's the deer who like, where'd he come from? Because I didn't see a slightly smaller version of him last year. That's exactly correct. That's exactly correct. So, uh, what what I was I started documenting deer based off of their locations and their home ranges and would save pictures from a year to year to see, uh see which ones look similar. And I started noticing that there was there was bucks making huge, huge jumps, and uh, I mean they would go from a hundred and twenty inch deer to a hundred and sixty or a hundred and seventy inch deer in one one growing season. And usually that was, uh, you know what we were guessing to be a three or four year old dear to a four or five year old dear. That that age group was usually the big jumps. So we started doing is documenting those deer as far as based off a trail cams and uh, I started doing that, and we started letting deer go no matter how big they were. They'd be a hundred and seventy inch deer that we would typically shoot. We said, well we'll we'll let him go and see what happens because of his age. Because of his age, we wanted to see. We were trying to figure out how when was the peak? You know, that's what everybody in White till Into Street tries to figure out, is, uh, what's the what's what's the peak age? When do they peek out? And uh, and we think in Texas down here, we think it's we think it's a little older than everywhere else. But we're different, and uh, white tails are really site specific animals. I mean it it changes twenty miles, changes completely as far as dear to dear. Uh So, anyway, what uh but what is the age? Um? Well, what we found or what what my personal research and what other research institutes are are finding. It depends on the ranch, it depends on the property, it depends on the location, and it depends on the deer. They're all individual. But in my opinion, our dear in Maverick County and that county was, uh, we're we're maximizing their antler potential at seven and eight years old, not five and six like previously thought. Uh in those and all of that was just to estimation before at five and six, and some of those dear people were estimating them and they're actually younger. Uh So at the trail cams, we can get a better idea of their age based off of he's not in you know, Okay, if we have three years of pictures and he wasn't two years old in the first picture, he's at least five or six, Does that make sense? And uh So that's kind of what we went off of, and we started letting these deer grow to be seven and eight years old and nine years old before we harvest them. And we can see these dear we're we're feeding and they're coming out every day and they're not not every day, but I'm seeing them in the trail cams every day and they're they're really they're still hard to hunt their nocturnal um even though we're feeding. And uh so I just started, we started, uh letting these deer grow to to a lot older age class than anybody else was. And we started noticing that, Hey, we just stepped up our game. You know. We went from killing a a couple of ones sixty class year and a one seventy here and there, to killing one eighties every year with an occasional two hundred in uh three or four year period and then it's no year six. We were killing multiple one nineties with a with a two hundred almost every year and uh and this was solely due from knowing the individual deer through trail camera and uh and that that you can't you can't always tell antler's year to year. But what we were doing is is we knew where the deer was his home range. He did the same thing each year. You know, in October he'd be here, in November he'd be here. Then the next year, a deer that looked similar to him, but bigger would do the same thing, so we assumed it was the same deer. We weren't always right or right, I say we. It was me more than anything. I wasn't always right on that, but most part we were. And we stepped up our game big time as far as uh growing, growing big deer. And uh so I us about years seven. Uh these these current landowners that were on this property we're at now in Maverick County, approached me through a mutual friend and uh, I asked, I. I guess I met him a year six, and they approached me to try to find a a They just purchased this this property, and they approached me to find a a ranch foreman and wildlife bolog just to run this property for him. And they wanted nothing else other than to grow giant white tails. That's all they wanted to do, or let them grow no cattle, no cattle and uh so, and they all they asked me, is that would you be willing to leave your current position? I said no, I grew up here and I'm happy and I don't want to do it. Well that went on, and I looked for a couple of people for him, but I could never find anybody that I thought I could recommend and put my name on. About a year later, they made me an offer to come over here that I couldn't turn down. So U so I aim and UH started applying the same basic knowledge that I was doing there with the trail cameras and the inventory of the of the deer here and UH. And it's a it's a five to six year deal before you can really start seeing consistent results on growing growing these big white tails. But your job, like you're a salary a salary individual, and your job to take a sizeable chunkle land here and in the end goal that you're pursuing is to increase the number and size of big giant white tail box exactly yea. Before on the old property I had, I was doing that almost as a side note because we had cattle and in a little bit of agriculture crop and uh and the hunting was a side note. And now you know, and that's the part that I enjoyed the most. That's the part that I developed a passion for it. And now you just strictly wildlife, just strictly wildlife, and UH, and we do we don't do. I mean that's what we're what we're after is improving the wildlife. Let me ask some base real basic stuff. What are and Yanni jump in and whenever you need to. This place is not a fence place? Correct? Are there fence places here? Like? Why are some places in Texas? Wus he about like defence properties? What do you gain and lose? Like? Why did you why did you men not? Did you you still getting that? Why did you not come in and be like, first thing we're gonna do, boys, is build a big damn fence. Yeah, because that's uh, defenses in Texas are Man, it's a it's a touchy subject, just hard. You don't even need to weigh in. Just tell me like the thinking right, well, the main the main thinking in uh, the reason fences were were originally you know, set up for deer in Texas. And the year you told us earlier in what year did you say they became popular? I think the first one, first official one was in the late sixties was when the first one that was made with railroad ties and some sheep and goat net fence and what kind of acreage? Uh? That one? That one was eight thousand acres and so big we're talking about. No, they started out as large properties, and what they started out as is to keep their neighbors from killing their deer or for harvesting their dear premature because they're like, we're running a management program practiced in some restraint, and then inevitably the big box that we're producing by providing good habitat and all that are getting shot by some holes around the next property. It's done what he's done his whole life, and if there's nothing wrong with it, he's just hunting um, but he's not as intense. That's the way the fences started out, and that was a great, great tool, but it was the motivation that was a motivation. So what what happened was is, in my opinion is uh, it's people just got greedy and they started you know, fencing smaller properties in and figuring out that they could have a quick fix. It's just like, you know, that's just people. They want to get it. As far as growing trophy white tails, they could. They started they started realizing that you could take a take a you know, that's the the pen industry or the raising farming wildlife really started up. And then I guess about the nineties, which is it took from the first ivents in the sixties. There was almost nobody doing it for that, you know, almost thirty years. It was. That was that first place a private facility. Was it like a hunt, like a like a outfit outfitting. It was a private research it was it was a private it was a private property in the university did it as a research project to start and found out that it worked, and that's when they started publishing their research and that's kind of just escalated from there and uh so, uh so, basically people just started they started fencing in smaller and smaller properties, and all of a sudden, the pen developed kind of almost accidentally, just fencing off small pieces of property and seeing what they could they could concentrate growing these you know, Frankenstein type deer, and that's what it's evolved in. And that's what people see on TV on the on the pen and stuff, with all these freakishly big deer that are they can barely hold up their head. Um. But in my opinion, I don't. I mean, that's that's kind of where it started and where we are now, and it puts a bad taste in people's mouth for for the fences. Um, so it's not is not having offense. Like you've worked at two places that are not fenced. Are they not fenced for aesthetic reasons? Are they not fenced for long term? They're they're not fan Well the other one is it is? It is. I guess you could say it's not completely fenced. It is partially fenced on one side. But that's Uh. That one was we we got along with with our neighbors and they practiced the same management plans that we are, management practices that we did. Uh. This place is uh, the owners of this property are super anti uh penn dear, super anti high fence. Um. They like Boone and Crockett club and they they really want to be able to enter dear that we harvest here in the in the Boone and Crockett system, which means natural reproduction, which natural reproduction, no human contact, no direct human contact. Uh. And that's that's pretty much. Uh, that's that's the whole reason. In Maverick County, I forgot what what magazine did this stuff did the deal, but they rated the top fifty counties in the nation for for white tailed entries since two thousand four. I can't remember if it was it was one of the you know, more common long term magazines, but it was. They rated the top fifty counties in the nation for for boot and Crockett white tailed entries since two thousand four. Maverick County was number one typical and number two non typical entries. Uh. And I believe that was it was the only it was the only Texas county in the top ten. Uh. It might have been the only Texas It might I think it might have been the only Texas county in the top fifty. Uh, but we were. That's why, that's why they chose to buy a piece of property in Maverick County and uh. And they came to me and they said, can we grow big deer without offense? And I said absolutely. All you have to do is let them grow and uh. But you have to get a property big enough where your neighbors are gonna be shooting every single one. So if you're on a smaller, smaller property, the deer during the rut that you're gonna go across the fence, and in anybody in the right mind, deer that looks old, mature and has a big rag, they're gonna blast it and uh but yeah, they're not gonna care if it's like, did you know if you let it go two more years, they're not probably I canna see it anyway, right right, they're not. They don't. Yeah, they're there for that weekend or that day to hunt and they see a big deer and they're gonna shoot it. It's it's a completely different dynamic than than most most uh but most people can consider hunting. It's uh, we're not we're not faring and farming them, but we're watching them grow. I guess, um it's similar to some guys that have uh good mule there in Elk Country out west, that name their bulls so that way they can keep up with locating them the following year. Um, you know, just you know, on public ground even it's real similar to that. We're just doing it in the private sector. So how many how many bucks are you keeping an eye on? Um? I think I have on my inventory list right now, I might have three or four hundred. I guess do you have photo documentation of how much time do you spend besides the trail cameras? How much time do you spend out why observing in photograph and deer, just to get to know who's all out there. Uh see October October one through February. Um, I'm in the in the field, uh at least six days a week most of the time, seven days a week for you know, morning and evening to two or three hours in the morning to three hours in the evening almost every day in a stand observing deer in a stand observing dear with the with the camera, I use a big lands out of the stand to uh supplement the trail cameras. Um. And I'm on and about thirty five to forty trail cameras from August fifteenth to February or March, and uh pictures roughly a week. And uh that's uh, that's my Monday Tuesday. So and that's just to try to get to know who's here. I'm just getting to know. That's all I'm doing. And within that, how often do you how often does the deer pop up? It depends on his personality. How often does the deer pop up that you had no idea was here even though you're doing all that time looking? How much mystery is left the around the perimeters when we get influx from the neighbors during December, during the rut, there is uh I'll run into a new deer probably, you know. Whenever I say new dear, everything that I'm noticing is usually three years old and older because I can't it's hard to distinguish the ones twos and three year old year to year. But once they once they hit three and four, they're easier to distinguish year to hear, and you're not distinguishing them off the antlers. Well, it's helpful, but other things tell me, like because you explain to me some of the things you're actually looking for, which allow you to tell it one dear from the other. Yeah. So, so explaining the posture of the photographs too, because that's interesting, yeah, um so. So my my field photos with my camera from the stand, I try to get the I try to get the bucks broadside looking looking in my direction with their ears perked in their hawks offset And I do that because you can tell age based off the hawks. You can't tell an exact age, but it helps you narrow down the age. And then the broadside, of course lets you look at all the different traits such as the chest, the brisket. You know the the uh swaying belly or flat belly or flat back or swaying back. Um. But what I do age she is all for age purposes only. But usually if I've been watching them, I'm not worried about aging them on those pictures. I'm worried about and identifier what I call an identifier and uh, what I what I consider an identify or something like a split here, like a you know, I'm talking like a quarter inch nick on the tip of the right here, or you know, on the bottom side of the year there's you know, a quarter of the way up there's a there's a black spot. And they'll carry these characteristics year to year. And uh, or a dark forehead or or a double throat patch double white throat patch, or a bobtail um or any kind of distinguishing scar or you know, there's a there's a ton of them when you start, when you start really studying and looking, there's there's a ton of different characteristics that you can look at that are not associated with antlers. Because antlers changed so much, you never know you can usually recognize them a year to year once they get older. But but the ear splits and the tails and stuff like that, that little stuff that you can pick up on and uh and I can't remember at all. That's why we're documented it with We're we documented with the or the infield photos from the stand and that's why I try to get them in that that posture, that position two. Uh. That way, I may not know that deer this year because I didn't notice something, but I take a picture of a deer in that same area next year it looks kind of similar, and I put the two two together. Then the third year, I take another picture of that same deer in that same deal. So then I create a catalog of inventory of deer from a year to year, and it helps me understand their age better and uh, and I can let them. We can therefore decide if we want to harvest them or not. And uh and it and some people that you're making that decision, I'm making that decision. Yeah, And uh. Some people think that's you know, that's a little bit uh too far into it, I guess, or thinking too much about it. And it's taken some of the hunting part of way. But my boss is don't know that I know that, dear, or they know I know that dear, But they don't know that, dear. They haven't never they've never seen him before. Uh so it's still hunting to the right people. Um and uh but there's several several of these bucks that I'm getting pictures of. I'll I'll have thirty to thirty five hunts looking for him and never see him. Meaning you'll you'll identify a buck and you'll be like, if you're gonna get him, this is the year to do it right. But he's not going to uphill from here right and then nor and he never turns up right right well even to the point where what I what I'm what I meant by that was where my statement was, if I have a deer on trail camera, does drue cameras just they just give me something to go look at more than anything. You can tell a lot, but you can't tell everything. So what I'll do is I'll use the choke cameras to find a find a deer of interest, you know, say he's a one d O. I yeah, yeah, And uh so I'll find a one fifty class whatever something or other that I have I don't know. I'll go sit on that deer with my big lens to find an identifier, you know, to find a split here because you can't always notice those little uh spot on the ears, uh uh different characteristic on the body. You can't always notice those in troick camps the first time you see one, So you have to see him in person, and then I get a What I'll do is I'll get him, get a picture of them broadside printed out in an eight by ten, put it in the folder, and then next year, uh do the same thing. Then I can put those pictures right next to each other and see who's who. Uh. But but usually when we do green light a buck a trophy trophy buck to shoot. We shot one two years ago. That was I think it took him thirty or thirty five sits before he killed him because what what was happening. It's nocturnal. They're just nocturnal and will not show up in the daylight. Even with all the feed in the world that you want to put out, they get. Uh. We're we we practice uh. We we do a lot of selective harvest for population control. And what we're trying to do is is we reduce the stress by reducing the population and uh creating more feed. But that, and you know that's one of the things I want to ask you about when we back up minute, don't ask about an other thing, you guys like couple bad dates, you have anything. Nothing, It's all coming out nothing your your little brain. Nothing is going like, Oh I wish I knew a little more about that. It's all coming out. You're asking the good questions, man, at least like You'll have something on the tip of your tongue and then I'll say it well or ill or you just keep talking and then I'll think about something else, and then more it keeps drifting away. I started to think that sound's wrong with you guys. No, man, I'm just fascinated learning about white Tail. Um, okay, I'm gonna jump you around a little bit. I can't remember I interrupt you before you got into something I wanted to ask you about. What were you just gonna get into. I don't know. I'm not the one paying attention about bringing the population. Oh yeah, about the importance and not having too many deer. Right. But as a kid, and Yanny can back me up on this, as a kid growing up in white Tail Country in Michigan, and I was like our big game in our only big game animals, white tails. It was like you aged dear at least in your head, you age dear by what their antlers looked like. So everyone knew that a spiker fork was a year and a half old if he was a Michigan six or Michigan eight so or Western three. Let's just make a deal with you, guys, use Eastern count Yeah five on one side five near a studies the ten point right counts. We started calling the Michigan six because everybody in the damn country is differently accountable only speaking Eastern. So a six or an eight was two yeah, right, And that was like just accepted wisdom. The other piece of accepted wisdom was a spike wasn't going to become big because he's already small. Yeah, now speak to that stuff, the like what what can you actually tell with age by looking at the antlers on the deer? Uh? That's that's a tough one, because I mean, I've seen, I've seen antlers are I guess in a way they're they're an indication of age bait. If you look at the if you look at mass mass and uh and uh. Just but as far as a number of points and spread. None of that seems to matter on age. It's because you were just showing me an eight point it was a year and a half old. Yeah, yeah, we had We had an eleven point this year that was a year and a half old. I had. I had a six pointer with a drop time. It was a year and a half old this year. So his first rack, first track, he had a drop time. And then we have we have, you know, seven and eight year old deer that have eight points barely do you ever get do you ever get a dear older than than one who's a forky? Yeah? Yeah, I shot one. I shot one a few years ago. That was he was a two bye two four point uh and uh he was. He was five and a half by his toothwear, which he could have been older. So he's never just yeah he was a heavy two points. Oh he was a big too. He looked at him, knew he was. Oh yeah he was. He was. He was probably eighteen inches wide inside with with like eight or nine inch g twos. But that's all he had. Yeah, he had nothing else. He was just too big forks like it look like a mule mule here. Yeah, Now I'm gonna do something else. I'm gonna distracting another way, just to throw this out, just just want to throw this out. Tell me the number of wild pigs that you have handled in by trapping and whatnot. How many wild pigs have you handled here in South Texas As this morning, four thousand, seven ninety five wild pigs have passed through your hands since I started counting. Tell me how how old areen you weld it up your first pig trap? Alight? So, dear, um, that's just a old teaser for later. So dear now you're saying, and you told you're talking about this too, that too many like if you have too many deer running around, they're not gonna get as big. It Uh, okay, get into that a little bit, okay, It it all uh yeah that the it's all boils down to population dynamics as far as uh you know, mother Nature's way is is grow, grow, grow, grow, and then have a big die off and then grow grow, grow and once it once it surpasses carrying capacity, once the land surpasses the carrying capacity, yeah, it has a die off, and it it's uh to basically have these big spikes on the graph up and down up and don't some species just hit carrying capacity and then level off. Um, I'm sure they do. The ones that I'm studying, don't, or that I'm dealing with, um, quail and deer for instance. Um, they hit carrying capacity and they keep reproduce, and then all of a sudden there's you know, too many less and less food, more competition, and they start getting the first species people look at when they're kind of talking about that that phenomenon is people like to look at snowshoe hairs. Yeah. Yeah, it's where it's so cyclical that it falls into line. It's seven years. I mean it's like dialed in right, and then you look at They did this study where they looked at snowshoe hair patterns and they went back through all the Hudson Bay Company records on links, how many hides, links, hides We're getting handled and it was offset but links who their primary pray species and snowshoe rabbits. They looked at Hudson Bay Company links hide receipts and realize that links high links seemed to bounce along in a seven year span off set from the snowshoe hair seven year span. Yeah, like just respond under that direct response. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But and see white tails, white tails do it. It's more gradual. And now that now that people there's there's such a high profile animal and game animal that people are never gonna let them die off. But they will let him overpopulate. And the first thing, the first thing that they but they won't ever let them reach that that uh point where they just they start dying off. But what happens is is is people get greedy and they want to let as many survive as possible, thinking that even even the biggest possible, thinking that someone's gonna turn off who's real big deer they think they think that giant deer and anomenaly anomaly and uh and and they're not there. They're a low percentage. They're not they I mean they're there's there's a certain percentage of white tails that are gonna be big. And it's a it's just a straight up bell curve and the middle range down here is about a hundred and thirty and uh so, so, uh well, we do or what I do to lower the population. We we we call animals to lower the population to uh reduce stress. And white tails in my opinion are completely stress oriented. Rather, it's food, water, bedding cover. Everything is stress related. So if you have too many, it may not look like the habitat is suffering, but they're competing directly with food and uh, same thing with bedding cover. And uh so the first thing to go on a white tails when it when it's trying to survive is antler growth. It's a luxury. It's yeah, pure pure luxury luxury. And uh so what uh and we we do feed here, so that's that's uh, we're trying to certain people in Texas feed to off set they think they can offset that stress level of competition in uh. In natural habitat, we feed as a supplement to help them out through drought conditions. So you don't have those spikes in the in the in the graph like we were talking about. And we try to level it out as much as we can too, because that reduces the stress anything any the I guess, the the spike up or the spike down or all creating stress on the on individual animals. So cooling is the practice of going out and uh killing deer. Yeah, both the reduced numbers and to make some kind of selection about who's gonna be on the property and who's not right? Correct? Correct, and just so explain this because Texas runs wild, it's so differently in this place in the US. The state will come out to a big chunk of ground in Texas and make an assessment about how many deer you guys are supposed to kill because the state's trying to encourage you to not let them get overrun. The state is worried about habitat. They don't want they want the habitat to be healthy. They don't care about or they do they do care about, uh, the animals. But there they realize that if you have great habitat, you're gonna have healthy animals. And that's their number one folks. So their number one focus is that you're not gonna allow your habitat to become degraded, to have long term degradation in the name of short term bunch of deer running around or cattle or cattle. But in those but in those are on private land. See this it's mostly privately land. And that's all uh the state. Those are recommendations by the state. The state's not forcing you, you know, uh in but the people that are want to be good land stewards and want to grow better deer and have better long term wildlife programs and cattle grazing programs. Requests the state's assistants to come out and tell them what they should or shouldn't do. And they'll come out and say, like just using it doesn't have to be specific to this place. But they'll come out to a property like this, they'll come out and say, you boys would be wise to kill four deer this year. Here are your tags. Here are your certificates for those four deer. Yeah, and uh, they they based that on several different Uh. They do browse surveys, so they look at the whatever the deer eating, and if if the plants, if the plants look stressed out, then they'll then they'll, uh, I guess uh give you more more tags or less tags versus based off of what they notice on the plants. Um. They do surveys, population surveys to see what that particular piece of ground is, is uh capable of handling? And the best way to count dear here is helicopter, right, helicopter here. You can use spotlights too, but it's too thick here, so we use predominantly what I do is I try to use a helicopter survey in tandem with the cameras, and I try to get an individual buck count on the cameras and then get your buck Do ray show from the helicopter and your faone survival from your helicopter. So you take your individual buck count from the from the camera and apply that to the buck Do ray show, and then you get your number of dose and then you foll your phone crop to that and get your total number. A dear, and when they come out and give you there's three hundred, like a decent number for a big chunkle land. Three hundred? Are you raising your hand? Holy can put as a wolf up? Woke up and has a thought. I have a question too? After thank god, you want to interrupt men with like a dumb question. You guys got such good questions. I want to be like, hey, what is this mean? You know what? Chris being so polite right now, I'll tell you what the deal is. There's so much talking that goes on that it's hard to even slip in the conversation. And I'll break in right now. Okay, you start talking, say something, hey, hey, uh so here's what I'm wondering, just like it's just like as simple as that. Tell me about how when you do a helicopter survey kind of like give me the breakdown of how that happens, like the main steps like skip the you know, before I got in, I took a pee. But once you get in there, you take off deer, start flushing and what are you actually looking for and what are you recording? Right down? Well, the way I do it, so everybody does it different, but the way I do it, uh is what you What you do is you you you separate the property and do like a grid or transax line transax and those could be depending on visibility, if the vegetation is high or the vegetation is low. That depends on that makes uh decides what your transax are gonna be. You know, rather they're gonna be a hundred yards apart where you're running down, you know, running down, turning around, coming back, running down, turning back, uh, or if they're gonna be four hundred yards apart, and based off of the density of the brush or density of vegetation and what you can see, that's how you estimate how much how much of the property you can cover with the helicopter. How much you're survey, say, in this sort of thick gass country, what is the transsept It's usually about two hundred yards because you can see two hundred yards. You can usually see a hundred yards out both sides, so you'll move over. How many how many feet? How you flying? I don't it's it varies depending on the vegetation. But it's not, it's not. I guess it'd be probably fifty. You're just skimmings. No, it's it's like airplane. No, the skids are touching the tops of the trees. Sometimes it's it's pretty low. And depending on the wind too. If it's real windy, we'll get hired just so we don't crash. Uh uh. But so what we'll do is we'll try we'll fly these transac and I guess they'd be four hundred yard transax if you can see a hundred yards either way. Uh is what it would boil down to. And uh So what you're looking for is when a deer flushes, you usually can't see them if they stand still, but so you usually want to get them to flush. So you don't want to fly on a windy day or a hot day where they're gonna be betted or not. Here you you want to fly on a calm, cool day. Usually cloudy works, so that way they're moving as soon as they hear you. And what we'll do is we'll count uh bucks does and fawns. It's pretty much what you're counting. And you can tell the difference between the dose and the fawns pretty well. We usually fly in October, so the fallons are pretty pretty small. And then the bucks break into subcategories, and I break them into young bucks, middle aged bucks, and old bucks and then uh And like I said, that gives you your sex ratio and your ratio of young versus middle aged versus old bucks, and then it also gives you your fallon survival for that summer. And you take those ratios and apply them to your individual buck count from your cameras and through all that. The state will take those numbers and say, and they accept your numbers. They well, they accept mine. They don't accept everybody. Sometimes they have to have a you know, a state employee in the helicopter with you. But if you're trained in it, you can get to point whe they'll accept your numbers. Yeah, if you're trained in it, and and they trust you and they know you're you're not going to screw up, then they'll take your numbers. And I've been doing it for ten or twelve or almost fourteen years, I guess now, But what's your level of accuracy? Like do you plus and minus? Like? No, you're not. Well. See with the with the helicopter ratios, you're not You're not trying to get a number, You're just trying to get the ratio. So so within then with the individual buck counts, so say you have you know, one to one ratio and you see three hundred bucks on the on the trail camera, so you have three hundred dolls on a wonder one ratio, So you have six hundred deer. But then you have a fifty fond survival and what fifty fons reproval means you have three hundred dolls, you have a hundred and fifty fonts. That's so in that situation, you have seven hundred and fifty total deer on the property. And uh, and you can't really a lot of people do the helicopter survey, you know, and that's how many deer they think they have. But what you just mentioned. Your level of accuracy is changes from property to property, depending on who's flying, depending on whether it's there's too many variables too, that it gives you a good idea and better than nothing exactly exactly. What was the other question, because that question was prompted by something that was spoken after you expressed interest in asking the question. Was it was yeah, yeah, yeah, um you all up speed? Okay, Now, these tags, there's a penalty if you go over. There's no penalty for going under. They frown upon going under. So when they come out and say, son, we're thinking that you need to do some deer shooting out here, they're not happy if you just don't do any deer shooting. No, I mean they if you're if you're if you go through the process of getting the permits, and it's a long process, so you can you can just will never bring any of this up and never get any permits and and do whatever you wanted to the to what your your license allows, which is which is your over to counter what right. And the way people get around that is they just bring in more gas, you know, more guests to shoot, so then they can overshoot deer that way. So this is the thing you kind of a thing you've been rolling in in a plan you can rolling. Yeah, it's a it's a long term, several years system just to get started in the program. And when they give you the tags, it doesn't matter who's pulling the trigger. Uh. Okay. There's three levels of these permits. Uh. And I believe the first level. Uh, I don't. I don't remember. I havn't been in the first and second level in in ten years, so I don't remember. But the in in Scott would know if we get him on here later. But uh, the level three anybody can shoot is many deers. So if you get a hundred tags, one person could shoot deer legally and they could they could use all the tags, or you could have a hundred different people shoot one deer. Uh, it makes no difference. And on the let on the highest level, so someone hunting on that property, he's ever a hunting license. They have to have a hunting license, yes, And there's a stack of tags, and when a deer is killing that property, one of those tags goes out of that deer. One of the state issued permit, it's goes on that dear one of your license your tag off of your over the counter license does not go on that dear if your property is enrolled in that permit system. So when you go buy a tag and it comes with five dear tags, but you're only hunting on your property and you have state issued tags in your property, you never touch your tags. Correct. I have not used a a white tail tag off of my license in six or seven years, because you're just doing I'm only hunting here or or on properties that that have the same permitting, same permitting system. Okay, No, earlier you were talking about that a buck. You're telling me that when a doe has twin fawns, eight percent of the time those twin fawns have different fathers. The last study that I read, uh, was was in in this southwest Texas. This information is somewhat specific to this area. Yeah, that's what that. Yeah, it's it's everything sites specific with white tails. They changed so much from area to area. And uh, but yeah, they because we have such tight sex ratios one to one most of the time, or even even higher bucks than does. Yeah, and I'll point out that they're born one to one, Yeah, right, right, A little heavier on the bucks, a little heavy on the bucks. So when you're sitting like when when I was growing up, you'd be sitting in there in the woods and you see about ninety dolls for every bucky saw right in in Michigan, because that was like I moved away from Michigan, but I was born. You know, I'm forty two years old. So I started hunting when I was eleven twelve years old. And back then people don't want to shoot dolls. Everybody shot every buck they saw, right and you'd sit up there and be like, I remember sitting there one time in the cornfield, and I remember it was like a late season hunt, so rifle season ended. I was hunting in the December season with my boat, and I remember counting nineties some white tailed dolls without a buck hotly cah. Yeah. I wonder if that was it was that. I wonder if that was a good indication of this X ratio or was it a indication of hunting pressure for the bucks. I don't know, but my feeling was growing up, and it was a long time ago, and I didn't have it. It wasn't taking a scientific approach to it. My feeling was back then in those days that the that the ratios were as ridiculous. They they got to be as ridiculous as like you'd here thrown around, you'd have twenty dollars for every part. Yeah, there's there's places in Texas like that that are neglected or not uh not neglected, but not not managed and only they only shoot the bucks. Same same deal like you're talking about that that happened right now today. But yeah, so it's interesting in that they're born one to one. But of course one thing to excuse it is, I'm sure the dolls gotta have a much longer life expectancy. Yeah, is that true? Um in in unmanaged places, I would believe so, yes, and managed places I don't. I don't think so. Yeah. So let's just say all people died right now, Okay, humans cease to exist, and we jump into the future one years. Based on your understanding, white tails, would white tails exist then at a one to one ratio? And it just I guess it depends on their location, but I kind of I would believe, Yes, you believe they'd find a way towards that. I believe, especially in this area, they gravitate to one one. So the twin fawn thing that the dough is is uh getting bread by a bunch of different bucks. I watched the dough on a with a with a red train. One time I had seven bucks, seven bucks with one dough. It was hot and she they she was in a field. I watched six of those bucks readers, a couple of them multiple times. Weren't you tell me all? But the big one the only one that never bred? Or was the big one while you watched? Well, yeah, wow, because he was so paranoid about trying to beat all the other ones off. Hey, chase one yards the other way, and another one to run in and breeder, mounter breeder, and then he'd turned around and see that one breeder turned around and chase him off, and then another one to come in from the other side. There was there was a couple of those bucks that bred her multiple times, and he never bred her. It's the time frame that that's even like biologically possible to be bred by two different bucks. Is it like the same day or yeah? I think their astresses is uh eight or something like that. So she she forms two embryos, and just because she's in there being so trashy, wind's up carrying in her the children of two different bucks. Right. It works with dogs if you can breed. Uh, if you breed three male dogs to the same female, they can have, you know, puppies from all three. Is it? Like? Here's the another thing we say when we were kids. A buck bread a big buck. Once he got to be the big man, Like the biggest buck around heat breed ten to twenty dopes. That's possible, it doesn't happen on what I notice here with a one one ratio, I think every buck is pretty well equal from my from my observations yearling bucks in this area, in this area of Texas and this, I mean this is a small, minute little spot, but uh, in my observations, yearling bucks breed as much as older bucks. All age classes are pretty well consistent depending on the individual. Depending on the individual you get. It's just like people. You get the real horny ones and you get the ones that are just laid back and all they do is want to eat. Yeah, it's the same deal with deer. And uh, I mean some bucks may not breed any any dose their whole life for one or to just they just tapping to stop and squat in front of him. What's that valarious guist theory. I think we were talking to you founder effect. Huh. I was gonna bring up the founder effect earlier. Is that the one where the buck takes himself out of the breedings. Uh problem was that vale Geist? I think so? I never really believed that theory. Yeah, is that something he put forward? I gotta google it, do it because I'll tell another vale guyst thing. I think it was Vlarious Guys who there's a there's a very famous uh mammalogist in Calgary at the university there. He's still living and there met him named Vlarious Geist and and he has he's like a big ideas guy about animals, and and he wrote about it. They might even have come up coined the term the founder effect. Basically about the um when animals come into a new area, when they discover new range or having arrange expansion from something like retreating glaze. Sure's at the end of the ice age whatever. The um the tendency towards gigantism that happens with animals moving into a new piece of habitat. And we see it with introductions, wildlife introductions, explosions, right, giant specimens, a whole bunch of them and then you have like a collapse and then you kind of find a norm. But that was about guyst thing. Yeah, it's gonna dig it up. Yeah, I heard this theory like the box It just yeah, I don't even need to look the damn thing up. It was this idea that I think you were talking about your honest that a book will be like, hey, man, I got an idea. I'm gonna pull myself out of the genetic pool and go off and hide out for several years and get real big and bad, and then I'm gonna come down and pour the coals to every dough I can find. I'm gonna come out of like hiding like I'm the Hollywood movie and pour the coals to every dole that I could find. Yeah, I was gonna ask you if you've ever seen that, if you had seen box Set for like four or five years, has been just real mellow, weren't very aggressive, and because of that, you know, I had put on weight and gotten big, and then all of a sudden one year they just turned it on and kind of started kicking. But it's like a version of the old like hey, let's run down and breed one of those cows and the old ones, like let's walk down and breed them all. It's kind of like an extreme version of that. Yeah, yeah, I haven't I haven't noticed that here. Um it seems you haven't noticed a big buck hiding somewhere for many years and then all of a sudden coming out and just it's sealaging the women. I'll say, what I've noticed is when they're horny at one their horny their whole life, when all they want to do is eat and they don't really look at the girls. They're like that their whole life. You know. As far as bud like folks fighting and breaking times, there's bucks that never break even a tip for eight or nine years of their life. Then there's other bucks that are have every time on their head broken by November. He's just gonna fight, He's just that's guys like that exactly. It's they're just like people and they're so individual that that's what makes it fun, and that's what makes it hard, and that's what also makes it so so interesting to me, because nobody's ever right, and nobody's ever wrong. Your your your theories and everything that you do. You know, it has an application somewhere, so you're not h you're not shooting all the giant bucks. Now you don't shoot the two bucks, and you know you get paid to do it. You can probably paid to do all kinds of stuff. What do you get out of it? Uh? It's I mean, it's it's a passion. It's just something that I've developed over the years, and now it's more of an addiction. It started out as a ash and now it's more of an addiction. I couldn't turn my back to it now if I wanted to. And just watching, just just watching. Uhh. We talked about this word earlier. Watching like a system. Yeah, just just a wildlife system, right, just learning as much as I possibly can about you know, that animal. How much do you feel that you're manipulating it to the point where you're you're farming, dear, And how much do you feel you're just making room for things, You're making room to allow things that would happen happen. I feel I feel very strongly that as far as I feel like we're trying to let things occur that would naturally occur and maybe putting them on a fast track without with an indirect approach, meaning in really like again, in this scenario, this hypothetic scenario where all humans die, you would all humans are dead. You would see that some dear we're growing to nine years old and dying of old age, which is not happening in Mosquito County, Michigan, where I grew up. Even kind of is there hunting? Yeah, so if there wasn't people, No, there is no old buck. We about ship our pants when you're in My dad shot a buck. They're looking back. It must have been a two and a half ye old buck. It was a giant. Yeah, he even got in the newspaper. Yeah. No, uh, man, I don't know that they all revert back. It's it goes back to those spikes in the in the populations. What I'm trying to do is avoid the spikes. If if, if, if people disappeared in a hundred years from now, it would be the it would be the up and down population. Yes, and uh there would be years or points in that process or that system of ups and downs that would be mirror to what we're trying to do here, But it wouldn't be consistent. You know what. You know what I'm saying. You know it would be up and down, but while it was going up, it would be what we're trying to hit here, um, And that's all we're trying to do, is we're just trying to slow that down. How will you like right now, if you had to sit right now and say, in my career, UM, I would measure success by what what would it be? Not on means that your career because you're you're young, like in and what would be the ideal thing that you would see happen? Not a property you were managing, like what would be a ten year goal? Uh uh uh, well, like a tenure. I don't know. I don't know if I could fathom what I really want to happen. But you don't know what it would look like. No, there's that's that's I don't have any idea what it would look because see the situation you're in. Remember earlier you mentioning that um and you were putting us as a life goal. But you were just saying, like a thing that would happen perhaps is that ever you'd get it to be where you had a handful two three, four truly like outstanding white tails come off your property. But one would point out you could do that right now by going online and buying like you know, big thunder fox semen, do you know what I mean, and putting them in a pen and giving him a bunch of stuff. Right. So, it's like, you want to get there, but you want to get there in a in a route that is acceptable to you, or a route that's interesting to you, and not through a route that's not interesting to you. Like I want to have a million dollars, I can make it crooked, I'm not saying me, but so he'd be like, I want a million dollars. I want to make it through running like a great company that treats his employees really well and has like stable growth patterns and and and a good environ mental record. Or I want to make a million dollars, don't care I have to kill you to do it, right. That's exactly I mean, exactly exactly right. My my problem is is as far as seeing into the future, my goals would be, Yeah, to have a couple of gigantic white tail bucks at a harvestable age each year. Uh, However, nobody's doing what what we're trying to do here, or has done what we're trying to do here to the intensity that we're doing it, so you can't really predict what's going to happen. Uh, you follow this recipe X well, right nobody. Yeah, and and it's so different, you know, from side to side. And that's why that's why that question is difficult for me to answer, um, because I don't really know something might happen that we don't see, because this is never you know, nobody's nobody's done this. It's not like you know, like you said, you follow a recipe and this is what you're gonna end up with. Nobody knows what's gonna happen. Mother nature is that awesome way I was saying, screw you, you know, and throwing a wrench into things when you try to start messing with her. And uh, and that's another fun part for me. Yeah. You mentioned earlier like an unintended consequences when we're talking about quail, and you were saying, you can think you're helping out quail by putting out quail feeders, but what you might be doing is helping out Bobcats and Kyle. It's by giving them a great place to kill quail exactly. And that's exactly right. That's exactly right, like intuitively be like, oh yeah, put the food on, dude, you have tons of quail. That's how. That's how. There's a lot of things that got screwed up in in the US that are started out as good intentions and the byproducts were you know, completely disastrous. Yeah, speaking of unintended consequences. You know, that's what's cool about this place is that it's all you guys are trying to do all like native flora and while we you know, you come down here and you've gotten the whole high fenced thing in your head and you're thinking about exotics and there's gonna be zebras running around this, that and the other. Like, let's like list off the cool stuff that we've seen this week. The four spieces of snakes. Yeah, a horny toad, Uh, what is Texas Texas tortis, a greener which is three hundred jack rabbits, five hund cotton tail rabbits, unbelievable Mexican whisp black billy whistling ducks, unbelievable varieties of birds. Yeah, I haven't seen this one kudu roll through yet. My. That's kind of why I want to have this discussion is because my impression, like the first time I ever came down here two like the famous Texas white Tail Country was when I came down with Ben O'Brien to come down here and just look at Quail. I remember walking around being like, this is just not what I imagined. You know it is, uh, Hue is vast expanses of I don't want to say pristine. The hand of man has felt like we, for instance, talked about the implications of fire suppression right we were you and I were having been and I have been bending here. We were discussing like, wow, would you what would you have paid to rod a horse or here two years ago? And he feels that it would have been more mixed grasslands from from making mosaics of burned areas and unburned areas, and and the animal the wild, it was a little different. Uh, buffalo or bison ranged down in this area, which suggests more open country and a little profound down here, which is suggests more open country. So it's the hand of man has felt, you know, through that same way interrupting systems, fire systems and things. However, vast expanses of what by a relative standard of what goes on in the US would be undisturbed environment, privately owned, but vast expanses of undisturbed landscape while they've habitat, and a pretty stunning array of of of native wildlife. You know. Yeah, it's some tremendous wildlife viewing here an unusual thing. We saw a snake. I had never heard of the blue what's you call the blue indigo? So souped up bringing rattlesnake. It's been interesting

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