00:00:01 Speaker 1: 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. 00:00:19 Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, we are discussing the increasingly urgent need to start harvesting more dos and we'll be talking through strategies to specifically target and hunt analyst deer. All right, welcome to the wire ton podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camel for Conservation Initiative. If you're not familiar, the Camel for Conservation Initiative means that every sale of First Light spector Camo gear, a portion of every one of those sales goes back to the National Deer Association to help them with their mission to do good things for deer and deer hunters. And speaking of the National Deer Association, today's guest for our conversation today is the President and CEO of the National Deer Association, mister Nick Penzoto, and our topic today is doze. We're talking antler list deer and we're talking about this topic for a couple of reasons. Number one, kind of selfishly, this is the time of year, when we're talking December, when I really start getting extra excited about hunting for dos. I've already taken two this year, but I'm about to get really really serious about it just in the next couple of days. For whatever reason, it seems to be as that season's ending, getting towards that last third or last quarter, some of that stresses off. You've had all your big trips, the ruts in the rearview mirror, and now I like to get out there with my kids, get out there with friends and family, take out more new hunters and top off the freezer, get out there for specific dough hunts. And it's a lot of fun. And it's a very good time to be out there getting it done because does are still out and about. They're hitting the food sources, so it's a great time to do this kind of thing. But that's not the only reason why we're having this conversation here today. It's also because I think it's a conversation that's needed. As we're wrapping up the year. There's still some work to be done. I just got not just about two months ago and got an email from our dear specialist here in the state of Michigan that went out to all the hunters, I believe across the state of Michigan, letting us know that we are in dire straits, that we have a situation with our deer population in the state of Michigan and our ability to manage it because we have not been harvesting enough doughs. I think the number is since the early two thousands, our dough harvest, our antlas harvest has gone down thirty percent. And this kind of trend is not unique to Michigan. The National Deer Association published their Deer Report earlier this year and then again came out this fall with a pretty strongly worded article kind of raising the red flag on this the fact that antlas harvests continue to go down across many different states, across many different regions of the country. We are simply not managing and balancing the population the way that we need to if we want healthy deer populations and if we want to continue to do our job as stewards and managers of this resource. And so that's why we've got Nick joining me here on the show here shortly to better explain what all that means, to better kind of outline the trends we're seeing, to talk through why this stuff's important, Why we as deer hunters need to be thinking about this, Why dough harvest can influence our buck hunting opportunities, How all of this impacts the habitat, how this might impact the future of disease, impacts on deer populations, a bunch of stuff like that. So I want to cover the why and understand why are we getting these emails, why are we seeing these things in the reports, why should we care? And then number two, let's talk about how to do it, because I'm guilty of this. Here on the podcast, we talk a whole lot about how to kill mature bucks, how to target a specific buck, how to kill your first buck, how to do all this stuff bucks, bucks, bucks. We don't do a good enough job talking about dos. And there are some unique things when it comes to targeting does, when it comes to going out there on a hunt, specifically just trying to hunt analysts deer. So that's what the second half of the show is going to be about. If you are listening to this in September October, November, December, whatever it is. We are going to talk about how you can get out there and fill your analyst tags with different ideas, tactics, strategies, how to fill the freezer with an analyst tag. We'll get into all of that here today. So appreciate you listening. Why don't we just get to my guest, mister Nick Penzoto and talk about some does all right here with me? Now we've got a returning guest, my friend Nick Pennzota. Nick, thanks for being here. 00:05:22 Speaker 3: Always a pleasure. Mark, good to be back. And I listened to the show. I don't think I've ever missed an episode, and the only ones I don't listen to are the ones I'm on. So maybe I'll make it a point to do that this time. 00:05:33 Speaker 2: It's hard to listen to yourself. I don't like listening to myself either, Nick, So I don't blame you, gotcha. I do appreciate you, though, tuning into the show. Thanks for thanks for keeping me in business. Yeah, I'm also appreciative of the fact that you were willing to jump on here with little notice. But I had the idea for this podcast kind of last minute, and it stemmed from some conversations I've had over the last couple of days with some of my friends at Meeta Her. We were actually on tour here recently doing some live podcasts and been talking a bunch about the dough situation in Michigan and elsewhere. And as those conversations were going on with me and my friends, I'm also getting text messages from some of my buddies from your Field of Fork program that you guys do with the NBA. We've got a Field of Fork angeless hunt coming up this weekend, and a couple guys who I mentored years ago in that two years ago now who are going to come and hunt with me before that too. So I've got all these dough hunts coming up, and my sons are asking me when can we get out there and start hunting doughs. And I'm having this conversation about the dough population in Michigan. All these things have got all these conversations and thoughts going around my head, and it got me thinking about an email that I received earlier this year, and I teased this in the introduction to the podcast, but I got this email that most of the hunters in Michigan or all the hunters in Michigan got that they're on the use letter list from our deer lead in the state of Michigan, basically pleading with hunters in Michigan to start getting serious about does And you guys actually came out with similar language this spring when you guys came out with your twenty twenty three Deer Report. And then again there was an article you published in i think late September kind of raising a red flag on this issue too. So that's what I want to talk with you about, Nick, is is first off, why is this something that you guys are starting to scream from the rooftops about the fact that we need to get a little bit more serious about the antalyst hunting that we're doing. 00:07:48 Speaker 3: Yeah. Sure, And so it's interesting while you were seeing all that, we were having internal conversations because as we start to review the Deer Report like we do every year, started to see some really concerning things, and so we had internal discussion about coming out and saying, hey, it's time to start letting people know that dough populations are not where they need to be in a lot of places, and so it's time to remind hunters that taking dose is a good thing for a lot of reasons. And so, you know, just a bit of a disclaimer though, because I don't want people to get the impression that we're after shooting all the deer and that all the doughs need to be shot. It's also a very localized thing, because I know, even where I live in Pennsylvania, you might have one side of the mountain it's overpopulated with dose, and you got the other side that maybe not. So I would just ask listeners to take this, you know, and also make sure that they apply sort of their own situation to it. And I think the way we've when I say we like collectively the work that you all do, the work that we do at NDA, I think we've educated hunters to the point where they can kind of recognize if there are too many deer out there. And so when you recognize that, I also recognize that you are part of the solution to try to get those things back in control. So, just as a little backdrop of where this was coming from when we were looking. 00:09:09 Speaker 2: At it, yeah, yeah, great point. Can you highlight for me a few of the numbers or any of the trends that you've seen when you guys started looking at those reports last year or coming into this new year, that kind of got you guys to think, Okay, we do need to start addressing this even more than we have because you guys have been forever talking about responsibly managing the deer herd, trying to achieve some level of balance with habitat and ratio of bucks to doze. But what are some of those numbers that gave you pause? 00:09:44 Speaker 3: Yeah, and that goes all the way back to nineteen eighty eight. Was we were one of the first ones to tell people to try to shoot more does, and we had to explain to them why because it was a foreign concept to many. But we can maybe get into that in a bit. But some of the big numbers mark and this is one of the biggest that stand out to me, and that is twenty four out of the thirty seven what we would call sort of typical white tail states midwestern to eastern states were down on their dough harvests from their five year average, and so we can see a blip from year to year. Maybe there are reasons for that, you know, everything ranging from bumper egg corn crop to not to ehd and other things. But the five year average is pretty important, and the majority of those states were down in that five year average, not just in the number of dose killed, but then the number of the ratio of does to buck shot. In an ideal situation, you'd have sort of that one for one at least, you know, which would be a balance. But we started seeing states that below that one one dough per bucks and more more states shooting more bucks than does, which is in some ways it's kind of almost unfathomable that that happened. And so this trend started back in about twenty fife, so from twenty fifteen, with the exception of the COVID year of twenty twenty, more states or there were more bucks shot than dose on average. Just some other statistics that are important I think here. So hunters are shooting less deer overall, which is also something to consider. So back based on twenty twenty one data, forty one percent of hunters killed a single deer. And so some of your listeners might be sitting here, especially the ones that are successful every year, saying, you mean to tell me that less than half the people were shooting one deer. And that was true in twenty twenty one. In twenty eleven it was fifty percent, so that's a nine percent decrease. And then in twenty nineteen eighteen percent people killed more than one deer only eighteen percent, so less than two and ten more than one deer. Yeah, so basically, someone shoots their fills their buck tag. The numbers show that the majority of them are then hanging up their bows and rifles or just not trying real hard to fill an antlers tag. So I think those statistics would be pretty startling to most people. 00:12:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, well you mentioned about how you know, nationally, on average, we're starting to see more bucks killed than does in many states. In Michigan, we now can see real time harvest reporting because we've got the mandatory harvest report, and I just checked the other day, and it's not subtle. In Michigan. Now it is dramatic. There have been about one hundred and fifty thousand bucks shot so far this year and less than ninety thousand does so almost twice as many bucks have been shot as does so far this year. I mean that is a stark, stark difference. And in that email I referenced earlier our antlust harvest is down on average, I believe thirty percent over the last twenty years here in Michigan. So, you know, pretty pretty dramatic change of what's happening there. So if this is happening, right, we're seeing analyst harvests go down across many states, I would assume then that is meaning that we're seeing deer populations go up. Is that? Am I right? Have we seen any kind of me? I mean, we're are we having that correlation as harvest goes down, populations go up and then everything that follows. Is that the case? 00:13:30 Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely, I mean, as we know, deer are pretty prolific. You know, It's why when people have maybe a localized DHD EHD outbreak, we remind them it's not the end of the world. That very quickly, within a year or two, that population will be replenished. And so if you think about those percentages of does you know antler list here not all state classifies them exactly as those, but let's assume most of those ant lists here are does it's inevitable that those populations are going to boom and become out of control, and so none of that's good. I mean, there's we have as an organization have strived from day one to talk about balanced herds, to talk about the importance of harvesting dose when it comes to the overall health of that herd. We're you know, reducing human deer conflict, which is something as hunters were not as focused on that. But if you're a non hunter, unfortunately, you're likely going to think mostly of a deer is something you're going to hit with your car or that you're going to have to chase out of your flower bed, and those things go up disease issues. I mean, unfortunately, my colleague Lindsay Thomas wrote an excellent article on the important deer harvest earlier this year, and he picked out the three states that were of the biggest concern and unfortunately for you mark your home state there in Michigan was number one. A twenty four percent drop in the number of antler lists here. I think that was from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two or maybe the following year, and so the in the ratio of about zero point seventy five dose per buckshot, So that speaks to the numbers you talked about. And then you have Wisconsin, a fourteen percent drop from twenty twenty twenty twenty one season, and they are six percent below their five year average. And we're talking about states and particularly Wisconsin chronic wasting disease issues. Kentucky was third on the list, eleven percent down, And just this past week they announced that they had found CWD in Kentucky. Now, yes, and yeah, that's a huge that's a huge, huge concern. You know, CWD, habitat loss, habitat destruction, human deer conflict, none of that's good for deer. 00:15:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're both at this summit this summer nick related to a whole bunch of different parties coming together talking about chronic wasting disease and various solutions and ways to approach dealing with it in the future. And one of the most important things that everybody could agree on was the single most important thing we need to do is just better manage the population. Right, kill another dough. I think that was one of the simple takeaways we came out of that whole discussion with, like, let's just all get one more dough this year. And that's a pretty simple way to help make a positive difference on a really serious issue, right. 00:16:20 Speaker 3: Yeah, it really is. We tried to keep the messaging as simply as simple as possible. People can certainly understand that, hey, if you have tags, go ahead and please put forth the effort to do that. But as you recall, we also talked about some of the reasons why people weren't filling those tags, and there are some real issues there too. So part of it is that some simply are just in their focus is I want to fill that buck tag, and my focus is getting that buck, and I don't want to shoot that dough if I see it because my buck might be right behind her, and so they pass on it. So it's passed opportunities. But more tangible issues would be maybe I don't personally have the freezer space for one, or maybe the processor that I used to use no longer processes deer or is out of business, and so now I have struggle a struggle with dealing with it. So we're also trying to look at maybe removing some of those barriers from people that aren't killing the number of deer that maybe they used to making it easier to donate your deer. For example, I mean, I can tell you I only keep too deer per year, but I will shoot more than that, and so I've got luckily, I've got a processor nearby that will take deer for donation. But then I also have a personal list of people who want a deer, and so I try to fill that list as a way to help keep me out in the field. And also I just enjoy being out there. I mean, I love hunting. I hold on to ant list tags for the winter season just to ensure that I'm still going to have a chance to go out and hunt if I want to. And so my situation, though, is not the same as everybody else's. And I think what we're seeing is somebody goes out and even if they don't kill their buck, maybe they're just burned out because you know, going day after days a lot of hard work, there's a burden on people's time, and so they're just not getting out there and doing it. 00:18:12 Speaker 2: So you mentioned the disease issue. If deer populations get out of control, the density leads to disease transmitting more frequently, more easily. Right, You mentioned the increased vehicle collisions and the risk that poses to lots of folks around the country. Can you expand a little bit on the habitat side of things and kind of the long term implications that has on you know, deer and deer hunting, you know, years down the line too, because that's something that I think is easy to overlook, especially if you live and hunt in an agricultural area where you think there's food everywhere. But that's an issue all over the place, isn't it. 00:18:54 Speaker 3: It sure is. I mean, so there is the agricultural part of it. We'll tackle that first. We all may look at these big eggfields and say, wow, that's great. The deer have all this food. But when the farmer comes along and makes a harvest corn, soybeans or whatever, they notice it because they measure those things. It's not like they just say, well, it seems like we had a full truck this year. I mean they literally measure by the bushel what their yields are. And if those yields go down, then all of a sudden, they're tolerance for deer is going to be down as well, and so more of those deer end up getting shot because of crop destruction issues, not by hunters, and it just creates a very difficult situation economically and also opportunity wise for hunting. But then there's the other side of it. There's a forest management part of it. So not everybody is blessed to be able to have their own forest that they can manage and know one to cut trees and create early successional habitat. A lot of our giant public lands are like this, and so one of the reasons that public lands may be unfavorable in terms of good hunting spots is because the forest there's no regeneration because there are so many deer that they come in and they basically mow everything new that's down, So you don't get any good edge habitat, you don't get any early successional habitat, and therefore the hunting suffers. But these deer are still out there, or they're spreading out into these suburban areas where they really shouldn't be, and so there's also an economic loss when it comes to that, and obviously an opportunity loss as well. I mean, I live in a town. I live in hunting central western Pennsylvania, but I can still see if I get up early enough, I can see a deer walking down the street. And I live in town, and I also see movements to we have a green space here, a couple hundred acres that a lot of people hike and enjoy right next to the town, and it's got way too many deer in the forest is a mess, and they start talking about things like contraception and other things that are not ideal. And so those are the types of things that overpopulation cause that aren't necessarily just related to this, but are very important. 00:21:04 Speaker 2: Okay, now here's another one. If we if we were to be selfish a little bit and just think about the things that a lot of deer hunters default too. I'm guilty of this sometimes myself. I can get the big buck blinders on sometimes and I'm just like so focused on like shooting that one target buck or seeing a bigger deer, or seeing an older deer. Right, we get excited about that kind of stuff, And that's okay to get excited about that kind of stuff if that's something that we really care about. Having it out of control, doll population is going to hurt a lot of those types of goals as well. Right, I mean kind of to your point there when it comes to even in an agricultural area, you know, even though there's lots of food prior to the harvest, once they do pick the beans and harvest the corn, and that waste grain disappears. You know, by the time you get to February or March, if you have way too many deer, there's not a lot of food left out there. And if the force is picked clean, all of a sudden, you've gotten nutritionally depleted critters. Once you're getting into the spring, when these deer are struggling the most, right, that's not good for antler growth. That's not good for lactating dos later into the spring early summer. There's a lot of downsides when it comes to that side of things as well. 00:22:22 Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean you're hitting on really sort of the key concepts of herd health, which when you go all the way back to when the National Deer Association previously known as the Quality Deer Management Association was started, it got the reputation for being an organization it just cared about big bucks, and I think people miss the point. Okay, nicer racked deer is a symptom of quality herd and habitat management. So you can enjoy opportunities better deer if all population is in control and the herd is more balanced. Habitat is balanced, and so we still very much care about all those things and are very core to our mission, but we try to talk about them a little bit differently so that people don't miss construe what we're about. And so to your point, and it's hard sometimes to just explain generally how seeing less deer is actually better for you as a hunter, and so it's very subtle. You mentioned things like different times a year and not having that food available. So for every pound less that a young buck is able to eat throughout those winter months, and the harder it is on him, you will see that impact on that deer's antler growth later, because the first thing that a deer's body does is it takes care of its body, and then from there the antler growth and so on is going to be largely dependent on how healthy that deer came through the winter and spring. Same thing with lactating does. Let's say that you have a dough that had dropped two fawns, and she's trying to feed two fawns throughout the spring, but her nutrition isn't good. And now you've got these two Let's say one of those is a button buck, okay, and now he is maybe he's born later to begin with, and then he's not getting the type of nutrition he needs as a yearling deer, and now he struggles his entire life to catch up from that. And so it's not even just a one year thing. A lean year can actually lead to multiple years of being lean and not reaching full potential. So I know that we all want to see deer when we hunt. It's not fun when you go out and you sit in the freezing cold and you maybe don't see anything, But that's part of the deal. If you really care about the overall herd health and and really if you want to see bigger, better bucks, which a lot of us do, dough management is a critical part of that. 00:24:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, And what about I mean, I know we like to see a lot of deer, and I'm guilty of it too. I like to see a lot of deer, but I also like to see certain kinds of deer behavior. And this is another one. If you have a more in balance buck to dough ratio and a more balanced herd structure, age structure, all those kinds of things, it can lead to more exciting hunts in a different kind of way too, Right, Can you speak a little bit to how you know your dough population and bucks to dough ratio can impact like the rut and that kind of stuff that we always dream about. 00:25:32 Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's funny because we've listened I'm sure both of us to one hundred podcasts over the last few weeks talking about the rut. I mean, you've had several great guests on talking about this issue and one of the things that comes up. And it's funny because I'll hear you and Tony going back and forth on this when you guys are together about how man, it's like the first week in November and I haven't seen a deer for three days. What's going on? And so the reality of that is is, if you know, let's put this into a human perspective, right, if you're a young man or young woman trying to meet a partner and you're in a town that's got one hundred thousand people in it, you ain't gonna have to go far. But if you're in a small town, you're probably gonna you know, with fewer people, you're probably going to have to go further to meet that person. And that's the same thing with deer. I mean, if there's a good mature buck. Let's say you've got him, even if your property's a small one. Let's see, have one hundred acre property and you've got a mature buck that you're after, and you've been passing doors all along because you just keep thinking he's going to show up one of these days. Well, he doesn't have to go far to find those does. He's going to find the first one, he's going to have her in the area that he wants her, and then he's going to be able to easily find the next one. And he doesn't have to really go far. He's not really challenged a whole lot, as opposed to if your dough herd is in balance or at least close. I mean, one to one is pretty difficult to achieve in most cases. But even two to one, he's going to have to do a little, you know, put a little effort for it to go find that though, as opposed to just pretty much staying close to his feed and staying close to his bed and being able to accomplish that breeding. He doesn't want to, especially mature deer, does not want to expend all the extra energy if he doesn't have to. He doesn't want to get into fights and brawls with other bucks if he doesn't have to. But you as a hunter, if you're sitting there, man, that can make for a long boring road. Sitting there during the rut and not seeing any deer. That's that's likely the biggest cause of it. As opposed to multiple bucks moving across the landscape you get, you're going to see more chasing, You're going to see more cruising. If you're seeing that, you're seeing more sign laid down things are probably in pretty good order in terms of your buck to dough ratio in those areas. 00:27:43 Speaker 2: Yeah, and the few places that I've been able to hunt and like that, you're also seeing you know, bucks doing buck things like vocalizing and getting really you know, aggressive with each other. You're seeing bucks actually fighting, and you're seeing you know, snort and just cool stuff like when I've been to Iowa and some of these locations like that, it's just so different than where I'm in Michigan. And a lot of it has to do with some herd structure things like that. I mean, you know, here where I live, this general area is very much like the first situation you described where there's so many does that every buck is set, he doesn't have to work hard at all because he gets gets done, and he's he's got another six, seven, ten dos within ten acres to pick from, and then he's off to the next one, and ten minutes later he can likely be finding another. And it can make for some slow days when they when the bucks don't need to work hard, the hunter does. 00:28:40 Speaker 3: Yeah, and eight structure is important there too, you know. It's uh, older bucks understand better how to you know, do those types of things, so they're going to be more prolific kind of scrapers and serious scrapes, you know, and and and rubs and aggression towards other deer, whereas the younger bucks. Again, to get back to people, your game is a lot better when you're in your twenties than it was when you were in your teens, right, And so it's the same thing with deer now. 00:29:11 Speaker 2: I'm not sure about if I had to re enter the game in my thirties, I might have lost it. 00:29:15 Speaker 3: So well that then you're just that big old mature buck, right, and you hope that you've you hope that you've established your dominance in a way that the doughs just come to you. 00:29:24 Speaker 2: But yeah, I think at this point I'm that really old lazy, dumb deaf buck that's missing an eye and kind of limpse along Lasn's better. That's that might be where I am. 00:29:33 Speaker 3: So I gotcha, I can relate. 00:29:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, thankfully. My my wife is still is still sticking by me. So here's this thing, you know, when it comes to the whole dough thing, and you mentioned this early on, there's always exceptions to what we're talking about here, right, Like there are some places where we need to be more aggressive with dough harvest, like we're talking about here, But then there's other spots where that's not the case, right, I mean up in northern Michigan and a lot of places that I hunt around my my deer cam up there, it still seems like it's it's pretty down load deer populations. I know there's concerns up in northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin places like that where someone up there listening to this might be fuming and saying, what are you guys talking about? We never see deer, it's horrible, et cetera. Can you can you give me some semblance and an idea of how you guys recommend a hunter figure out, you know, do I need to be getting more aggressive or do I not? Is it simply just an eyeball test, like what do you feel or should we be getting serious about a deer census. Can we get a hold of our state biologist and just ask like, what's the actual steps we should take to figure out that? 00:30:47 Speaker 3: Yeah, and so there are anecdotal there is anecdotal evidence, and then there's science that you can use. And everybody's situation is different. If you're someone that's just your public land and you're unable to go in and do an actual deer trail camera survey, which if you go to the National Deer Association website, type in trail camera survey, we'll show you the science of how you can do that, take you step by step into calculations, and you'll know how many deer per square mile that you have. For a lot of people, though, that's not going to be realistic. So I think part of it's a visual test or knowing at least your local herd. So I know I actually own some land. It's not a huge piece of land, but I can tell you that I am on top of understanding what deer living there. Okay, So through trail cameras, through looking at my habitat, through my own harvest data, I'm pretty confident on most of the deer living there, especially the bucks, but even the dough family groups that when I see them, I can pretty much recognize who they are and have some idea of where they come from. And so I can tell you that during the first day of our firearm season this year, I saw twenty two deer that day. Now, when I'm out there hunting archery season, which is what I do mostly, a pretty average or decent night for me is I'm going to see four, maybe six deer. And so there's a difference between the deer that are living on me for the most of the year and the deer that I may have recruited because of pressure and firearm season or whatever. But the pointing saying that is when I went out with firearm, didn't I didn't intend to shoot a dough. My focus was I would do some more of that in the winter archery season. But when I saw twenty two deer on opening day, regardless of whether they were directly living on me or I recruited them from nearby, I decided the next day, the first nice, big adult dough that comes in, I'm shooting that deer, because man, that's concerning to me. As much as it was exciting to see that many deer, I knew in my mind, and I own land in a CWD management zone, you know what, I need to do my part here, and I need to shoot a deer, And so I did. I shot the deer and I donated it to a friend of mine. So some of it will be anecdotal. If you just feel like you're seeing what seems like too many deer, you're getting a lot of them on your trail camera, that's probably a signal to you to go ahead and start filling more of those dough tags. And so you know, there's the science and there's the anecdotal. 00:33:12 Speaker 2: So to your point, a lot of folks just probably aren't going to go and do a scientific trail cam survey of their population. Is there any kind of like rough back of the napkin kind of estimate? And I know there's no good answer to this as I'm posing this question to you, because it's all going to be habitat dependent too, But I can imagine there's gonna be some people listening thinking how many deer is too many deer? Right? I mean, let's just say you hunt a hundred acre piece of ground. Let's just to make it simple, it's kind of mixed habitat, some kind of agriculture, some kind of cover. You know that probably applies to a whole lot of hunters across the country, some kind of mix like that, one hundred acres. Is there any kind of rough number that we can throw out there and say like, hey, this is way too many? This is probably right? Or is it just so situationally dependent it's not even worth tossing numbers up. 00:34:11 Speaker 3: Yeah. So, as you know, I work with a lot of wildlife biologists, right, and they're always going to tell you they're always going to start their answer with well it depends. 00:34:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're getting really nervous as I pose this question. 00:34:23 Speaker 3: Yeah they are. No, Yeah, they sometimes they rarely let me out to actually talk to anybody into public because they're afraid I'll mess up. But no, I mean, so you know, there are It doesn't have to be a deer trail camera survey. There are other things you can do. You can do pellet counts, there are some vegetation surveys you can do. But in terms of hey, is there just sort of like a general number that you know is, for example, is fifteen deer per square mile? Is that the right number is thirty deer per square mile? It does depend. But when I think about like the area that you live in Mark, which I have been to, and I under understand kind of what you're looking looking at there, it actually is very similar to the area that did I live and hunt in. You know, fifteen deer per square miles probably pretty good because you've got that's not a huge gigantic number, and there's a lot of food around, there's a lot of edge habitat uh and so there's opportunity. But I would say if I were to go an hour or so north of where I live into the Alleghany National Forest, that's too many deer for there because you lose the agriculture and if you don't have good eggcorn years or other good mass years, it can be really challenging for deer. So it does depend. But if you're talking about sort of that very traditional mix of hardwoods with with some agriculture, but not not the not the hard Midwest where you're you know, you're thinking Iowa and Kansas and gigantic agfields. You know, I've always in my mind kind of thought of that as just a general rule of thumb. You know, fifteen's pretty good. You might be able to hold a few more. But I'd rather, I'd rather have a few less, but bigger, healthier deer than to try to get to that already number or even beyond that, because that's when you start running into issues. 00:36:03 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I I don't know how to get the real number, but I bet around here it's got to be more like fifty to one hundred deer per square mile where I'm at. I mean, it's not it's not out of the question to see twenty to thirty five to twenty to forty deer in an evening sit, you know, on those like banger nights where the conditions are right and the corners came down or something. I mean, I've had a lot of nights like that over the years, and it's hard to make a dent in that. You know, when you've got a little bit bit of ground here and there, you can hunt and I feel like, you know, I feel like I'm doing I'm trying to be a part of the solution. But it almost seems like to make any kind of real dent, it's like you need to take ten, fifteen to twenty dos something like that, and that's a lot for any one single person to do. How do you how do you think about like the numbers? Nick Like in a situation like I'm in, like I've got, you know, a couple of permission pieces in a square mile area, and I'm one guy, and I am inviting friends and new hunters and stuff to come out and do that kind of stuff. But how do you feel, like how many doughs I should be taking? Is it just like as many as you possibly can, or is there a way to be a little more scientific about it? 00:37:25 Speaker 3: Yep. So obviously the first thing is going to be how many tags does your state allow you? I mean, that's that's another challenge I hear from people, Well I'm only allowed to have one antler list tag. Well, that's probably a bigger issue to be taken up with your state management agency. But I think in most cases nowadays it's pretty generous, especially in you know, the Northeast and even up in the areas you live Upper Midwest. I know, when I buy my license in Delaware, I get four antler list tags right off the bat with that license, so I think that's good. My general advice would be get as many tags as you can get, and then from there you're going to sort of play it by what you see, right so I can get I think up to six tags now where I live. This year, I didn't buy six. I think I bought four, and so I'm still holding onto a couple of those, and I'm going to let what I've seen this year help dictate that. Not scientific, but as I'm familiar enough with my area that I'm pretty comfortable with that, and I know now based on what I've seen, I've already filled that one extra tag. I know. I want to go out in the winter season and fell at least one more antlerless tag and try to encourage other people in the area to do the same thing. I'm one thing too, I want to caution people because you'd brought up what you might see right now. It's also a little trickier in winter because if you happen to live near one of these big bag fields that was cut down, you might be recruiting deer into there from miles away and that's why when we do our trail camera surveys that are the scientific evaluation, those happen in August when you're dealing with your local herd that lives on you for most of the year, and not those unique situations where you might be drawing deer in from a from a large distance. So that's another reason, by the way, to fill your dough tags early if you're focused on local management, because you're you are taking a deer that is a resident or nearby resident of the place you're hunting. That all changes once you have gun seasons, moving deer around and deer get into sort of their winter habits or finding where that food is. And so you might be shooting a deer now that lived three miles away for most of the year. 00:39:33 Speaker 2: Right, Yes, So that that brings up a good and good kind of segue to actually doing the thing. So you just answered my next question partially, But are there any better or worse times to start targeting dough So you just you just made a case for targeting doughs early. Is there any other reason why it's a good idea to take a dough early versus late, and then vice versa. Is there any reason why a late season jial kill is better or worse. 00:40:03 Speaker 3: Generally speaking, anytime you have an opportunity is going to be a good time. Okay. Now, I'm not saying you've got your target buck coming in and he's following a dough. I'm not saying shoot the dough in that situation. Okay, let's be realistic about it. But earlier in the year is more likely that you are removing a deer from the property or nearby property, that you're hunting a deer that uses your place. Okay, So locally, you are helping your situation more locally, and also at a time when you're probably not that you're not always focused on a buck. But let's be honest, when we're going out there and we're still sweating and we're carrying a thermicell, likelihood of seeing the buck we're after might be a little bit tougher during that time. And so just it's just a mental approach, like you know what, I am setting aside the first couple of weeks of the season to focus on antler list deer. Don't get me wrong, if I see a buck that i'd like to shoot, I'm going to shoot it. But my focus is going to be to try to fill some of those dough tags. If you do that before the rut, you are able to help with some of those things that we talked about earlier. Those are, you know, a dough or two less than bucks are going to be able to chase nearby during that time. So it's very helpful that way. But in the winter too, I don't want people to get me wrong. Even if you do shoot that dough that maybe lives three miles away, you're still helping the situation. You're still helping somebody, and you're also either putting meat in your own freezer or to a friend or to someone who really needs it. And you know, we still have an awful lot of hungry people in this country, and people don't understand how far those donations go. And I feel really good about it every time I donate a deer through those programs. So I love to hunt. I can't eat all the deer, but there are other people that can help with that. So you're always helping the situation anytime you take a dough out. 00:41:54 Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, I've heard some people say you shouldn't shoot a dough in the late season because you're killing your future bucks because those are doughs that have already been bred, and now you're just wiping out your future deer. What do you say to that person, Yeah. 00:42:08 Speaker 3: I mean, if you just want to look at the math of it, well, certainly, if you take out a dough, but if you take her out before she gets pregnant or after, regardless, you're likely taking out two or three right, and so inevitably in that population you're going to have button bucks or bucks that are taken out. That's just the reality of the situation. You are not deer very resilient, okay, and so you should be focused less on numbers of bucks and more on quality and age class of bucks and having deer throughout those age classes. And so to have twenty five yearling bucks running around every year where you live doesn't really help your situation. It's too many deer to begin with. You're not getting that type of hunting opportunity that you may desire for mature deer or we talked about mature deer behavior, have that that's what we used to have where it was you know, people would shoot any buck, which is fine. I would never tell anybody to put the value of the tag is what you put on it. You do with what you want. But back in the day it was in your state, my state, any buck with an antler was a buck, and you shot it, and you probably only had one dough tag. Your state only allowed you maybe one dough tag, and so easy to see what happens with population issues. But I would say, if you're trying to do that math and saying, well, if I kill a dough, I'm killing that buck that I'm going to kill four years from now, that's a pretty tough, unrealistic math problem there. It's a tough way to live your life as a hunter. 00:43:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that the risk, like the possible downsides, are far outweighed by the upsides of doing all the other things we mentioned. Now you did, you did lay out one scenario that I have worried about, especially during that November timeframe or even early December, when there's that second rut possibility. I've always been kind of allergic to shooting a dough during that time period when a dough might be bringing a buck along with her. But I actually did it for the first time this year. I shot a dough during the rut this year. With apprehension, but I was like, I'm gonna do it because i'd actually, you know, as as listeners of the podcast know, I hit a buck I've been after all year in the shoulder at the end of October, and so when November rolled around, I was like, I just need to, like I need to get some confidence back. I need to have a great shot on a dough and I just wanted to like just feel good about something again. So I was like, I'm going I'm gonna take this dough. It was November, I don't know, I can't remember. Somewhere in that first week or ten days of November, somewhere in that ballpark, yep, and and took a shot, got her and immediately was like, worry though, oh man, that is there gonna be a buck that's gonna come through here and smell that dough and then go off, you know, follow her back into the woods that way, or what's going to happen? Or did I spook something else? I was thinking about all those things, but I said, forget, I just got to get a dough here. But what's your take on that, Nick? As far as shooting a dough during the rut, the risk of that in any kind of way impacting the rest of your hunt that day or anything. Is that all overblown and we're just you know, getting worked up about nothing. 00:45:25 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:45:26 Speaker 3: First, I got to tell you what I was listening to the show when Tony was using the analogy of going into a bar and getting stabbed in the shoulder. I literally laughed out loud when I heard that. That was that was top top rate. But yes, yeah, it was so. Now, I think that we often give give all of these deer in situations way too much thought and credit that we should. Deer are disturbed constantly out there, and they are unable to the problem is we process information as human beings, and so that's the that's the lens we see the world through. Deer do not process their world like that. I mean, you shoot, if two deers stand in there, and you shoot the one right beside the one that stand and it doesn't go through that deer's mind, well, that deer just got shot, right, That's not how a deer's mind works, right, And so don't be worried about if you shoot a dough what that's going to do to your chances of getting a buck. Realistically, if you do shoot a doe and that buck was in the area, and he does move off for that period of time. He doesn't move off forever because in his mind he's processed that he saw someone get shot in that area. He processes that, you know what, I've been disturbed by human Humans are bad, and I'm going to go somewhere where I'm safe. And then at some point he's going to return to that area or be available in some other area. And you know, I see, I just hear and see so many things about even with chore bucks, well, those are just they're just different deer. And so this is an interesting challenge I'd put out to people. Everyone's running trail cameras, right, pick out a couple bucks, just random ones, even yearlings, and then see how many times you actually see those deer during a hunting season. You might not see any of them in the daylight. And so just because some bucks have bigger antlers, we have said they're the wiser, smarter, and they're deer, They're still deer. They're still deer, and we give them, I think, way too much credit for how they process information and how things we do may impact them. And so yeah, again, if you get a nice shot opportunity to doe in November and you see that there's no buck around her, that's a great time to take her, take her, get her out of the woods, and you fill the tag and get back focused on bucks. 00:47:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So anytime it's a good time should doe. Another dilemma that I know a lot of folks face, and I've sometimes thought through too, is which dough to shoot or should I shoot this dough or not based on the situation. So I'll lay out a couple of scenarios. Number One, if there's an adult dough with young what's your take on shooting that adult dough with young Number two, if there's a group of does and you can see summer older, some aer younger, which is the best dough? Take? Do I shoot the big old one? Do I shoot the younger one? Doesn't matter? What do you think about those? 00:48:29 Speaker 3: Yeah? I'm primarily for focused in a perfect situation of going for the biggest, oldest one if I can. But at the same time, if an eighteen month old dough presents a good shot opportunity, I'm not going to wait on the other dough. If I want to fill a dough tag, because we all know how quickly a dough hunt can go bad if one of them smells you, and now you don't shoot any deer. And so you know, I don't think I've ever shot a dough fond that I knew was a dough fawn. Maybe one, except in a winter season where those dough fonts are darn near as big as adults. But my focus is if I can, I want the biggest, oldest dough. But I've got no qualms at all with shooting an eighteen month old dough. The first dough I shot this season was an eighteen month old. They are very good to eat. They're also of good size, and they're also typically alone, and so you don't have the battle of trying to beat a bunch of different eyeballs and that type of thing. So you know, I wouldn't waste a whole lot of time being focused on that. If you get a good shot opportunity, take the good shot opportunity. But I do have a tendency to focus on the bigger, older wins if I can do it. 00:49:39 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm right there with you. Okay, So we don't really get into this whole lot, but it is worth talking about specific tactics when you are actually going out on a dough only hunt, like you're out there either in an ant li list only season or you've got your buck tags failed and you're just trying to kill some doughs. Every year, I get to this time of year and I'm like, all right, now it's dough season. Like I'm you know, when I've got that buck tag filled, or when I get late, I usually just like revert to, Okay, I really got to get working on management if I haven't got enough down yet. And it always seems like early in the year I think to myself, Oh, it's so easy. I'll be able to get does whenever I want. And it seems like whenever you're trying to kill a buck, the doze or everywhere, right, But as soon as you're specifically trying to kill one, all of a sudden things don't quite work out that way. So does your approach two hunting? Does Does it change at all throughout the season or would you say that the general tactics to try to kill an analyst deer, you know, apply in September just as much as they apply in December. 00:50:44 Speaker 3: Yeah, they certainly change by the season. You know, early season is another reason to try to shoot them early is because you're getting in there before they've been bothered and disturbed a whole lot, you know, maybe when they enter your shooting area or your food plot early seas and they're not nearly as in tune as they will be the next time they come out there in the time after that. So there's that factor. And then in that winter season too, one of the things I found is unless you have one of those dynamic food sources that's drawing deer in from everywhere, those deer that you were seeing in August are kind of moved back into those same areas again, and so you're dealing, you know, sometimes with those deer that live on your property most of the time and know it best. So I'm still certainly focused on food in the winter season. That is very much the driver during that time of year. But I would say what happens is mark guys that are scouting, they're mostly scouting bucks, and so just think about going through trail cameras. How many people listening to this flip through their pictures and they just up and they see dough and it's like the leat deleite, deleaite, deleaite, and they put no stock into what they're looking at. I think you had Steve Bartilla on a while back and he was talking about this. He's always so entertaining, but he was talking about this to the point and I was nodding my head saying, you know, that's right. We don't really look at those pictures to know, hey, this dough group's been hitting, this has been on this trail like every day for the past week, and so when I'm deciding on my spots to go hunt that deer, I really should be looking at that data. And so, yeah, I think that's the biggest part of it, is be willing to scout and understand what your does are doing, and you're going to be a much better dough hunter because of that. You don't just throw that out the window and say, well, yeah, there's always does out there. I always see dose, But how many do you actually see, especially if you're bow hunting, how many do you see within range that you could have shot? That's a completely different question. 00:52:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very true. So it does really come back down to some of those staples of deer hunting. We're just you know, you can discount. I'm not worried about rubs down, I'm not worried about scrapes now, But tracks and droppings and trails and sign of feeding, all that kind of stuff, all of a sudden becomes really important. I guess. The nice thing. One of the reasons I love dough hunting so much is that you typically have a much more target rich environment or target like your pool of possible targets has all of a sudden gone up dramatically, and so you know, any sign is usually a good sign in that kind of case, right, So yeah, get a little more work with Yeah. 00:53:19 Speaker 3: Good old, good old fashioned woodsmanship. I can tell you ry hunting Delaware with my friend Ron Hawes there. We don't really do it with cameras at all. It's all based on reading the leaf litter, fresh trails, fresh tracks. We can see clearly areas that have had a lot of activity, and we get down window those trails and set up I mean trail, I just say trails, and something popped into my mind, that's something else heavy trails for dose. They're the ones making those trails. It's not your mature box, right, and so trails are very good sign to get yourself on dose, you know, get the wind in your face, get within range of that trail, and you're going to likely have an opportunity. 00:53:58 Speaker 2: Okay, as we're less right now, as we're talking, Let's say there's someone listening right now, it's December, and they hear all this and they say, all right, I gotta do my part. I want to take another dough. Can you just name for me a handful of different ideas. I know we's talked about scouting for sign or scouting for locations, but if you just had to start throwing some food sources out there, or some types of habitat to look for at this time of year to have some late season success on some doughs, what kind of stuff might you we be thinking about? 00:54:30 Speaker 3: Yep. The obvious ones are, if you happen to live in an agricultural area and there's some you know that there's still some waste grain available, that type of thing. You're seeing a lot of deer there. I'm sure right now that's the easy one. But let's say you don't have that. So within the within the woods, a more wooded setting, where is that edge habitat or where is there some early successional. And when I say that, not everyone might understand what I'm saying there. So younger age classes of vegetation growing up among some of the older rage classes. So your shrubs, young trees, a deer are really moving heavily toward brows. And so you may be walking by a couple a couple down trees that you never looked at. We'll stop for a second. Look at those, look at look at the ends or the deer nipping the buds off of you know, young shrubs or you know, or they are they working those brows areas. Those are just as good as food plots, you know. Frankly, another tactic. You want to see a bunch of deer, if you happen to own the land, get out with your chainsaw and knock down a couple of trees and then set up on those, because that's instant food plot. I mean I have seen deer, yeah, I mean it's almost like they can hear the chainsaw and it's like a dinner bell where you know, you cut a tree down. In less than a few hours, they're in there and they're feeding on those on those fresh ends. So that's a great opportunity. Any leftover eggcorns, if you can find them, can be a gold mine. Typically at this time of year, you're you're looking at your red oaks that maybe have been not eating up early in the year when the whites were preferred. So if you can find some ake corns, a late dropping soft mast, some certain some species of crab apple trees don't drop their apples until well into the winter. I mean those, if you can find those are a gold mine. If you've got some snow on the ground, that the deer going to lead you to where they are, So really it does get back to you know, there's trail camera data, but then there's also boot leather data where you can get out and find these areas. But you're going to find the deer near the food and the cover, certainly this time of year. 00:56:30 Speaker 2: So one of the things that a lot of folks talk about when we're targeting a mature buck in the late season is not always, but usually folks prefer evening hunts in the late season, and usually the same case in the early season. Two right, and there's a lot of talk about moorings, you know, being harder to pull off, at least without spooking deer without deer figuring it out, just because accessing these places while deer on their feet can be harder. So there are scenarios where you can do it, for sure, but on average more difficult when we're just targeting dos, though, would you say that's still the case or do you think, yeah, it's worth doing those morning hunts now in the late season or early season when you're targeting antly lists because there's again, like we said, there's more of them around, less risk. They might be a little bit more tolerant of you know, your impact anything like that. 00:57:23 Speaker 3: Yeah, I go back and forth. I think every situation is different. So my particular property, I don't have any agriculture within a few miles of my place, and so it's what I plant these and all of my plots are kind of like interior plots. There's not really a great way for me to get in on mornings to intercept those deer coming from feed to bed. Okay, if I was in the Midwest, I used to live in hunt in Ohio, I would hunt mornings there more often because there were more obvious opportunities to get between food and bed, and there were ways I could get in and do that, but for the most part, my experience has been that deer are kind of moving back to bed earlier during these winter months and are coming out of their beds earlier also, so evenings have always been better for me, and so I spend most of my time there. But in my particular environment that I have, I hunt very few mornings, except for, you know, when the rut is really kicking off, just because the situation doesn't dictate that that's a good spot Delaware, I'm going to hunt a lot of mornings because we can get a half mile off the main feeding areas and intercept those deer going back to their beds. So it really is sort of site specific. 00:58:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, So something I've kind of stumbled on in recent years when it comes to the end of the year, when I'm down to the last week of hunting season or something like that, we've got a late antler list firearms season, so you can gun hunt for does right to the end of the year. One of the things I've started doing on these properties I've got permission on that have a lot of ads. You know, I can't get in there before daylight without spooking all sorts of deer off these ag fields in the morning, right, because there's deer out there they're feeding just before daylight. But what I have found is that there's usually a few deer that linger on those fields after daylight. And so what I've started doing is actually waiting till daylight and then kind of spot and stalking my way through these fields, trying to find that dough family group or a few doughs that are lingering, and actually sneak into gun range, you know, twenty minutes after daylight and get a shot at a deer like that. That's been pretty effective for me recently, being able to like get an extra hunt in those morning hours. And it's kind of nice. I wake up late, I slip in there, I sneak in, and if there's dos out there, great, I get a shop. If not, I can go back to the car, go home and go to work, or take the kids to school or whatever. It's been a nice little additional way to get some hunts, and that have been pretty effective without a you know, without impacting the property to my and without taking a lot of time either. 01:00:03 Speaker 3: Yeah. I love that strategy with a rifle in particular. I mean, you have a firearm, you don't have to get within thirty yards of that deer, and so you have the advantage of being able to see. You don't need a flashlight. And if you spot a deer, let's say you spotted deer a couple hundred yards off, you're going to be a lot more effective at getting close enough when you can see where you're going and you can read that deer's behavior, you can see when they're looking at you when they're not. And so no, I absolutely love that strategy. I think generally we all probably don't have to be walking into our hunting spots in the middle of the dark. We could probably all walk in right about daybreak and be maybe even better off. So that certainly applies in this situation in the winter. 01:00:44 Speaker 2: Yeah. So all this, though, comes down to a little bit back to the impact we make on on deer herd, right, the pressure effect. And I mean, you know me, at least, I'm pretty like obsessive about that stuff, and I worry a lot about the pressure I'm putting on the deer herd and all those kinds of things. When it comes to does though, do you think that they are more tolerant of our impact? Like sometimes I think they are, And then other times I see like that old nanny Doe who seems to be like on edge more than a buck half the time. Do you think we can get away with more when we're just targeting those doughs or not? 01:01:20 Speaker 3: So I think you can get away with more in terms of that dough is still going to want to move even though she knows that there's been pressure. But you've got a different kind of deer moving at this point. Okay, you've got a dough that's willing to move, but she has not taken many steps without wind checking, you know, looking at all the likely spots where she's probably seen you before, checking the ground in case somebody's walked through there. That dough that you're trying to shoot right now is not the same animal that you were trying to shoot back in September October, and so it's hard to get close to them. I mean, there's a one particular dough that I've been after, and the only reason I know it's the same deer is because she's got she's she's piebald, and it's not mad. It's it's sort of subtle, but she's got a lot of additional white on her and ever since the day I said that, you know what, this year, I would like to shoot that deer because she's older, she's she's been there since I bought the place. It has been impossible to get anywhere near that deer because she's old, she's smart, and she's not the same deer that she was at the beginning of the season when I didn't want to shoot her. 01:02:26 Speaker 2: So, man, we need to do a podcast all about target does. How to get one target dough for the year. Yeah, it's hard something. 01:02:35 Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen that deer again. Going back to the buck example, we try to say mature bucks or they're just so smart and you can't see them. Well, that dough I have only seen on the hoof twice this entire season. Yeah, you know deer deer. 01:02:49 Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, they are. I think one of the reasons why it feels like maybe you can get away with a little bit more with does. Maybe not that you can get away with any individual dough, but it's just that in most cases there just are more of them. So there might be like that one mature buck, and if you spook that or educate that one mature buck, well then that's going to significantly change things. But you might have ten DOS you're working with. Where I am, you might have forty DOS that you're working with, So you can afford to be more aggressive sometimes knowing that, yeah, I'm going to educate five of them, but they'll be thirty five more or five more or whatever, you know, so it can be worth getting a little bit more aggressive, especially when you're getting towards the end of the season and you're running out of opportunities, you know, get after him, because if you don't, it's definitely a zero. So that's that's something to think about. What about you know, have you have you done any aggressive wonky things with dose? Have you ever decoyed for dose? Do you ever call for does anything like that? 01:03:49 Speaker 3: I've decoyed Actually the first, uh, the first deer I shot this year responded to a decoy. Now the decoy wasn't for her, it was it was for a buck I was after, but she responded to it. I had several dose respond to it, but I would consider favorably. But I can't say that I have ever specifically gone out and tried to decoy I mean, dough or just they're so less tolerant in general, they they and then they get into stomping and snorting, and then they can they can blow up your whole hunt. But and so because of that with Dose, I just try to be where I think they're going to be and keep it simple that way. I think a lot, especially this time of year. I think an awful lot about my cover in the tree and being able to get a shot off where the vegetation's gone, and so it's more or less trying to get as close as I can without them seeing me. At the same time. It sounds simple, but I try to keep it pretty simple this time of year. 01:04:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, I am the one thing I've thought about recently if I didn't have the firearms season that we do have in Michigan for does, if I was just bow hunting, I bet you a dough feeding decoy could be pretty aren't effective for just like getting other deer to feel comfortable at least to getting close and check it out, and then you know you better take a shot at them before they do get wonky and spooky about it. But something that has worked well for me in BO season has been doing a fun and distress call oh interesting to get does to close the distance I've had a number of deer that I've a number of doughs I've called into range that way, and I think you could do it. I'm sure you could do it during firearms season. You just wouldn't need them to close as much distance. But the one risk in bo season is that you bring in a deer that's very on edge. It's like I can get does to run in to me like they will run to you, But that dough is like on pins and needles. And so a few years ago I did this and I had a dough in range, but she jumped the string big time. But I think you know, if you've got a dough out there at one hundred and fifty yards or something, and you've got a three fifty or shotgun or something, and you're thinking, man, sure would like it if she was within one hundred. I wish she was closer. Man, that's a pretty good tactic. You can get her to close the distance to seventy or sixty and she's not going to jump a bullet. That might be a thing to consider if you want to get a closer shot. And you know, it's not hard to make that kind of sound and to get a dough curious enough to come and check it out. 01:06:22 Speaker 3: Yeah. Calling in the winter has worked well for me for bucks anyway, especially grunk calls, which you know, for most of the year, I never have much success with them at all, But I've had over the years a lot of success on bucks in the winter, And so, you know, I just think at that time, deer kind of like they're hurting up a little bit more. They're kind of trying to find each other, and they are going to be curious maybe and that dough distress. Maybe that doe had lost her fond during the gun season, somebody shot it and she hears that wants to respond to it. I'm thinking back to an old VHS, like back in the eighties. You might not even have been born yet, but it's like an old Roger Raglan video where they were doing this dough in distress and these doughs were like running in and it was blowing my mind. You know. Of course, I've never really done it since then, but I can certainly understand where it would. 01:07:10 Speaker 2: Work for you. Yeah, I mean I've seen something similar, so it's something to think about. So kind of along those lines, are there any other ideas tactics, best practices that we should be thinking about when we're going out there, either for the rest of this season trying to fill a few more dough tags, or next year when we get started early, anything else to help us be more effective managing that dough population. 01:07:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I really think mark, as much as people were always looking for sort of that sexy new tactic or the silver bullet, there is never any substitute for effort, And so it's scouting. It's taking the time to look through all of your camera photos and ask yourself what they're telling you it's going on, and reading what's going on on the ground, being aware of your surroundings and hunting deer really kind of the old fashioned way, minus the technology that will always get you I think, closer to deer than just you know, well I'm just trying to kill a dough. Well maybe you should. You should track during a year how many you might have seen six or eight deer in a night. How many of those could you actually have shot with a bow. In particular, that number is not as big as you probably think it is. 01:08:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, very true. It's it is no small feet to kill any deer with a bow. And to kill any deer with any kind of weapons still an accomplishment. And I'm always reminded that this time of the year when I'm when I'm trying to get a crack at an antly list, and they make me feel like a fool time and time again. So would you say, Nick, that the motto that we came out of that summer this summer, which was one more dough, is that still the model we should carry with us this next two three, four weeks as we wrap up the season. Is that a good idea for most folks? Now exceptions, There are exceptions, So look at your region, look at your area. But for those of us in high deer density areas, is that something that would be worth encouraging everyone to try to get just one more dough at least this year? 01:09:10 Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely, Because we we try not to look so much at year to year data as much as trends, and so I don't like to look at that trend going back to twenty fifteen where now all of a sudden, we're shooting more bucks than we are. Does Okay, let's go back and look at those trends where we talked more about shooting dos and the importance of it and how hunters responded to that, and how we did eventually get to the point where we shot more does than bucks in that harvest, you know, get let's get back to that, and then let's maintain it. Like even on our end, we can't get lazy and say and not talk about the importance of shooting does as much as we should, we probably shouldn't. If we get to the point where we have a meeting and say, hey, we really need to talk about shooting does again, then we've probably missed opportunities along the way to talk about it. And it's not anything you do intentional, but it's not always the sexy headline, right, like, oh, there's that headline about shooting more dos again. Yeah, But if you put it out there and people see it, it does make an impact. And I think we all need to be committed to talking about that. 01:10:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think along those lines, And I'm guilty of this as much as anyone. It's so easy to get really excited about and to celebrate, you know, getting a crack at a buck. Right, I've posted a photo of every buck I've shot this year. I've not posted a photo every dough I've shot, I've not maybe celebrated it externally as much, and I should do better that. So I'm going to try to do a better job of fully celebrating every one of these deer I certainly appreciate them all, but maybe I'm not talking about as much, and that might be a missed opportunity to showcase, you know, how much we appreciate these critters and that food and the meals and the experience and all that. So I'm going to make a little personal goal to share every every one of the doughs that I will hopefully be putting a tag on here before the end of the season and celebrating those fully. And i'd encourage everybody else listening to you know, if you're able to get out there and get another dough or a few more, does celebrate them, share it. Tag me in your dough photo on Instagram. I'd love to see it. I'd love to give you a virtual high five, and hopefully we can all where appropriate, make make a positive difference with these these deer herds and get some great food along the way. So, Nick, anything else you want to add. 01:11:32 Speaker 3: Before we wrap it up, No, and I appreciate you saying that, I mean, you're you're someone that has a lot of influence, and so people watch what you're doing, and you know, I think that certainly will go a long way. And yeah, and I take pictures of every every analytust deer I shoot. I post the pictures of all of them. I did a little ramt on one of them from this year in the gun season, saying I try to fill my dough tags and yeah, I don't have the influence you do, but I know even if ten people see that and a couple more people shoot a dough because of it, then it was worth it. So yeah, I think that's wonderful advice and looking forward to seeing those dough pics. 01:12:06 Speaker 2: One last question for a nick yep. Where can folks go to learn more about the National Deer Association. Where can they become members, get involved all that good stuff. 01:12:15 Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you appreciate that. So dear association dot com. Just google Deer Association. I don't think people were using URL so much anymore. And we have a big orange join button right at the top, and we've got multiple levels. I always point people to our so we have three levels. We have our life membership, which typically are with us for a long time to get to that level. But we have a premium membership, which is where I want to point people to because right now we're still running us like thirty five bucks, and you get discounts at a whole bunch of really great partners of ours on gear. You're going to burn that thirty five bucks up really quick. But then we also have a no cost level where all we need from you is your address, your email at and you can you can try us out for free for a while and learn more about what we're doing and maybe you'll you'll jump on that premium level. So thank you for that opportunity. Mark appreciate it. 01:13:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, hey, thank you for what you guys do. For a long time now. I've followed the work of the QTMA and now the NDA. I follow it closely. I've appreciated it, I've benefited from I've learned so much from the things you put out there, and I'm thankful for the work you're doing. So thank you, Nick, thanks to everyone on the crew. And uh yeah, I should become a life member. I'm not a life member. I keep on re upping individually every year, and I guess I just need to bite the bullet and get on there so I don't need to remind myself every year to resubmit, so I'll be worth of Thedear Association dot Com. 01:13:45 Speaker 3: We'll give it. You get a rifle now. Life members are getting a Bold Action rifle and either six point five creed More or three oh eight. So there's never better than when I became a life member. I got a cheap set of luggage, so I'd much rather had the rifle. 01:13:59 Speaker 2: All right. Timing's good. Yeah, Well, thank you Nick, appreciate it, Thank you Mark, all right, and that's gonna do it for us today. Thanks for joining me. Appreciate you tuning in and being a part of this community. I actually just wrapped up two nights on the Meat Eater Live podcast tour, got to meet a bunch of you, got to hear your stories, and it just reminded me of why I do this. It's so much fun to get to see the impact we're making, to hear from you, to hear how you know your hunts are going and they're improving, and you're having great experiences out there in the field, and it just really brought a big, big smile to my face, and I'm just excited to keep it going more and more episodes to come. There's more season yet for many of us, so get out there, enjoy these final weeks or months of the season, have fun, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.