00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wire to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host Mark Kenyon. In this episode number forty three, Tay in the show, we're joined by renowned wildlife biologist and white tail manager Dr Grant Woods to discuss how we can handle white tail management adversity. All right, welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast. And today we've got a really exceptional show in store for you guys, because we're being joined by Dr Grant Woods, the host of Growing Dear TV and really one of the foremost experts on deer and deer management. And I wanted to bring Grant onto the show to help us continue a conversation We started a few episodes back when we had Kip Adams on the podcast to discuss the current state of white tails, and in that episode, Kip shared a number of challenges that deer and deer hunters are facing across the country and their challenges that I imagine many of you are dealing with right now too. So that said, now that we've identified some of these challenges, I wanted to chat with grant about how we can deal with these issues. So in a few minutes, we're going to bring Dr Woods on the line. And I'm really excited about that because I know we're all going to learn a lot today. But Dan, are you as excited as I am about this conversation. Well, he's a doctor, right, I mean not like a doctor that I mean, it's not like fixed my cold kind of doctor. But he's a doctor. Like he's a dear doctor, right, He's a biologist that has a doctorate. Right, Yes, that is correct, and that's pretty cool because doctor it's seemed to be the biggest losers on the planet. But unless you're actually a doctor. But because I met this one guy at one time and he was a doctorate of English, and I just didn't get along with him that well. He always was like correcting me, and I'm not you know, I'm not very good with words or writing or talking for the most part, so he was he was just correcting me the whole time. But this guy, he's he's a he's a doctor of deer, and I really like Deer. So I think we're gonna have a pretty good conversation with him today. Yeah, yeah, we definitely are. UM. I don't know how familiar you are with Growing Dear TV or what Grant's done, but he is just absolute wealth of information about white tales and managing for white tales, and habitat improvements and and really everything related to deer. UM. I actually got to participate. I actually got to go down to Missouri, I think three or four years ago UM for the cut Amaze Dear Steward course, and as part of that we got to UM actually tour Grant Woods property down there, which was really really cool. He's got just unbelievable property, and we gets to see all the different things he's been putting in place and why he's been doing things and how he's been doing things. And Uh, I think in short, I just took if anything that took away from that, it was that there is so much to be done when it comes to when it comes to deer and managing deer and and to and there's so much to learn. So I'm excited to spend a little extra time here with Grant learning. He's a great teacher, he's a great speaker. UM. You know, for anyone that's watched an episode of Growing Dear TV, UM which is Grant's web show. If you've seen that, you know that he's just a terrific guy to listen to. And um I'm thrilled that he's going to join us here on the Wire Dump podcast to to kind of share his two cents on a number of these issues. Yeah, I'm I just love learning about the science, you know, because because here we are where you know, we may be giving tips and tricks to our listeners, or you may read an article about what you should do, you know, to hold bigger deer, but but then finding out the science behind it and the reasoning for those tips for tricks or you know, food plots or whatnot you can is just it blows my mind. And that's the stuff I love to learn about. Yeah, yeah, you and me both. I. Um I had a phone called Grant a couple of months ago, a month or two ago, um I was interviewing him for for a story and had some questions to him for him regarding kind of everything going on right now in the white tailed world, and he just had a tremendous amount of perspective and insight into so many different issues that we talked about, you know, two weeks ago with Kip when he started talking through some of the kind of state of white tails across the country and some of the numbers that we're seeing and some of the challenges, and Grant had some really really interesting insights, And as I was talking to him during that conversation, I just thought, you know, we have to get him here on two on the show to talk about some of those things. So I think, you know, I don't think there's anymore that you need to say. I think we just need to get Grant on the line. We need to, you know, get some questions in front of them, and we need to just sit down and listen and take notes and hear what Grant has to say. Because I think you and me and hopefully a lot of other people listening, I think there's a lot that we can learn from Dr Grant Woods. So what do you say we get Grant on the line? Sounds good? All right? Here with us on the line? Is Dr Grant Woods? Welcome to show? Grant, Hey sparked, Hey, we are really excited to have you on. Dan and I were just talking a couple of minutes ago about the fact that we just feel like, you know, for this show this week, given what we've been talking about over the past couple of weeks. You are really just the perfect guy to give us a perspective on how to handle kind of some of these new challenges that deer and deer hunters are facing, uh, you know, in the current day and time. But before we get into this kind of really big and exciting topic, for those that maybe aren't familiar with you, Grant, can you share with us a little bit of back on as to you know, what you do today and what experiences you bring to the table. Yeah. Great, Well, you know, just I'm getting to be an old man on fifty three and I schooled here in Missouri and then University of Georgia and finished with the Clemson And those were kind of the heydays. Deer populations were going growing throughout the White Kills Range and more and more expanded hunting opportunities, and guys were just starting to buy land for for recreation or for deer hunting, and of course, you know that's a long ways from where we are now rest of normal stuff. And and through that time, dear populations kept increasing until you know, decade or a little bit longer ago, and and then it started decreasing in some areas, and hadat loss is certainly came to play and a lot of pettters come in along that way. I started trying to find ways to share information rather than one on one. I've been a private consultant for twenty five years, we've been incorporated twenty five years, and we started just using the internet website Growing your Dot TV. We simply film what we're doing every week fifty two weeks out of year. Film one week and have a show up next week and it's onneting and hunting season or the sty fire or trapping or whatever we're doing. We just share that with the public. There's about nine minutes long, and it's a good project for us. Yeah, I've I personally have really enjoyed what you're doing over there with Growing Dear TV. And obviously over the past you know, three or four years or however long it's been going, it's just grown tremendously and everyone I've ever talked to about it has has really found to be a helpful resource. So I think you're you're definitely taking that knowledge that you were sharing, like you mentioned, you know, one on one or with your with your clients and You've been able to just bring that to it's such a such a wider audience is pretty incredible. UM. So you know that being the case, and if if we're talking about how do we, you know, bring some of your knowledge and your experiences to this wider audience. That's what I'm hoping to do here today to UM. You know, as I mentioned, we talked with Kip a few weeks ago about the state of white tails and he mentioned a number of challenges and he also gave us kind of a diagnosis of his own of of what he thinks the current state of white tails is. UM. But that was his own perspective. So I'm curious to kick things off Koreant. You know, could you could you share with us your own personal diagnosis of what you think the overall white tail situation is across the country. I know that's it's hard to do as there's things that are very localized, but at a high level, can you give us your two cents on on what the situation is today across the white tail world. Are we in a good shape, bad shape? Or you know, what are your thoughts at a high level on that issue. I think we're on the tail end of being in great shape. So anytime something's taken away from any of us, we don't really like it. We've had just large, healthy deer populations for again, about a decade or so, just wide open hunting opportunities. You know, some states just guys still more deering in any of us need legally, and and those are being reduced to predators and through habitat loss and through over harvest in some areas, and so state agencies have or are talking about taking away hunting off tunities, and no one likes that, myself included, and so in some areas. But we're so great, and what are some honey hooles out there were? Hunting is better than never And by some measures, you know, we're harvesting more older bucks right now as a percentage than we ever have. Our our herds seem to have a more balanced adult sex ray show and rattling and grunt calls and huntings, grapes works and more and more areas. But on the other hand, some places there's actually more food than deer. Populations are down some states drastically down, harvest down thirty in those cases, you know, we haven't lost fifty cent of the deer habitat in the last three or four years, So definitely some missues out there. The great thing is we do have a lot of knowledge, and I think all the issues we're facing, almost all of them can be fixed and pretty short order if hunners and agencies are willing to take those steps. That's I like to hear about optimism, UM, you know, in regards to you know, how those issues can be fixed. UM. And I want to take some time here to dive into some of those potential solutions. UM. But I guess I'm I guess at a high level, grant, can you address a couple of those things? What do you see as the as the largest challenges at a high level? Um? And then what do you think some of the things that we or the agencies and hunters and other organizations can do to address those? Okay, at a really high level, I think agencies have to give more control of deer management to landowners or dear co ops or you know whatever. Each state can have a different way of doing that. But to the end users how I like to phrase it, and whatever form that end user or the hunter on the ground is. So hunters tend to see trends of deer hurts declining, uh, the severity of disese outbreaks tend to pick those up quicker than agencies. Agencies are usually working on one to three years past harvest data, and you know, in a big day, they're a really well funded state may have ten or twelve people working on deer. We're in that state, there may be half a million deer hunters, So there's a lot of eyes out there and literally thousands of joke candas and all kinds of stuff going. So I think when agencies stay in a model, you know, we're gonna write a tenure deer manager plan for state X, y Z, and then they're committed to that plan. In the middle of that plan, there's an h D HIM radjet d's outbreak or child populations just blow up faster than anyone predicted, and the agency doesn't want to change their model, and hunters are screaming and crying, gosh, I'm not seeing near the deer I used to see, or or whatever case may be. There's got to be a way for the agencies to be more interactive, and I think that way is to allow landowners that collect data, harvest data, observation data, and are showing their good stewards and the resource to give them the freedom to make changes or choices along the way. So there's two ways to do that. Sixteen states currently have a d MAP program. That's dear Management, the systems program same some states called a different name, but basically it allows landowners or joining landowners to ride a management plan as long as they collect data and that you know the plans within pretty reasonable bounds. The state says, okay, how many DEAR tags you need, So you're setting basically the harvest quota property by property, and that is the epitome or the top of deer management. That's when you have concerned landowners and hunters in an area doing what's best for a resource. And you go all the way down to the other Internet spectrum and you have a state that says we're going to do X y Z statewide and even anybody states like Delaware just three counties in the state of Delaware. There's big differences from one side of the state to the other, and one rule just does not apply to the whole state. So agencies at the thirty out on foot level have to become more flexible and work hand in hand with the guides and gals on the ground to avoid this, this kind of decreasing dear heard numbers and even quality in some areas from fighting further down the slope. Okay, that makes that makes a lot of sense. Now you you talked there about, you know, the responsibility on the side of the of the agency to to enable the private landowner. Um, something that you and I had talked about maybe a month or two ago. UM kind of related to the subject as you talked about the fact that more you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you've said something on the lines of the fact that today, more than ever, you know, the responsibility has to shift to the landowner or if the landowner wants to see the types of results that we have seen over the past ten years, more of that responsibility needs to be on the shoulders of the landowner or the individual hunter on public lander, whatever it is, to start taking um, some taking some responsible to themselves to improving the situation or taking an active hand in managing their area. Um. You know, do you believe that same additional responsibility now has to stand um, you know, with the hunters to given these changes? Absolutely, you know, and I think this is. It's really pretty simple, you know. And again, I'm fifty three. I was raised in Missouri. I currently live in Missouri. I was raised in the county that did not have a deer season even in my lifetime. I lived through the restoration. And he's talking of deer two Geyster's that we can even kill antlerless deer while there's a lot of deer two. Now there's you know, urban programs trying to harvest even more dear and crop damage. Uh So I kind of live through that whole spectrum. But when we started, everyone was so thrilled, myself and my family and TWU did just to see a deer that one statewide regulation one bird, one buck, excuse me, per hunter was a great management plan. No one was even using the word but quality or age structure, or conception dates or sex ratios. It was dear hunting. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what most people want. But that's not what most people want. Survey after survey tells us that today and the rules were really simple, and the rule applied from one side of Missouri to the other side of Missouri, and everyone was pretty much happy. Public land, private land, not a lot of difference as people have started figured out well we could, you're getting bigger as they get older. Males produce more antlers, more inches of antler as they get older. Typically we can plant food plots and forceded areas and raised the nutrition level. We're deer or even grow bigger than average in a totally forested area. So now the landscape is this vast array of different maazement goals of jeffies, not county by county, but even a lot of areas property by property for simply not enough resources in any state agency to address all those landowners. So in my in my view, the best row of state can do is collect overall herd health indicators. Body weights are really easy to collect, age of harvest, check for diseases. And this is the biggie, and this is where some states don't live up to what I think they should to ride unbiased, really good information. So landowners and hunters can make decisions and kind of manage their property for their goals and objectives. And in some states seams maybe don't want to give up that control, or maybe don't know and don't want to admit they don't know, or simply just you know, we've been doing this for ten years. By golly, we're not changing now. But those times are over. They're absolutely done. And landowners by land small properties, large properties for the sole purpose of deer honey, any want ability or the flexibility and their regulations to manage that your heard for their goals and objectives. They're not buying land just to shoot the first year and a half a bucket. See, that's just an absolute fact. You know, no one goes out and buy the big o ranch or even a small ranch, says well, I sure, hope I should despite the day I just made my day. That just doesn't happen. And it's not bad. I think it's great because you know what, healthier deer have larger antlers. That's a fact. And so some people get mad about talking about antlers. Man, I love it because I know if there's older, mature deer, but you know, I'm talking realistic cantler. It's not something raised in the ten nak er ten just full of steroids, you know, realistic, wild, free ranging deer. Man. I love guys talking about antlers because antlers mean there were healthy fonds, there were healthy does, there's plenty of good habitat, plenty of escape cover, the stress level of that deer's down. You know, with all those components, a lot of non game species are benefiting also, so own birds with tiles, other species. But we're not going to go out and say today, hey, folks, we all need to manage for the flatwood Salamantham. You're just not gonna gain any traction. There's a small following out there, but not much. But when we say let's have better habitat for deer, a whole bunch of species benefit. Yeah. And um, something you said that I think ties in really well with with where I wanted to take things next. And that's the fact that, um, you know, we're taking a look at how to measure the health of the herd, and you mentioned antlers are great indicator of healthy deer um. And we also talked about, you know, moving the responsibility away from not just the agencies and everything, but we need to manage at the property level or the more region specific level. So for our listeners who now we're you know, we've we've talked all about some of the different challenges. We've talked about things that we hope will happen at a high level. But I really want to focus now on you know, what can what can we do on the ground to to address some of these issues. I mean, you know some of the things you mentioned were over harvest or disease, outbreak or predation. Um, I guess to start though, I'm curious, Grant, you know, how can someone assess the state or the health of their local white tail herd? And you know what do they need to look at to see? You know, is my white tailer struggling? Do I need to be worried about these things? Or am I? Okay? Okay? So for any assessment to have value, you must have some type of baseline to compare it to. And I default based on my professors, who at the time I thought were crazy, but in hindsight I respect them. I was finishing my PhD to ask me a question, what did the deerhood he heard look like pre European selver one thing? A little guys, no one was here, How do we know? You know, who could possibly know that? But you don't know, Argue. You go the library and you dig, an, you dig, and it turns out that archaeologists had had dug up recovered over tens or at least I could find records for over in thousand pelvic girdles from Indian middens or basically Indian trash heaps, and in the archaeologist studied these not for the deer he safe, but they were looking at Aboriginal butchering techniques they would find there were time to get there's a pattern of deer. Deer hunters at that time, Native Americans butcher dear the same way. They're looking for rock marks or cup marks on different major bones to sit there the same north southeast west and deer by their pelvic girdle. It's very different between a male and a female. You can very accurately determine the gender of a white skilled deer by the pelvic girdle. So you've got a helpic size of the ten thousand from Florida North Dakota. You can kind of see if they were killing more bucks, and does you know what they killed fifty fifty All these are guys with addle addles or bows or rocks or man drives or whatever. They didn't have thirty six in dortex, and they were killing the fifty fifty sex ration almost better than any state in America right now. And then you can also get kind of a pretty good feel about the age of deer, like you know, new or year old pretty accurately two to three, three four or five I say seven, So basically young, immature, you know, middle aged, mature, and senile. And we reconstructed or I reconstructed the deer herd before European settlement. Based on all these records out of museums around America, it turns out almost sixth cent of the deer they're harvesting are mature, are three years old and old. Almost no state in America does it. Now Bucks end ups and you're thinking about this. Okay, you're sitting in the TP his code. Mama wants to new maxins. You need some meat. You're not worried about if it's stores one, three four, just trying to get one about seven ft because that's the average shot distance literally, and so you're just going for deer. And they had no bias based on antlers or or anything else. And it turned out that there was a really older age structured deer in the harvest because there are plenty older deer out there, and a balanced sixth ratio. They shout at the first deer they could get hold of a trapped it or anyway they could acquire that meat in that leather and those tools. So we're gonna call that a healthy deer because that's what was here before there was any biased selection bias selection excuse me, and now and then the other really simple indicator. And I like, I'm a man, I'm a body, so I love really detailed data sending teeth actor Matson's lab and all that stuff is great for me, but really, simply, is there more deer than there's quality food and neat area you hunt? Not food but quality food. So you know, I live in hills, are mountains men, There's more acorns and deer to eat this year, but that's not quality food. Acorns are not quality food. So because there more quality food and deer, if there is, I need to back off my harvest and allow my deer population to expand a little bit. Or on my deer browsing, on opending on where you are wing down south sweet dumb ease or up door. Certain species that are really not that desirable are they just barely making it through? And this is the simplest qualified biologists and in a landowner tablettle training walking through his property, especially during the late winter that's a stress period, or late summer August can be a stress period. And seeing what forward species are being browsed on, and within a few minutes you can say, but we need to harvest some more doughs, or we need to back off our dough harvest a little bit. You notice I didn't say bucks, because they're non factors. They're not part of reproduction unit. As far as giving us more fonts, one buck con service a lot of dose. So it's the dough harvest we're always interested in. Everyone wants to talk bucks, but we gotta talk dough harvest. Now, that's how to quantify. That's a good indicator. Okay, you know my food plots are are nibbled down to the ground. I need to harvest more deer or plant more food or do something or gosh, I can't tell you've been using my food plucks. There's no complaints that crop damage in neighborhood or if I plant trees are not being browsed off, I can allow this dear her to expand a little bit. That's just them. Never fails, never let you down. It's when we start trying to say we have ten points seven deer for square mile or sixty seven point three deer for square mile, And we start arguing because the wild pre engineer are tough to count, we can get really accurate estimates that almost never a census on exact population count. So as I've matured in my career, how were less and less about how many deer or per square mile and more about how much quality food risk for square mile? And this is a very simple thing for people to evaluate and keep annual records. While I'm noticing a lot of brows on sweet gum, I gotta harvest some deer or man, I've seen a lot of native plants that I know dear like to eat and are surviving, the reproducing, the making seed. The deer not over browsing them. I believe get back off my dough harvest allowed her to be more deer in the area. Take that up. Whatnot? Camera surveys are relatively simple to do. There's plenty of troup cameras out there. Even if you're a small property owner working on two or three neighbors, and you can get a pretty accurate estimate of your sex ratio, the age structure of your bucks, and the deer for square minds, that data may or may not be necessary to manage to herd. But if you come to a challenge, well, you know, the state says or some animal white group says whatever. Now you have hard and fast data you can use lasting like say that doesn't lie the body weights averaged over time. So we know pretty much. You know, a yearling dough needs to weigh this and the hardwood force, and it's gonna weigh adapt plus twenty pounds in an agricultural area. And sure bucks are gonna wait this and a hardwood force and they're gonna wait x plus in an agricultural area. And if your body weights are trending up, it's probably to have some more to do out there. You're losing dear somehow, or to have a tast improving, or something's going on. If your body weights you're training down over a period of two or three years, I should need to figure out what's going on there. So so I don't I don't own property, and I'm in no way a scientist. I guess, how what are some specific things that a guy like myself, who the only way I can hunt is have permission on somebody else's property or public land. How how do how would I go about knowing that a particular crop is not as abundant, or a particular like the acorns didn't drop, or there's a certain foliage that wasn't getting um nibbled on because I, you know, over the years, I haven't really paid attention to it. Yeah, So again it's just pretty simple observational skills. So you're on public land, its managed for old rage trees, and there's a clothes canopy, and you happen to notice that ever maple limb that's on the ground after a windstorm, the bark is dripped off the next day and there's no leaves. There's too dear, they're wiped on that soon as it hits the ground. You're just really simple. If deer are hustling that hard to make a living, there's too many deer and it's not just that there's not enough food. Many of the parasites that really impact dear their life cycle is they're they're on the vegetation to a worm or whatever have you, and the deer eat it. And the closer there eating to the ground, the more those parasites they ingest. So there's a prime example, there's an avalancial worm or worm that's big enough you can see, and it happens to collect in the second chamber of a deer stomach. Deer have don't have four stomaches like people often say, they have one stomach with four chambers. And so we know and we cut into that second chamber to stomach. If there's five hundred or fewer of this particular type of stomach worm, then there's quality more food than there's deer. They're just like getting a very big load of the quality. You have a few of these ones and near hunter system still, and there's about five hundred to fifteen hundred, it's probably about the right amount of deer for the right amount of food. But if there's over fifteen hundred, there's no magic. It's not like fifteen no long. But you know, you've got eighteen hundred or those deer eating so close to the ground that they're ingesting the larvae of these particular parasites, and there's just too many deers they're eating too close to the ground. So there's very specific measures, but muscles, as you said, need the scientists or a landlord spree trained in doing that. The simpler and just as accurate as I've matured. Way is whatever the preferred food is near area, maybe it's wild strawberries, and maybe it's maple limb. Just you know where you are, it's poison ivy, And some areas believe or not, poison ivy is great deer brows. And if you're walking through the woods, and every poison I believe it's five ft high or higher on a tree and blows that the deer brows it off. You've got too many deer and and so everyone asks how many sere deer? Well in the clothes canopy, you know, old grow forest, it maybe ten deer for square mile in Iowa where there's soybeans everywhere, and maybe a hundred and fifty deer for square mile. It depends on the type of habitat where you are. So my land in Sell then Missouri's in the middle of a big old clothes cannot be forced and fescue pasture, no agg anywhere around. You never see. There's no such thing as a combine or anything like that in the county. I live in green drills going down the road, no silos, and none of that exists. But a mile land we have through the plots and we line them for lives and we do good work, and you know, and we do some prescribed fire and stuff. And I carry about a hundred deer per square mile and very healthy deer, very very healthy deer. Anywhere else who sell them Missouri, except for other type of landowners are kind of doing the same thing. Thirty deer for square mile would be too many. There's just not enough food for it. So again, you know, if and I'm not saying dood, but let's say Missouri Primary Conservation just makes a general rule for all the o's art mountains, well, you can't ont harvest doze and blah blah blah, gosh, I couldn't manage my dear or I have no legal way and kill enough there. And that's where site specific land management is so important. And and the sixteen states that have this DM program have proven this, and so many states have that DMA for over twenty years. This is nothing new. So kind of rounding that segment out. One of my biggest frustrations with deer management, especially from an agency point of view, it's failing to look across the border, and they always want to reinvent the will well We've got to study this for ten years and see what we need to do. No, you don't. There's a state that's already tried that and and and done that and figured out if it works or if it does the work and if you need to tweak it. Failing to learn from other states for other agencies is a huge, huge sin, I believe on some agencies. Park. So I'm feeling here, you know, from a from me and Dan on the ground or whoever's on the ground, I think at the big takeaway here that I'm taking from, We've had a lot of things here, But if I had to take one or two things away from this, it sounds like, basically from the standpoint from the responsibility of of the hunter, you know, we need to become more more observant of what's going on around us, because you know, to Dan's point, you know, to this point, he hasn't necessarily been paying attention to what's been browsed on or are these different things that might be indicators. But really, given some of these things happen and giving some of those challenges, really it would be you know, beneficial for all of us individual hunters, landowners or public landhunters or whoever it might be, to start taking that responsibility of you know, observing what's happening around and starting to pay attention to things like brows and whether that might be a good thing or a bad thing, and what that means for for how we should harvest, or you know, taking the next step to what you point out, Grant, being you know, try and trail camera survey. Um. You know, we need to start taking some of those things into our own hands versus just depending on our state to say, hey, kill this many dear, because to your point, Grant, you know, what they say at the state level or even county level just might not be relevant to our individual peace yep. So so let stow all the way back first conversation. You know, when we first restored deer and had deer seasons, we had just restored deer, so nowhere was overpopulated and the plants that natyve veg station or crops had not been over browsed by deers. So there's plenty of ice cream quality native plants everywhere they restored dere Right, We've had deer restored in most are is fifty plus years now a lot of those plants are gone dear populations got too high back in the eighties and nineties, they wipe them out. They are literally gone. And so hunters at first didn't have to be naturalists or observing plants or brows because there we're just dear, We're just your deer. Of course you's food there. That's not the case anymore. The game has changed. And just like we don't use rotary dial phones, if we just go out and set and say, boy's your hope for deer watched by? And everyone has that mentality, no doubt about it. Do you here in America are in big, big trouble? Yeah, So so moving on, I think from that, then, you know, we've talked about how to assess if there's you know, if your white tail herd is healthy or if it stands and where it needs to be. Uh, let's talk about some of the challenges. And then you know, if if we do take a look at this assessment on our property and I'm saying, okay, it looks like my population is not where it needs to be. Um, you know, there's a handful of different typical challenges that we see that might be you know, what's causing that. So I'm curious from your standpoint, Graham, maybe I'll give you a couple of these different options. I'd like to hear your perspective on if this happened in your situation, how do you handle it. So, let's say example number one. One of the typical things that we've seen across a lot of states over the past couple of years, especially back in two thousand twelve, was disease outbreak outbreak e h D. So let's say we are assessing our local herd. We see it's down, and we believe it's because of disease outbreak, maybe a bad hit the last summer. What if any thing can a land on or do on their own ground or with their own behavior and hunting tactics, what can they do to help that herd um get back to healthy level. Yeah, So at my property in two thousand and twelve, we lost about a third of the standing deer crofts with HD hemor radget disease, which is totally different than to c w D chronic wasting disease. A lot it's infusion about that still, and we do intensive camera surveys and and and so it's a year HD hit in my part of the world. We do our camera survey every August, and it didn't really hit to late August September, so that survey didn't pick it up, and we could have not evenly win in that season, said guys, we need to kill fifteen deer about deer for hunter acres or so does and we would have really heard our herd because we lost. In hindsight, looking back in the next year's camera survey, we lost about a third of our herd the HD hymmeor radjet CIEs one third bloom gone. And but because we're out hunting the property and were observant and we're watching for vultures and you know stuff all the time, we started to pick it up dead deer by creating some ponds. And I said, well, this isn't good. I don't know how Stincy this is seasons or he goes from September fifteenth to January, let's don harvest. They does. We kind of get in October so November and kind of see where this disease is going this year, and sure enough it was a really bad case and we just held off the dough harvest and then the next year had a really low level doll harvest and in two years we're right back up the hundred deer square mile. So some times landowners may be absent key landowners, they live a state away and they may not be able to be there watching this unfold. But someone their neighbors are, or something is. And this is where a solutionist is is deer management co ops or neighborhood co ops because someone's out there on the land, someone's walking their top fields or checking a trap line or doing something and they're picking up these indicators or signs said, well, this isn't right. I found three dead beer by the creek. That's just not normal. We need to we need to get down the Wasson Creek Saturday. Everybody needs to walk from all the creek Saturday and see what they find. And that localized level. Like in Missouri, at first, the agency was staying on not picking on missourige just have lived here. Yeah, you know, h D is not a big deal into this before in two thousand twelve was unequivalently the worst outbreak of HD on the record throughout most of the Missouri And you know they're talking at first, well we had maybe thousands or died or whatever. El shoot. I had individual appliance or farms that we're finding three hundred deer dead on one farm, and you know, so it was masked. It was tens of thousands of deer across the state literally, but the agency wasn't picking up on that like a landlord can who's out there checking his cows, checking his crops, just hyping with his family on recreational land, whatever it is. And so that responsiveness. You're finding a bunch of dead deer, you just know intuitively, we got to back off the doe harvest. We don't have the many reproductive units out there's were used to happen. And if you go ahead and have h D and push for your normal dough harvest, and what happened in Missouri at a bad outbreak of HD, and that's stay mire. We had an acorn crop failure, so deer out any opening trying to find brows and very susceptible to harvest too. If you hunt an acorn area, your deer herd will be driven by acorns, either in the timber hard to hunt or out in the open. If there's no acorns, that's the drive, that's the driving factor of harvest. Above and beyond everything else, that's the harvest factor. And if you're not in tune of that, which the agency really wanted, no way to predict it. So we had a big harvest on top of a big outbreak because all the deer that we're still alive and remaining rout the know the past, you are being field or something, trying to find something to eat, and so they probably overshot their harvest and it's gonna take an extra two a year or two longer for some land owners to recover that deer herd. So again, just being tuned in and you're hearing this over and over and everyone wants the more, you know, an answer, I need to push this button like computer, this camera survey. But being tuned in and knowing that local deer herd and maybe not you is so responsibility. But the neighborhood deer co op or what kept going on. I'm a huge fan of neighborhood deer co ops because you've got so many eyes and ears watching for advanced betator action or poaching or whatever's going on. And it's just to ops of the true word of co op, of volunteering, no money changing hand, just neighborhood co op is an extremely powerful tool, extremely powerful tool on disease outbreaks. Yeah, you've gotta be keyed into it. The disease c w D. It's a real sleeper. It doesn't expose itself like HD. You know everything's fine. A month later you're finding a dead deer and you know you've got a problem. C w D is slow acting. Deer can carry it for three or four years afore they show the symptoms or signs, and that's a whole different follow laps HSD. There's nothing you can do about it except reduced to harvest afterwards, like the deer population build backed up and buil again. I have I have a kind of a hypothetical question for you. Alright, so I have money to go ahead and buy a piece of property that has ever before been um managed for deer, it has it has population A let's say, So what I do is I go in, I plant food plots, I create more cover, and I now have a property that can hold, you know, healthily hold more dear mhm. How does how does population and disease kind of work hand in hand? I mean, is it good that I increased my property to to or better my property to hold more dear, But does that higher population then cause for a higher risk of disease? No, so again we'll go back. No, No, so again. It's it's all about quality to habitat and having the appropriate number dear for that quality habitat. So no problem. In agg country, you know, there's a lot of beans, but a pretty good mixtic cover. Holding a hundred and fifty literally two hundred deer for square a mile and having very healthy deer doing a lot of wooden CROs gets is having twins all that stuff. Because there's so much food in a forty acre being filled, it would literally take thousands upon thousands up hear me correctly, thousands of acres of a hardwood forest to make the same amount of food. High quality food is a forty acre bean filled. So more dear doesn't tell me anything more dear and low quality habitat. Body weights are dropping, and remember really simple thing to measures body weights dropping, body weights dropping blow, average antler size dropping blow, average number of funds dropping blow average, I said, tell tell signs that deer distressed, not healthy and more susceptible to parasites. We use disease a lot, but Guyster's infinitely more problems with parasites. Parasites are each factor, but they're microscopic. A lot of them tough to see, and totty much go unnoticed by hunters and even a lot of managers. So you've improved that property and the deer heard improves, you probably have the exact same health. And I said, dear, it improved in increases. So you go from just hypothetically ten deerer square mile the twenty deer square mile, but you doubled the quality of property. It's all the same. There's no more stress if you improve the property. But if you keep the deer hummers down at ten deer scroom, mind, you're gonna grow a lot bigger, dear, Or you improved it properly little, but you let the dear herd grow fourfold, even though you did some improvements to staining, a couple of food plots, maybe made upon but the deer it has now increased fourfold. Then your dear heard quality, even though you've made some improvements, is going to be a lot less. It's always relative to the herd quality and habitat quality. And again that's on localized level. No way to manage that from a one take a place in the state. So so follow up question for your Graham. This makes a lot of sense, you know, maintain that balance with your herd and quality habitat and food sources and everything. But recently, it's especially after the big two thousand twelve outbreak of hd UM, there's been a handful of companies supplement companies of an advertising and marketing their products as a way to um better prepared deer to handle or to survive and outbreak like that in the future. That can help deer kind of weather that storm. Is there any real scientific basis to that? I, I mean it sounds like you to what you said earlier, if you have quality habitat a deer, what will be possibly you know, less susceptible. UM. Is that true when it comes to supplementing a herd. You know, I'm not saying no unequivocally, but I am not aware of any scientific research. It's bad. For example, I just I don't knowing this product. I know the I just talked about. I don't knowing that emials products in particular what rand in. But let's say I know some of the rumors dear need more topper you're even more selenium. No, that's not gonna solve. There's no magic, one magic bullet that works. There are some areas that are low and copper, but it's peop We're talking to parts for billion and in some areas and maybe a little low and selenium. You're not gonna change that, dear, just by adding that one tracement on. Just like if you and I talk of montivitamin every day, but we still leave McDonald's and lay on the couch five hours a day. We're not gonna get a whole lot healthier just because we could the multivitament. And I do not believe that any super energized food or we've got these new trace minerals because we've got a memorable as here's here's a fact. And I don't want to state this very carefully, but remember it's always a ruthless dang of facts that murders a beautiful theory. And the ruthless facts are the periodic table is only so big. It doesn't get any bigger unless some scientists creates a really super molecule gas or some lab and that has nothing to do with dear, management and and and all those elements on the periodic table have been studied for quite some time now. I do not believe there's any brand new super combination and those elements that are gonna change dear management in any form or fashion. That's not to say feed can't work. And supplemental feed has certainly been proven in scientific stud used to raise body weights down appropriately, raise antler size, raise the number of thoughts. It's never been proven to do that more than just good habitat. Can you gotta remember the world record deer, most world record free ranging legitimate deer. We're not killed with the supplemental feeder or killed us and most being filled. Beans, by the way, are the ideal food for a white tilt deer, and so as beans have increased it across the landscape more. You're seeing bigger body rights and and we've shown that Mississippi State has shown that other agencies and are excuse the universities now working on that for summertime for it. It's just really hard to beat a soybean for a weather her reason. So no, I don't think there is a magic tood. If there was, I'd be buying a bunch of them pointed on my land. Yeah, you and me both, um, so I guess a question sort of moving on here, but I imagine I already know your answer to this, but I want to just double check. Uh. You know, we we've kind of confirmed here when it comes to handling, you know, how do we deal with the challenge of disease. It's really a matter of monitoring your situation, understanding what's happening, and then adjusting your harvest um to correspond with that. Um. Yeah, And we're saying I'm gonna be careful because I think when they're staying disease, what we're really saying here is h D, because that's in the news and media image disease, you know, vectored by a little midge or biding fly. CPD is a whole different story. And when we come to containing or hopefully, hopefully someday controlling CWD, I think it's really simple. It's unequivalently shown now that moving dear transporting deer's the fastest way for CDBDE to spread new deer herds or across the America. And so this hurts some people's feelings, h but we're talking about the number one national wildlife resource. More kids in the white tailed deered and balled eagles. This has been showing a study after study. White kill deer is the symbol of wildlife in America period, and it's hard for me to stomach that we allow a few to prodress the farmers. If you will to buy and sell beer and self seemen at the risk and the very over tangible risk of destroying the most valuable natural resource, to white killed deer we have on this continent, it's hard for me to stomach that. So if I was deers are, and I don't want to be deers are. If there's such a thing as that deers are, I don't want that job on the field biologist. That seems pretty simple to me. I believe I'm a strong believer in private property rights, and I really believe this. I don't have my property fence. But if you want to fence your property and there's adequate habitat, you know it's not a teenagers human pender. You know there's there's escape cover and the right number deer and right that I could care less if you want. You may be live in a neighborhood where most of the dear guy young and you and your family want to chase some four and five year old deer. And really the only way to do that is to protect those dear to allow to get older. And you have adequate escape cover, you have x hundred acres or whatever is going on. I don't have any problem with that. I don't care if you do or don't. But the deer don't care. They don't care anything about defense. But when you touch it deer, do you collect seamen, you inject chemicals into it. You're transporting that deer to another place. This is no longer a wild deer. You've now domesticated that animal, and you've taken away from every taxpayer in this nation. It supports that wildlife resource. And and I think it's very selfish for a hand, but relatively to all the millions of hunters in America. For a few thousand people to want to profit off bind settling the moving deer, to jeopardize a resource that millions of people enjoy and pay for, I just think it's wrong. So I equate that little easy. I really don't care what you do on your land as long as you don't impact my land. There's all laws like this. My neighbors legally can't put a nuclear dump on their land. They can't even burn to ires on their land because it impacts the air quality and the stream quality of my land. Why do we allow people do stuff to deer that has a known, now known, scientifically proven the impact on wild, free ranging deer. Why do we let a handle of people do that on their land. We don't let them store nuclear waste. We don't even let them burn a tire. To me, that's as cut and dry and as simple as it could possibly be. Yeah. I like your perspective a lot on that. I think it makes. It makes all the sense in the world. I certainly see where we're coming from. But man, that is one of those topics that does get a lot of people fired up. Oh someone's gonna call your boats now. Yeah. But my mind is that if you touch dear, you know, and you know, there's all kind of university of doing great work and gratitudents and I've done it. We've got get pistols on deer and blah blah blah blah. You're touching deer, and you're transporting deer for so purpose a personal gain. I think it's about as dangerous as burning tires or having nuclear waste on your property. Yeah, I just made a lot of people mad. Well, It's an a iportant point to make, and I've I've dabbled and share my opinions on that too and gotten a lot of flak for it. But I think it's something that people really need to be thinking about. So um. So that said, though, I want to before we run out of time here, I want to touch on a couple of the other popular issues that I know a lot of people are dealing with, um and one of those is predation. And this is one that allot of people like to talk about and a lot of people are concerned about, and in some cases probably rightfully. So um, two questions for your Graham Number one, Number one, how can you tell if predation is a challenge for your local whiteail population? And then number two, if it is, what do you do about it? Yep? Not I'm an easy tale. But you know, things, if you're dear, are so skinny as you can barely see them. I mean, you know, you're you're pretty good hunter, and you're kind of watching your sin and you're doing stuff, and they're so alert you can you just can't hardly see what you're out of stand anymore. Then you know, and you're using pretty good hunting techniques, and everywhere there's a crossroads on your property, there's four piles of tiles. Scott, you probably got that problem because kyles eat deer unequivocally that you know, young deer, fawns, mature deer, they eat deer. That research is done Seinsfield and proven. We don't need to argue over that anymore, and so can we do something about it? It's it's in not all areas have a problem. And there's a recent study I think out of Wisconsin that really clearly showed that in open farmland kyles don't have as big an impact on deer as they do in timory country. We looked all throughout the South, it's mainly piment country, and the southern states are really getting hammered by kyos. In the north Central Lake states up north are getting hammered by wolves and kyleach. So there's areas where it's it's certainly a problem. And for the bologists at say and Mandards say, well, we just guys are here, We just gotta produce our deer harvest, and this is a new norm. We gotta accept it, I say, and I think the data is really clear. If we look in areas of Texas or out west in the Powder River country in the Western States, where they raised a lot of sheep for cattle, they it impacts your income directly. They do a really good job promoting kyote numbers down through trapping and other means. So again, we're talking about our national resource. We're talking about something that generates billions and billions of dollars and provides millions of ours of recreations. If we get serious about controlling kyotes, we can limit your numbers. I'm not talking about whipping them out. I'm talking about bouncing predator and prey populations just and good stewards of the resource. So, yes, trapping does work. Yes, it is labor intendency. Yes it costs money. Yes, some landolds are doing and some The most important thing is that agencies allow trapping the kyotes during the fawning season because that's when we have the biggest impact on fond survival. What about other predators other than kyotes, because that's a popular one, But what about black bears, um or wolves and some of the Great Lakes States. Are those having as big of an impact? Is sometimes you know, they're they're big predators, so they get a lot of attention, but are they really having an impact? Yeah, you know there's studies in some areas certainly bears, I mean, I though it's a study out of Pennsylvania, I think where bears were retunting for about forty fawn population. Bears, you can give them that search image can really find fawns easy. Uh, here's the mine that people don't like to talk about. How about eagles? Man, We got more eagles now and we've had any of our lives time by far, and eagles certainly are fawn predators. Orders abundant eagle populations and uh, I mean eagles are great turkey preadors. An eagle can fly over an open field of turkeys and one of them is not making it out that turkey, although it's a great bird, is not escaping a big old bald eagle creis in that field. It's just not gonna happen. So, uh, we have more eagles, more hawks. Who hasn't driven down the road and saw a pile of hawks, especially winner on every power pole going down the road. And they've been protected for thirty plus years. And I'm not saying it shouldn't be. But the reality is we have more eagles, more locks, more bears, more mountain lines in a lot of areas, more coyops, certainly, more wolves. We have a lot of predators out there, more than we've had in most of our lifetimes, and to say they're not an issue is just really be imbined to the situation. And so what do we do? Well, we make choices every day as humans of what we favor and don't favor. And it seems to me that in a lot of areas were favoring predators and ignoring the white tail population and other game species coil turkey, other game species. So I think we've got to find a balance between sudative preat populations that's good for mankind and instead our goals achieving that balance. Yeah, I think something you said that's really important too, And it's something that, um, I worry about sometimes because you know, I'm in addition to being a deer hunter, I'm also just a wildlife a lover of wilderness and wildlife and animals and nature and all these different things. And I think the important thing you said there was a balance. Um. And again this is just my two cents, but sometimes you start hearing people talking about, you know, we have to kill every single predator, just strow them all because they're killing our deer herd. And I like the fact that you made it a point to say, you know, we don't need to eradicate them, um, but we need to find that proper balance. I think in my personal opinion that's the right the right way to due to is finding that balance. There's there's probably a place for for both, but finding that right balance. Yeah, it would be a lonely deer with for me to walk out and not hear a kyld howling somewhere every now and then a bustance stuff, that would be a lonely deal with for me. Or see a bobcat over now and then, you know, or or if I get to hunt in those Northern States, I worked a lot of by war Road Minnesota and borders of Pollo wolves up there, and probably a little too many, but you know, like we're hearing them how at night or seeing a big old wolf track. That's really that is part of that willderness experience for me. But it's just finding that balance. That's in all things a lot of auderation and balanced and I think that's our job as mankind is to help find that balance, because if we if a man doesn't create that balance, we didn't get these big old, massive swings. The preservationists people say, don't do anything and they're work itself out, it will work itself out. But those we will work it stuff out in massive swings, massive swings that I don't believe human society will all right, yeah, yeah, I think that's that's absolutely the truth. And speaking of one of these changes, um, you know, we talked about the at the beginning of the episode. You mentioned, you know, trying to set a baseline and you know that what the population was like, what the dear population heard was like before European settlement, and um, you know, now humans obviously have made an impact and that's changed things. One of the greatest impacts happening right now. It really is forever, ever since we've been settling North America has been habitat and recently, from my conversations with Kip and others, more and more people are bringing up the fact that or the belief that habitat loss is making a greater impact on some of these dear declines that we've been seeing than maybe you know, is being given credit for so grant in the case if it seems like we're losing white to habitat, I believe there was. I think Kip Adams had mentioned the fact that we've lost a total third of all the CRP ground in the Midwest over the last four or five years. I think it was us UM and that's you know, tremendous white tail habitat. In these cases where we're losing habitat um for for deer. Is there anything that an individual landowner or hunter on public land can do to combat that at all? Is it just merely you know, putting more cover onto our pieces of ground, or what can I do if I if I hear that's an issue, what can I do about that? Yeah? You know, if you're an individual hunter on public ground, I think your best tool is to ballot box. You can vote, and you can you know, forward and get behind referendums that protect will of habitat and streamside management zones and because good habitat is always good for clean air and clean water and many things besides seeing a big old pluck out there on the frosty morning. So I think that's the game where US assistants find that balance. We all want to have cheap fueld and we want to have cheap food. Those are realities and and so there's trade offs and there's balances and where do we find that balance? And finding that balance is very difficult. But you know, a loss of of CRP land certainly has a huge impact on game and non game species. But it's an individual landowner and he's saying, man, I got a chance to make some money and pay my land here at corn prices they're not high now, but they were high, and I can you know, I think it's more profitable for me to a corn and have CRP. Who's complain that landowner for making that choice. So these are trade offs and and there is not an easy It's easier for me to solve you know, wolves and kidos and other things than is that one. Because I do work for some those people. And you know, you're a guy, and you're you you had land and CRP and you're making you know, where you are sixty seventy dred twenty dollars an acre form CRP payment. All a sudden corn jumps at the ten dollars an acre and even though it's marginal land. You can make more than that hundred dollars preak or profit. You got two kids wanting to go to college. You're trying to pay it for a new john to your combine. What are you gonna do? You're gonna take that land out of CRP and go corn. So that is a very very complicated question of which I don't have an answer except that as a nation, not as an individual has a nation in the ballot box, we need to come and decide you unitedly and hopefully come to a decision which doesn't have a lot anymore in our democracy. What our values are? What what is? What are we willing to pay for gas? What are we willing to pay for corn? And what are those trade offfs that allow us to maintain while I've had a tap and a very healthy productive society. And those are tough questions. Those are as windmills, Boy, there's a you know, it's a clean source of fuel that destroys some land, destroy some habitat, and sure knocks a lot of birds out there. You know what, what's the right answer there? First you we get windmills going, by, guys, that's a great solution to our energy crisis, and if you're a guy walking blow and picking up a few eagles, you're going on, I don't know if this is a good or not. So you know, we we don't have to make two tradeoffs, and that one is not easy when to answer, Yeah, that's a that's a that's a tough call. Absolutely. Yeah, well we are. We are coming up pretty closely here on time. But Dan, do you have any final questions for granting here before we let them go? Yeah? I have a question about big Bucks. Okay, every you know, if I'm a landowner, um for for me personally, I'm buying that land to manage it to hold Big Bucks. And so I've managed my property. I have the cover, I have the food, I have everything that is needed from a from a scientific standpoint. Is there a way to improve genetics or um do something management wise that will increase antler size? Okay, so first thing I'm always gonna look at. I'm gonna be quick here scoep tub and water. And I think what you're really saying is you want to kill a big buck. Because I have done all that killing the big book. You've done all that, But if you haven't told me is what the neighbors have. There needs to be a reason for that mature deer to be on near land versus the neighbors land itself selfish, but that is a reality. So if you've got soybeans or neighbors got soy beans, that's even. If you've got water, necks got water, that's even. What do you have this better than the neighbors out of one oh three? And I always want to air on the cover side because that's where deer has been, specially from sure dear, it's been most of the daylight hours. It's not sexy to talk about, but I'm always gonna air on having the best cover in the neighborhood if i can either sanctuary, less, signing pressure or whatever it is. Second part of your question is no way. This has been proven by great scientific research. You're not going to change the genetics of a wild, pre ranging deer while your trigger finger, you're not gonna do it. Old red structure. You can accomplish, better food, you can accomplish. The only way we're gonna change genetics with any meaningful result is by line breeding or having a pedigree, knowing who breads for several generations and the results of that crossing under offspring and calling the ones that we don't like, keeping the ones we do. I said, only with the pettigree, because just calling, Oh my guys, here's a four point buck. I'm not shoot him. You have no idea. That's just pheno type. But his geno type may be totally different due to an injury or got born, laid or whatever happens. So a little quickly here, but no, I never ever ever give me clearly never been calling has a way to improve genetics and a wild Cranian deer. It cannot be done or it's not likely to be done again unless there's a pettingree. So you'd gown these monster deer in pens because they know who's bet who for several generations and the results of those crossings. And there's some real famous cases where you know, the hundred forty and shade pointer is still in two offspring year after year after year, with all the most properties. You've been cold as a cold buck. So I fell really easy on my land. If it's four years old, it's a cold deer. I try to shoot it. If it's not four years old, I don't hear what if stores lives I like something you said. They're um and kind of going off topic here really quickly. Um, but you mentioned you're looking at age and that's determined whether you shoot or not with these different things happening in the white tailed world right now, is that the criteria that you would recommend most hunters use rather than antler size or things, uh, anything like that when it comes to making har decisions. Absolutely. You know, if you're a landowner near savvy enough the home land and new stocks, you can get pretty good at estimating age of a buck on the fifth and so age will always give you better long term results. And you know, circumference or antler spread or number points on the side, what happens with any of those measurements is that you end up high grating over time because your best two year old bucks, a three year od buck or earling buck, whatever your criteria is gonna you know, if you've got a three point on the side rule, your best earing bucks, a're gonna have four or five points on side, and you keep shooting the best year after year after year. We gotta remember that those here the book most part of the genetic pool of antlers, and we're not selecting them on those but those bucks aren't. It's not that you're changing the genetics, but you're allowing the bucks for less inherent potential standing there to eat the food and go on. It's not breeding, it's just the mature in too deer that dorn Off to as good to start and lot to start with. You want that deer that exceeded the criteria but was still the same age to live because it's showing the potential to be better. Doesn't mean as jeans are gonna be better, but that individual deer is going to be better. And that's why we manage individual deer. Yeah, you want to give them that chance to to reach that potential. Well, you want them to express their potential. Absolutely so. So we've taken a lot of time out of your day, Grant. So I want to wrap things up here. Um, but one last question to kind of put a bowl on this. You we start a conversation, Grant with you mentioned the fact that we've gone from maybe a time of really great, a great period of time for white tails and white tail hunters in America to maybe a slightly different in time. So, um, it seems like you know from people I've talked to we're we're entering a slightly new normal. So in this slightly new era of deer hunting, what is the one big takeaway message that you hope that deer hunters can kind of wrap their heads around moving forward giving these changes, Every deer hunter, every deer hunter public land, private land, is a deer manager. When you pull that trigger, you've made a management decision. Did you improve the deer heard quality or did you decrease the deer quality? With got that recognition that every hunters a manager, not to state agencies there, they're teachers, are educators, they give us guidelines, they hold the public trust, they collect data, But the guy pull on the trigger determines the future of that peer heard. Maybe you need to pass up deer because you've had bad disease, you've got a lot of predators, or what the issue is, or maybe you're in an area that needs to harvest a lot of those and reduced that number of deer based on the amount of food out there. But the realization that we can't be in consumers simply deer hunters, and then we all have to carry a little bit of the management burden by making the choices we make is the key that will help us have great hunting into the future. That's awesome, Grant. I think that is a perfect way to wrap all of this up. So for people listening today that want to learn more about what you're doing and learn more from you, um, where should they go online? Just sending a little our website, Growing Dear dot TV, Growing Dear dot PV. And we're making new showing a week and all past five some odd shows too, and fifty show. Excuse me, you're on there five years of running and so you can search on you know, food Pots or Predators or whatever and find a couple of shows that fit that title. And hopefully we can just share information. It's reading no charge, just like March stuff here and just hopefully you can learn something. Hopefully we can share something meaningful. Absolutely well, I can uh. I can definitely say from my experiences, Grant that your resource is a tremendous one and I've certainly learned a lot from Growing Dear TV. So for everyone listening, highly recommend checking that out. So Grant, thank you so much for joining us here today. This has been terrific. Mark, thanks forty Dan, thank you for your time. Thank you all right, have a great night, Grant. Thank you. Thanks guys. All right, well, I hope you're taking notes there, because Grant really shared a tremendous amount of insight and I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Now, closing things out here, if you have been joining the podcast, it was we always ask it would be awesome if you could leave us a rating or of you on iTunes, and I want to give a big thank you to the one hundred and ninety three of you who have already done so. And I thought i'd read off one of those reviews here too. This comes from the iTunes user known as rude Like, and they write Mark and Dan have one of the best podcasts available. I enjoy listening to them so much that when I started, I was able to pull off six episodes a night at work. However, now I'm caught up and I find myself longing for more. These guys are real people, dedicated to their lifestyle and hobby. My only complaint is that they don't do to our shows. Thanks Mark and Dan for the hours of awesome. All right, Well, thank you, rude Like, but be careful for what you ask for, because we are getting ever closer to those two hour long shows, and uh that might end up happening if we keep trending in this direction. Now, in addition to raigings and reviews, if you haven't already done so, make sure you subscribe to the Wire Done podcast on iTunes with the Apple podcast app or the Stitcher app, or wherever you go to get your podcasts. You want to make sure you do that so you can get all future episodes downloaded right to your phone or tablet every week. Also, we'd like to thank our partners who helped make this show possible, so big thank you too, sick A Gear Trophy, Ridge Bear Archery, Red Nick Blinds, Carbon Express, Arrows, Hunt Soft, Lacrosse, Boots, Big and J Longrange Attractants, and the White Tail Institute of North America. And finally, and most importantly, thank you to all of you listening today. I hope today's show has inspired you to take up more responsibility as a deer hunter and manager and has empowered you with acknowledge to do so. And finally, of course, I hope you'll stay wired

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