00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan. This is episode number one six one Tayni show. We are joined by Marcus Lashly, a wildlife biologist and assistant professor at Mississippi State University, and we're gonna be talking all sorts of things related to white tailed deer, habitat, mineral stumps, predators, and the moon's potential impact on deer. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sick Gear. And today in the show, we are going to be joined by Marcus Lashly, a wildlife biologist and assistant professor at Mississippi State University. And Mark works within the Deer Lab at Mississippi State and you might remember hearing about that on a past episode when we had Bronson Strickland on here earlier this year. But basically what this means that Marcus has been and is involved in a whole lot of fascinating research projects related to white tailed deer, and in particular, Marcus has looked a lot into things related to white tailed deer habitat. So today the plan is to pick Marcus's brain all about deer habitat and what they need in their habitat, how we can improve it, and um a whole bunch of stuff related to that, but then also some things related to hunting to UM. In particular, he's done some really interesting research related to the moon and its impacts on deer. So I want to ask Marcus about all those things and more. It's going to be an interesting conversation. But before we bring Marcus on the line, and this is for the seven of you who enjoy our long and winding introductions. Right, how are you taking? Seven? Seven of us? Right, Jim John on, how you doing? I think there's seven people like al right, I love this section, So this is for for those seven. How are you man? I'm good you, I'm very well. I'm very well. Had a a busy deer related weekend and busy preparing for an exciting week ahead. Yeah. Uh sounds to me like you got a big buck spotted in Michigan, right, Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, that's for sure. Since so you know, when we talked UM last time we record the podcast, I told you that I've gotten like a tip about a big buck in the general area of one of my hunting properties. UM, and I was gonna go check it out that night. While I did go check it out that night, and they weren't kidding. I saw a really nice Michigan buck. Um. Definitely one of the better bucks I've seen in that general area. UM and all the time I've been hunting down around there. So, UM, four year old. Yeah, at least four at least four UM. Hard to say if he's older than that, but definitely four older. UM. And I'm kind of you know, based on where he's at right now with growth, I wouldn't be surprised if this buck makes it into the one fifties. UM. So he's I mean, that's a Michigan stud I've never I'm trying to think here, um, on any of my Michigan properties that I can hunt, I have not had a buck that big that was on my property on a proper decord hunt during the hunting season. So I have seen deer this big during the summer in the general area, but I've yet to have one that big that's stuck around for hunting seasons. So we'll see. Maybe this is one that does stick around on one of the spots I can hunt, and um, you know, he'd be a nice constellation prize if holy Field never shows. So that's that that that for sure. It is not holy Field though, right, yeah, it's it's not holy Field. Um, it is in the same general area. Um. So you know, like I said, if holy Fields not around, this buck could potentially fill that gap. Um. But no word on holy Field yet. I've been driving around a lot in this area looking for things looking for him, and nothing in the bean fields yet. But um, this is a heck of a deer and I'm excited about that. So did that, and then have been out a few more nights looking for deer. And then over the weekend I hung three news stands, um and put a fake scrape tree in one of my food plots and moved a hay bail blind to a new area. Um. So I been doing a whole bunch of stuff over the weekend, just getting things the final prep situated. And I just have a few little like I gotta put one more fake scrape tree up, I gotta move a couple of cameras and then I'm done until the hunting season for that spot for this general area. So right, and then what about because you mentioned you were going to be doing some publicly and scouting as well. Yeah, so I can't. Oh you know, I think I meant and that I was going to tell you about the public land scouting i'd done. Um, this is like two weeks ago. Now, I spent a good amount of time on some land down um, down this neck of the woods. And long story short, it looks really good. Um it's there's some big country. It's kind of gnarrowly. It's not like the easy stuff you can just walk into a hundred yards off the side of the road. And um, you know, being deer, I think that I found some places that are tough enough to access for the average guy, that I might be able to find some little pockets of deer that feel comfortable in. Particularly found once about there's a bunch of swampy stuff, and I found an island of high ground in the middle of that swamp. And there's just like one little bridge of high ground that connects it to it, and that little funnel connecting the island to the main high stuff was just littered with old rubs and trails coming in and out of there and I found some what looked like for sure a buck bed down at the end of the point on the island, in a few dough bedding areas, UM, maybe fifty two hundred yards away from that. So like some very promising stuff. UM. And then I was out actually scouting in the evening, checking out some bean fields that were adjacent to that public And this was just maybe two or three nights ago. I saw a pretty nice buck right next to the public land. UM. Not a giant, but at least a three year old um and something i'd be pretty pumped about to get on some Michigan public So so yeah, that was good, Like I'm excited, like these final pieces are all coming together. And now I realized that I leave a week from tomorrow and I don't come back un till hunting season. So it's nuts. So you're going to Montana just to chill the rest of the summer, and then you're gonna be doing an antelope punt, an elk hunt, and a North Dakota mules your hunt. You're kind of you're kind of off on all of it. Okay, Well that's why that's because I don't talk to you enough. Mark, I thought we were friends. I know that you're you're kind of close. Um, so I'm gonna be sort of hanging out in color Otto, Wyoming, in Montana for the next month six weeks or so, five weeks um as far As Hunts Montana and Lo Hunt, then Montana whitetail Hunt, then in the North Dakota whitetail on. No elk hunt this year. No, I'll come this year, Okay, Okay, just trying to. I think I'm gonna try to, you know, like you've been talking about, just trying to wreck up some points until I can go to a slightly better area because where we went it just seems like the pressure keeps on building there. Yeah, most definitely. Yeah, I'll tell you what I'm Obviously this year I finally had to call it, you know, and say I'm not going to be able to go on my elk hunt this year. No, yep, So you know I don't. I don't want to. I don't want to be that dad who something happens and he's like literally and if I were up in the mountain to the time it would take me to walk back to my car truck and then drive home would be over twenty four hours, and I would be I would just feel horrible for the rest of my life if I missed my son's birth. You know what I mean. And I don't want to be that guy. And uh, but next year I will be doing some out of state hunting. You mark my words. Good. You need that adventure in your life, Dan, I definitely need that adventure in my life. I feel like I'm in a cage right now. You told me this called mensco. You wake up every morning, you don't know where you are. What's going on in my life? I could be Alzeimer's to Um, can you push your ELK trip earlier? Could you do like an early ELK trip, like first week in September? Um, well, I could go. Well, it is the first week right sons later we'll see September one is on like a Friday or Saturday this year, so it's the first week. But the opener of that ELK season is the last week in August. Now I could go if I wanted to, But the group of guys, I'm going with a group of guys, so they all have scheduled already to go that first week of September. So I would have to be i'd be running solo and where where we had planned ongoing. You need some experience to go up there, and probably experience with someone who knows what they're doing. Um, it's really steep and it's in Colorado, so it's it's it is high country. Will probably be close to twelve thousand. Yeah, well, um, tend to twelve Yeah. If you want to drive out to Montana and hunt antelope with me for a couple of days, when's that, uh, the last couple of days of August before because it will be a period of time between when my wife is gonna leave. She's gonna beet up with a friend I think, and take off like the last day of hours or something, and then I'll have like a two or three days before the white tail season opens up that I was gonna hunt antelope and scout for white tails. Um, you might be a still draw tag m. Let's talk after the show, my friend. I mean, you know, I can I can't handle Dan not being able to have a little bit of Western adventure in his life. But check this out right, So I restructured my vacation hours at work and I don't have my phone with me. Well, I just wait one second, let me let me tell you something real quick. Okay. July, August, September, October, November. So right now, I at at work. I have accepted an approved vacation from November six to November is Thanksgiving, so I get those off anyway, So I have three straight weeks off of work. Now that is good news. Right. So the goal is on November six to shoot my buck and then that would be nice, right, don't have to grind it out again, and then maybe go to Nebraska to do what our meal the hunt. It would be one or the other. I'd be able to shoot both. I get one tag. But that's just daydreaming at this point. I like where your heads that though those sand hills they're calling to your aren't the man? Ever since I've ever since I went out there, I think about that place every day. It's crazy. Well, when we started talking about it last summer, about me potentially going out with you for for some type hunt, that got me like all obsessing about it and thinking about it, and uh man, there's a lot of opportunity out there, and you know this is this is exactly the kind of stuff that we're gonna be talking about in just a couple of days at our live podcast recording, which is gonna be pretty awesome. And I just want to remind everyone listening, um, if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, So this is Thursday July that this podcast is coming out. UM, if you're listening to that now, Tomorrow Friday, July, Dan and I are going to be a New Orleans at the Quality Deer Management Association National Convention recording a live episode of this podcast in front of the audience, and you guys can be there. All you need to do is go to cut May dot com to get the details. It's am on the twenty one. We're gonna be doing that, talking all about d I Y hunting trips. And we've got a friend of mine who have wanted to have on the podcast for a long time. He's gonna be joining us as well. He's gonna have some really great insight to share on this topic. It's it's gonna be top notch. So I'm pumped about that. And then just another reminder that evening Friday, July eight pm, we're gonna have a Wired to Hunt meet up in downtown New Orleans. UM, I'm trying to get some intel from guys that are on the ground there right now as far as where we should meet, but some kind of like bar grill or something like that, some kind of bar down there that's large enough for some people to hang out. Eight pm. And as soon as we picked that location, I'm gonna be talking about it on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I'll put out the announcement then probably the next anytime now, I'll have that announcement out, So look for that. If you're in the area and you want to meet up with us, say hi, meet some other wire hunt listeners. That's eight pm Friday, July. So are you excited about that? Dan, I'm I'm really excited. Now. It's hot in New Orleans, my friend, I'm excited for it, but it's hot down there. Yeah, I I haven't looked at the weather yet, but I'm sure it's going to be Have you have you looked at the weather? I really don't care. I mean, I'm I'm I sweat when it's forty degrees out, So I'm that guy I believe that. Well, it's gonna be a good time. So hopefully we're gonna see some of you guys that you're listening right now. Hopefully we'll see you in in just a short day or so. But um, we need to we need to shut this intro down, Dan, because our guest is ready to join us. So let's take a quick second to think our partners at Sitka Gear and then we'll be back with Marcus Lashly For this week's Sitka story, we're joined by Sitka Ambassador Ed Grahams, who tells us about a surprise elk encounter on a public land haunt in Montana. Back in some other sitdown, Bassadors and I were were artreal c counting in southern southern Montana, and after days of rain and twelve inches of snow, we finally got in on the elk the bodyline and I saw her elk and we were trying to figure out how to get to him. We some heard them, but didn't know where they were, so we ended up just hiking up the mountain trying to get to where we last saw Will did we know after walking through an opening we were right in the middle of a herd about twenty elk. They had to have seen us, but they didn't know what we were. We're in our open country gear walking right through the middle of a clearing, and unfortunately we didn't harvest one. The big bowl came out slipped behind a tree at about twenty yards and one of the funerals. The funerals changed and the college busted and they took off. But it was definitely the closest encounter I've ever had with her milk on edge hunt. He was wearing Sitka's timberline pants and jet Stream jacket. If you'd like to create a sit of story of your own, or to learn more about Sitka's technical hunting apparel, visit sitka gear dot com. Alright with us, Now on the line is Marcus Lashly. Thanks so much for being here with us. Oh really glad to be here. Yeah, I UM. I think I first heard about you when the Quality Deer Management Association published a YouTube video of you a handful of years ago talking about some of your studies that you've done related to the deer and related to the moon and deer, and I found that pretty fascinating, and since then I followed some of your work through various studies and research projects you've been doing, and it just seems like you constantly have your hands in some interesting stuff. So we're excited to Yeah, we're excited to try to hear more about that. Yeah, can you give us just a little bit of an introduction, um to who you are and what is you're doing? Sure, so again, I'm Marcus Lashly. I'm a country boy from Alabama and uh had to have had an intense curiosity my entire life, and that's led me to down this path. Grew up hunting and fishing and basically have followed that path all the way into a career now in academia, and I work here at Mississippi State University in the ms U Deer Lab and study primarily habitat relationships with a lot of different species and and one of the ones I'm most interested in of course, as dear, definitely, Now, you had quite a path to get to this point. I think you were NC State for a while, and can you walk us through like what you're what that journey looked like, and all the different things you kind of worked on up to this point. So I got a bachelor's degree actually here at Mississippi State, and most people don't get a degree at the same place they end up um for a you know, in an academic job so that's a little bit unusual. But I did get my bachelor's degree here in forestry with the option of wildlife management, and I fell in love with with habitat at that point and working on habitat, and I went and worked with Craig Harper at the University of Tennessee and he trained me during my master's again habitat related work with civil culture, so basically different force management practices within without fire, how they affected deer forge availability and quality and those sorts of things. And then I worked in a couple of different jobs with some different agencies, worked in West Mississippi all the way up to the outer banks of North Carolina and even down in Florida as a biologist, And then went back to get my pH d at NC State where I worked again on fire and force management how related to deer habitat quality and predator prey interactions between deer and coyotes. So, and I also got a post doc there at NC State working in that same long leaf pine ecosystem with with deer and coyotes in fire. It sounds like you've been pretty busy. Have you still got some honey, tim In? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I find plenty of time, you know, at Fort Bragg when I was doing my research there, I didn't get the hunt very much for deer. But I'm also an avid turkey hunter, and uh, it turns out the schedule of trying to catch deer all night and then going turkey hunting all morning and then sleeping you know, from from noon to about six or seven in the evening and doing it all over again with a pretty good schedule for me. So I got plenty of hunting in. You know, you have to find time to do it. So whatever that schedule is, you you work around it. I feel like Dan had a similar schedule, being up all night and sleep until six next day, but it wasn't for turkey hunting, it was it was something else. In college. Well yeah, yeah, college, yeah, college story. I thought you were talking recently. Well now, I guess as kids, right. Well, you know, when I when I was growing up, I worked on a catfish farm as a night man, and uh got to work all night, you know, during my teenage year. So I was already used to that kind of schedule for for work purposes, but also have had some leisure activities that drive me in that way as well. So of all these different I mean, you listed off a handful of different topics and studies that you've been involved in that I'm sure I've all been really interesting to you. But of everything you've worked on, what single project or you know, particular topic have you like really clicked with the most, like which specific aspect just like fascinated you above all else? Well, uh, from a science geeky standpoint, we would call it indirect effects. So basically, if you think about the systems, they're all food we ups, and that way up has a whole bunch of different lines connecting lots of species together. And it's really intriguing to me that you know, things like fire could change plants, which change the way that dear behave, which is also affecting how predators behave, and they you know, the predator changes the way that the prey behave, and you know, you you start trying to figure out who's affecting who when you get in this web and realize that they're all connected, and you know there are all these caveats in the system, and that really has become the heart of what I love. Ecology is really cool, and you know, you don't understand until you really get into the weeds that that all these things are connected, and it becomes really interesting, especially when you start thinking about it from a hunting perspective, because as a hunter, you're the predator and you're affecting how the deer is acting in the environment and how they affect plants, and you know it, just those things get me really excited, and that has really become a thrust of of my research program now, is to really understand how things are affecting one another and how we can use that information to manage them better. I can, I can certainly see how that'd be interesting. Can you give us a specific example of this, Like you kind of mentioned some of the connection points, but I'd be really interested. You know what, like X variable, if you change that, how does that then trickle down through the chain? Sure? So h for just as an example, Um, I've studied fire and I'm a pyromaniac, so I'm mentioned fire all the time. I'm always always go back to fire because I really like fire, and most people don't realize how important fire has been in the the ecology of the systems, especially in the Eastern and Southeastern United States. You know, it's been a critical part of the way that these systems work. So just as an example, uh, the timing of fire is pretty cool, and we haven't we've sort of overlooked that. It seems like a lot of people have measured different response variables. And depending on what you measure, you know, sort of okay, growing season for is best, or dormant season's best, you know, late late season. You know, different times are better for different things depending on what you're looking at. But when when you start thinking about deer and when lactation really peaks, you know, the demands of a deer really peak best in the middle of the summer. And one of the research projects that have been involved with and we're attempting to publish the data currently, show that the phonology of fires, in other words, which month fire is set in changes the way that it makes the nutrients available to deer. And if you actually mimic lightning, when lightning would set things on fire, the nutrient paul send the vegetation coincides with antler growth or or lactation, which are the two you know, depending on whether you're male or not or female, those are the most nutritionally demanding. So the timing is critical to make those nutrients available. But to take that a step further, if you start thinking about the predator in the system, which is coyote in this case, so that coyote is also trying to eat so. Uh. One thing I thought was particularly interesting is is mice and rabbits and things like that that coyotes eat are also more abundant after you burn. So coyotes sometimes in some cases will actually seek out fire, so they're not doing it necessarily to get deer or that they obviously eat deer, But because they seek out fire, then deer sometimes will avoid fire. So it looks like they're avoiding this nutrient pulse when they're actually avoiding a predator that's not even trying to eat them, you know. So you start getting into this really crazy food web, and animals are doing things that you don't think they should. But when you start taking a larger look at the system, it makes sense. Uh. So that's just one really convoluted example. I guess I love it. I love it. How long How long after a fire takes place do you do we start to see the results of that change, Like the the nutrients are you talking about? Well, the nutrients or the animal behavior. Okay, well, uh so just to give you another example on it on a different species. We we burned in May this past May, and we have cameras that were monitoring the use by lots of species, and northern bob white and turkeys were in the burned area seeking out the things that were made available by fire. Less than twelve hours after the fire is put out, they can respond pretty quickly and they and they know what's going on. It's like they're sitting up in a firetower watching for smoke and they're going to you know, they know what's going on. So it's pretty amazing that deer is a little bit delayed because there you know, when when foods are being made available to a deer, it's through vegetation, so they're eating leaves and it has a little bit of lag time before those plants start to respond again. But I would say within two or three weeks that they are really heavily using those nutrients that are being made available by the fire. Now, I know that fire is something that's very well understood within the community of pretty serious habitat managers um, but for people that are you know, just getting started, maybe they've gotten to the point where, like I want to try food plot that kind of thing, but they haven't gotten to the point of doing some of this, um it's more natural forage type of work. Can you just explain why or how it is that fire makes a difference in this way, like why it's the actual mechanism that's that's producing all this great forage. So, uh, so, the fire is doing several things. One one thing that it does is it warms up the seed that so the soil, so it removes bo mass that's above ground obviously when it's burning it, and it exposes mineral soil and also warms it up and releases nutrients back into it. And the combination of those things make some plants grow really well. So annual forbes, which we typically think of as the high quality deer forages, those they're actually adapted to respond to that that situation that's created by fire, So you end up with with a lot of forbs that respond to it. And that's one part of it. But we also have another mechanism, which is something I've been studying quite a bit, and that's plants that are that are perennial, so they last year after year it free as a perennial plant. For instance, those have especially hardwoods have adapted to deal with fire by re sprouting from their stomps after their top kieled. So that's really interesting. I think we're probably going to get into it anyway, that fire is essentially causing the mineral stomps, which some of the listeners may have seen videos that we have online about that, and that that plant tissue is really high quality because it's trying to get back into the canopy position where it can get sunlight. And while it's doing that, it's making a really abundant amount of nu trans available to your deer. So with with fire, how what what I guess Number one, is there somewhere we can go or resource if we're going to try utilizing fire in our management plan, what would you recommend as far as plowing that off in a safe manner, in the right manner to improve dear habitat or wildlife habitat. Sure, Well, you know I preach about fire, and one of the reasons is it's becoming harder and harder to use because you know, we have to deal with where smoke goes, and and there's there's a perceived liability associated with fire if it gets on your neighbor's property or you know, something like that. And we actually in every state agency they have a program that is actually like Mississippi for instance, as the the Prescribed Fire Program that trains people to be a Mississippi Prescribed Burn Manager and that that's providing you training to get that UM to get that title so that you can then pull a burn permit yourself, and you would actually go through the Forestry Commission and get a permit. You have to write a management plan for that fire that you you send to them, and then you have to follow that that uh, that plan with your permit, and as long as you do that, it provides you protection from from the liability. So it's designed to protect the landowner to encourage burning because we know now that it's so important. So that's one way that you can get the training to to get you started on how to use it. Another thing that you can do is contracted out, so there there are contractors that specialize in burning and you can hire them to do that. Uh. They're also in some state agencies there they have a private lands program and they will have wildlife biologists who will work with private landowners and can work with you on getting that plan set up and even in some cases pull the permit for you and and help you burn it. And like our our state has an active program where we do that. Uh. Most states also have an extension program through the university, the land grant institutions, and they have specialists on staff that are also there to helpline donors with this type of thing. So there are lots of different options, although fire is one of the more difficult things to use, just because there's that perceived liability there. Yeah, yeah, definitely a lot of a lot of planning. Yeah, it seems like there's there's a little more to it. But to your point, into your noted obsession with it, it is such an important it's such an important piece of what's happening out there. And correct me if I'm wrong, But you know, over the last hundred years or so, we have largely limited the benefits of fire because we perceived it as a threat and we try to control fire completely for a long period of time, which has resulted in a lot of you know, unnatural um habitat stuff where we're not getting things set back, where we're getting tremendous amounts of just mature growth and we're lacking the understory or we're fuel loading big force out west, and then that's resulting in these massive wildfires because we're not letting the smaller, usual natural fires happened. I mean, is that that? Yeah, you're right on point that. You know, in the early nineteen hundreds, there were there were bands of people who were going around telling people fire was bad and we were trying to get it, get rid of it. And then it wasn't until we started seeing some effects of that we realized that was a bad idea. And you know, we've had some like like, for instance, Smokey the Bear for a long time that was you may have noticed when when you were younger, the message was only you can prevent fire, and now it's only you can prevent wildfire. So they've changed uh their message a little bit to avoid that negative connotation associated with fire, because we like fire. Fire is a good thing, but you know when an arson arsonists satisfire, then it's destructive. So you know, they're trying to make that distinction there. We actually need fire and need to use it to make some of these systems function correctly. And uh, you know, people don't realize that, and a lot of people grew up thinking fire was bad and now you know, we're trying to change that message. Well, it seems like your crusades is working. More and more people seem to be seem to be making it part of their management program. At least it seems like over the years I've been you know, monitoring this field and learning it myself, there's been a consistent, consistent trend of people talking about that, and it's one of those things that is a little intimidating if you don't have experience with it, but the benefits of yeah, when you know, when you don't have fire in the system, the way that nutrient cycle through the system is a little bit different. And just just to make this relevant to the average person who wants their does to be able to wan their phones or their bucks to grow maximum antler growth, the time when those things are are most demanding is actually a time when vegetation starting to decline in nutrient quality, and the fire, especially when it's time to properly, extends that nutrient pulse and actually increases it dramatically during the times that they need those nutrients. So the deer essentially have adapted, especially in the southeast, to take advantage of that that resource pulse created by fire. So you know, without fire in the system, you end up with his gap and it's called the late summer stress period, and you end up with a gap in that quality. And that's a problem when the deer trying to express their their antler quality or wan a phone. So we're talking late summer and like you said, those are are trying to lactate, trying to feed those fonts and bucks are you know, finishing up their antler growth. And that's the time obviously a lot of nutritional need. But you're you're saying that the native vegetation at that time, a lot of that stuff is losing some of its nutritional punch. Is that it starts declining. Uh, you know, we don't realize it because it looks like it's green still outside, But the quality of the leaves on the vegetation outside right now is much lower than it was in late May. For instance, the same leaf is much lower quality. And fire provided you know, it's set back that succession, so the leaves are still young at this time, and that's where you get that now a lot of landowners aren't in a situation where burning is a possibility, or you may be a hunter that's leasing land and fire is not a possibility, And that's where you can start to get into things like a supplemental food butt program or the mineral stump uh application, those could become really important because of this natural cycle of vegetation when fire isn't in the system. Yeah, let's talk about those two pieces right there. And that mineral stump um idea is one that's been particularly interesting. I heard you talk about this on the Deer University podcast a few weeks or a month ago or something. Could you explain what that is, why that's something we we might want to consider using his hunters and managers. Absolutely so, Uh, that same cycle that I was talking about with fire, you can actually cause that to happen with a chainsaw or or a hatchet or you know something to cut down a tree. Uh. Basically you take a mid story hardwood, so it could be black gum or red and maple or you know, an oak, whatever you want to cut down. I normally target species that don't have much timber value, and you basically cut that that tree down and it's remember I was talking about it earlier. They're adapted to respond to that by re sprouting and growing rapidly to get back into the position they were, so that the plant is mobilizing nutrients from its roots up into the leaves to grow very quickly. And when it when it's trying to regulate that balance, sometimes you can see a five and some nutrients. I've even seen an eightfold increase from the leaf quality before and after you cut it down, So we're talking about a substantial change in the quality, and that's a plant physiological response. Especially in fire adapted systems like the Southeast, those things respond really aggressively to it. So you've you've made the vegetation really high quality and us all in the reach of deer. So you're literally just taking a chainsaw and cutting a tree down and you're timing it so that it produces those stump sprouts when deer needed the most, which would be primarily in July for most of your listeners. And that's a good substitute for fire. You. Yeah, so deer or designed to extract nutrients from leaves, and if you're going to provide nutrients, that is the best way to do it is through vegetation, which you know your food plots are vegetation as well, So that's those are good ways to deliver it in the way that it's the deer is designed to extract it. So to what what level or what scale? I guess what I'm asking my scale? What kind of scale do you need to make a some kind of noticeable impact in a localized area with this type of method. Um, you know you can burn an acre, maybe you burn tent acres and you get a certain amount of food out of that. How many trees do you need to cut in this fashion to get a similar impact with the mineral stone? So so that's something that I've been working on. I'm trying to figure out at what scale could you start benefiting a population And the answers you probably have to do it at a larger scale than you would want to to really impact the nutrition, but it still can be a supplement just like your food plot. And based on our preliminary data where we're estimating how many trees would we have to cut down? So if you took a tree, just a maybe a five or six inch diameter tree, so we're talking about most people could reach around the tree with both hands. Uh. So a tree that size, if you cut down about a hundred of them, it would equal the new trient production of a common warm season food plot. M. But it's not really that many it uh just to put that into perspective, My my graduate student that's been working with me on this Dawn Chance and I went out, um maybe last week or two weeks ago and cut down some trees around a stand that we wanted to make a really high quality boastand and I think it took us fifteen minutes to cut down twelve trees around that boastand or something like that. So not much time commitment for the amount of forage you're getting. And you know, you can use it in a lot of different ways. One one thing, as you're cutting down those trees and making lanes to shoot your bow if you're a bow hunter, uh, you're also making it the bow the area much more attractive because that vegetation continues to be produced all the way into bow season. And on top of that, we took all of the the trees that we cut down and would drag them and sort of make a land to to make the deer walk through and the way that we wanted to wanted them to. So you know, it has a lot of different purposes and it's a really easy way to enhance nutrition, deliver nutrients and the way that they are designed to eat it during that important time, but also has some carryover effects to improve your bow stamp. Now here's a question what if the what if you're doing this in an area with a thick canopy above it and so that stump isn't going to get a lot of sunlight, is it still going to have those quick shoots full of nutrition? Still? Oh? Yeah. We the initial experiment that we did with the red naples, so that that was the video that you were referencing earlier. Uh, those were primarily and clothes cannopy forest. Okay, so there was not much like getting to those. Now when it when it does have some sun like getting to the ground, you're you're getting two things. One, you'll get some some more plants that are that needs sun like you know forbes to respond to that. But also the stump does seem to do better when it has some sunlight to respond. Now another thing you mentioned and you you kind of touched on this a little bit, but when I've heard you speak about this previously. Um, you talked about, for example, the maple tree, and you talked about how that's not necessarily something that deer would select for in a lot of situations, doesn't have a huge nutritional punch. But then after you cut it off because of that tree, trying to balance out from the from the roots up to what's above ground. You you you talked about specifics in regards to protein and other nutrients in those new, newly sprouted leaves. Can you give us the details on that? I mean, how substantial the difference are we getting after we're cutting these trees in the new sprouts. I mean, this is like super concentrated punches nutrition in these new leaves, right, m so red maple uh just as an example, is is generally in the low teams at the peak quality, which would be you know, late April or May, and then by the time deer would need it for growing antlers or or what have you, uh is declined down to normally around ten. So that's not very good. UH normally for pea collactation or antler growth. We're thinking about more like a sixtent crew protein for uh. So the only thing by that time without fire in the system. We're doing what we're talking about with the mineral stumps the only things in the landscape really that consistently meet that requirement or forbes, So you know a lot of our brows would already have declined in quality by that time. So when you cut down this lessly red maple that was ten crew protein before you cut it, and then you have that re sprouting vegetation for a two or three months period after that. We had some that got up to even thirty, but on average they're up around So we've exceeded now what what the requirement is of the deer, and it's on par with the average ford that they're like to eat on the landscape. So we've taken a plant that's not very high quality and changed it, transformed it into something that's extremely high quality. And if you look at the nutrients like phosphorus was the example of was giving in the videos because it's so important for antler growth and lactation. That one was actually a fivefold increase roughly in in the plants. So, uh, most of the time it's it's at least three threefold, and some times it's up to eight fold. But on average is somewhere around fivefold increase. And that's what we've got me really excited about it because it was actually double the average for on the landscape to include things you would plant in your food plots. So that was that's a substantial change in the quality of a you know, a red maple that that's not high quality on the landscape. Typically we've transformed into something that is the highest quality thing around on the landscape. Yeah. So that the other thing you you mentioned was about the the diet preference for dear. That's one thing has also been amazing to me. We we typically think of these different plants species as being sort of a stagnant you know, deer either like it or they don't like it, or they you know, they they weed it, but but they're not seeking for it. You know. We think of those things as being stagnant, like green brower is always great, uh, sweet gums always terrible. You know. We we sort of label these different species. But what I've learned from this experiment some of the other ones, is this that is as far from the truth as it could be. The the diet selection of the deer for plant species is completely dependent on how you change the nutrients within that plant, and which the nutrients are limiting on the landscape. You know, all these different things are influencing it. The deer are smart, you know, they're they're adjusting their diet to take advantage of wherever they need. So if you change the content of nutrients and the leaves of a plant, you're going to change the preference of that plant for deer. So I think you might have mentioned it, but I want to make sure that I am interpreting this correctly. How long does the benefit last? So you cut down this tree, how long are we going to get this um you know, disproportionately high nutritional value from those shoots. So the primary response where you have that sort of that peak in quality generally last for about six weeks and then it starts declining. But the ones that we cut in June last year, we're still substantially higher quality than the leaves on the same species that we're not cut down in late September, so we're talking about several months out. We still had a noticeable nutritional gain from from doing that. And then how high up are we should be cutting these trees down? I mean, as we cut them right towards the ground. Is it three ft high and is it a straight cut across or you know, what's the specifics of executing this well, Uh, I don't know what in terms of making it sprout best, if there's a good technique. The generally the more of the tree you leave, the more sights it has to generate those those uh stump sprouts. But the taller you leave at the quicker it is out of the reach of deer. So we have been cutting them down to about ankle high and that's been working really well. And you've got to think again, these the reason these trees are responding like that is because they're adapted to deal with fire, which would be killing it all the way at the ground level. So you know, they can handle it as as close as you can get to the ground. Uh. You know, if we do it about ankle high, we don't have any trouble with hitting hitting the ground with our chainsaw, enduing the blade or something like that. So you know, that's that's what we've been sticking with and we're getting a really great response with a lot of different species. Now when you when you kind of going back to fire, you know, we we often think you burn a crp field or a grass field for for fire. Are there ever any instances where you would burn let's say a timber or a grove of trees? Absolutely? Yeah. That most of my research is that's actually enforested systems. And most people want realize that a pine tree that the reason it has that thick, corky bark on it is to protect it from fire. So you know that historically all of like the long leaf pine ecosystem is an imperiled ecosystem and the you know, in the southern coastal plain and without fire, it goes it changes into a different community, like the longly pine goes away. So it's sexually perpetuated by fire love loly pine. Same thing they are adapted to fire. Uh. Even more interesting to me is a lot of basically all of our upland oak forests are also adapted to fire. So you know, you can burn and up when oak stands and not harm those oaks. They're actually adapted to deal with it. So you know, you have to take into account your firing techniques and you know you don't want to run a crown fire through them obviously, but uh, you know, low intensity fires they are adapted to deal with it, and it's absolutely beneficial to wildlife, especially some of them that you want to hunt. So it sounds to me like fire before humans even you know, started working the land or anything like that, has been a part of the evolutionary system of trees, plants, animals, everything. Yep, yep. That's that's one of the reasons that I've been so interested in it, because it doesn't matter where you look in the southern ecosystems outside of you know, floodplains or you know, places that obviously wouldn't burn because of water. Uh, when you get outside of those, it's amazing the list of adaptations that almost every species you look at have to deal with it. It really is amazing. And that that's why I focus on it so much, because I just you know, it's a huge part of every system almost and even even streams, and you know, some of our aquatic ecosystems are actually you know, have links to the uplands around it that burned, and you know, a lot of the nutrient dynamics and how they move through the systems from from the terrestrial to the aquatic or even influenced by fire. So yeah, it really really has been eye opening for me over the past ten or fifteen years learning how integral this process was to all these systems. It is fascinating. And then it's interesting how you can then apply that understanding to helping you understand why a mineral stump or why I cut down tree reacts the way it does because it's it's basically simulating its response to fire, which is which is pretty interesting. I want to make sure I emphasize one of the things you mentioned. It makes sense that you utilize in the mineral stump or the or the fire idea to just improve the natural forage available for a nutritional standpoint. That makes a lot of sense. But I think another fascinating opportunity in the very short term for people listening still right now, is how you can use these as a targeted hunting tool. Um. You know, we talk a lot on the podcast about ways to try to sweeten the pot at each individual tree stand. So you know, for example, I've got a tree stand, I've I've put a mock scrape in front of it, I've got a little water hole in front of it. Maybe, like you mentioned, we've got a few down trees that help manipulate a little bit of deer movement. Well, it's not like this is another way to almost introduce like a micro food plot type effect, but instead of planting something, you cut a cluster of trees in within shooting range of your tree stand, and you time it so that when you're in there hunting, there's now these fresh shout or shoots of new growth out of those stumps that are super nutritious and they're gonna be attracting deer um. It was exactly right. Uh, I'll use In fact, I talked about it on the Deer lab or Deer University podcast. Uh. You know when I first started thinking about the mineral stump I did, I was sitting on a tree stand where I had cut down some trees around it and was wondering why they were you know, there were deer in there annihilating these plants that I don't think of as high quality plants. And you know, I've been using that for years and finally have done a research project on it to try to figure out why the why the deer were doing that. But you're exactly right. It absolutely can enhance the available nutrition around your stand, and you can target that to improve your hunting experience around those stands. Yeah, I mean what an easy quick thing like everyone could go do like this week is like gribate chainsaw cut down like five four to six inch diamuter trees within range of your tree to a couple of your eastends, and right there you've got a little special food source that these deer are gonna be hitting in October or November or whatever it might be. And do you said July is is like ideal time frame? But can we even go into August? Yeah, the the ideal time frame for the deer to take advantage of it, to wean a fawn or grow antler would be in June for most people, depending it depends on when you know, it's a little bit different depending on when the phones are being born and that sort of thing. But uh, yeah, you basically a month before whenever the peak and antler growth or the peak and lactation occur would be ideal for them to get the most out of it from a nutritional perspective. But we've cut them down all the way into early September and still have the trees respond. They did not respond as vigorously at that point, but uh, any time leading up to both season is a good time to do that because you do get some some flush and vegetation from that stomp, and it is attractive to the deer, especially when there's not much else to eat, you know, around the stands. That's great. That's a really cool idea simple way that you can, like, anyone can go and utilize this on their property. Um and how many how many times have you gotten in a tree standing there like, man, there's there's something blocking my shot right there. You know, it would be really nice if I could shoot thirty yards in this direction. You know, you could use that as an opportunity to clean out a couple of good lanes and also put a really nice little food source in that lane. I think it's terrific idea. Uh, I might need to do a little cutting myself here in the next few days. I would encourage you to do so. Yeah. So before we move on, we need to pause briefly for word from our partners at White Tail Properties. And today we've got a great segment on a topic really related to what we've been talking about here with Marcus Spencer. New Earth will take it from here this week with white Tail Properties, we're joined by Tom James, a lance by Swiss out of Central Indiana, and Tom is going to be telling us about what the very first habitat improvements should be for a land manager. Good question. Um. Some of the first key things the fundamentals if you want to think about, is when you think in terms of what a deer requires, the food, security, covering, water and the q d m A has a great analogy of the thinking about the lowest hole on the bucket that you need to plug up to keep the water from leaking out. So what could be missing on your property that the surrounding land may have, and so you want to do a quick assessment. Maybe it's food, Maybe it's water. Maybe if you can maybe it's cover. If you can look through your woods and see two hundred yards, then you've got an issue with with too much shade, not enough sunlight creating new potential brows and cover for your deer. So maybe it's a timber, a timber either stand improvement or a harvest or a combination of two that's gonna allow some more new growth to come in and picking up your property. Maybe it's as simple as you're not leaving an area alone as a sanctuary. If you're trapesing all over forty acres and pushing deer off every time you go, then that's that's obviously an issue. So maybe just an adjustment in the way that you move around and hunt the property and approach things. Uh. If food is your lacking ingredient or your lowest hole in the bucket, then even in timber, it takes some work, but you can certainly clear out some openings and plant food. Um and I would suggest considering both perennial food and annual food stuff that you can leave in like clover and chicory as a perennial coming back every year and do some fall planted cereal grains and brassicas for the fall time, so you've got a year round program going on. And typically it's not an issue in the Midwest. But if if water is a lacking ingredient, then maybe you can create a water hole or even some of the new systems like the banks water watering tanks that you can set up that are mobile and fill up and provide water sources for your deer so that they don't have to leave the property to water. Again, that's fairly rare, but that could be a consideration. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that Tom currently has listed for sale, visit whitetail properties dot com. Backslash James, that's j A. M. E. S. So, so we you mentioned the two tools here, UM mineral stump as of or mineral or fire is something we can fill in this gap of nutrition in late summer. But then he also mentioned supplemental food plots. Um. People talk about food plots all the time. I mean there's lots of quote unquote food plot experts UM who talk about, you know, how to plan them to improve your hunting, and what shape and what size and such and such as best What do you think that hunters are missing when it comes to food plots or or the experts when they're telling us about what we should be doing from a food plot perspective? Who's where are we? Where's the gap? What are we not hearing that we need to better understand? That's not being you know, shared in the popular media. Well, I think that the majority of the messages that are readily available to the average person are about enhancing the hunting experience directly by you know, making deer easier to see and that's great. I think it's a fantastic tool. You know, it's great to get children involved in hunting, fantastic opportunity if you're a bird watcher, even plant things to watch birds. You know, they can be used for a lot of good reasons and and that's a great message. What you probably miss is we keep saying supplemental food plot for a reason. They are a great tool to supplement the diet of deer. And you're picking. You can pick fourages specifically to fill in gaps. So we normally have two gaps, two major gaps, and the nutrition of deer in there, you know their habitat that that would be the late summer stress period that I was talking about. That occurs because you have this natural decline in native forages and you haven't you don't have mass starting to fall yet, so you have this gap and available nutrition, and on the front end of that gap, they have a really intense need for nutrients. So that's one gap you can you can use supplemental food plots to help with the other gap, and it's more important in the northern part of the deer range than the southern. The other gap is in the late winter so you know, the bucks are past the rut the winter, especially in the north, that's pretty intense, and they don't have much to eat on the landscape. So when I'm thinking about food pots, I'm talking I'm thinking about enhancing the nutrition, especially in those two gaps when they need it. Okay, So that that's the message. I think it's lost more than any of them. Okay. So what you know at a high level utilizing supplemental food plots, how would you you know what type of food plot program or specific forage or anything that would you recommend as far as trying to fill those gaps. So that's a great question. The the thing that is most commonly overlooked as the importance of summer nutrition and and how intense, especially in the South, that gap and native vegetation is all of our well pretty much all of the things you could plant in a warm season plot fill that gap really well. So you can extend that available nutrition through the summer, especially if you're you know, a landowner or a a leaser that can't use fire or some of these other techniques we've been talking about. You know, that food plot maybe your only chance to provide nutrition during that time. So almost all of the warm season plants that that you would you would consider, do that pretty well. But most people do not engage in summer food plots. No, speaking of summer food plots, this is something I always wondered about myself. What if we're up here in the corn belt the Midwest, and you've got hundreds and hundreds of acres of being fields all around your property, So as I would as I would assume there's tremendous summer nutrition all around me with all these being being fields everywhere, do I need to be worried about increasing summer nutrition when you're in an area like that, with the agg community providing so much of that essentially a massive warm season food plot. I think in that situation, if you already have soy beans planet all around you, you probably should focus less on a summer food plot program and more on enhancing some of the native vegetation. Especially in in your situation. Cover is probably a more important factor in the summer, and you can implement some of these force management strategies to really enhance cover and help those ponds, you know, avoid predation and and uh, you know, help that buck hide from from predators. So I think, uh, in some cases that may be more important. And that's certainly one that that it may be. If you are going to plant food pots, who probably ought to plant something other than the the uh, the local agriculture. So if they're planning soybeans, you probably ought to try something different than soybeans, just uh. You know, all these plants have different nutrients within them at different levels, So if you use other types of plants in that scenario, you may enhance the availability of of a nutrient that the soybeans aren't providing very well. Okay, that makes sense. And then to your earlier point, if if you've got it covered in the summer because of the surrounding egg, there might still be an opportunity to fill the gap in the late winter. So in my situation, all these harvested fields, especially these days, people are the farming quick. It's so much more efficient. There's not a lot of waste screen in these fields anymore. So that certainly seems like up by me, there's a huge gap there in that late winter time period. That and we have a more intense winner there. So you're right that that's probably a more important stress period for you to to target to your point, though, it's important to understand, right, it's different in every different location. So trying to understand what it is for you down in Mississippi versus Michigan, or Iowa versus Georgia or New York. And I think we're all we all have different challenges that are our deer and our habitats are facing. So it's kind of a matter of trying to understand what's happening here in this region. And I imagine, imagine a lot of state game departments have biologists, are different people who can help you better understand in your area. Yeah, you absolutely do. Uh. You have a couple of different resources that are great, and most of them have an extension wild like uh professional hours is is a Bronson strict one who you had a few weeks ago on the program. So uh yeah, almost every state has one of those, uh, through the university extension. Okay, that's great. I want to I want to rewind us a little bit to the native forage aspect of things, and UM, right now, some parts of the country specifically kind of like where you are, Dan over there in Iowa, southern Iowa, UM, a lot of areas are experiencing some drought right now. And I know you worked on a study related to the impact of drought on native forage and the nutrition it provides and then how deer react to that. Can you tell us a little bit about what you found from that study? Sure, yeah, I and so I was working during my masters with Craig Harper on that project in Tennessee and and too. I think it was two thousand and seven. Just so happened we had the worst drought and on record in the state. So I thought that was a great opportunity to see if that impacted dear nutrition and deer diet selection. So I took an advantage of that situation. I collected plants during that drought year and compared them two years that were normal and rainfall, and it had a pretty big impact on on the nutrients within the plant and dear behavior. So the main impact that it had on the forage was it decreased the amount of crewe protein in the plant. And also that the plant goes through accelerated maturation, So basically that means that it tries to grow really fast and produce seed before it dies, so it's really stressed and the plant starts speeding up all the processes. So that decline that we've been talking about, uh for the last a few minutes, that that that happens quicker during a drought year. The plants are are just accelerated, so that decline in nutritional quality of those plants as is happening way before the deer really needed. So with that being said, there are some forages on the landscape that maintain a high quality even during that drought. Their lower quality than they usually would be, but they're still relatively high quality in terms of what the deer needs. So what what we saw in that experiment was that deer actually change their diet selection to focus on only a few species that maintained that high quality. So, uh, really interesting that, you know, just in that short time period, the deer apparently realized that it's a drought and everything's low quality, I need to pick the few plants that are good. So that makes sense. Now bringing things full circle, what about if we're in that situation right now. Let's say what we're experiencing some drought, it's midsummer, and we're we're thinking, okay, how can we help supplement the deer because maybe my maybe I did plant food plots, but the drought has just knocked him out and not getting great production there. Um, we know that the natural forage is being reduced in quality because of the things you just mentioned. There is this a situation where mineral stumps could be like our our emergency methodology for trying to boost that drought kind of help deal with them. I'm glad that you brought that up, because yes, so the drought is doing several things. One thing you have to think about from the from nature's point of view, when is the fire best going to be lit by lightning during drought? So fire would have been prevalent on the landscape naturally during that time, which would have been a natural supplement uh for deer, But that's not the case in most instances. Now food plots can become a problem because if it is a drought, they may fail. So uh, the mineral stomps could be a really important They still respond really well. That tree has so much invested in the roots system. You know, it's so well developed that it can still respond really well, and it should be able to do that because nature would have burned it during drought more frequently. So you know, it all makes sense when you start thinking about this from an adaptation standpoint. So, yes, the mineral stomps could be very important during drought, and the plants are still adapted to deal with it because that's when they would have been burned naturally anyway. So Danna, are you gonna get a chansaw here pretty soon? Probably? Not like I've been selling a bunch of chainsaws for somebody. You really should be getting some kind of conversation that discount or sponsored by somebody. Yeah, it seems like maybe maybe you know, they could fund some research to show how good chainsalls are. So Dan, where are you at all this stuff on a habitat? I know you you don't get to do as much habitat work in the places you hunt, since you don't own land or have exclusive access to anything, but anything on this habitat side of things that you want to know more about. Yes, and this is kind of you can answer it vaguely if you want. But you know, when we talk about habitat for whitetail, we everybody says food cover water, And I didn't know, do you have any research that shows that a deer will travel longer distances to a food to U Let's say a food source, whether that is a field um to spend most of his day in the an optimal cover or do they sacrifice cover to be closer to optimal food and water. That that that's a really great question and has been a source of tension among several deer researchers, I think, because we don't always agree. But in my from my perspective and the research that I've done, and I've followed a lot of deer around and watch this happen, and I'm also an avid deer hunter and have have watched deer for a long time and actually designed my own hunting strategy around this idea. The cover is much more important to the deer, and you have to think of from a deer's perspective. Normally cover is actually something that's also edible, so it's plants. So in my experience, the deer ranks cover over other things. So if you have poor cover and really great food, you're not going to hold the deer like you would if you had really great cover and maybe poorer food. And let's just think about that from an adaptation standpoint for just a second. It's much more important for a deer to avoid being eaten than it is for it to get its next meal, which makes a lot of sense in terms of a fitness consequence to the deer. If it gets eaten one time, it doesn't produce any offspring, but it can miss some meals and it's gonna be science. Yeah, so we're really breaking this down to the nuts and bolts here. The deer has to survive first, and then if it survives and then has good nutrition, it can produce offspring. But the precursor to that is it must survive to do either of the other ones. So that's my perspective. One of the deer will choose cover over food, so they're they're willing further to find it, right And do you feel that's the same way with water as well? Uh, well, that one's another interesting question. They do drink water, obviously, but they get a lot of their water in a way that's called it's called preformed water. So basically that means the water is bound up in something else. And the plants that they're eating have a lot you know, some of them are nine water actually, so some of them are are really high water, and they get a lot of their water from the forages that they're eating. So a lot of people don't realize that. Uh you know, I don't know what percentage of the water, but a large portion of it can be obtained from the plants that they're eating. In fact, you know, deer really uh attracted to salt during the summer. And if you I don't know if how much you'll know or your listeners know about salt and what function it serves in the body that has a lot of them, but one of the things that does is helped regulate water. And if they get this really big flush and vegetation that they almost water down their blood by eating all of it, and the salt can be pretty important to help them regulate that the balance of water in their blood. So pretty interesting, uh physiological tidbits huh, speaking of getting eaten, you mentioned you mentioned their second the importance of cover and the fact that NAT is very important. This is definitely something that UM is related to coyote populations expanding across the country, and I know you've done some work looking into this, the impact of coyotes some habitat considerations related to that. Can you expand on that a bit? Tell us what you found on that front. UM well, so the primary thing that we found and so I guess somebody back up for a minute. One thing that we did during that study with collared adult female deer and then followed them until they had phones, and then followed the phones. We also caught coyotes and collar does and followed the coyotes at the same time. So we're getting a pretty good look at how they're interacting and and who's eating what, and you know that sort of thing, how the how the coyotes are impacting them. And in our study, a large portion of the phones died. I think we had about fourteen percent survival, which is one of the lowest survivals on it that's ever been reported. Was on that study, and the line share of those were directly caused by coyotes. So at face value, it looked like coyotes are a big issue in that system. But we also were following the nutrition of those animals and and uh, you know what was going on in the system at a broader scale. And one of the things I thought was particularly interesting that we noticed we we would go to find some of these phones and occasionally we would walk in on a phone and it would bleat when it heard a step on a stick or something, and without fail, everyone that we ever heard bleat starved to death. So that was pretty interesting to me. And being a habitat guy was thinking, well, what is a what is a coyote gonna do when it hears a phone bleat? It's gonna go over there and eat it. So we actually may have seen coyotes eating a large portion of our phones because we have a habitat problem, and that makes it harder for them to hide and harder for mom to feed them. And then the phone is responding to not being fed well by bleeding, which makes it easier to find. Again, the habitat becomes a yeah, it becomes a compounding effect, and then we're you know, we we were associating to blame with coyotes when in reality it actually was a habitat problem. And you know, they changed the habitat management program there and have have started to see a real nice response from what I can tell from the camera data that we're getting from it, it looks like, you know, they're getting a response from from improving the habitat. So you know, habitat is really important because it provid us all of the different things that there need. You know, if you trap coyotes, that's only providing one thing that they need, which is a you know, making it easier potentially to avoid coyotes. But if you improve habitat, you improve their nutrition and the ability to hide from a predator. You know, it's just a compounding effect and it's normally easier. Another thing that was really interesting in that study, and and UH I worked with several other researchers chrisp Warming and Christophernum culture chip would on this. Uh one thing that we were shocked about when we started looking at the coyotes their movement behavior. They're all over the board. They're all individuals and they all do their own things. But we had coyotes and in different age classes and both sexes do this. We would call collar the coyote on the study area, and then some of them moved hundreds of miles and only a couple of months period from that study area. So in one in one case we actually it was so shocking. We actually tracked from point to point the entire path that the coyote. Coyote made it in about two month period and it was nine d something miles like that. That is unbelievad You know my point of bringing that up. One thing is shocking. The other thing is if you were going to implement a trapping program to try to improve phone UH survival, if you trap a coyote, first of all, yesterday, it could have been in the state over from you. Second of all, tomorrow you may have another coyote in its place from a state over to UH. You know, the trapping has to be at such a large scale and so intense and timed right before the phones are being born, that you know it, it really becomes a situation where it's almost not reasonable to implement. It makes people feel good to kill that one coyote, but in reality, that's all it did. Was it made a big difference to that one coyote obviously, but in terms of your phone, your phone recruitment, it probably didn't make any difference. Yeah, so it's okay. So if it sounds like really the best way to handle predation issue with coyotes is to just improve habitat, I've read a lot of stuff on this, but I'm curious, from what you've seen, what is the best way, what's the best habitat prescription to deal with predation to improve that phone recruitment. Well, uh, let's think about that and a couple of the tools that we've talked about. So food plots don't provide very good phone cover for the most part. Uh, when we're talking about phone cover, we're talking about things that are less than waste. We're talking about plants, primarily that are less than waist tall. So if you have a forest that's really thick and you don't want to walk through it, but you can kneel down and see really well through it. So that's pretty typical in the southeast with like a ten year old pine plantation. It looks like it's a huge block of cover, but actually it's really poor because if you get down to the level of a fawn and a coyote, you know it's it's uh, just not obstructed. So things the things that are most important to improve that habitat, or to increase sunlight to getting to the ground if it's limiting. So if you're in a field, it's not a limiting factor. If you're in a forest, it might be. So breaking up the canopy and allowing some sunlight to the ground is the most important thing. Light is the most important limit here of plant growth. So that's the first thing. The second thing fire or uh you know it, even the mineral stump idea hinge cutting, anything to get you know, more vegetation from waist high and down. You know, the more vegetation you can get at that level, the better. Okay, an old field you know, you know I talked about food plus an old field, so you know it just has a diversity of different plants species in it. And I'm not talking about said forming grasses. I'm talking about like some of the native plants that you would have in an old field. Those provide excellent cover for a phone. I read somewhere and I packed this could be the paper, the study you're working. I cannot remember who to attribute this to, UM, but I read somewhere that they also found that the increased amount of edge within a habitat is better for funding. UM. So lots of different changes in habitat. Is that something that you found too? UM? Yeah, that's ah. That was actually I believe will gouls Be from Auburn that lead that paper, and he took several different sites across the East and looked at what things were contributing to phone survival and that's the same thing that I've I've found that that edge is creating several things. One, it's diversity. Uh, you know, you have several different plant communities coming together at an edge, and that structural diversity makes camouflage really effective. So that will fawn has a spot pattern and counter shading because it camouflages it. So those edges coming together are important for that. And the more of that you have, the you know, you imagine that fawn. First of all, it's in really good area to use its camouflage, but then if you have a whole bunch of area for a coyote to search on top of that, both of those things would improve the survive of that. It's just amazing how fragile and resilient nature can be all at the same time. You know, everything is That's that's why I'm here. I just think it's fascinating that everything is so connected and you just you start moving things around in that food web a little bit, and you know, things start to not work correctly and then they become fragile. You're exactly right, yeah, alright, well, real quick, before we move on and with habitat still on our minds here, let's pause for a real quick second to talk about food again, as Spencer new Heart is bringing us a quick word from our partners at the white Tail Institute of North America. This week with white Tail Institute, we're talking to consultant John Cooner about their special blend of Imperial white Tail Fusion, which is super popular with dear and even more popular with hunters based on the product's outstanding reviews. Fusing is sort of an unusual product for us because it's in part one of our oldest products that we have kept updating and in part because we have ended up changing it so much that we ended up changing the name by continuing to improve it. The main parts are still the same as Imperial white Tail. Clover is the main forage component UH. Doctor Dr Hannah, our Plant Genetics has finished breeding our newest clover variety of a couple of years ago, and so that has been added added to uh to Fusion in place of the clover we've had before that. Also, we've increased the amount of the chickery that we put in there. UH. The protein level is a little bit higher uh than it was. It gives up to the product we had before was called chickery plus. And with all those changes, and the fact that that we found chickery plus fusing because it led folks to believe it was more chickery than clover, we said we might as well go ahead it it's time to change the name now because we've made those other uh continuing improvements to it. Impure. White tail clover is number one food plot planning in the world. It's made for a good boisture holding bottomland soil UH and it's just it. It is our number one flagship products. Into that there has been a small amount, say ten percent, maybe a little more of the chickery UH infusion, and that brings the total protein UH provided up to about If you'd like more info on White Tail Institute's forage products, check out white Tail Institute dot com, where they also carry some of the top supplements, attractants, and herbicides available. Okay, So, continuing on the topic of how certain factors influenced deer let's shift from habitat to the favorite conspiracy theory of the deer hunting world, which is the moon. And it's so much, so many question, just so much debate about the moon. I know you've done some work on that. Could you could you give us the end of the details of how you did that study and then what you filmed. Yeah, so you remember the study in North Carolina. We we collared those females there and the video that you saw from the q d m A was actually right after presented that at the Southeast Dear study group that was based on only that that group of does which you know I had. I don't remember how many were collared at that point, but you know, uh, quite a few deer. And on that site there was a clear response of deer, especially on some moon phases. I believe it was the late the the late quarter, why I forgetting the name of the late happening third quarter or whatever. So there was a big peak, especially near dusk during that moon phase. And when I added more d or two it after the fact from that site, same thing. Most of the movements that were influenced by the moon we're actually at night, so you know they wouldn't impact your hunting, but some of the response was during hunting hours, so that was pretty exciting and actually contacted a number of of deer researchers from across the Eastern Seaboard. I wanted to expand that and and look at this at a at a higher level. And I got a couple of data sets from Steve ditch Cough at Auburn, a couple of data sets from Lisa Mueller and Craig Harper at the University of Tennessee, and UH a couple of other data sets all the way up to Maryland, UM with with the Mark Connor up there. So Sarah, you know, I think there were maybe six data sets total from bucksandos across several states, and I wanted to look at what, you know, are they bonding similarly to the moon phase across all these sites and across sexes? And what I found was pretty interesting. Some of the sites there was no effect of the moon or not one that we detected. Some sites females or males responded and the other one didn't. Some sites both sexes responded in a strong way, but in the sites that they both responded in a strong way, they weren't similar across sites. So then I was, you know, basically, when you get to a point like this in a research project and you don't have anything clear to talk about, you know, so it's like it it becomes pretty hard to publish something like that because you know, we we can see varying effects. Uh, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But when it does work, it doesn't work the same in different places. So yeah, well it wasn't inconclusive once I started digging on it. Uh. What I basically came to the conclusion about was the responsive dear to the moon were largely dictated by what type of predator they had in the system and how intense hunting pressure was and that sort of thing. And we were seeing some responses on some sites when they had as coyote as the main predator. That was different than when humans were the primary predator or when bobcats were the primary predator. It was changing based on that that predator, and that makes a lot of sense when you start thinking about the hunting strategy of that predator and how it might be best to evade being eaten by. So yeah, So, uh, for instance, coyotes or what's called a coursing predator, so that basically the same as wolves. They basically are are trotting around the landscape visually hunting, and of course they have a good nose, but a lot of you know, they're seeing prey. So a good way to avoid being eaten by that type of predator is to avoid being seen. So you might avoid times that it's really easy to see, so that you may avoid moving a lot during the night when it's a full moon, for instance, if you are avoiding predation from a sitting weight predator, which would be like your bobcat or a lot of human hunters, it's good to avoid places that's easy for that predator to hide from you so that it can ambush you. So a lot of what I was seeing seemed to be and and again I haven't published this data, but uh that that's what it seemed to be going on, is when when you had certain types of predators, they would drive a little bit of different response and you know, uh, they're adapting to you know, to not be an eaten. You know, they're trying to not be eating. So they're they're changing their strategy based on that, and I think that's why they're This is sort of like that I forgot how you put it. I thought it was nicely put the way you did, But it's one of those things that goes around and everybody argues over all the hunters are always arguing some think that the moon's affecting movement, others don't. Well, they're probably there's a lot of truth behind any of those arguments, depending on where you are and you know, how you're what you're hunting strategy is, and what kind of predator densities you have, and what those predators are, and how good the habitat is, you know, just on and on. You probably are having different responses from deer based on all those things. And that's why it's so hard to detangle because they're they're so adaptive there. They are just doing what suits them. Another just a little tidbit. Another really interesting thing that I found, uh in that study, and I didn't have enough data really to explore it further, but I did find some literature that, like even in humans, but the best literature is in mice. Some of your your bodily functions are influenced by the moon. So you'll have things that you know, like melitonin will will spike in certain moon phases at certain times. And one of the things that I thought was pretty interesting is one of those hormone spikes at the same time as as some of the deer would be moving in mice during that moon phase and those things. The one that I really keyed in on was one that makes you hungry, so in mice that it's linked to how much how actively they're trying to eat. So it started making a lot of sense that actually something related to the way the moon influences us through you know, gravity and and uh light actually could influence how hungry we are. Which you know, that's that's starting to get really crazy, and you know that the work that it would take to to show something like that would be pretty incredible, But uh, that's same. That's find some pretty interesting linkages. And again there there's literature even showing that the moon is affecting human behavior. So it's perfectly reasonable to think that some of those biological things could be going on with here. Uh you know that we don't really understand h So so you did this study down the original study, and then you collected additional deaths that some were all across the country, and then from there it got a little more cloudy. Now that sitting where you are now today looking back and all of it, is there any is there any takeaway that you actually utilize yourself, Like if you looked at all that and you try to apply it to your own hunting situation. In regards to the moon, is there anything that you can say to yourself at least okay, well, at least send no X that I can use or find helpful. Yes, the best take home message that I could give people is to hunt when you can. Uh that the moon phase it probably does influence der behavior in some cases and maybe not in others. And who knows whether or not you're in one of those situations or whether or not it's changing over time. So while the moon could influence behavior, AH, is probably too complicated at this point for us to understand. So I would suggest hunting when you're able, if you have good conditions and you can get through your day off work or you know, you have that good Saturday lined up. Uh, you know, go honey, dear. You know one thing about And just to back up a little bit, when we look at the data and I'm talking about the moon influencing behavior, I'm just talking about increasing how much they're moving at different times. Yeah, it's not it's not like in some moon phases they're not moving at all. They're always moving, you know, they're always eating. So uh, the best way to take advantage of the moon is just not worry about it and hunt when you can, and sometimes you may line up with one as best. I mean, you know, things like the rut, they're not influenced by the moon phase. Uh. You know, we showed that over and over again. Things that you could key in on like that where we know bucks are on their feet and moving a lot more, those things aren't aren't affected by the moon. So unfortunately, I know that's not what people like to hear, but that's the best take on message at this point that I have from it. Fair enough. It's uh, endlessly interesting to try to piece that stuff out. But like you said, there's there's not a whole lot of really slid research they can point to there being any type of something anything we can really latch onto and say is is obvious correlation? I mean, there's you know, well, you know there there have been several data sets presented, uh in different outlets, and you know, sometimes they have a really strong case for one thing, and then the other ones there's nothing, and then in other cases that showing something the opposite. And I think when I gathered all those data sets and saw it for myself across all these different places, it became pretty clear to me that there probably is something going on, but it's changing obviously across the landscape, and I don't know how best to predict how it's going to change yet, and I don't know if we ever will. Have you have you, um, I know there's been a lot of different things and research looking into us. I I don't know if you personally have. Have you spent any time looking into other factors that increase or decrease deer activity and movement that you can point to and say, yes, for sure X variable an increased dear movement that we can key in on his hunters. Well, I do have a little bit of experience looking at different weather variables for instance. Uh, my primary experience has been looking at how coyotes are. You know, different kinds of predators influence movements, but they do shift and tend to shift their behavior, you know, during the daytime when it's extremely cold at night. Uh so that's one thing obviously people probably already do that. There there are variable effects of different kinds of fronts that could cause them to move more than than other times. But you know, again, uh, these depending on where you do these studies, you find something different, and uh, I think that a lot of it has to go by local knowledge. You know, everybody has their own strategy that they have developed over time from the places that they hunt, and uh, you know they're probably get good data. Now one thing, just a short plug one one thing that we're trying to do through the Deer Lab. We haven't a hunting app, and uh, Bronson strict one was the one responsible primarily, and Stephen maris also I'm coming in after the fact after they've already made that. But uh, that app is designed to help us gather some data from hunters all over the place, so that goes into a repository that we could actually then look at some of these types of things like you know there's some sort of weather event or know the moon phase or that that sort of stuff. Is there actually are things changing when hunters are seeing deer and when they're successful. So really that that will that will be one of the best data sets, assuming that hunters use it and are truthful when they're presenting the data. Obviously, we were not gonna you know, we're not gonna sharing the data with people that could go steal your hunting stand or something. But uh, you know that platform is designed to help us inform questions like this because the the methods that we've been using with coloring animals in particular or just not providing really consistent results across the range of deer. So you know that tool if we get thousands and thousands of hunters reporting to us when they're seeing deer. Uh. Of course, the app is not designed that. The app is designed to help you with your own hunting and manage your own stand locations and and for you to generate reports to see where you're seeing deer. So that's what the apps for. But it's being stored in a way that we could use it to look and see if the moon phases affecting when hunters are seeing deer in in general. So uh, you know that I think that will be a pretty good resource for the Deer Lab to explore in the future and hopefully we'll have a load. Um. But so it's if you go to M s U Deer Lab website, there's a link on there. It's called the the Deer Hunt App, I believe, yeah, And it's a free app. It's free for anybody to download and use as they please. And it has a lot of really interesting features in it. Uh. You can manage stand you can manage like a hunt club, so everybody could see stands that you have on the hunt club and you can see whether or not somebody's occupying the stand, those sorts of things. But you can also create a side hunt club for your own stands where the rest of the people in the Hunt club can't see them. So you have some privacy options in it too to do that kind of thing. Um. So a lot of a lot of really cool things in that app that you could use. And this is a again available on on you know an idos or an Android. So really cool app and and it will help us it's called it's called the Deer Hunt app. Uh, it'll help us answer some of these questions. Hopefully we can, you know, give you a more straight forward answer on how the moon affects deer or or what weather patterns affect dear behavior. That can help you harvest that big But there you go some citizens Science opportunity there for all of us to contribute a little bit. Yeah, we actually want to do a couple of different things with the Citizens Science. So we also were trying to figure out a nice protocol to allow hunters to do mineral stomps and then uh, you know, send us some data that we can then make available to hunters at a broad scale. So, yeah, we actually have several opportunities like that, hopefully that that the deer can help us inform or the hunters can help us inform them about their deer. Yeah. Yeah, well, hey, whenever those opportunities are available, definitely let us know. I'll be sure to share that with our listeners, because I think anytime we can help contribute to that kind of thing, it's a good idea and it eventually will come around and help us too, I think with us final absolutely, that's the whole point of this is we're trying to learn so that we can share it with the the other people. So, so, you've spent so many years studying white tails and other wildlife and habitat all these different things. What piece of research or what study or what aspect of what you've looked into has actually changed how you hunt the most? Like, what's been the most impactful insight you've garnered over the years that actually impacts your hunting? Yeah, that that's a a great question, and it would. So there there are two that are really impacting my hunting. One is the mineral stumps, and it's been impacting my hunting for years and I just now know why. So I've been doing that around my bow stands and have been quite successful for a number of years, both hunting by cut those trees down and having that natural source of vegetation right near my stand. So that's one thing that has really impacted my bow hunting. The other thing, and I primarily bow hunt, so it can be important for you know, that rifle hunter as well, but that's what that's what I'm using it for. Uh. The other thing is actually impacting my my bow hunting also, especially on my own property. And I followed while I was in Tennessee working with Craig. I followed acorn production of white oaks for a number of years and it was pretty interesting to look at individual oaks and follow them over time, and it turns out about fifty percent of oaks will produce almost no mask. So I thought that was really interesting. And the reason it's impacting my hunting now is actually marked trees based on their production potential on my property and then cut all the rest of them down, so that that fanning basically released all of my excellent producers and now they produce an ungodly amount of mask and I love sitting next to one of them with a you know, archery equipment. It has might there a little bit harder to find though, because we have a lot of great cover with these awesome producers spread out within that cover. So uh, you know, it's improved the habitat dramatically. But but that that oak mass production has just been unbelievable and that's definitely impacted my hunting a great amount. So how how can someone go about really figuring that out for their own oak trees? Because I feel like a lot of us, like we go out there in the summer and we see, oh, yeah, this tree seems to be producing. If I don't, I mean a lot of people don't pay attention to that at all. But people that do pay pay attention to oaks, imagine that might be the extent of it, is that is this tree producer or not this year? And you know, will I hunt near How could we well determine whether or not this is an old tree to keep or an old tree to get rid of? When I was looking at that study. I was trying to figure out is there a characteristic of the trees that would predict whether or not it's going to be a good producer. And the short answer that is no. It seems to be a genetic um predisposition of that tree. It's either good genetics to produce a lot of acorns or it doesn't. So if it doesn't, it doesn't matter what you do. You can release that tree, you can fertilize it. You know, it doesn't matter. It's never going to produce a lot of masks. The excellent producer, on the other hand, is always going to produce a lot of masks no matter what you do. So you can enhance that, particularly by releasing it by cutting trees around it down and letting its can at the Expand so with that being said, to determine whether or not it's a good producer, you need to follow whether or not that that tree has produced for a couple of a couple or three years. And particularly if you follow it for three years, with about nine certainty, you can estimate which ones are excellent producers and which ones are poor. So that's pretty that's a pretty big deal. If you were going to try to thin a stand. And you know a lot of people don't want to thin their oaks stand because they don't want to cut down any oaks that are going to produce masks. Well, this is the sort of that that silver lining where you could actually cut down about half of your oaks and actually improve mass production because you cut down only oaks that didn't produce anything. So they could be a very useful tool. Uh So if you follow them for a few years, especially if you follow them three years, and of course the better, the better, the the data will be the longer that you follow the tree. But if you follow it for three years and it produces an acorn out two out of those three years, then it's probably in the excellent category. And then when you cut those trees down, then you can and on taking advantage of the mineral stump that season two right, yeah, yeah, yeah, and uh just so you set for that season. Just just one note, I have cut down mineral stumps that are five years old now and the deer still just crushing them. So the deer actually will help you keep that thing producing for several years in some cases, and so you might you might get several years out of it, out of the mineral stomps around those trees that you've released that are also producing you know, a ton of masks, and so we keep circling back to the mineral stumps here. But it is an interesting idea. So I'm thinking, if I'm interpreting this correctly, these mineral stumps could last years if there's enough browse pressure, so there's enough deer to keep that knocked down so it doesn't grow to reach maturity again. Because because the process is right, that that tree is trying to balance itself from what belowground, the root system belowground, to what's above ground. So as long as what's above ground is is not substantial, as long as a deer keep it knocked down, it'll keep being a mineral stump and producing the superfood. Right. Yeah, I don't know biologically it should still be a superfood. I have not collected the data on the nutrient content of any of them that have been going more than a year yet, but I will say in terms of the dear behavioral response to it, yes, they will continue to come back and hit that thing over and over again. And if the brows pressure is substantial enough, well, if it's if it's too there's sort of a balance there. If it's too intense, it'll just kill the plant. But you know, if it's not intense enough, the plant will grow out of it. I wonder to grow out of the ridge. So there's sort of a you know, a mid range there where you want a lot of brows pressure on it, but not so much that they just kill the plant. So, uh, yeah, in some cases I feel I've actually it seems like that would be hard to hit that range. But most of the time, when I've cut ten or twelve of these things down, the deer will keep it at the right height to keep utilizing it for a couple of seasons normally. So is there could could we manufacture that same um mechanism? So let's say we're in a situation where there's not enough brows pressure to keep it knocked down. So after you're one, I can tell it's it's going to be growing too much. What if I go and prune it. What if I trim it every year to keep it down in that sweet spot? Could I kind of artificially maintain then yeah, you can for a few years at least. Eventually the plant will run out of resources, and based on that fact, you'd probably expect that the the huge bumping quality you get from the first time may not happen the next time because the trees already used some of its resources. Uh again, I don't have date on that, but intuitively that's what I think would happen. So the short answers, Yes, you could continually cut the same one down to make it available to deer, but at some point it will just die because it won't have enough resources to keep responding to that. So uh yeah. In short, you could if you if you cut a bunch of them down and some of them, some of them get out of the reach of deer, you could go come down again. All right? Well, Dan, do you have any final questions for Marcus here? What kind of change saw do I need to buy? Well? Uh, whatever you can effectively cut a tree down with. Um. Yeah, I've used a variety of different kinds of chainsaws and even use an axe and a hatchet. Uh. You know, it all works, So all right, find something on sale at trackers splayed in We'll do all right, Well, anything else that you want to leave our listeners with, Marcus? Is there any point that we haven't gotten to or any kind of pet project you want to make sure that people know about. No, just I'm I'm glad everybody has been listening and and thanks for having me on the show. And you know, I always encourage the listeners to come check out our Facebook page and social media. Uh m s you Deer Lab web page, great resources and and keep listening to your podcast. You've got great information. I really appreciate you having me on. Well, thank you, Marcus. Absolutely same back to you as well, and we'll make sure to have links to the Deer Lab website and Facebook page and the Deer University podcast. You guys are putting out lots of great information. Um that that I've definitely been able to learn some stuff from two. So thank you Marcus. We appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, thank you. And that's going to do it for us today. Thank you so much for tuning in for this one. Before we go, they'll just want to you have a big thank you to our partners at Sick Gear, Yetie Cooler's, Matthew's Archery, Maven Optics, The White Tail in Student of North America, Trophy Ridge and hunt Terra Maps, and of course thank you again for listening. I hope you have a great weekend, a great week I hope we're gonna see some of you on the twenty one of July two thousand seventeen. Are live recording Friday morning AM at the q d M A National Convention and uh that's gonna be a lot of fun. Hopeful we'll see you later that night as well, eight pm. Location is tb D. We'll be posting on our Facebook page, Twitter or Instagram. So thanks again, have a great day and stay wired to hunt.

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