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 Kenyon. This episode number one, and today we're joined by Dwayne Diefenbach, a wildlife biologist and the leader of the penn State Dear four Study, and we're discussing Antler point restrictions, how dear research is conducted, lessons learned from monitoring deer movements, dear home range insights, and much much more. Hello, and welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sitka Gear. Today in the show, we are going to be joined by Dwayne Diefenbach. He is an agjunct professor of Wildlife Ecology at penn State University in the leader of the penn State Dear Force Study and the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. UM. That's that's a whole lot of things as far as titles, but I think in short, what it means is that Dwayne spends an enormous amount of time studying and researching and monitoring and learning about white tailed deer and their behavior movements. Impacts all sorts of stuff, and I think it's it's a lot of stuff that that I and Dan and I'm guessing all of you are probably gonna be really interested in. So today, with the two thousand seventeen hunting season kind of coming near to a close for many of us, I kind of thought we can take a step back from the hunting stuff and take a little time to get back to the basics and simply talk about and learn about these critters that we love so much. So that's my thoughts leading into this one. Dan Um, what do you think about that game plan? I like it, man, I tell you what. I I've never done any type of official research before, so this kind of stuff triggers me. I guess I really like to learn about numbers. Like That's what I do for my my real job, right, I I look at spreadsheets all day. I run audits and and that kind of thing. So when you know, in order to do proper research, you have to do those things. So I'm I guess I'm kind of what I'm what I'm getting at is I'm kind of a nerd for statistics. That's good. That's good, and it's funny you bring up what you do. We've been friends for many years now, we've hosted this podcast, done podcast episodes together for for three or four years now. I still don't really understand what you're doing. What what I imagined? Dan? Um? Have you ever seen the movie Off the Space? Uh? Yeah, So I imagined two things. Either you're like one of the guys who just is really angry about his boss constantly telling him to put the cover sheet on the TPS report. You're either that guy or you're the guy I think his name is now, not Peter, I can't remember what his name is. But the two bobs coming in, they're interviewing, so what exactly would you say you do here? And then he's like, I've told you I'm a people person. I think that might be you, Dan, Yeah, it could be. It could be I'm that guy. I'm the guy who just takes one giant stamp and I stamped a paper and then I put it onto another pile, and then stamp a paper and then I put it onto another pile. So okay, that helps, that makes sense, And then that that helps paint to paint a clear picture for me. Now, I don't use a computer at all. My job oh man. So, um, anything we need to cover in the life of Dan before we get to our main show here, Dwayne, I don't you know, as far as I want to tell you a story, but I don't think I can that it's not R rated because it's about my daughter. But but it just as a reminder that I have to watch my mouth around the kids and what I say. I'll just tell it. I'll just tell it and you can edit it out and it parts out if you want. Okay. So the other day at school, warned listeners, Yeah, right, right. So the other day at school, um, or, my wife gets a notification I think from the teacher says, well, your your daughter used foul language at to another student, and and my wife's like, what happened? You know what happened? And like, in a way, I'm kind of proud of her because she used it the right way. But but but she says, another kid started crying over something real simple and petty, and she called that kid a pussy. And then she went on to explain that if you cry over stuff like that, like she goes, are you hurt? No, then you're you know, and then you know, like if you're crying because of nothing. That's what you are. And and I I guess I. My wife's like, you have got to watch your mouth around the kids, so I, uh, I gotta. By the way, I am not gonna win any awards for like best dad and never Okay, So I don't think this is news to anyone dance. But there's that one person who said they're a better father because of you, So right, hold hold that close to your heart. Yeah. But but other than that, you know, just starting to think about late season, man, I think here, I mean, life is just so crazy right now with the holiday, the holidays coming up. But hope I can get some trail cameras out, go to some of my properties, try to find some of these food sources and uh, you know, start that whole game. So have you assuming based on what you just said that then you've not been out at all in December yet? No? The uh the Iowa shotgun seasons just ended on Sunday. Yeah, so you're thinking now, as I understand it, though, you have to hunt with a firearm now, right since you filled your bow tag. Nope, Um, I can use a primitive weapon during that muzzle late muzzloader season so I can continue to use my bow during muzzleloader you know, the late muzzleloader season, and that goes from now until the end of the season. Um so, And I think there's a new law in Iowa, like I can use a crossbow now I can in this in replace of a muzzleloader, I can use a handgun. Uh So I won't be doing any of that, but uh there is an opportunity for me to go out and harvest a second buck if I if I find one worth shooting. Cool, that's exciting. I hope you do. I hope you get out there. Man. Are you done done? Now? Are you done? Oh? No, no, unfortunately not. I will tell you what though, I'm just kinda I am worn down, like I am ready for I'm ready for this season to be done. I think I just I just need kind of a fresh start. I think, Um you know, since we last chatted, I think I had told you, well maybe we didn't talk about it at all, and we talked all about my late season hunts for Holyfield. Well after the last the last time I talked with you, or I think even on this podcast, we chatted about going down to Ohio and the last thing we knew you saw a buck potentially worth shooting, but you were going to make a move that night. No, we talked. We talked since then because I talked about you about how the next day I moved and then he showed up. I got there late. Remember, Um, Remember I forgot all my hunting clothes at my hotel. Okay, So I got into the stop spot late. And when I got to the spot I wanted to hunt, there was already doze feeding there, so I couldn't hunt there. But the big bucks stepped out right where I wanted to be. The next day, and the next day I got to the spot I wanted to be in, the big buck came out where it was the night before. Um. So that was the end of that Ohio trip. Okay, So now you're back in Michigan, right, So yes. Then I got back to Michigan and a cold front was hitting a couple of days later. So my game plan had been to stay out on the Michigan Main Michigan property where Holy Field is until that cold front hit. So the front hit and I started hunting. I started bouncing around. Um and over the course of I don't know, I think that front hit on the fifth of December, maybe something like that. And between the fifth of December and the December I think I hunted maybe six times. Um when there was good missions, Goodwin direction, all that kind of stuff. Um. And you know the long story short on that is, I never saw holy Field. I never saw any bucks at all. Um. Got into some good spots, had good weather, etcetera, etcetera, but just nothing but doze. So that was disappointing. So last year holy Field did kind of the same thing, right, He made it through gun season, showed up one or two more times, but then went away for a while. Or was he consistent all at late season? Last year? He was pretty consistent last December. Um, I only saw him. Well, I saw him a few times in person in December, including that time I had him, you know, in front of me at sixty five yards um. But he was on trail camera ton Um. He was all over the cameras last year during the month of December. I have not gotten a single trail camera picture of him yet this month or in November. I don't have a single picture of him since October. Holy Field. Wait, I thought he made it through the gun season. Oh he did. I've seen him. People have seen it trail camera pictures. Yeah. So, so I saw him, you know, twelve times in November and then UM got a sighting of him the day after gun season. UM, so you know, visually was confirming he was alive. But no pictures at all. He hasn't been on the trail cameras at all, which is weird. Um. But uh but yeah, so I hunted you know during this time period, haven't seen him, no pictures. Um. So then I said, all right, time to I'm not gonna keep beating my head against a wall if he's not moving daylight or anything. So then last weekend I went to Ohio and hunted in Ohio Friday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Um. I thought I'd tried to catch they had a little two day guns season going on, and no luck there either. Um. I saw some deer um one night, I think it was Saturday night in particular. I thought I felt pretty good about it. Um got set up in the spot near where I had seen this big buck um the trip before, and UM just started seeing all sorts of deer, more dear than I ever see on this property. UM ended up seeing maybe seven or eight does and I think six different bucks, um, and these does all came piling off these ridges and they all came by within shooting range on me. And these bucks were chasing does. They're they're bumping does around that. I think there was a young faun that maybe was coming into estrus. Finally, you know that kind of second rut you get these late maturity funds. Um. Because it was nuts, like, I haven't seen anything like that on this property in a long time. UM. The issue was that these bucks were all young bucks, two year olds and year and a half olds, um. But it got me excited. I was like, man, if there's you know, a fall here and all these bucks are kyrageting one air, A couple of bucks were fighting, um, all this stuff going on, I was like, man, maybe maybe this would be the time the Big Boys shows. But he didn't. UM. I guess the only good news that there were pictures. There was a good amount of trout camera activity recently with three different mature bucks still in the area, UM, somewhat consistently. You know, all shown up a few times a week. UM. So there's bucks there, but they were not moving in daylight when I was there. So three days there no luck. Came back home and uh, I just pulled trail cameras. Again. I haven't checked pictures in like ten days or two weeks or something like that, and again nothing on camera. Um, just a few pictures of that one three year old I was calling survivor um and some year and a half old. And that's basically it. So I think things are kind of I think things are kind of coming to a close here the two thousand seventeen season. Um, pretty soon here, in a few days, I probably gotta switch over to shooting some doughs because I just have to kill some doughs out here. That was gonna be My question is when when do you give up and then and on Holy Field and then go out and just try to fill the freezer. Yeah, I think I'm I'm a few days away from doing that. Um. So pretty soon here it's gonna be time to just get that done. Um and then uh, you know, move on to two thousand eighteen and whatever that might hold. So, man, it's crazy how different our seasons have been when you think about it, because you're getting to the point where you say, man, you're worn down because you've been hunting so hard you know, throughout almost the entire from September all the way until now. And I'm I'm to the point where, Man, I cannot wait to get out and sit a late season hunt, even if it means forty degrees in December, you know what I mean? Like I I feel like my season was over too soon, very very different seasons. I think you hunted ten days and saw like six bucks over one fifty and I hunted. I hunted like a hundred fifty days and saw six x over ten inches something like that. Um, it's been a it's been a season, man, I'll tell you that. But next episode, I think we do. I want to do like a two thousand and seventeen analysis, like review the season, go through in detail. Pretty soon. I want to sit down, like think through all the things that I thought coming into the season, all the things I've learned after the season, all the mistakes I made. Um, I want to do like a really comprehensive review for myself and then and I thought maybe that'd be helpful to share that here, So keep that, keep that in mind for yourself, Dan for our next one. Um, so we can both do that perfect. But I guess it is now time for us to wrap this up because it's it's time to get Dwayne on the phone. So let's take a quick break here for our sick coust story and then we'll call Dwayne for this week's sick of story. We're joined by photographer Caleb Boyd who tells us about a hunt of a life time that never ended with the harvest. So I've been fortunate enough to travel and photograph around the world on commercial and documentary hunts, and one of my most memorable hunting experiences was capturing a hunt for a U. S. Marshal that was retired and it was on a brown bear hunt out of good News Bay, Alaska. This ten day hunt turned into a fourteen day crazy rain, freezing, snowing, um out of tents and glassing for ten to twelve hours a day, and it was unbelievable weather where we saw wolves, wolverine, bears, moose, you name it. And it was on the frozen tundra. So each night was windy and raining and it was it was a long time, So fourteen days out in the field, and it was one of the coolest experiences of my life being able to see all these animals and yet not take an animal, and so even though the hunt was unsuccessful, the experience was an adventure of a lifetime. On Caleb's hunt, he was wearing Sitka's Mountain pants and jet Stream vests. If you'd like to create a stick 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 show is Dwayne Diefenbach. Welcome to the show, Dwayne. Oh, thank you, glad to be here. Yeah, and uh I was. I was mentioning to Dan Um earlier that I've been following your work through the Dear Forest Study over on your blog for a handful of years now, Um, and I've just been pretty fascinated with the things you've been sharing, the little updates in regards to what you're doing and how you're doing, and different different insights you've pulled from that study. So so for a while I've wanted to try to have you on the show. I'm excited that we can finally do this, So so first off, thank you, and secondly, Um, for those though that maybe aren't familiar with who you are and the work you're doing, can you just kind of give us a quick overview of of what it is you do and how you got to this point. Sure, UM, so, I I'm the leader of the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, which is located at penn State University. I'm actually an employee of the U S Geological Survey UM, but because I'm stationed at Penn State UM, I'm also on the adjunct faculty, so it gives me a unique position where UM I do research. UM I also do a little bit of teaching. I mentor graduate students, and one of the more important parts of my job job is to work collaboratively with our state UH natural resource agencies and so UM. For the past seventeen years, I've been doing deer research with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and a few years ago UM I actually also started a joint project with both the Game Commission and our Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry. So the Bureau Forestry manages about two million acres in Pennsylvania. UM and both agencies, of course UM have a vested interest in managing deer um the best they can, and so both agencies are working with me now on on our current deer research so so why did you want to get involved the dear, dear research at the beginning? You know, seventeen years ago, when you start with this focus area, I have to laugh because most of my career I've avoided deer. UM. I've done work on waterfowl and UH. I reintroduced bobcats to an island and have done various research projects and and quite frankly, I never was that excited about having to do research with deer. But of course when I started in this position, UM, deer are very important to the Game Commission, and right around two thousand, UM they decided that they wanted to do some research because for years they really hadn't done any research on deer, and UM they were thinking about implementing some major changes. UM. They ended up implementing Antler point restrictions in Pennsylvania, UM to create an older age structure in the buck population. And so along with that, they knew that they needed to do research. And so UM that's where I came in. And I guess I haven't looked back. It's actually, despite my trepidation, UM, it's actually been very rewarding because the Pennsylvania Game Commission has provided a lot of resources towards the dear research. So we've been able to do some really interesting work and address just some basic questions about why dear disperse and how they disperse, and and and things like that. So it's it's actually been a fun ride, I imagine. So so, speaking of those early issues there, you mentioned, you know how there's a lot of work being done around the Antler point restrictions when those were introduced. Um, did you get involved in analyzing, you know, the health of the herd or anything along those lines before and after those were introduced. Yeah, that was a big project from two thousand two to two thousand and five. We actually we radio colored over five deer um and because we wanted to look at what harvest rates were before Antler point restrictions were implemented, we wanted to know what harvest rates were afterwards. And we wanted to know whether um deer that weren't harvested the first year because their racks were too small, whether they survived and were actually available to be harvested in the second year. So, you know, those are questions that people didn't really know the answer to, and um, we said, well, if we're going to make these changes, we need to know what actually happens. So we looked at the biological side of things. UM. At the same time, probably more importantly, we wanted to know what hunters thought about Antler Point restrictions before they were implemented, during and after. And so it was a complete evaluation of both the social side of of what we call a p RS or Antler Point restrictions as well as the biological effects. So, of course now I need to ask in particular because the whole issue of a PRS have been a hot topic in my home state of Michigan. UM. We've instituted a p RS in one corner of the state. UM, and then it's been a it's been a hotly contested debate over the last year or so a couple of years about whether that should be institute across the rest of the state. UM. Do you recall what do you guys end up finding out as far as the social and biological answers to those questions you just post work. Well, the bottom line is, from a biological standpoint, Antler point restrictions work. UM. In Pennsylvania, we found that hunters were, you know, obeyed the law. UM. They UM, there was you know some um, there was very little illegal killing of deer. There was a little bit of mistaken kill um um. But for the most part, UM we increased the number of older aged bucks by like so UM. It was a success from the standpoint of creating an older age structure of bucks. UM. From the from the social side, it was pretty interesting. What we found was that hunters that supported well, I would say basically, hunters made up their mind before we implemented Antler point restrictions. Either they said they were going to work beforehand and supported them, or they didn't, and after Antler point restrictions it really did change their mind. H And how has that study continued on today? I mean, are people still tracking the social um side of that at all? Because I'm curious to hear you now that's been a significant number of years since if viewpoints have changed at all? Do you know that? Um? Well, the Game Commission are our research has concluded, But the Game Commission does do UM surveys from time to time every couple of years. And I think that what we found in our study is that before Antler point restrictions were implemented, about six hunters supported them, and by the time we got done it. It was basically the same, and I think that pretty much holds true today. Interesting, it sounds like from the things I've heard, it was quite a contentious issue there for you guys as well. UM, I heard it got a little bit, oh a little feisty at some of these different town hall meetings and little heated As far as the road show that I know that, I think it was Gary Alt who who was at the time, I think was kind of trying to communicate with the hunting population about why this is a good idea, and UM, it sounded like that was quite an interesting time to be in Pennsylvania. Well, the critical component this and Gary Alt went all over the state for a couple of years, meeting with holding you know, tens, if not hundreds of public meetings, and eventually meeting literally with tens of thousands of sportsmen in Pennsylvania. UM. And what he generally found is overwhelming support of the people who attended those meetings. And UM, but I think that education. UM. Other people, not just us, have pointed out that if you're going to make changes like this, you really need to do your homework up front and inform hunters of what the changes are going to be, what the expectation is, what they can expect to see um and that's really important to making sure it's a success. And I think that has a lot to do with why it was successful in Pennsylvania and that the majority of hunters supported it before they were implemented. I got a quick question in regards to like the logistics of this research and how it was implemented. What like, how how long did this research take? How how did you go about collecting all that data? Well, we did surveys before and after every hunting season, so in two thousand and two UM, which was basically um uh sort of a pre treatment, right, because you had all these bucks out there and then suddenly many of them were not going to be legal to harvest, and there weren't that many older aged bucks. Only about of our population was two and a half years or older. On the odds of having a four and a half year old buck in the population were probably on the order of one to two UM. So what we did was in the winter before a p r S were implemented, we caught as many deer as we could um mail deer and put radio collars on them so that we could monitor their harvest rates and survival rates. Um. And then as I mentioned, right before that first hunting season, we sent out a survey to a random sample of hunters, and then we did another survey right after the end. And then of course the next winter we captured and radio collared more dear and we did that for three years. So you captured and collared five deer, right, I forget the actual numbers, but it was between five and six hundred deer I believe. So so how did that happen? I mean, was that it throughout different parts of the state or was that in one general area? Was it like, did it take one weekend or two areas one? Because Pennsylvania, we the a p rs are divided into a three point area in a four point area because there Western Pennsylvania has better habitat and a lot more yearlings um will have uh four you know, will be eight points in their first year, or a lot of them will be six points and some will even be eight points. Um. So so in the Western PA they had to have four points on a side. So we had one study area out in western part of the state, and then we had another study area in the central part of the state where we had a three point rule. Um, so we had to study areas had cruise capturing deer in both areas for three years. Okay, so that was over. It was five over a three year period. Yes, okay, okay, I got you. And I don't know if you even have the information or can answer this, But how much did this undertaking cost? Uh? Well, let's see, that's already about ten years ago. But I would say, um, over the three years, pool boy, well over a million dollars. Quentin Endeavor, I would imagine absolutely. Her research is not cheap. It's very We figure it concess about a thousand dollars for every deer that we capture. Wow, can you not the wrong this topic? Um? Can you outline for us actually how you go about a deer capture, whether be for a study like you did back in two, two, three, four and five, or you know, eventually I want to move into the current research being done. I'm kind of curious to hear about actually how you're getting your hands on these deer and putting collars or whatever it might be on them. How does that actually happen for you guys? Well, we've tried lots of different things. We've used helicopters, UM, dart guns. We have clover traps, which are basically just a walk in trap. UM. We've used rocket nets where rockets fire a net over bait UM. And we also use drop nets, which are even larger nets that are set up with a trigger that the deer walk under the net net drops down on them. What we've found is that UM helicopters are not effective. UM. Well, they can be, but there they're really not practical in the Eastern US with our forests um UH dart guns are really time consuming and we've given up on trying to dart free ranging deer UM. So basically we're we in our current research project on the Deer forest study, we just use rocket nets and clover traps. UM. If we're in an area that has a lot more open areas and and higher densities of deer, we might use drop nets because we can catch a lot of deer at one time, But for the most part, we just use the clover traps and rocket nets. So you get a deer netted and then so there's a deer on the ground with a net around it. I gotta imagine that deer is struggling. Um, what happens next? Imagine someone runs up to it, grabs it, tries to cover its head or something. Can you walk me through that? Sure? If we catch deer with the rocket net, usually we're catching two or three deer, but we might catch five, six, seven, eight, um. So those deer tangled up in the net, um, we have a crew that will restrain them, and we also sedate them because you know, if we catch three or four deer, it's going to take Even if they were sedated, it might take ten twenty minutes to get them untangled from the net. So we have to sedate the deer. We always blindfold deer when we handle them because with them not being able to see, that reduces some of the stimulation and their calmer UM. And so will sedate them, untangle them out of the net. At that point, we can you know, tag them, caller them if we have to collect any sand upples, will do that at that time, um, and then then we can give them a reversal drug for the sedative, and we have to basically monitor to them until they're able to get up and move on their own. If we capture a deer in a clover trap UM. We generally don't like to sedate them because if we have a well trained crew, they can go in um restrain the deer, fit the caller, and and ear tag it and collect whatever data we need to collect in in about three to five minutes. So there's really no need to sedate them because the stresses UM very very short term. And uh and if you don't have to sedate and animal, it's it's a lot better because less things to go wrong. Yeah, so you're leading, you know these studies. Now, do you still get to do any few would work like that today? Or do you have grad students or or or crew as you mentioned doing all that stuff? Now? I only go out if it's nice weather. Smart man, I ask because I'm wondering, you know, is like that is this kind of thing? Is this the really fun part when you're in the field hands on, actually like up close to these animals. Is that what you love about it? Or is your passion more so in just understanding from far out and analyzing and seeing the big picture. Oh, I guess I'm a little bit of a different wildlife biologist in that I really like the data UM to see the patterns so there's different rewards. I mean obviously, um, capturing deers I I call it capture and release hunting, right because you're you're trying to outsmart these animals, get them to walk into your trap or or in front of the rocket net and capture the them. So you have to figure out what their patterns are, what they're doing, um, how can you get them to you know, come into the bait um and then of course handling the animal. You know, it's always exciting, I mean who gets to hold a live white tailed deer? Um. But but the more rewarding aspect, at least for me, is uh is when you when you get all these data. Um, when all the data are collected and you can analyze it, then you can start to see patterns, and then then you get to understand, um, things that you otherwise wouldn't know just from watching a deer or handling a deer. UM. When you have you know, five deer data from five deer over three years, then you can really get to understand about what's going on with these animals. Before we get into this is going to lead, Mark's got some more questions for you about the the studies and what the findings were. But I have a real quick question about what happens when a hunter shoots or kills one of these tagged animals. What happens next? Do they have specific instructions that they are supposed to follow, how does that get educated out to them? And whatnot? Well, Um, every deer it's ear tagged and the radio collar has UM has wording on there with a toll free number, and it also indicates that there's a hundred dollar reward if they report the recovery of that caller. I mean, you know, it could be someone just walking in the woods, could be a road killed deer. Um. Most of them are you know, most mortality is hunter harvest. So most of the time it's a hunter who harvested the deer and it's reporting it to us. So they just call a toll free number. Um, we uh, you know, get the information from them, and uh and if we need to recover the caller. Interesting And Dan, you were you were spot on you know me, Well, now you know where I'm trying to go with things. Um, because yes, that was where I wanted to direct things next. Um, Dwayne, because as you mentioned, you really enjoy the patterns and understanding the high level data that kind of illuminates bigger picture behaviors. UM. And from what I've seen following from a distance, this recent work you've been doing with the Deer Forest Study has given you an opportunity to see some of those things that I think US hunters might be particularly interested in as well. So can you can you fill us in real quick on what this current project as you've been working on this dear force study? What is it? What have you been looking looking at? Where are the goal has been so far? Um? And then from there I've got some questions about some of the things you've learned. Sure, so the Deer Forest Study really should be called the Forest Deer Study, But here are more charismatic and it rolls off the tongue better if you call it the Dear Forest Study. UM. And really um. In Pennsylvania, we've been doing a series of projects. UM. What we do, what I do is in working with the game commission, as we sit down and say, okay, we have to make a decision here about managing dear What is it that we don't know that we would really what's the most important thing that we don't know that we'd like to know, and that's how we focused our research. So we've looked at you know, the effects of a p RS. After that, we moved on to female survival and harvest rates and how that relates to how we model populations and UM. And we've answered other things along the way about dispersal and all sorts of stuff. But right now we're at the point where UM, you know, the game commission is making decisions and in their decision model UM, the biolo just need to make recommendations to the board of Commissioners who make the decisions about what to do. And we have a sort of a decision model that the biologists walt work through and they're looking at deer population trends and habitat conditions UM, as well as what UM, what hunters or society desires. Those are the three things that go into it. And what we've what's happened is we know a lot about deer in Pennsylvania. Now now we we have a pretty good handle on how we model numbers and look at trends and populations, survival and harvest rates UM. What we don't have a good handle on is is the forest conditions and how those conditions are being affected by deer browsing. We know there's been lots and lots of research that deer can have a tremendous effect on the environment. UM. They have preferred species of plants that they prefer to eat, you know, just like you and I would prefer ice cream over Brussels sprouts. You know, they prefer trillium and Indian cucumber over um, you know, something as untasty as mountain laurel or rhododendron. So they can you know, if you have a lot of deer on the landscape, they can have a real impact. And and so we know they can have an impact. But the question is, UM, what are the desired habitat conditions and what is it that we need to monitor to say, Okay, deer are not really having an impact. We're happy with the forest conditions as they are. And so that's the focus of this research. We've got four study areas UM. Each study areas about oh anywhere from twenty five to forty square miles. And what our goal is is too in each of these areas, UM either stabilize or change dear populations and at the same time monitor vegetation and see UM and hopefully learn a couple of things. A what things about the habitat on the vegetation should we be measuring um? How does the habitat respond to changes in dear density UM? And also how do hunters respond to the actions that we're taking Because we're using hunters as a management tool to manipulate deer numbers UM, and so they're a very important tool, a crucial tool to the game commission. So we also want to better understand how hunters hunt on these areas. So so this is a rather rudimentary question, but can you explain for us why this kind of leg of the stool matters? You mentioned, you know, hunters and deer and then habitat. Why does understanding the proper habitat health matter? Why do we want to make sure that deer in habitat are in balance um. I think this is something that a lot of people understand, but maybe some people might say, well, I think I think it might be fair to say that a lot of guys UM, A lot of hunters just want more dear, right, if more dear means better hunting? I think at some level, if you at a very simple level, you might assume more dear means better hunting. Um, why might that be wrong? And why do you think having the proper balance matters? Well, first of all, let me a couple of things before I dive into that. First of all, UM, you know this, all of this is driven by human society's values. Hunters obviously are a big part of this, but um, deer are a public resource and so the state agencies have to be responsible to not just hunters. Um. Of course hunters are a big part of it, but they also have to look at um that all stakeholders and all people that are influenced by deer, whether it's because of a vehicle collision or damage to their um landscaping or industrial timber companies who are having problems with regenerating forest. Um. Society, the Game Commission has developed a deer management plan, working with Society to set some objectives, goals and objectives for managing deer. And so based on those objectives, they're trying to make the best decision possible. And I would say, from a hunting perspective, why would you not want to just maximize deer? Well, mm hmm, um. Probably for the main reason is that you're not going to have the deer that you want. Um, if you don't take into account habitat, I mean a farmer doesn't just say, well, I've got twenty acres and I want to raise a hundred and fifty cattle on those twenty acres. You can't do it. Um. He's gonna he might be able to keep a hundred cows alive on twenty acres, but it's going to be a mud pit and he's gonna have to bring in a lot of hay. And he could do it. And the same thing goes with deer. We could have a lot more deer in Pennsylvania, but is it the deer that you want? Um? And uh. And so having a trying to have some sort of balance between habitat quality and deer numbers. UM. If you can seek balance, you're going to maximize potentially the size of deer, the reproductive rates of deer, um, and generally have a healthy deer population, which you know, I would think would be lead to you know, happier hunters in terms of more higher quality hunting experience. Yeah, yeah, I certainly agree with that. UM. And now I'm kind of rewinding the clock a little bit. But in some of your earlier work. You mentioned that some of your research, some of your projects have related to some of these things as far as modeling populations. UM, is that something you could speak to, which is how do how does the Game Fish Commission and or researchers they work with determine that balance or how what are you guys looking at to help figure out what that proper balance point is? Um? Is that something you've got some experience with? Well? UM, I think this current project is trying to get a better idea of what that balances between habitat and deer numbers. UM. In you know, in you know, back up a second, quite frankly, UM, deer management North America. That travesty is is that any wildlife management is traditionally been called a three legged stool. As you mentioned earlier, there's the species you're managing, there's the habitat that species depend on, and there's people. If you look at deer management in UH in North America, for the most part, they they address the concerns of people, and they address deer numbers, but they don't address habitat. In fact, Pennsylvania is the only state in in the northeastern US that explicitly has some goals and objectives relating to habitat conditions um, and so um, you know, and we've only recently implemented that. I mean we've been um, well we've had to have had some goals and excuse me in the past. But but Pennsylvania's, you know, is a rare situation and that we're trying to explicitly incorporate habitat conditions in while making deer management decisions. So. UM, so just getting deer counts and estimates of deer numbers and trends is not so difficult. There's some different methods out there just based on you know, using hunter harvest data. Um. That it's I mean, it's expensive. I mean the agency puts a lot of personnel, time and effort into collecting those data. But it can be done. Um. The hard part is figuring out that balance. And that's where this project is coming in. So I really, I really see it as UM, this current project is being cutting edge um potentially being well not just potentially, but being will be very informative for the Game Commission, who has to make manage management decisions statewide, as well as the Bureau of Forestry that has to make decisions on the two million acres that they're responsible for. So, so, have you to this point yet been able to UM achieve any of the goals that you have kind of laid out for this study yet or have there been any UM takeaways yet that are actionable or is that still some time to come. Well, you know, when we started this, we knew that this was going to be have to be a long term project. And that's because, um, dear easy there there's more dear born every year. Um. You know, a buck. Average age of a buck is um, it's still a year and a half old. Most of the books are year and a half old. But you have a high turnover and so you can learn a lot in just a few years monitoring deer vegetation. Right, the if you're going to grow a stand of oak um, that's going to take at least eighty years. So so we're talking about a completely different time frame or perspective than what biologists usually think about. Now, foresters think about eighty year time frames, but biologists are usually thinking about two, three, four or five years. Well, now, in two, three, or four or five years, you might have an oak seedling go from six inches to three ft tall UM, and so to be able to monitor vegetation change is going to take what and we've already found this out at least five years and probably ten years before we start to get a good handle on on the vegetation response to the changes we make in deer numbers. How fragile is that balancing act as far as uh population versus habitat um, I don't think it's too fragile. I mean, we've been trying to manage or mismanaged deer for over a hundred years, UM, and we still have forests. It's just is it the forest that you want? Um. We have lots of places in Pennsylvania that you know back in the eighties, UM, we had very high deer densities, and so basically black cherry was very successful at growing, but not so much sugar maple or or other species. So, UM, the forest will survive, but there will be some effects and deer populations aren't going to crash because as of these things. UM. I think what we are is the wildlife profession is maturing, and we're at a point where we have a lot of the basic tools. Now we're trying to learn how to fine tune those and put a sharper point on those tools and then getting a little bit more specific who makes those decisions on how this this habitat should be and what is considered a good habitat. Yeah, so that's a difficult thing. UM. What the Game Commission has done is looked at um UH data that the U. S. Forest Service collects as part of the National Program, and UM and forest ecologists have identified UM some certain minimum level of tree reach generation what we call it advanced regeneration. So if you have a forest out there, there's big trees obviously, like oaks that are dropping acorns, and those acorns do lead to seedlings that pop up in the understory, and that's called advanced regeneration because if you go in and cut down those large oaks, those small seedlings that are on the ground or we're going to pop up and replace those large trees that you removed. So there are some UM standards, depending on the forest type and the habitat of UM sort of some minimum conditions that you'd want to see UM in terms of advance regeneration of seedlings. And so that's what the Game Commission is using right now. UM. However, there's more than just trees out in the forest and um and and agencies like the Bureau of Forestry are not just responsible for tree is but their their mandate is to look at the plant community as a whole. And so there's lots of understory species um uh, like trillium and indian cucumber and vibe um uh uh, some hobble bush, which is a viburnum. In fact, hobble bush is extremely rare in Pennsylvania because it's highly preferred by deer, and with the high deer densities that we've had in the past, it's disappeared in a lot of places um so. So, but those those other things, like those understory plants, we really don't know a lot. We people have done research and they say, yeah, dear love trillium, dear love indian cucumber, um. But what we don't know is what percent of the landscape out there should have indian cucumber, how common should it be? And so we don't even have any idea what that should be. And that's part of what we're trying to address with this research is get some insights into um what level of UM deer numbers would lead to UM. You know a plant diversity of plants in the understory community that would be acceptable to society. All right, let's pause here for a moment to thank our partners at White Tailed Properties. This week with white Tail Properties, we are joined by Dave Skinner ad Land Specialists out of Kentucky, and Davey is going to be telling us about what to look for when buying a property with intentions of early season white tail hunting. Yeah, in Kentucky at season comes in in September, and if you're looking specifically for that early season hunt, some things keep them on one just like late season food sources are keen um. And there's two food sources in Kentucky that trump everything else in September, soy beans and acorns. Um. If I'm looking to han specifically that early season, I want to make certain I either have solwy things on the property or Jason to the property. More than anything, though eight onns are always number one. I want to know that there's white oak treats on the property. Um becose one. Those eight mores are following. That's where the deal will be. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that Dave currently has listed for sale visit white tail properties dot com backslash skinner that's s k I N N E er. So a lot of the a lot of the big picture take away from the study could be years out. It sounds like this is a long term thing, UM, But I do know from the things I've read on your website and different presentations that I've seen online, UM, that that you guys are learning plenty in the interim as far as dear behavior, just given the the interesting insights you guys are able to gain by the fact simply that you have you know, uh collared and are tracking so many different deer. Right, what what are some of the most interesting things that you guys have learned so far on that front? Yes, so, UM. So we call her dear UM in this study because we do need to keep track of numbers and get an idea of how many deer out there, what the harvest rates are, UM and UM. And we've been using these GPS satellite callers because they're really they're expensive, but they're also very cost effective because UM, instead of having a truck and multiple multiple trucks and technicians running around the woods with antenna's trying to track dear UM. With these satellite GPS callers, I can sit at my desk and get hundreds of times more data than I ever could with an army of field technique scions. So so those callers have just been sort of a side benefit of this project UM that have provided a lot of insights into how dear move UM in different times of the year UM, in particular how they respond to hunting UM, which is interesting for us because, like I said, part of this study is to learn about how hunters hunt UM, what the harvest rates are that we see on these study areas. In particular, if we're trying to manage or manipulate deer numbers, UM, you need to do that through Antler West harvest. So how these deer respond to hunting is for me has been the most fascinating part of this project. Yeah, so so tell us about that. What have you seen as far as a year in a life of a deer maybe maybe buck if you've got a box in particular, UM, and then how does hunting pressure impact that. I've sure I've seen some interesting things you guys have posted as far as you know, actually looking at one specific buck and learning about a specific bucks travel patterns throughout the year, and that was pretty fascinated by that. Yeah, Actually, if you indulge me for a second, back up a little bit about ten years ago, So I had a student who, um, we didn't have satellite callers at that time, but we were interested in in deer harvest rates and how where a deer lived on the landscape, how that might influence its probability of being harvested. And so what he did was he captured a bunch of deer radio collared them, and then we also did some aerial surveys and we're able to map hunter density across his study area where he had all these collar deer, and we found real differences in in how hunters were distributed across the landscape. And actually, um, what was really interesting is what he found as there was sort of this sweet spot that if you you were most deer was most likely to be harvested if it was oh about a third of a mile from a road. Um, if if you were real close, if a deer was real close to the road, you know, its home range was real close to the road, Um, it would have you have a very high probability of being harvested. And then as you got further away from that road, that probability being harvested would decline. But if you looked at like hunters success, the sweet spot wasn't right next to the road because that's where all the hunters were. The sweet spot was a little bit further away from the road where there weren't quite as many hunters, um. But you still had enough hunters that you were moving deer around, and those deer ended up getting hard harvested anyway. So that was really intriguing. Um. But it was kind of a black box type of thing because we knew where deer were sort of on the landscape, and we knew where hunters were, but we didn't have any real time data. Right. All we could say is, yeah, this is where this deer spent its time and it got harvested. And this is where this deer spent most of its time and it didn't get harvested. Well, now, what we can do with these satellite callers is actually watch these deer move in real time. And in Pennsylvania we have to keep in mind we've got like three quarters of a million deer hunters um. Uh. Most of those are out during our twelve day rifle season. So there's intensive hunting pressure. And so how do those deer respond, especially on public lands because there's lots of con entional wisdom out there. Oh, they run off the public land and they spend all their time on private land, or you know, they go nocternal and they don't move during the day. UM. So what actually happens and what we found is that that that conventional wisdom isn't all correct at what it's correcked up to be UM. And and insights that sort of explained what we saw with that earlier study. And so these dear um respond very much to the hunting pressure. UM. They respond. Before the dear season opens, UM, I give a lot of talks and show show hunters movies, UM. And I asked them, so, what happens on Saturday and Sunday because we always have a Monday opener for dear season And they said, well, Um, Saturday and Sunday, everyone's going out to their dear stand and I said, yeah, exactly, and and that just triggers the behavior and the deer and they know something's up. And so UM, come Monday morning by two to four o'clock in the morning, though a lot of those deer in a hiding spot that they've discovered, and they just sit tight until the middle of the day and then they might start moving in the afternoon. Um, but they respond to that hunting pressure. Um, that's really really interesting. And then there's lots of different aspects. But I'm rambling on here and I you must have another question. Yeah, so so let's talk about this, um, this immediate reaction to you know, opening day hunting pressure. You mentioned that some of them go into a hiding spot of some sort. Can you elaborate on specifically what you found? Um? Were these dear you know, you mentioned that some people think these deer's runoff public land or some of these deer go completely nocturnal. Um, can you elaborate on those two points? So did you see that these deer did they stay in the same general areas pressure but just stop moving as much? Did they change the time of day they moved in more? I'd love to hear the details of that. Yeah. So um uh in these study areas where we are, which is you know, ninety plus percent forested, um, the deer. The average home range of a deer is about a square mile. A male and a female deer. Except during the rut, male home ranges expand to two some of them up to three four square miles. But if you exclude the rut, the home range of these deers about a square mile UM. During the during the rifle season, they don't leave their home range. Um, they've the ones that are still alive. Of course, we're only callering adult deer that are at least a year and a half old. So in there the first hunting season that they're watching them, they've already survived two hunting seasons. We're monitoring them during their third hunting season, so they're two and a half years old at least summer older. Um. So what those deer do is they've through by just getting lucky. Have found out that if I go to this spot in my home range, I am unlikely to be disturbed and I'm just gonna hunker down there until this hunting season is over with. And so where I said a home range of um a deer is about a square mile when you look during that two week hunting season, UM, it averages about a hundred acres. Interesting, did you did you look at this at all? Or did you did you separate out any of this data by age class. Oh could you see with a four and a half old buck or older they moved X and a two and a half yearld though moved. Why did you look at anything along on those lines? UM? No, we haven't, because first of all, we don't age. We only age our dear as UM juveniles, which is less than a year old or adults over a year old UM. And the reason we do that is that it's just too difficult and we don't really need to know how old it is UM other than juvenile adult and adult UM. And the other thing I can say is that looking at dear that we've followed for two three years, UM, their behavior does doesn't change. What about broken down by sex UM? Well, both males and females have a high spot during that intensive hunting period UM, although bucks from what I've seen UM are a little bit different and that they tend to like UM. If they're going to hide out, it's gonna be on a on a ridge or um on a crust of So we've got two different you know, I should need to back up a little bit. Two of our study areas are in central Pennsylvania, which is what's called in the ridge and Valley region. So we have these long linear ridges and valleys that go and sort of a southwest and northeast direction. In our northern study area, it's up on what's called the Allegheny Plateau, and this is it looks very mountainous, but really what it is is it's a flat plane that eroded, so the mountaintops are flat, and then you have the steep drainages where erosion has occurred over the millennia, and so in both of these places, the bucks will sit either on the on the edge of one of these steep um ravines or on the top of a ridge, and that's their preferred hiding spot, usually in a place where if it's flat to the west, they can smell anything that's coming from the prevailing winds. And on the eastern side, there's no way you'd sneak up on them because it's you know, very steep slopes, and so if they do get disturbed, they can just jump off that point and heckn in thirty seconds to a minute, they would be hundreds of feet below you in elevation and you know, half a mile away. Now, the dough the females, they tend to have a similar hiding spot, but not It's just seems to be an area that they run to where they didn't get disturbed. I love that you were able to see this with your studies and these these collar deer because because what you described there as far as these typical hideouts, you know, it is right in line with what so many hunters have seen as far as where you know, these bucks tend to like to bed, you know so often from observation, UM, you'll find that these mature bucks especially find a great betting spot or hiding spots you might call it, you know, during a pressure time of year, up on a ridge where they can see down ahead of them, they can smell behind them. And it makes sense from a from a rational kind of logic standpoint if you just think, how would a deer be able to survive? Um, But it's really neat to see the actual data, UM prove that too. UM. Yeah, I just posted a blog today, UM where it's a buck that we've followed for three years, and I show some of these spots where he hit out on these ridges and some of them are right next to a road, but they're steep, you know, there are you know, if you for every um two feet that you go horizontally, you need to go a foot up. So they're very steep and and not many people, certainly not me, are going to be trapesing around those areas, and they they discover them and that's where they sit. Now. You mentioned, I think you said there was two of your study locations in the ridge and valley location. There's one study location on the plateau. Um. Did you say there's four total study areas. Was that right? Well, two are up on the plateau or two are in the ridge and valley? Okay, okay. I was gonna ask if you had a study group that was more in a flat land type scenario. But it sounds like you don't write. Lots of people have asked, you know what, we're going to study deer and more, you know, egg um situations and probably not for a while because that's even more complicated habitat situation um and but and there. Yeah, so yeah, I don't have a lot of insights in those situations. These are just large tracts of public land um predominantly forceded so you know, so that's sort of the topography issues. The other one is the the idea about deer you know, going on private land and so on the bound. We've got deer that are that we've captured that spend time on public land and private land, and quite frankly, most of them they're hiding spot is on public land. Um, they might go down into the private land is more likely to have some crops and food resources. But um, like I said, these or don't leave their home range. I mean, they'd be nuts to leave your home range. Right. They know it like the back of their hand, so they know where to go. They know you know where the danger is. Um, So they're going to stay within their home range. They're just seeking out spots that they've discovered. They're not going to get disturbed. What about any patterns that show once a deer maybe population or uh individual deer has been spooked or bumped pressured, how how long before it returns back to its normal pattern? Yeah, that would be a great question. But that's a really difficult one to answer because we haven't radio colored any hunters. Yea, Um, but I can tell you that, um, uh, you know, like we've got I've got One of our blog post is about a dough I call her Hillside Dough because she had this spot that was in her home range. It was the steepest spot in her home range, on the side of a ridge, and that's where she hid and she would go there every day. Um. And there was one Saturday where so you know, like early in the hunting season, the first week or so, there's a lot a lot of guys are just sitting, um, and then later in the week they'll start to put on drives. And so especially that first Saturday and the second week, and there was one day where you could see where she was in her hiding spot and she got kicked out and she made this big loop around the edge of her home range that she didn't normally do. But the next day, you know, and so then that night she was out doing a normal thing, and the next morning she went back up to that same hiding spot. M So my guess is that even if you bumped a deer out of that hiding spot, odds are it's going to go back to it. Yeah, it makes sense. As you said, Um, it makes the most sense from a survival standpoint to stick to an area, you know, like the back of your hand, versus going somewhere brand new when faced with danger. You know, if I was faced with danger, I would probably run into my bedroom and locked the door. Um, I wouldn't just go running willy nilly somewhere brand new. Um. So that you know that makes sense? Um. Now, some other things I've seen you guys right about in the past related to some factors that you guys took a look at, some outside factors you took a look at to see how they may or may not impact deer movement. And you know, a lot of our listeners, myself and Dan included, we kind of obsess over what types of things might impact dear as far as how often they move or how early in the day they might move, you know, like, does the moon impact when dear move? Does certain weather factors like temperature or barre metric pressure or anything like that impact when and how much dear move? Um? Can you speak to that? Have there been anything's you've looked at it on those lines and what have you learned? Yes? So, um so. Obviously the moon's a big one. Um. You hear a lot about um about the moon affecting the timing of the rut um, weather influencing the rut um weather, and moon just influencing dear movements in general. UM. So you know, I wouldn't say we have the final answer on this because a lot of people over the years have looked at try to look at the influence of moon on movements and that sort of thing, UM, and and the results are sort of equivocal. When you go in the literature, some people said, yeah, there is an effect of the moon on movements, and other people say, no, I couldn't find any effect. UM. But I think with these as more and more of these satellite collars are being used and we can get much more detailed information on their movements than we could UM in the past. With with the older collorum technology, we'll be able to get at this. But from what we've been finding in our study is we can find very little influence of the moon on anything. UM. The Game Commission UM looked at road killed females, thousands of them over UH seven year period and UM basically there's no relationship between the moon and the timing of when females get pregnant. UM. We've looked at the effects of I had an undergraduate student this summer looking at to see if UM. So, for example, in a full moon, you might expect deer might move more at night and then to feed, and then they wouldn't have to move during the day. And Um, she did find an effect statistically, but from a biological standpoint, I mean, the difference in movement was like you and I making an extra trip to the bathroom or something during the day. So she could find no effect of of moon conditions on on deer movements. Um. She also looked at rain and wind. Um, there's some influence there. Um. I I think it's kind of funny that we've looked at this a couple of different times, and the suggestion is that males are kind of whimps. Um. If it's raining, they're less likely to move, but females don't seem to care. Um. And then with wind, Um, there isn't much effect. Um. If it's really calm, they're less likely to be moving. If there's a little bit of wind, they'll move a little bit more. Um. Some evidence to suggest that when you get very windy conditions they'll move more. But again, um, we've a lot of this work. We've limited to the month of October because that's our archery season and deer aren't really affected by the hunting. That's going on at that time of year. Um. But on the other hand, it's a beautiful time of year and you don't get a lot of wind, you don't get a lot of rain, So we really can't say, you know, a whole lot about how that influences their move you know, I can say for October there doesn't seem to be a lot of effect, but you don't get hurricanes in October and things like that, right, Right, So the it sounds like from what you guys are seeing in your studies, and this is probably something that we as deer hunters would say is true to just anecdotally, nothing impacts a deer movement as much as hunting pressure. Right. If there's anything that has a really significant impact, it's that. Would you agree, Yeah, yeah, that's I mean, you don't need to you don't need statistics to see that when you look at these movies that I posted on the blog about what deer doing during that that during our rifle season with the intensive hunting pressure. People have asked me about archery and I've looked at deer movements that time of year and you can't, um, you can't tell anything. And then of course in between that's the rut and the rut you know, they're they're just in the rut and they're going seven. Yeah. Have you seen any patterns as far as buck behavior movement during the rut? I remember seeing one study I do not remember where this study came out of UM, where they had seen that UM, with these types of GPS or satellite collars, they could actually see that many bucks would go to kind of focal points within their home range during the rut, two to three or four different focal points, these likely being doe hotspots or doe betting years that they would check, you know, every twenty four hours or so many hours throughout that running time period. UM. Did you see anything like that in your study or if you, have you seen anything else as far as dear behavior buck behavior during the rut through your own studies? Yeah, that's a really great question. I read that paper, UM. That work was done in Texas and UM, and so I, you know, I looked at a lot of our you know, because I've made these movies to look at these deer movements, and I could not discern a pattern. And then I read this paper and I looked through that and I can honestly say that I, you know, just visually looking at movements can see nothing like that UM. In fact, my students and I have been talking and we want to investigate that UM a little more quantitatively. And one of the things we're going to do is that we do have UM in certain situations, we have both males and females in the same area, and so we can look at both of their movements, and in fact, UM we can see when a breeding event probably occurred, because these satellite colors are very accurate. You know, they're within tens of meters, and you can see like these this male and a female UM will have overlapping home ranges, and the mail will be moving around, and then suddenly those two animals will be right next to each other for twelve to twenty four hours, so you know that that's probably a male tending a female. And so what we'd like to do is take those situations where we know there's a male and a female, a male tending a female, and seeing if we can detect patterns of movement that are different from other parts of the rut, and see if we can actually distinguish that. But I can honestly say that I have not been able to detect any pattern of males making regular movements UM supposedly, UM, you know, trying to check out females. Instead, what I see in our study areas as males UM basically doubling, tripling their home range area and just moving constantly seven, just going back and forth across their study area as quickly as they and constantly. UM, my guess is searching for females. In addition, if you look at home ranges of females during this time of year when they're most likely to be um inestrius um, their home range actually shrinks. And that makes a lot of sense. Right, if you're lost in the woods and you want to be found, you sit still. So if a female's out there and she wants to be found by a male, don't move around a lot. If you want to find a female, move around a lot. And so that's what we see, the males moving around a lot and the females actually reducing their movements. What what percentage? And I don't know, well maybe maybe you do know this. Um. You mentioned that during the rut, it seems like these bucks are just moving all over the place seven. Um. Is that literal or what percentage? If you've if you've tracked this to to this level of detail, what percentage of the day during the rut is a luck actually like betted down versus up and moving? And then what does that look like, you know, in a period of the year that is not during the run, um betted versus on his feet moving? Yes, um, No, you know the in Pennsylvania, um, half the females are bred by around the November so UM. So that um. First that you've got like a two or three week period in November. Um that that most of the breeding occurs and um and during that time period, a lot of the males basically do not have do not exhibit that crepuscular behavior, you know, where they're active in the around sunrise and active around sunset and middle of the day and middle of the night they're less likely to be active. That just disappears they're just going seven um and and yeah, that's what that's what they're doing. And then outside of the rut then they fall back to that as you mentioned, cris carepascular behavior where they're most active at dawn and dusk, um, not so much in millian night, not so much in the middle of the day. But it doesn't sound like you guys have ever looked. Actually, you know, on average a buck spends six of his day moving around of his day Betted, I'm just kind of curious of that particular number. I've never actually seen anywhere. Yeah, jeez, I think I did a blog post about this a little bit ago. Um. This one buck that I followed, um during the peak of the rut, except for maybe four to five am, when it looked like he took a rest every day. The rest of the time he was just going yikes. What about wounded deer? Have you like, tracked a deer that was known to be wounded by a hunter and followed his patterns you know, maybe not a critical wound and how he acted after being shot. Um? Not really. Um. You know, we catch these deer and they disappear. We do know one that um uh got hit by a car um and survived. Um. But I haven't to be honest, I haven't looked in detail to see what his movements were. UM. We you know, we don't see a lot a crippling loss. Um. You know where a hunter shot a deer and then it died and it wasn't recovered. Um. We don't see a lot of I mean, in the seventeen years I've been studying deer in Pennsylvania, we don't see a lot of illegal harvest. Um. So yeah, I don't have a lot of insights on that. Okay, we're gonna take one final break here for word from our partners at Matthew's Archery. And as you've heard over the past few weeks, Matthews has released their new triacts both and today we've got Matthews design engineer Marque has to talk about one part of the technology and that bow, the new three D damping. If you can imagine your point of contact, which is your grip on the bow that's zero zero. You can turn your bow in three directions from that position, so you can imagine forward to back, you imagine left or right, and then you can imagine that twisting motion all that happens from the grip. And if you can maximize the effectiveness of the damper in all three of those directions, which we we have done well um within the past, but as our risers get more and more eye shaped, which is a really stable shooting platform, the damper inherently got underneath the grip and you lost that twisting benefit. So by moving it out in front of the riser, you get the benefit of the eye shaped riser, which is very stable, like I said, and you now have a system that is working in all the directions that it should and it really dampens the vibration. Well, what little bit that we have from your perspective, Why does that matter in a hunting situation? That? Why does it matter to to eliminate even more sound, even more vibration? Sure, well, it's two things. One, it's just the experience of shooting. Uh No, one wants a buzzy bow whenever they shoot. It's the experience of that. It's letting the arrow go and just nothing. You don't feel anything but too. Obviously, in a hunting situation, your target is not a film target. It can move. Being as stealthy as possible is a goal that has always been around. And the quieter you can be, the more accurate your shot is going to be. And that's not necessarily because you're shooting better, but it's because the target is not reacting as fast or at all. If you'd like to learn more about the Matthews Try acts and their three D damping technology, you can visit Matthews Inc. Dot com. Here's another question as we're as we're looking into these specific examples out of curiosity. Another thing that I feel like, well two, here's two things so too common. Um oh, old wives, tales of sorts. Maybe that we like to talk about a lot. One being uh, the October lull. A lot of people like to say that they believe dear just don't move, especially bucks don't move very much in mid October. Have you looked at this at all? Have you been able to see if there's actually any quantifiable decrease in movement UM during mid October. From everything I've read and seen, that is not the case. But have you guys looked into that in your own study? Um? Yeah, Well I'll be honest here, Until until this summer, I didn't even know what the October lull was UM. And I think a lot of it is from people looking at harvest data and UM and making inferences from the harvest data the fact that a lot of deer get shot in archery early in October and then it tapers off and then it picks up again and in in November and so um so, and that's more of a hunter behavior issue than a deer issue, because you need to look at the number of people that are out hunting. UM. So, for example, I know my my neighbor is a big archery hunter, and he's out there the first couple of weeks, but then he's like, well, you know, this was fun. I got it out of my system, but I'm really going to wait till November one because that's when that I know that rut's going to start kicking in. And so I suspect a lot of this idea of the October lull is more an effect of hunter behavior and hunter effort UM I have not seen any evidence of in October lull. Yeah, well, I think that's that's what most of the other studies that I have have read and seen seemed to indicate as well, that that there's not actually any real decrease and dear movement, but but certainly um hunter activity and other things that that might change what we see as hunters UM and might change a little bit of where they spend time, but probably not the quantity of time they move around. So so it's interesting to see that you guys haven't seen that there's there's a lot of things going in on and on in October. I mean food source sources are maturing. So you know, if you're an area with a lot of oaks and it's a spotty year, that could cause changes and dear movements. UM. You know, people ask me about how you know food influences them. Unfortunately I don't have a map. If I had a map of the you know, oak production across our study areas, I could answer that question, but I don't. UM. But you know, there's a lot of different things in the ruts kicking in. Um. You know that last week in October, probably of our females are bred by the end of October, so that last week and in October you will see some males that will exhibit you know that those behavior movements, those real intensive movements. UM. Yes, So there's a lot of stuff going on that that I think more of it is the excitement of the early October opener of archery and then not much is happening until the rut kicks in at the end of October. So, so is there anything else, Dwayne that we haven't touched on that that hunters need to know that you guys have learned from this study to this point yet any big takeaways you guys have had yet that that you wish more hunters were aware of, or um that we would find helpful. Well, I guess a few things. I mean, I'm not sure if to think about, you know, especially during the you know, during that rifle season. UM. So if there was any advice, um um I would give hunters is a, UM, don't give up on the afternoon hunt. Um. What we've found is that when you're sitting in the early morning, those deer are already in their hiding spot and they're sitting to um. Of course, a lot of deer shot then. But you know, these bucks that we're following, which are two and a half, three and a half, four and a half years old, a lot of them are just sitting when you're sitting. But by lunchtime, um, a lot of them have started making their movements. Um. And and so I think you, you know, pack a lunch and don't give up on the afternoon hunt. UM. The other thing is knowing where these big bucks or older bucks hide, you're not going to sneak up on them, so you might want to rethink the tree stand and um, you know, deer drives are probably going to be effective. Now you know, you may not be the guy who gets it, but that deer is more likely to be harvested. I think if hunters worked cooperatively. Yeah, that's that's probably the two big takeaways that that I would say that you know that at least popped in my head as I've been looking at these deer and thinking, man, how would you ever get to this guy? Because he's got the perfect hiding spot right right. These these bucks that make it to those older age classes, they make it for a reason, right, They've made it to four or five or whatever because they were able to find these little hidy holes that give them an advantage to to avoid suckers like us that go out there looking for him. So it makes sense and it definitely makes us work work for our venice and no doubt about that. Uh, Dan, do you have it? Do you have a final question or anything before we wrap things up? Yeah, I just have one question in regards to decision making by let's say your research. All right, We've we see example in other states that people have made a decision that hunting is not a good way or the people don't like hunting, so they pass laws that band hunting and then maybe they capture deer and do castration, you know they castrated or uh certain like in Canada they've outlawed certain types of bear hunting because of emotion over logic. Do you, I guess what are your thoughts on when research and science are trumped when it comes to decision making based off of emotions. Help help me here, UM, So your question is about how do you get Do you get frustrated? Maybe when some of the uh, the I guess organizations that you work with maybe don't make a decision. You know, the re search or the science says yes, you should do this, but maybe public opinion or emotion trumps that and maybe a different decision is made. UM. Well, it only frustrates me UM when clear goals and objectives have been set um and identified, and biologists have taken those goals and objective collected data and said, if this is your desired goal or objective, Um, this is what you need to do, and that is ignored. UM. That's frustrating because you know, as scientists or managers, we're not We're not the ones who say this is this is what the condition should be. UM, that society's decision so as long as society says, hey, this is what we want, aren't wildlife biologists are perfectly happy going out to collect data and to make a recommendation saying Okay, if this is your goal, um, this is where you are, and this would be this action would help you get to where you want to be. And when that's ignored, that's frustrating. And that happens. That happens, you know, not that's not just an anti hunter thing. I mean, when you know an agency has goals and objectives for dear densities and they say, this is where you want to be and this is what you need to do, and then the decision is to, for example, not harvest as many deer as what the biologists recommends, or completely ignore their recommendation. That's really frustrating. Yeah, you can definitely see that being the case. And it certainly does seem like to your point, Dan, that these types of things certainly are happening, and you hear from from other people involved in the management side of things that yes, science based decision making definitely does get trumped by politics or um certain segments of of of the society being really noisy and the grease here the squeaky wheel getting the grease sometimes, and that to something I think we all need to stay vigilant about and uh, pay attention to what's happening, and um, you know, as best as possible, keep people like you out there, Dwayne, who can help, who can help our managers understand what's happening, and UM, make sure we're managing these places as best as possible. And from everything I've seen, it certainly seems like you guys are doing that well. You know, everything in life is about relationships and trust, and so one of my objectives with the blog and this research is too, well, the research will help inform management, but the blog is to share in form nation and to hopefully show as many people hunters and non hunters alike, UM, that we do have information that UM, that we have a skilled set of managers and researchers in Pennsylvania, and that we're trying to do the best we can with the resources we have to help make better decisions for a deer and for us. Yeah, and and for anyone out there listening who has not yet seen the blog that you just mentioned, UM, I highly recommend checking it out and following along because, as I mentioned already. You guys. From everything I've seen over several years now that I've been following, you are posting some really interesting things, um, from that research standpoint, from a data driven standpoint that we don't see a ton of in the popular deer hunting media. Um. So, Dwayne, where can people go if they want to follow that blog or follow your study in more detail? Where can they find that stuff online? Yeah? Just um, the the r r L is um ecosystems dot PSU, dot E d you slash dear. Okay, we will link to that on the website on wired Hunt. Um if you can't remember that you r L. And I'm guessing also if someone just google dear four study, that probably find it that way too as well. Right, Yeah, I'm pretty sure they would. You gotta love the power of Google. Well, we'll, Dwayne, anything else you want to touch on before we wrap this up. No, thank you very much for the opportunity to share some of our findings and spread the word about the research we're doing here. Yeah. Absolutely, and thank you Dwyane. You know one final quick thing I noticed one once when I was on your website. There's a a link or a portion of the website dedicated to getting hunters involved and actually sharing some of their data with you. Um. Is that right? And is that something you need? Do you need more hunters participating to help in any way? Yeah? So, um so if hunters are hunting on our study areas, um, there, it's posted with signs UM and there's a toll free number to call and they can just call us and give us their license number and and then at the end of the season we send them a survey. Okay, and uh, and maybe we can get some of these guys to throw some radio collars on two right to help with your study. Yeah, well you can, you know, you get those apps, you know, Matt my Walk and stuff, and yeah, that would be cool, but we're not there yet. Yeah. I was in all seriousness. I was thinking, like, there's there's gotta be a way to do something like that, to to get a number of hunters to have an app that tracks their location that you could use in conjunction with radio color Deer. You know, someday would be really neat to see a study like that. Um. And I'll just try to take credit for it right here that that we were the first ones come for that idea. Right, No, you weren't because we actually did something. But um, but that was back when you you know you all we had were handheld GPS units and it was a lot of work, you know, out in the field talk getting hunters to wear units and getting them back and stuff. But yeah, pretty soon if we can convince people to run the app on their phone and then email it to us, yeah we could do some of that stuff. We're pretty much there possibly. Yeah, fascinating stuff. So all right, well, Dwayne, we're gonna wrap this up and just want to thank you again. We really appreciate the time and I look forward to continue to follow along with the blog and seeing what kind of other interesting stuff you guys find out. All right, thank you, and that will do it for us today. Definitely hope you enjoyed this one. Before we go, just want to let you know that we will be off next week, taking little time to spend with our families and friends and enjoy the holidays. So if you're board next week, go ahead and listen to some past episodes if you'd like. There's plenty of those three Wire Done podcasts. You can go back and listen to sixty two Wild podcasts. You can go back and listen to another twenty one White Tailed Q and A episode, so you definitely have plenty to dig into. Um So, in the meantime that we do want to thank our partners who have made this podcast possible all year. We really really do appreciate these companies lending a hand to help us create this thing. You know, we we put this thing out there, but it does take time and energy and funding. So big things to sit a gear YETI Cooler's, Matthew's Archery, Maven Optics, the White Tailed Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge and Hunt Terra Maps, And finally, of course, thank you all for listening. I appreciate you taking time to spend with us really all year, all season. The fact that you've been falling along with our stories, supporting us, commenting and sending messages of encouragement, sharing your stories, that's that's just incredible. It's it's been an awesome yeor and we just appreciate you being here along for the ride. Also, just want to wish you all a very merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year. I hope you enjoyed these coming days and weeks with those you love, friends and family. Hopefully get out in the tree stand a little bit more to enjoy these final hunts of the year. And until next time, and until next year, I hope you'll stay wired to hung

Save this episode