The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 746: Hornography

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Steven Rinella talks with Kevin Monteith and Randall Williams. Topics Discussed: The Monteith Shop; Hornography and how we’re gonna make a t-shirt; bad winters; die offs; what impacts horn size and how healthy mamas birth big bucks; what’s going on in the Wyoming range; and more. Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. On-X hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in On-X are available for your hunts this season. Now, the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS. with hunting maps that include

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Kevin Monteth is here today. Second podcast appearance. You're one of the top favorite guests we've ever had. You're just saying that to be nice? I'm telling you. People love that show, dude. That was a big show. Over the years, we've had some big shows that people really liked

and just generated a lot of stuff. That was a big show. That was episode 162, and it was called Landscape of Fear. Now we're all the way up on episode 745, so lots changed. Randall's hair has grown like that and been cut back. dozens of times since then.

Just a few weeks before Corinne and I started, I think. Phil was just getting out of high school. Kevin is here So Kevin is the professor of natural resource sciences at the University of Wyoming's Hobb Haube School of Environment and Natural Resources

Department of Zoology and Physiology He is the leader of the Monteith shop He is here to dispel Almost everything you think In fact About deer About deer and elk about antlers

he dispelled it before and he'll dispel it again in a new way plus other things all I do now when I'm talking every time and I had to do this

the other day I had to do this the other day who did I do it to I'm trying to think oh Morgan Potter a professional hunter

in Africa he was laying on me the whole genetics oh this area doesn't have good deer this you know not laying it on me

I don't mean to, like, you know, he's a body of mine. The whole, like, well, that area doesn't have good genetics. And I had to lay on him the whole not so fast. There's a lot more to the picture. You see him stiffing up there. Did he stick it up there? Like, he's itching to get into it.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, not that I said. Yeah. A lot goes into it. I think it might have also been a reaction to some of the. Listen, this isn't a, this isn't a weapon. This is an antique. I'll explain it in a second

because it's relevant to my life right now. Relevant to your life. Yeah. I'll explain. Not really. For instance, just to give you a pre-titulation about what's going to happen. Kevin's just showing me a picture of a buck,

a mule dear buck. Anyone on the planet, anyone on the planet would look at this buck and declare it to be a classic year and a half old buck, a classic first rack. Like a spiky little buck with little offshoots, you'd be like, that's a year and a half old buck.

Every guy would say that. I would tell my kids, if they'd be like, is it a big one? If they got it, I'd be like, eh, yeah, yeah, a year and a half old buck. It ain't. It's two and a half years old. At three and a half, you'd look at it and you'd be like, eh, probably not year and a half old, but still looks like that. A buck that'll be a runt for the rest of his life. Not because he's from an area

with bad genetics. It's because his mom was in piss poor shape when she was pregnant with him. Correct. That's right. We're going to get into all that and a lot more. Lots of good research. Lots of good

research. But first tell, we were just talking about how you call your place, your outfit, which is kind of funny, you call it the Monteith shop. And we're talking about it in like, in the trades, you know, you meet the shop. I don't care if you're a tree surgeon, whatever. Millwright, you go meet at the shop, and then you go off to your job site. And it's funny that you called your scientific lab,

your shop. Yeah. Because there's work going on there. There's work going on there. Yeah. And we definitely catch some flack for it because it's not. Oh, yeah. Because it doesn't sound official enough. It doesn't fit, right? Yeah. If you're going to be a, I don't know, a scientist or a group that does science, the typical reference is a lab. And I think that's, at least in the, in the academic world, that's, that's the norm. And I think despite working in an academic world, I don't think I've ever, I don't think I've ever fit the mold. I don't think I necessarily have a desire to fit the mold. And so in thinking about what it meant for us over time and who we were to be referenced Staz in that way. To me, what made more sense if we're going to be data generators, hands dirty, in the field, and, you know, being able to do the work, that puts us in as close proximity of the animals that we do. To me, what made sense is a shop, something that's more, that associated more with the trades or like a mechanic shop. For example, I often maybe reference us as like diagnostic mechanics working to hands dirty.

in there working to figure out what's going on with any particular animal population and working to understand them better. So, and I think, I don't know, I guess like my upbringing and who I am at heart, it fits a lot better than being referenced as a lab. So despite the flack that we get forward, we stuck with it. Oh, yeah, I wouldn't pay attention to that. Before I explain this year knife I'm holding, you got a Monteith shop shirt. on that has what I thought was a bigfoot guy pumping iron you did not you did think that and

it's not that correct okay what is it because this is something I hadn't heard of I'm embarrassed to have not heard of as much as I hear you talk about beaver is he's got a picture on his shirt of a big foot pumping iron lifting a stick except except it's not yeah it actually reminds me of the The sand creatures in Star Wars when they shake their... The Tuscan Raiders. Yeah, the Tuscan Raiders when they shake their things at one another. That's good. That's good.

Thanks. Speaking of which, we're trying to... I'm trying to license a song right now that has a line. We did a couple favors for a guy who looked like a Tuscan Raider. Hmm. No, we did a couple favors for some guys who look like Tuscan Raiders. Is this based on a true story? I doubt it.

Okay. Go on. So it's a beaver holding up a stick. And part of that is the artwork was done by one of our former team members, Rianna and Jacob Peck. And we just started doing some work on beavers here over the past couple of years. And sort of, yeah, we became aware of this behavior. And it's a behavior often that's very rarely seen in beavers. But there's a scientific paper on it.

And if you Google stick display in beavers, there is a YouTube video demonstrating them doing it, but amidst like territory holders are at the edge, kind of the fringes of potential territories, that sort of antagonistic behavior, they'll pick up a stick and just go up and down and up and down with that displaying that stick. And I don't know, I think it's kind of funny too, given that, you know, most of our work is on big ungulates and we've done a good bit of work on horns. and antlers and those sorts of things and what they're used as is weapons and forms of intimidation and display and beavers don't have antlers or horns on their heads but perhaps picking up a stick

does some sort of has some sort of intimidation element associated. Sure, dude. It's like he's getting pumped that means like he's getting pumped speaks off leave. He's in Jack. Carry a big stick. No, that's exactly right. Our stickers have that saying underneath it speaks offly and carry a big stick. Yeah, he's either

you know if you really dug into it is it like a fitness display you know is like is it like hey man

like this is a hard thing to pull off right when we were at this when I was just in in Africa we were hanging out these Messiah dudes and they like they have

a there's this traditional dance in Messiah culture which generally like young men and young women and in this dance was like a couple there's like a display an athletic display of men which is just a flat-footed jump again and again like a spring like from a flat-footed stance

that you just jump again and again and again and like get some impressive height dude especially when I was like let me give it a wing I was like yeah impressive height and And then, right, it's just a, and asking, like, what is it all about? It's just, like, showing what you got. Your game. Yeah. Yeah. A flat-footed jump, you know.

And then for the women, it's kind of like a, you put this disc around your neck, and it's like a gyrating move to make the disc shiver. Right? It's just showing what you got. So that beaver could be like, yeah. Exactly. Balance, strength. Yeah.

Or it's saying, I'm going to whoop you with this stick. Yeah. Or it's like, this is the kind of stuff we got around here. You know, I had a beaver, I had a beaver interaction there a day. My boys, his buddy's family, they had beavers plugging up their irrigation, crop irrigation system. And I went over to advise him. I'm trying to get rid of them.

And I made some caster moundsets. Just like took a beaver's cat. It seemed to just one beaver kind of like doing his deal. Put Castor out. He just left. Hmm. Like, I don't know. I can't prove this.

I feel like he had like a, oh shit, someone's already here. Like left. I'm telling you, he left. He's gone. We keep checking. He's gone. That's wild. He had these little dams in this, you know, in an irrigation deal.

Yeah. He had these little dams. He had a couple little shit in castor mounds the size of a cell phone. you know what I mean we put like a big old cat two big old cast amounts Mounted cast on there and that dude

I'm not kidding that dude moved out which could be like something interesting to develop for like sort of like non lethal non lethal deal is get after him early

and just like sorry boys making big castor miles sorry boys there's already a bad mofo in town man you gotta go find a new spot to hang out so he um and it did him good

because he's alive he lived to tell the tale yeah Oh, this knife. So, how do Vils in town, A.K. Moosey? I screwed up in my head, and I didn't think that she would be here. She could be hanging out right now, but I just didn't think about it. I didn't think.

And by the time I invited her, we started, we're recording at nine. It occurred to me at 840 to invite her. She wasn't able to make it. She's shooting pistols. But I'm going to have her fix this because she's a leather sower. My old man brought this home from North. Africa and whiskey whiskey too. That's like got to be elephant ivory.

Yeah. Take a look at that. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. It's got to be elephant. I don't know what the hell. I don't know what kind of ivory it is. It looks exactly like some of this stuff that I have from my grandmother that was from China.

From China? Mm-hmm. It's from North Africa. No, I know. I'm just saying like a little Confucius statue carved in ivory. Oh, I thought you meant that you were a cute. using my dad of bringing home

some kind of souvenir knockoff from whiskey whiskey whiskey whiskey just like that where's the stick? Yeah he so he was

real like whatever it was he was I just don't remember what he told me about it he was real particular about it

though and this sheath is a weird leather look at that letter I've had some people say

maybe ostrich but you can't see the a lot of times an ostrich leather you can see the you can see

the the follicle for the feather. I need to have it stitched back up. That was unstitched when I was born. Oh, so it's been that way. It was so, you know what I just did? I took mineral oil. I put that, I took that sheath and put mineral oil a couple tablespoons of mineral

oil in a vac bag and stuck that sheath in there and vac sealed it, which I'm going to patent as a way to like bring leather back to life. Picture what I'm talking about. It's a good idea. Drawing it in. I'm going to patent it so no one else can do it. Let's say, check with me. Take like an old, whatever, old leather belt, whatever.

It's kind of played out. Put oil in a bag, vac seal it in that bag, then let it sit on your workbench for a couple days and open it up and that sucker is rejuvenated. Now, a leather guy might tell me that there's a reason that's dumb or not a good idea, but I don't know. Or you might tell you that people are already doing that. You could tell me that. You could tell me you might think it's a good idea, but don't be surprised. Yeah.

I don't be surprised when you pull something out and it fell apart. I don't know. But I think I'm on to something. But I need to have it stitched back up. But isn't that something? I want to, you know, like those antique road show things? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, what is up with this thing? Randall wanted to know if he came home from the war and it had kraut blood all over it. But I don't know that he, um... See. I told him I already cleaned it all off. Randall's got back from Germany Much to Steve's chagrin

Yeah, I don't like that one bit Well, you're glad that I'm back No, I'm glad you're back But I felt I was nervous the whole time You're over there That things might break out again Um, Norman McDonald used to talk about that

Yeah Everybody's always worried about like North Korea Yeah Russia He's like why are they not worried about the Germans We've already They've already done it

We've already had two world wars Well then why don't you think it's over now RIP Yeah Um Oh one other quick thing I don't want to take up too much for our time But you know how

Like I'm bad on sports I'm bad on just generally Very ignorant about athletics I was getting my hair cut I get my hair cut at VIP Barbershop which is great

you got a call ahead but it's great and one thing I like about is they always playing sports with the volume off which I was better you know that way and

because there's less of it well no I like it like during the during the summer Olympics it was cool because you just watch these people run around the track

but you can't hear what's going on I thought it was very soothing I'm in there a day and like the big old there's a huge TV screen it's only thing in there they don't really

it's not really like mega-deafs mega decorated but there's a huge TV screen and so normally you sit like when you're getting your haircut you're looking at the screen but when you're waiting your backs to the screen but the other wall is a giant mirror and I'm just kind of lost in my thoughts half watching a baseball game but it's in a mirror okay which I didn't think about and every time a guy hits the ball he's running the third day's walked he'd run the other way and I'm like sitting there I'm Honestly, God, sitting there like, when did they change that?

I swear, I swear, I was almost going to ask Kevin the Barber. I was almost going to be like, why do these dudes take off running like the other way that what you normally would run? And all of a sudden it occurred to me, I'm like, oh, it's reversed. Yeah. Well, you're probably excited because he thought, he thought, boy, the prevalence of left-handers is really going up in professional sports. I felt I was so I was like so I was so ready to open my mouth and go like Hey why are they

Yeah Could have been majorly embarrassed Could have been a good Yeah Um A couple quick news bits here Let me look here a minute Oh movies's coming out

I can't believe I hadn't heard about this before There's a movie coming out where Bambi goes and seeks revenge Mm-hmm You've heard about this? It's called The Reckes Bambi the Reckoning. Well, everybody says Bambi, but isn't it like Bambi's kid? How does it work?

No. No, Bambi's dad gets killed. Yeah. The mom, yeah. That's who gets killed, right? No, this is old man. Yeah, there is. Yeah.

This is old man. Remember Spencer tried to work up how many inches of antler? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he, because. Bambi and his dad had? The buck does get killed. But I feel like Bambi's also. an orphan.

Right. So maybe there's a, yeah. It's been a while, to be honest. It's a sea tier creature feature. I guess that means poor graphics. It's made by the same studio that made a bunch of Winnie the Pooh horror films as well. It's like as soon as they enter a certain form of public domain,

they just go buck wild on these things. Interesting. Yeah, so the story is like it drinks some toxic something or other and then it becomes monsterized and it has. has like a million. It's just like ninja turtles. The grieving deer decides to take a sip of the nefarious chemical that local corporation

Wilberks. It's always a, there's always a lot of these movies, there's a animal movies, there's usually a bad corporation. There's a strain of anti-capitalism in all of these. Oh yeah. My kids in this little, my kids in this little song and dance club right now for a week. Like just to keep them busy, my little one, just to keep them busy before we go Alaska, you know. And he's coming home singing, they're teaching them a song. It's like a, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a flat out like anti-capitalist song. He comes home every night and practices. Is it the one from the Lorax? Yeah. My kids at that same song and dance club. Is he? Yeah. Oh, I've got two. I've got two kids in there right now. I think yonnie's daughters have done it as well. Yeah. Oh, but so you think your kid and my kid are in the same song and dance club right now? It's very, it's very, well, he's he's not doing the Lorax song.

He's doing a lot. They're comrades now. There's different age groups. And it's not like the Lorax was a book written decades ago with the same exact anti-capitalist sentiment and same plot. The song has nothing to do with the Lorax book. It's a guy with corporate attorneys. It's like has nothing to do with the Lorax book.

Well, yeah, but it's about him cutting down the threes to make the thneeds and he's draining the resources dry without a thought of the planet or... No, that's not in the song. I invite you to look at the song. Is it the one that says, how bad can I be? Yeah, yeah. And it's like, he's like talking about his corporate attorneys are denying. Yeah.

It's like this whole, either way. So next week it'll be the international. That wouldn't land. It's over my head, Randall. I don't get it. What's the joke? That's the old, isn't it the old socialist anthem? No, I don't know.

Sorry. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. On-X hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in On-X are available for your hunts this season. Now, the Hunt app is a fully-function.

GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones aerial imagery 24K topo maps waypoints and tracking you can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer

you can get a free three months to try out on X if you visit onexmaps dot com slash meet Kevin you got you got stomach for one more news bit yeah you're good news bit yeah yeah coming A Bambi movies coming out where Bambi becomes a fanged

bloodthirsty monster who will stop at nothing to attack his prey and there stay tuned They are as prey humans, or we don't know. I'm assuming there's a lot of blue-collar men.

Yeah, because, well, driving around in trucks. Before, like, there's a whole genre of these movies, like animated animal movies. Yeah. There's a whole genre where the bad guy is a southerner who hunts. I've talked about this one show a bunch times. There's a show my kids used to like. I didn't like them. watching it and there's like a couple

there's like rotating cast of bad guys one of the bad guys was a wild game chef one of the bad guys was like a very that's pretty tame yeah he was a very like effeminate urbanite yeah and one was like a southern chef

huh the bad the villains um okay we've talked about on the show this is news isish We've talked about in the show and demonstrated in various video projects we've done the process called Ike Jime. You familiar? It's a fish dispatch method.

Oh, no. My first introduction to EK.K. Jemay was not by, it's a Japanese word, my first introduction to E.K.G.me was not having anything to do with the Japanese and not having anything to do with fish. but it was demonstrated to me in South America with a a giant river turtle which is a sighty species but these native dudes had a net and they were using the net to catch fish

and this big turtle gets wrapped up in their net a giant river turtle and we're in a camp together they take the turtle we weren't able to film this because they were explaining to us that Like, it's kind of a no-no, but the turtle got in the nets. What could they do about it? Either way.

They go get a, they go and cut a switch, like a big slender stick. Mm-hmm. And peel the bark off it and basically make like a, what would look like a, like a hot dog roast and skewer. Okay. Or like a marshmallow stitch. And take the turtle and flop, cut his head off. now when i used to process turtles we would cut their head off then you hang them up by the tail and it would be hours hours before you could pull his leg and his leg didn't suck back into his

shell right you'd like you'd hold out a pair of channel locks this is how my dad taught me to do it it's kind of gruesome but just how uh scofia explains it in legead culinary but you hold out a pair channel locks so the turtle grabs the channel locks grabs onto it and you pull out and decapitate them just like you're cutting head off of chicken this is just how it was demonstrated me as a child and then you hang the turtle up and eventually you pull his leg and it doesn't pull back and then it's time to clean the turtle these guys in south america they took a machete and then took that long skewer and inserted it into the spine and ran that skewer all the way down that spine till it was in its tail and that turtle melted.

I mean, melted. It was just like blubbered. That was after they cut the head on. Immediately, immediately, cut the head off, ran that skewer. And there wasn't, because like a turtle is a, I don't know what's going on in the nerve. Just like disrupting all the nerves. Yeah, like think of the expression, like running around like a chick when his head cut off, which I demonstrate, which I mentioned to my kids all the time when we're hunting.

Like they'll hit something and it'll kind of do a little mad dash and they feel real bad for it. And I'll be like, well, you know, think about it. Like someone cuts a chicken's head off, it runs all over hell, right? It's like dead, but not dead. so it just like it melted the turtle I never seen anything like it

turns out this is a common fish dispatching method in Japan and I've gone with a friend of mine she was Korean but still we would she would catch a fish and immediately cut its tail

just cut through the cut through the cut through the tail to sever the backbone the spine at the tail point, right? And then you kind of cocked the tail so it's still connected by skin, but it's now cocked back,

folded over. And then she'd take this brass wire she had, copper wire maybe, whatever it hell it was, copper wire. She'd take this copper wire and just in that,

in that spine. You follow me? The spinal cord. They're basically going. And that fish just, again, It just is like done. You know, you think of a fish flopping for a long time, whatever, you know,

and it influences how that fish goes through rigor. Yeah. And it's just like the fish is just deader and dead. This guy here, there's this company, Schenkel Systems. They've built a robot that uses the Japanese EKGME method of killing fish, which they regard as the most. humane way to harvest the animal while producing the best quality meat. The process involves inserting, I forgot this part.

It's kind of like ancillary part of the thing is you put a spike in the fish's brain first. So the process involves inserting a spike into the fish's brains soon that is caught, killing it instantly, reducing the stress that can cause the fish to spoil more quickly. Oh, he's not talking about. What? that's what he's talking about not running the hold on crinkie

Randall anyone their machine isn't the spine reaming machine their machine is just a spike to the head machine. That seems a lot easier to make it stuns the fish to help humans do that method

no so it's a robot that stuns a fish Yes. This is what you get for talking about news articles you haven't read. Do you know what? People are always saying, like, well, I read an article this morning. I'm like, I always go like, you know, I didn't really read it. I mean, I saw it. Oh.

But the guy says a weird thing. So he's talking about how he's a... What? Huh? Okay. Oh, making the subsequent cuts in seven seconds. Is he ream in the spines or not? The human does it.

The machine stuns them. Schenkel's refrigerator-sized machine called Poseidon is operational on... Steve reads news so you don't have to. It's operational on three fishing vessels off the U.S. West Coast. the fish is inserted into the robot which then uses computer vision to identify the species and its anatomical information spiking the brain and making the subsequent cuts in seven seconds it might be that the bad this is a bad writer who wrote what i'm reading clearly subsequent cunts makes me think that it's doing more than that it's ream in the spine This guy raised $22 million for this thing. Jesus. Should have gotten into robots.

You know what really turns me off, though, is one of his quotes. He's got a quote that I think is indefensible. Where is this quote? Oh, here's a quote from this guy who builds himself, not Bill's himself, former SpaceX engineer. But I don't see SpaceX engineer and think fisheries. primarily because they're very interested in Mars and there ain't no life on Mars like I don't want to go there

you know he says we've been fishing for 40,000 years and the tools haven't really changed a little bit of a oversimplification are you at all aware of a thing called sonar guided bottom trawling

I mean, holy cow He's saying that like Nothing's changed in 40,000 years But now we have a robot that can poke a hole in the fish's head And this is like the right This is the right direction I'm like nothing's changed in 40,000 years of fishing Yeah

Good Lord Plastics Internal combustion engines Sonar guided bottom trawes Which can literally Which can literally scrape underwater spires whatever there's another big article

about lab grown meat and fish which Corinne put in here and then pulled out and now they're back in here again we don't have to cover it no we're not going to cover it I don't care if everybody eats it I don't want it

well this is more on the lab lab grown fish that it's you know making it's getting into some good restaurants or I don't know if I buy that in Portland And there are seven states that made it illegal. And the news bit is that last month, Texas was the seventh or eighth state.

Our own great state made it illegal. Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Tennessee, Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, have done various things to, like, prevent or slow down or ban cultured, sell cultured meat. Texas just did it in June. Yeah, I thought they may be. That's a little bit big brother for my likens, but like I can't get worked up about it because I'm kind of grossed out by by lab-grown meat. But Corinne, by saying good restaurants, think about what you're saying, though. The articles point out how a Haitian restaurant in Portland is serving lab-grown salmon.

Now, I haven't been to like Haitia recently, but is there like a lot of big Haiti? What did I call it? Haitia. Yeah. Tells you how long it's been to that. Is there Like salmon isn't part of Haitian cuisine

Good Much less lab grown salmon The chef is You know Won a James Beard Award So I think that that puts him At some kind of level I've been nominated for James Beard Awards

And I don't feel like I'm at any level Okay You ready to dig in? Sure All right How do we start? Because you guys do so much work man Can we start with a recap?

we can do whatever we start with the recap what kind of recap do you want can you recap for can you recap for for us and our listeners um just kind of like

I'm sure you give the spiel all the time the spiel about when we see an area that we declare like bad genetics or bucks don't get big there you know that area's got big bucks because it's got good genetics

um what is that short hand for you know what i mean like like what are some of the things that actually in in your mind and it could include genetics but like what are the sort of hidden factors that are driving whether you're seeing big giant bucks and you're part of the state you know yeah well i mean is that too big of a question no no you're good i'm just trying to figure out how to lean into their age genetics and nutrition affect antler size tell me again age Okay.

Genetics, nutrition. Okay. And much of our focus for a long time and certainly within, you know, hunting communities as well, we tend to offhandedly and frequently refer to genetics, right? It's hard to open up a magazine and see an article written, you know, about some big buck or big bowl that somebody harvested. And inevitably, it's like, man, the genetics in this area are just fantastic, you know, for large antlers. And there's an aspect of that that is true. Like to grow, you know,

a substantial set of antlers, horns, you need to have genetics that support that, right? But we also get ourselves in the situation as we frequently refer to that. And I think I think where some of that's come from is we've called it our hornographic culture, where we're so focused on horns, antlers, their size. Like, we're so drawn into that. All we can think about is males and the crap that's growing on their head. And so we've referenced that as our hornographic culture. And there's elements of that that are good.

That doesn't. I love that. The greatest shirt, dude. Hornography? Hornography? Can you text someone right away for someone steals this idea? This is going to Hunterston. It's a buck mounting a dough.

And it says hornography. A big buck And proceeds go to Monty's shop Texting Hunter Yeah And in And And see

Yes That's perfect Proceeds Proceeds go directly to me Proceeds go to Monty's shop Is that fair? Yeah 100%

You don't care if we steal that I didn't clear that With the brass I just sort of threw it out there No no no That's how we're gonna do it I think No that's how we're definitely gonna do it

We just stole it flat out from the guy in a recorded place. We've used that term in a scientific paper, in two scientific papers. I mean, we laid it out in a scientific paper. So it exists. Can we do the thing? And then if we do proceeds, go to you guys?

Yeah, 100%. Hornography. That's good. I know. I know when I see it. Sorry, continue on. I just got so damn excited. I can continue.

In Texas is in the Hunter. So I think, but I think what that does is in, And of course, like, when you take that scenario where we're focused on the males, and then we think about, like, what has happened, for example, in places like Texas, we often think of like Texas and line breeding and the various things that they do to get males to grow these just ridiculous-sized antlers at a very young age. And there is a genetic element to that, but I think that's part of what's just translated to us is, well, of course, if there's big antlers in this area and not in this area, there's better genetic. over here for antlers than there is over in this other area. So what we did to better understand what aspects of genetics versus nutrition go into producing large antlers is I think it's fortunately like one of the most, I think, elegant experiments that I've ever been able to be a part of.

And that is some work we did in South Dakota. And with that work, we had animals in the Black Hills of Southwestern South Dakota, which had historically been known to grow some impressively large white-tailed deer, a number of bars and custer in other places that have just stupid big white-tailed deer. But more recently, in the past number of decades, they're all very small. Like, we just don't grow big deer in that region anymore. Versus in eastern South Dakota, where we can grow impressively big animals as little as three to four years of age. And so the looming question with that, and it created, it presented the situation

to evaluate what you reference directly. And that is, are those animals in Southwestern South Dakota in the Black Hills just genetically different than animals from Eastern South Dakota? So we did what we call a common garden experiment, brought those animals into captivity as newborn fawn. So we captured animals from the Black Hills in Eastern South Dakota as newborn fawns, fed them, put them on a high nutritional plane. So we bottle raised them as fons, put them on a high nutritional plane. So we basically maxed out nutrition. Nutrition wasn't limiting in any way. And then raise those animals all the way up to adulthood. And at adulthood, animals from on average, so once they hit peak body mass, antler size, animals from the Black Hills, males from the Black Hills were 70 pounds

smaller than males from eastern South Dakota and had 40 inches of less antler than animals from eastern South Dakota. Because of bad genetics. Because of bad genetics. Right. And if you, so right surface level, right? They've been on good nutrition since the day that they were born. And so clearly that that supports a genetic explanation then at that point. 100% case closed. Case closed. Which then we then took that one step further and looked at the next generation of animals born. in captivity. So we had Black Hills males and females allowed them to breed males and females from Eastern South Dakota. So like no local bucks jumping over the fence. No local box jumping over the fence. No, we allowed them to breed within their groups from all the animals that we'd raised since

newborns and then raised that second generation of animals all the way up to adulthood. And so once that second generation of animals were raised all the way up to adulthood, if we just consider the Black Hills animals, those sons, born to those Black Hills males that I was just talking about, those sons were, had 30 inch more antlers than their fathers and were 50 pounds heavier than their fathers, indicating they made up over 70% of the difference that occurred between the first generation animals that we brought into captivity. We didn't do anything genetically. Same genetics from those two groups of animals. What was different was the mothers from the animals that were now born in captivity, that second generation of animals, those mothers were on a high nutritional

plane. Now if we go back to the wild scenario when we originally got those animals, the mothers in the Black Hills were on a poor nutritional plane. Ponderosa pine dominated forests, crappy understory, just on a poor nutritional plane. So what that means is called a negative maternal effect. What that means is that those animals that we originally got as newborns from the Black Hills carried the nutritional signature of mom who was living in the Black Hills. And now our new animals that are born in captivity, they're now carrying the nutritional signature of the moms that they're born to in captivity. And those moms are on a high nutritional plane. And there's almost no, I mean, when you think about that level of difference, I mean, we're talking 50 pounds.

difference in body mass 30 inches of antler like it's it's it's pretty wild to think that we could through some genetic manipulation in a natural setting obtain that level of difference and here we're talking over a single generation of animals those massive increases in both body size and antlers that are attributed exclusively to nutrition of mom while those young were in utero yeah yeah and so And even like there's been a number of studies that have been done in Texas from some colleagues of mine down there where they've, you know, gone to great lengths to manipulate genetics by within enclosures, by taking, you know, helicopter catching males and then and then calling males that weren't meeting the level of size that they were working to obtain and are basically unable to obtain like a positive change in antler growth over time. through that level of very directive, very selective calling. So when you think about that, when we translate that to like one area to the next, then what that can mean is that, and there's two sides of it.

One, each set of these animals is adapted to their local environment. Not every environment has or offers supreme nutrition, right? So if we consider place in the arid desert to, you know, a migratory mule deer populations that's running up into the high alpine and, you know, eating tall forb, tall forbs all summer long. So all these animals, oh, and or, you know, in the arid system, maybe their winters aren't so bad. So it doesn't take it much for them to persist through winter versus the animals that are in the more temperate systems in the in the mountains. Like, it's harder for them to persist through winter. And so even if you just consider that at the surface level, not all of those animals can just operate and do the same thing. The way in which they operate, the way in which they obtain and allocate resources has to be adapted to that local environment.

So there's a side of that that's influencing antler size that we see from one place to the next. But it's also a reflection of that local adaptation, the nutrition they have present there, and their ability to allocate resources. to antler development versus other things. So certainly when you consider like males in one region to the next or males in a harvest from one area to the next, like if we're going to compare apples to apples and say there's bigger males here, smaller males here, we first need to, of course, consider what age classes of males are there, right? If they're mostly two and three-year-olds versus over here, you know, there's less

harvest and they're mostly being harvested at four to seven, we're going to see differences is an antler size. But once we've accounted for that nutrition and what we see from one place to the next is going to play a much bigger role than genetics from one place to the next. And most of that nutrition and what dictates what a male is going to be for the rest of his life

is mom. And mom's condition in utero. Yep. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but here this. On-X hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great

features that you love and on-X are available for your hunts this season. Now the hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K top-o maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer you can get a free three months to try out onex if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet so i think what's fascinating about that is then what we see and even as we see from one year to the next well we can see fluctuations in antler size given environmental potential from one year to the next food growth spring condition summer conditions winter conditions, for that matter, from one year to the next.

The greatest marker of what a male carries with him actually came before he was even dropped on the ground. Yeah, that's a buddy mine in Wyoming, a guy that's very, very shrewd on wildlife and like a lifetime observer of wildlife. He was, I didn't get into it with him, but he was talking about it was a wet, spring right yeah anticipating yeah good antler growth yeah he's not wrong though right i mean that's not wrong that is that is helpful but you could also like a thing you wouldn't hear from a guy is the guy wouldn't come and say to you uh two springs ago correct would not i saw a lot of fat doze yep so i'm hoping to draw a tag yeah this year in order to reap the benefits of that great nutritional season

that those doles were enjoying some time ago. It's just not like part of the lingo. Correct. Yeah. And so, which is also important for us to be mindful of as hunters

and even as conservationists when what we see today, for example, from yield of males or even size of males within a population, in many instances, isn't a reflection

of what happened then or what happened over the past couple years. It's actually a reflection of what happened maybe five years ago. And it's in large part because of the conditions that those males experienced from their mom while they were in utero. And it's called a cohort effect as well where we may have years that were just poorer years or worse winters where moms were struggling in utero and they lacked the ability to give their young the silver spoon right out of the gate. And so that signal, even if conditions improve later on in life, just like our example with the common garden experiment, even if condition for that male gets better after that spring and summer, he's still going to carry the mark of mom, mom's nutritional signature with him for his entire life. So when that cohort of males gets to six years old, they're going to carry that signature. And so especially when we see up, yeah, it's even more delayed.

It's even more delayed. And so as we consider even ups and downs and fluctuations within populations, for example, we see reductions in density, and we can talk about this too with like bad winters. And then we see nutritional recovery within a population, meaning we have a bunch of fat moms that are able to, you know, to plug into their offspring. I think what's really interesting is oftentimes in periods of population growth, we'll then see, you know, in a few year lag behind that is when we'll see a number of very large males being harvested. And it wasn't, hit me with that again? What's the timeline? So if we see a dramatic reduction in a population, for example, and so that reduction is then tied to reduce competition for food.

So nutrition improves. So a big winner kill. Yep. So nutrition improves for everybody else that remains. So there's a big winter kill. Yep. Wipes out all the deer. Yeah.

The 20% that are still stand and have it gravy now. Yep. Because they got all the good betting areas. They got the good feeding areas. Yep. All of themselves. Less competition for space and food. Yep. So nutritionally, they're far better off, which means they're meeting their needs, and then those females are able to allocate more resources to their offspring. So those offspring, and I mean, we see this in our work, Born Baker, grow quickly, and then they're carrying that positive nutritional signature with them, right? We're not going to realize that positive nutritional signature from a male harvest perspective until maybe four years down the road, right?

That's a thing in my little point I was making that it wasn't even accounting for. That's correct. You'd have to be, I'm excited about this year. Yep. Because four years ago. Yeah. Yep. There were some big fan dough.

Yes, that's exactly right. There's kind of like two, like, countervailing forces then with a bagged winner. Because I think, like, the traditional understanding is, like, there's a bad winner, and then you have to wait for the bucks to backfill. like so the the three-year-old deer the old bucks die the three-year-old deer become four-year-old deer become five-year-old deer and you see that sort of but then in a bad winter that those bucks that are born after the bad winter are going to have that limited potential for the rest of their life but then the bucks born after that are going to have much better potential than the the ones that died in the winter so there's like a there's like a there's like a stunned generation right before that generation that's enjoying the more food at the trot, that kind of thing. Phil, can we try to animate what Randall just said with charts and graphs? Yeah, sure. Can you say that one more time?

Well, like, I'm not, I know, because you're a very smart person. I know that you're right. I just don't understand what you're saying. We should have a chalkboard in here. Oh, that'd be great. No, like, you know, like the traditional, I think like the traditional very simplistic, like, logic about winter kill is that old bucks with worn down teeth are going to die. And then that unit, if you're just talking about like a unit, you're saying like,

okay, that unit will be back on its feet by the time the younger bucks get to that age class, right? Yeah, I would say that. And so it's sort of this like linear like backfilling. But once those bucks get to that age, then you have the generation that were still in mom during that bad winter. So that generation is going to drop. And then the ones from the generations after that, then they're going to have even more food than anyone.

So there's almost like a delayed onset. There's like a drop in potential and then a skyrocketing potential in terms of those cohorts. Do you think he's sitting on a publication here? I don't think it's nearly sophisticated enough to make it a Montief shop paper. Well, so let me, I can essentially describe that with. with what we observed. I'm tracking. I'm going to get out my markers.

The second time I'm tracking. With what we observed in the Wyoming range. And so I will say, I want to say, before I get into that, like, I mean, so we've been working in the Wyoming range now since 2013. But can I, can I have a quick question? I want to hear all about the Wyoming range. That's one thing I want to clarify. Yep.

Because you kind of got at it, but I just want to make sure you get at it. Yep. Your job is not producing. Your job is, your mandate is not to help hunters kill a huge bucks. No. Okay. So let's clarify. Like, what is your sort of, what gets you up in the morning?

It's not like guaranteeing hunters bigger bucks. Yeah, no, no. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll let sidestep and get to some of those things. And then I'll swoop back to our deer work in Western Wyoming. So our motto is advancing science and management one day, one data point at a time. And so that even ties back to like the reference to our name and that

our aim is to one, advanced science, which means one way to think about that is our goal is to better understand what makes these animals tick, how they make a living within the world that they do, and then take that one from just like an ecological standpoint, better understand them, and then two, what does it mean for us from a management or conservation perspective? The reference to one data point as a time is we often joke like the amount of effort will put into one single data point because our work our work is typically if we can pull it off is long term and it's individual base and that is we're working to monitor individual animals for as long as we can so a lot of studies like toss a collar on an animal you know monitor for a year or two and that's

it well yes we're using collars but we're monitoring them for as long as we can and we're collecting a whole suite of other information on them as we're monitoring generations of deer we are yeah that's exactly right and so to do that and so for example like one animal in particular it may take a lot of money and a lot of effort on our side of things from a field perspective to monitor that one animal to collect the data point from that one animal but sometimes that one animal is such a critical data point to better understanding how what makes those animals tick. And then if you take a whole bunch of those individual data points from animals and you pool them together, allows, you know, patterns to emerge for us as to what it

means for those animals. Notably, I mean, I get to, I'm very fortunate to be the spokesperson to talk about our work a fair bit, but there's so much that happens behind the scenes that, I mean, I shouldn't get any of the credit. Our funding sources, we can't do what we do for free. and so like I'm we're also constantly raising money to make to make that possible but Wyoming Game of Fish Commission in particular has had a lot of foresight to support us in some of these long-term studies groups like mealy fanatic foundation Wyoming wildlife natural resource trust and many others that have like been the backbone that make it possible to do what we do and then all of the field personnel especially with the Wyoming game of fish department are central to our ability

to be successful and support us in the field and then I um I work in a with a an amazing team of people in the shop, grad students, research scientists that pour their heart and their soul into the work we do, the data collection, that make all this possible. So want to be able to at least give credit where credit is due. And then if I say anything stupid through the course of this, it's totally on me. All the good things that are said, they should all get the credit for. And to put a finer point on this, like when you say one data point at a time, what you're doing is catching animals by the dozen and every single one of them you're taking temperature you're

measuring fat you're swabbing the nasal passages you're uh ultrasounding for pregnancy you're measuring the size of the fetus you're i know i'm missing stuff there but yeah like i've i've gone on uh collaring or i guess a check-in and collaring thing and it's i mean it's hands-on and it's very specific it's like how much does this animal weigh on this day of the year? So, yeah, like, I think just to bring it to a more concrete level, like, you're, you're measuring deer and handling deer, uh, the same deer for, in some cases for years. That's correct. Yeah, it'd be like, uh, a thing, if you go back to the landscape of fear, we'll move on from

the old times. We'll talk about new shit, but if you go back to the landscape of fear, you, uh, uh, Kevin explained that you put a collar on a duck. you put a collar on her fawn yep you track her fawn through her whole life put a collar on her fawn yep you're starting to get a picture of where did that dough ever go mm-hmm where does the fawn ever go that's right does the fawn go to new places or the same places yep um when what are the what are the movement patterns what are their sort of relative fitnesses yep because you're able to look at like how fit was dough a what's the condition of

her fawn what's the condition of her fawn yep right it paints like a an amazing picture when you compare it to a different style of biology might be like we flew it with a helicopter and did a count right it's just different

I'm not dogging on that kind of work there's probably great work but like no to go like well let's look at like a lineage like let's look at these like specific animals over long period of time and what can we tell about those specific animals that might inform what you're seeing when you fly over to helicopter

and count. That's right. Exactly. It's like you're adding a really important piece to a, that can plug in or inform all these other methodologies. Yeah, that's exactly right. Like when I went with you, I mean, it's, your students are, your team members are like 20, 30 people all sleeping in the same Forest Service cabin, like rallying out into the field every day.

Yeah. I'd have no drink and rule. Wrestling deer. And at night, at night, like, someone's making spaghetti and someone's, uh, whatever you call it when you spin the blood vial around. Centerfuge. Your center fuse. Yeah, like, it's literally a forest service cabin and someone's making spaghetti and someone's centerfusing meal to your blood. Yeah. And, uh, and then everybody wakes up at five in the morning and rallies out again.

And a long day, like in February in Wyoming, just like someone's got a clipboard and someone's measuring deer and someone's sampling stuff. And it's just like, it's a, it's a. It's an impressive operation. Yeah. Well, and I think, like, even as you described, Steve, the ability to see, to connect those pieces together, which I hope is, like, more from, like, a mechanistic perspective. Like, how are these things happening? Why are these animals doing what they're doing? The sort of the getting under the hood perspective as to what it makes for each one of those animals to tick.

And then as we scale that up, what that means for understanding what's going on within a population. And that can't happen with like a two-year study. Yeah, right? We're talking many, many years to be able to put that together. And some of our goals with our work in the Wyoming range, so we've been fortunate to work there since 2013. Yeah, let's talk. Let's set that up and we'll talk. We're going to talk about a specific place.

That's right. So do you mind what is the Wyoming range? Where are we talking about? Yeah. So Wyoming, Salt River Range, Western Wyoming, and it's, it's home to what either is or has been one of the largest meel deer populations in the world region g region g yeah like you might and if you if you hang out on meal deer forums yep there's a lot of talk about region g and a lot of the talk about region g is a county speculating about its future yes talking about its challenges

anticipating what are going to be the good years the bad years it's a it's a very yeah it is a very disgust unit yep one of the reasons that's probably true is because it's like a unit that sort of occupies a distinct geographical feature. Yes. Right? It's like when you say Region G, you're kind of talking about like a range. Yep. You know?

Yeah. It's very elegant. Yes. And it is a probably in the top three or four meal to your spots to get discussed, be like the Kaibab. I'm trying to think of the Henry Mountains in Utah. People like talk a lot about. Region G. Yeah.

gets talked about and mourned celebrated yes yes for sure all all of those yeah and so that that population i mean is numbered a thought to have numbered you know beyond 50 000 deer you know once once upon a time uh and then kind of leaning into the 92 93 winter was a time when there were thought to be well over 50 000 deer within that herd wow there was a lot of female harvest that was happening at that point in time to work to bring densities down because they were over over what game and fish should define as the herd unit objective the 92 93 winter hit and the population crashed uh and then since then it's kind of fluctuated i don't know if we whether numbers matter or not but maybe like 30 to 40 000 is somewhere somewhere in there and hasn't yeah and hasn't risen to

those levels previously and what would be a low end since 92 so if if let's just let's just accept Yeah. I know you're saying like maybe 50,000. Yeah. If we accept like around 50,000 and 92. Low end since then. Yeah. Like it hasn't hit that height. No. Again. No. So the new high end since then has been 3040. Yeah. Probably mid mid 30s. And what would you ballpark has been like a low end? The bottom. So I'm going to get to that. Okay. 11.11,000. Yeah. So we we started in 2013 doing the things that we do. Randall described to work to understand nutritional dynamics in the herd and then simultaneously just better learn more things about deer that we haven't learned previously. From 2013, and this was at a time when maybe, I forget the exact numbers, were probably bouncing around in the upper 30s, maybe around 40,000.

And from 2013 to 2016, what we saw each year was just a general decline in body fat of females, both in March and in December. So autumn and spring body fat. It just declined from 13 all the way up until 2016. And then in 2016, 17, we had a bad winter. We lost 30% of our adult females, pretty much all of our radio marked fawns. And so, in going into that winter, autumn fat going into that winter was around 7%. So remember 7% body fat.

We lost 30% that year. Population rebounded, began. to rebound after that body fat of level levels of female shot way up and then we had another bad winter in 1819 lost 30% of our adult females again so and 2019 2018 19 so the 1819 sorry sorry we're working on a history project now I live me and we're thinking across centuries right now so say the dates again I'm sorry that was dumb so dumb of me not dumb you no no you're good so winter 2018 2019 yeah so Winters overlap calendar years, right?

So 16-17 winter, 18-19-winner, two bad winters, roughly 30% of adult females. After each one of those years, we see upticks in nutritional condition following that. So body fat of females shoots up after that. Productivity eventually returns. There's always a lag in a year because what ends up happening, this goes back to what you were referencing, Randall. So in those bad winters, fauns because their metabolic demands are different. They're some of the smallest animals on the landscape, and they don't come into winter with much body fat. And this all comes down to allocation-related principles, right?

And so as a fawn, the energy you obtain is mostly going to grow. You don't have a bunch of, like, extra energy to put in body fat versus females, adult females are done growing, and whatever extra energy they have, they can put into body fat. or males part of reason why we see age-related dynamics in antler size or horn growth that we do goes to the same principle up until they reach asymptotic body mass and so are thus basically done growing in body size we don't see peak antler size until after that and that's all principle of allocation their first prioritizing body growth and then so even even those age-related dynamics yes it's age but it's founded in nutritional principles and and how the resources they have

and how they allocate energy. So even that's driven by nutrition. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. On-X hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in On-X are available for your hunts this season.

Now, the hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K top-o maps, waypoints, and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out onex if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. I want to restate that point for people that are at work and they're only half paying attention. Yeah. Or me driving on the road

listening to something. I'm listening to Clay's Water Witch an episode right now, which is fascinating. But I only catch half what he's taught about because I'm driving. So if you're driving

and you're only half listening, this is good. When a buck throws his... I never thought about this for. When a buck throws his biggest antlers, he's at a point where he's seeing the least amount of body-sized growth year over year.

That's right. So he's like growing his body, growing his body, growing his body, growing his body, boom, he's kind of what he is. Mm-hmm. And then he gets serious about antlers. That's right. Exactly. Oh, that's right.

Yep. All right. You can get back to work now. All right. All right. No. No, you're good. So after those winters, we see that we see that uptick in body fat that occurred thereafter.

it during those winters we lose almost all the fauns the females are in poor condition as they exit winter and then what we see are spikes and stillborns after those bad winters and and yep and we see suppressed birth mass after those bad winters as well which again yes i'll say this over and over again but that has nutritional underpinnings as well for a mom for these long-lived iteroparous animals which just simply means they live a long time and they they reproduce multiple times through their lives. Their best strategy is to have the opportunity to reproduce multiple times as opposed to take one instance and pour all into reproduction because then they're likely to die. If they die, then they lose out on all those other opportunities to reproduce. So what that

means for females that are in poor shape, it's better for them to survive and for their offspring to die than it is for them to pour everything they have into their offspring and then compromise their own survival so that's part of why we see um if she lives she might crank out three more whatever condition will get better next number of years and she's going to have the opportunity to try again so we see increased rates of stillborning uh suppressed birth mass birth mass plays a huge role in whether or not they survive thereafter and so what that means is you have high rates of stillborn in fact in some of those years it's like the leading cause of fond mortality after those bad winters and so and and that just because like um

that fetus it's not getting fed malnourished essentially malnourished in the womb dies in the womb of malnourishment yeah that's exactly right and they're born dead man yeah that's another thing

I never makes total sense it just never really thought about yeah that I've never thought about the fact that a doe would like get pregnant but then not have a fawn right oh yeah no for sure and I think to sort of sidestep

I think it's also important to point out for deer in particular both white till deer mule deer, they very rarely abort. So they will typically, once they're pregnant, they will care, they will almost always carry it to term, but then they may drop stillborns, for example, in those, in those years with those bad conditions. We have, when it's gotten really, really bad in those bad winters, we have seen a couple of premature abortions that have occurred, but it's very rare in deer. Okay. So she, she birds it. She births it. At the right time. Yeah, but it's still born. It's

dead. And so a deer's strategy is to typically carry the term. So they're almost always pregnant. Twinning is very common. And then they'll typically make those sort of like nutritional decisions of if they can do it once the young have hit the ground. And so that's why we see that. Versus like pronghorn or moose, for example, where if things get really bad, they may just, they're more likely to just abort on the way. Or for critters like maybe elk, well, moose, elk, cheap. We see nutritional signatures more strongly tied to like how fat they are and whether or not they're going to be pregnant. So those those things are evident along the way. Regardless, what that means is we're almost missing two cohorts of young in those instances. We lost the we lost the

fauns in the bad winter. We lose a vast majority of the fauns that are born after the bad winter because of that nutritional suppression that has occurred. So there's basically two cohorts. And so if you think, you know, from a hunting perspective, two cohorts then that once those cohorts would have been four to six years of age, there's not going to be a lot of animals in those age ranges. Yep. Because few of them actually made it through. And anyone that made it through, especially after the bad winter, when females are in such poor shape, they're going to carry that nutritional signature of mom barely surviving through that bad winter. And so they're going to be small regardless once they hit that age then dude i got i'm sorry man i got i got two questions okay i have to

like try to remember where where i was i don't lose track but i'll no no no ask your questions go no no i'll write them down i'm going to write them down okay okay now i feel like it just derailed you i don't know i just got to write them down okay okay one second i got to write down I'm joking I'm joking Don't me keep going I wait to you right I'm down

Okay right now It's almost as compelling as you're reading news stories for the first time But there's a payoff to this Phil Yeah Dude listen It's just that what you're telling me

is so interesting to me Okay But continue on All right All right So after the bad winters there's of course there's the there's the there's the flush in in well actually let me side stuff a bit after those two bad winters we had enough data where we can look at what determines whether or not female deer survive bad winters and there's a few factors that that are critical yes the worst the winter is the lower probability to have to survive the winter that's intuitive right the more the better food so like sagebrush growth on their winter range and in this in this range in sage brush is critical. The core of their diet through winter. So more and better sagebrush growth on their

winter range helps them survive. Their ability to freely move on their winter ranges and just be able to move and access food on their winter range plays a role. Is that a function of snow? Yeah, and part of function of snow. Yep. And then we also see very strong age dependent relationship. So old females, and so especially in a bad winter, we're going to lose old females. And then some of the very youngest ones, but otherwise, like, that sort of prime age from, say, three to seven or so are pretty solid from an age perspective. But the other driving factor and the most profound factor is how fat they were going into that winter. So I think what's important to consider in that, and the reason why it happens this way is if you consider why animals die on a winter,

and a bad winter. And you can almost translate this to like any sort of like environmental event that challenges them nutritionally. And that's what a bad winter does. And for an animal to persist through the winter, it just needs to meet its energetic requirements through the course of the winter. And so as you pile up snow, that's going to increase their nutritional deficit. Pile up snow and cold, right? So thermoregulate cost to thermal regulate, maintain body temperature cost to locomotion, wade through snow and access food. And it's also restricting food. It's reducing their ability to access the food. So all of those things hamper their ability to meet their daily energy requirements. What fat does is it's basically it's as if they packed

groceries on their back from summer range. And so if if that's one of the most profound factors that influences overwinter survival, what it means is that overwinter survival is largely dictated by what they experienced on a completely different range that could be 100 miles away and the food that they had access to there months earlier and they're bringing that with them to winter range and that's helping ensure their survival over winter that's a fact you don't consider either it's like how on the on alone and some of these survival reality television shows the contestants try to just pack on weight before they go out there that's my that's my they're going to take groceries yeah yeah you got to bring your reserves

I ain't ready. Okay, so after, and I think one significant piece here is after those bad winters, we see the, we see the upticks in body fat. That's tied to the added precipitation, but those upticks and body fat stay even after that first year. And it stays for a couple different reasons. One reason is a reduction in density, so fewer miles on the landscape. And that signature is profound within our data. And many people don't like to hear that, especially when it comes to deer. They may argue, like, oh, density doesn't matter.

We don't want to hear that. But it's true, the more miles that are on the landscape, the increased competition for food, and that's going to result in lower body fat. Who doesn't want to hear that? It depends. Well, so it depends upon the context of what it means for who doesn't want to hear that. What the potential implications are of it is that, And I guess we'll either get to this now or more so later, but more is not always better.

And much of our publics, for example, want more deer. We always want more deer. But more isn't always better when you consider it from a nutritional perspective of what's happening within a population. And so, and that has been very evident within the Wyoming range with our data there. And so increased precept, fewer miles on the landscape, lower. competition. What's also interesting, and this goes all the way back to our conversation of why we see, for example, even different antler capabilities aside from one place to the next, from a nutritional perspective. But what we see after animals have gone through those bad

winters, we evaluated what factors influence their gain in fat over the summer. And it's all the things I mentioned, it's its habitat, it's pre-sip, its density of, density of deer on the landscape. It's age. It's whether or not you recruited, whether or not you lactated and recruited young. But the other thing is if you've experienced a bad winter. In the past. Yeah. And so the animals that live through bad winters, what we see within them is this slight shift in how they allocate their body reserves over time. You're kidding me. No, I'm not, I'm not at all. And to the point where they learn yeah and not to not to like anthropomorphize two months because it's a like it took notes it's a physiological component but what it is is yeah it's an adaptation associated with

this like subtle pre programming pre programming within the animals that's a slight shift and we call it risk sensitive reproductive allocation where the risk they allocate resources of reproduction in a risk sensitive way right and that risk is associated with what they're going to experience thereafter. And again, if they invest too much into reproduction, they're risking their own survival, right? Because they need reserves to survive. We have a bad winter that's like life-threatening and they barely make it. We see that shift in risk-sensitive allocation to the level where there's slight increases in body fat that we see if animals had experienced bad winter past. Even after we've accounted for all the other factors that are there. And it's not like,

you know what I said, like they learned. It's not that. It's not that they're like, hey, man, when the weather gets bad, I got a little move. Yeah. Right. It's got on to old man Lawrence's haystack. Right. It's not that. No, it's like physiological.

It's physiological. And I think what can also, maybe that sounds crazy. It's not, there's been some very elegant work. And so that work of mine was led by Taylor Lashar, and we drew from some prior work when we decided to investigate that idea from Board Barton, who was able to take semi-domesticated. reindeer in Norway and ones that were supplementally fed through the winter and ones that were not. And just by way of shifting them, taking the supplementally fed ones and going to a natural pasture or taking the ones that were from the natural pasture and going to supplemental feeding, animals carried their signature of the range that they were on and how they allocated

resources to reproduction, with the exception of those that went from supplemental feeding to the natural pasture, they instantly dropped how they allocated resources to reproduction because it was it was the potential, it was a potentially compromising their ability to maintain themselves, which is, which is the priority. So I liken it to like winter PTSD. These animals had this life-threatening experience and there's this subtle shift within their pre-programming. And to support that further, and I worked with captive deer for almost a decade, you can have captive white-tailed deer, any captive, ungulate for that matter, except for maybe domestic animals, and supplementally feed them the entire year. So they're on the best nutrition all year round. And we still see cycles

in their diet, how much they eat, in their body fat and body mass through the entire year. When technically, like, they're supplementally fed, it could just be constant through the whole year, but it's not. We see these natural rhythms. And so they voluntarily, through the winter, reduce metabolic rate, reduce appetite, and how much they're eating to go through those cycles. And so I think the most, I mean, maybe it's like, okay, that's cool. So deer slightly reprogram after a bad winter. But I think what it also tells us is that animals are adapted to the local environment within the ranges and the conditions that they experience. To the point where even within an environment like that, when we see this huge, huge shock to the system, we see animals

adapting accordingly. And so that should help convince us that when we go from one range to the next, these animals are operating in ways that correspond with that range so that they're locally adapted, which is the same reason we see antlers the way in which we do, females doing what they do. For example, females in the Wyoming range are not going to gain fat the same way that female deer in southeast Montana are going to, different range, different environmental conditions. They need different things to be able to persist. within that environment.

So to go one step further, all these things happening with body fat, the reduction in density within the herd, then we begin to enter into the 22, 23 winter, which this is like, I don't know, 100 plus year winter, like wildest winter that we've seen for decades within that country.

We lost 70% of our adult females, all of our radio marked fawns, all of them, just all gone, 65% of our adult males. So, man, yeah that dropped the population to 11 roughly 11,000 animals through the course of that winter and I mean it was like animals were sort of like got so concentrated on the south facing slope in places where there's like juniper but no food the the hedge line the brows line and the juniper was like

almost as tall as me where they just all they would do is just walk these trails around around juniper just eating whatever they could sagebrush any sagebrush that was exposed like the twigs everything was eaten to the to the snow line i mean it was it was a very sad experiment experience in an incredibly incredibly devastating winter in that regard for that deer population i had a he's probably connected to you but a buddy mine has a property in Wyoming and he was there was some researches that were doing a little collaring work on his place i weren't feels that he might even been talking about your outfit could have been some western Wyoming anyways he was playing he was telling me how this guy was telling him that during that winter he's like it was that there'd be moments

yes yeah there'd be moments when the mortality signals were like bing bing bing bing bing yeah so like within this broad time of like really hard of a prolonged period of intense hardship yeah there'd be like killing moments yes yeah yeah and so can you explain that a little bit yeah so again this goes back to what we also talked about before and that animals simply need to meet their daily energy requirements. And fat helps with that. During that winter, and I think this is just a really striking example of this, for females that entered winter, that entered that winter over 15 percent, that entered winter under 15 percent body fat, we began losing them on February 15th.

Hmm. Animal, female deer that entered winter over 15% body fat, we did not start losing them until March 15th, a month later. Wow. Which, like, if you could just distill a bunch of data in a very simple manner, that's incredibly telling to just be able to say that. Yeah. So what that meant is that animals were very much on the nutritional edge.

And so they're barely getting by. They're barely meeting their daily energy requirements. And so as we would go through that winter, and that winter was very, very cold as well, when we'd see storms come in or significant drops in temperature for a couple of days, we'd just see spikes in mortality. And that's because what it's done is they're barely meeting their daily energy requirements. We see those drops in temperature. Their energy requirements go up because they're needing to meet basal metabolic demands through the winter in that day. And they just can't do it. and so they die.

And so that's where those spikes in mortality came from during that period of time. Now, what I think is also very important and incredibly revealing to the work that we've done there specifically with regards to bad winters. And if we go back to the 16-17 winter, the 18-19 winter, the recovery in nutritional condition, so body fat that occurred thereafter. And in part, again, because of the signals of the bad winter, but also the reduction in density on the landscape, so fewer mouths to feed. We entered the 22-23 winter at over 12% body fat. So if you remember, do you remember what we entered the 16-17 winter? 7%. So that's a,

that's a huge difference. Entered 7% during the 16-17 winter, we lost 30% of our females. 22-23 winter, way, way worse than the 16-17 winter. If we run, we ran, Taylor ran our survival models for the 22-23 winter based on a 7% body fat level. So had we started at 7% going into the 22-23 winter, we would have lost over 90% of our deer population. No kidding. Meaning, we go back to 1617, 18, 19, the reductions in deer density, the recovery and body fat that occurred thereafter. Those winters saved us in the 22-23 winter. Had we come into the 22-23 winter at those lower levels that we were experiencing previously prior to those former bad winters, we probably would have lost essentially everything. Meaning, if we go back

to the more is not always better perspective, especially in that, I mean, that's the very clear demonstration of more is not necessarily always better from a nutritional perspective in that way. Yeah, so if you had more deer going into that winter, It's not the case that more deer would die, but it would be proportional. You'd actually have a higher proportion. If you had more deer on the landscape, you'd have a higher proportion that would die. That's correct. Than if you had fewer deer going into it.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. God, it's great, man. I mean, it's bad. It's interesting. When I say great, I don't mean, it's great what happened to the deer.

I'm saying it's a great... Oh, yeah. Yeah. With input of information, I don't know. Just like understanding. Yeah. There's a lot of power in that, just like that scenario and how it played out for us. I mean, the winters, the winters basically presented to us a huge experiment or treatment effect, essentially, based on like the severe nutritional limitation and then the massive reduction in density that occurred with that. And fortunately, we were doing the work that we were when we were doing it. Otherwise, we'd still just, we'd still be talking about like how bad winters are. And they are bad. what does it mean for the population? And even this notion that, like, you know, what happens on a winter range, we see it, right?

It's very evident to us. These animals die on winter range. But at the same time, one of the major reasons why they're dying is because of what they experienced during the summer and whether or not they brought enough reserves with them from summer range. And all of thought about, sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, and all that stuff would be invisible unless you had those very individual data points, right? Like, you're not going to pick that up from not to poke at the helicopter people, but you're not going to pick that up from an aerial survey.

Like, it's a very intimate knowledge of specific animals. Yeah, and you're going to, I mean, you're going to see the level of loss. Right, but you're not going to see the underlying. No, and to be able, you know, for our ability to be able to do that, like, we know how old each animal is. We know the fact that they brought with them from Summer Range. We know where they lived on Summer Range, and we can connect and build all those pieces together, also not only allows us to tell those stories, but tell a number of our other stories associated with how animals learn to migrate. What does it mean for them? What does it mean for the

reproductive chronology in their cycle through the year and those sorts of things? Unless we have those repeated samples and the things that we're measuring, we lack the ability to be able to paint that picture. And so that deer that you talked about at the beginning, that really small male. He was born in 2017. So he was born after the 1617 winter. And yeah, all day long. In fact, I mean, even as for the potential of antler growth that exists within the Wyoming range, I mean, all day long when he was three years old, I mean, I would have said, and I think that's kind of what you're referencing to, Steve. I would have called him. He's either a large yearling or a small two year old. I would have said it in a declarative fashion. Yeah. And he's three, and he's three. And he's three.

three and a half years old. And I would have also said, I could tell you what he is. Now, my abilities fall apart when they get up to be like four or five, six years old, but 100% what you're looking at right here. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that

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out on X if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet okay can I is it time now yeah go because this is the benefit of being the host you get to indulge your question you're driving a series of very fast questions so I want to get more information okay a hot tip okay

you should start a tag service where it's predictive modeling and you sell to people tips be like i would be looking very seriously cash in at this point x in four years i think meat eater should just hire us and meat eater should offer that service yeah okay yeah it's called the the the montee labs or montief techs monceeathe meat eater okay we'll do that okay okay another quick question yep uh uh there at amy and my boy driving down the road my older boy and there's all these sirens and paramedics running around

and we stop well shy but i take my binoculars and look and i see something quite startling there's a wrecked motorcycle there's seven firefighters and paramedics working on a man who's like splayed out on the road and there's a demolished fawn i don't know no idea if the guy lived or not tried to miss a fawn hit the fawn was a mess on the road road two days later we drove down that road and there's a dough still staying in there like 100 yards away but looking agitated three o'clock in the afternoon she's still on her feet looking like agitated down in the ditch um when you with your are you ever able to pull out of your data sets what that relationship's like

like if she has a stillborn does she still hang around does she immediately walk away do you know what I mean when she loses a fawn what is the sort of there's no way to measure grief but like when does she go like huh I guess

it's time to move on yeah interesting question and highly variable from one individual to the next in most instances with stillborns though we can suspect even just via their GPS data around the birth event whether or not

they had stillborns because they tend to piece out pretty quickly she knows what happened yeah that's exactly right and also many females like if they if they lose one of their young later on to to whatever reason rarely do they stick around okay they will often leave however there are a handful of females that are just their motherly nature whatever that is um may may be there and even defending the carcass still um when when we arrive So it's highly very, typically within 24 hours by the time when we're working to get in there. So clearly dead. So some would leave quicker than that.

Yeah. Yeah, they're gone by the time we get in there. Yep. Got it. Yep. Exactly. Here's an observation. When you're talking about this thing of like gaming out, how much energy am I going to put into this offspring?

It's implied, but just to point to an example. of something entirely different. Like, think about a Pacific salmon. When they go, they're going. Yeah. I mean, like kings can kind of delay. A king salmon can delay. He doesn't have to stay to a set schedule.

You know, he can, whatever, his body will make a decision. Like, nope, not going to go. That's why you get huge kings, right? That's why you get, you could get a 70-pound king. Because for whatever reason, for a number of years, it didn't click on it. And it didn't run. But these other salmon that are on a set schedule, it's like, I'm going, buddy. I hope the river's right, right, I hope the river's right, because it's happening.

Yeah. Question. If I took a deer, if I took a buck from Iowa, okay, 180 inch white tail from Iowa, 200 plus pounds, 180-inch antlers, and I brought them down and put them in Coos deer country in Sonora. Does he just die? Coos deer country and Sonora He probably die He just dies Because his pattern

Cows deer Did you say Cus You led me right in the saying I'll fight you Over it Because his groove His like system Just isn't

Gonna translate That's right That's right Yep This one's controversial So you don't even need to answer Ooh, yeah, that look in your face. I just wonder about, like, is it even possible?

Like, what if you went and looked at human fitness, human physical fitness? Does some of the stuff, is some of the stuff relevant? People don't like to do that kind of stuff. Oh, 100%. Yeah, I mean, there's a substantial amount. And, of course, I don't, I don't do work in. Like maternal nutrition. Oh, yeah.

Huge. There's lots of evidence within human medicine associated with maternal nutrition, maternal stress. Yes, that ties, that translates over a generation. Yeah, absolutely. Got it. That's all my questions. It happens in humans as well.

Okay. That's all my questions. Maybe a couple other things related to some of these ideas. One of them, okay, so the other thing that we saw after a couple of those bad winters is on winter range. We tried to keep our same animal distribution over time roughly. So if we lose animals, we work to go back in and recatch. adult females from that same general area to keep the same number cooking yep yeah exactly roughly 70 adult females is part of that is what is with that study as we were going back to some of the

areas where we had routinely caught deer in the past and wanted to replace them we couldn't find any like there was none in there after those two bad winters and so it got us scratching our heads of okay what does that mean did did those bad winters just cause animals to like yeah i'm not living here anymore and shift out of that country yeah when they were pushed by the bad winter because of snow conditions, did they then find a new place that was better and then stay there?

Or did they just die? And they're not there anymore. So we evaluated that question and while certainly there are signals, you know, animals can be displaced a bit by a bad winter, which also interesting, though, is a stronger signal of that displacement

is if animals had a bad winter the prior year. And so again, it's like this winter PTSD, the shift from where they had lived previously tends to occur after the bad winter as opposed to during the bad winter. So it's like the memory of the bad winter results in a shift from when they would normally winter. They stick it out through the bad winter. And they're like, but I'm sticking it out. But next year, bro.

Next year I'm going somewhere else. That's exactly right. Because Mildare are incredibly faithful. They're incredibly faithful to their winter range, to their summer range, and to their migratory route. Do the same thing year after year as adults. And so they shift, the winter PTSD shift after the bad. But what we learned from that work in particular was that the reason why we ended up with these vacant holes on winter range was because animals died and we lost them.

Okay. And remember, one of the key factors that influences whether or not they live or die through winter is how fat they were. So what that means is what we observe on a winter range with regards to population distribution, for example, yes, it's influenced by what happens there during winter, but it again is dictated by what happens during summer. So summer nutrition, where animals go and their summer nutrition, plays a huge influence in winter distribution of animals. So they're making a mistake. They're making a mistake. What do you mean they're making a mistake? They're not to hack on them. They're not thinking

it through. They should, okay, what's the, what's the thinking? They're blaming. What would you do? No, no, I'm not, I'm joking, I'm not joking. Yeah. It's summer range, it's like it has a poor experience on summer range, goes into a season with low body fat, 6%, goes to winter range, has a terrible winter on winter range. Its response could possibly be, I need to find a new summer range. Oh, yeah. But it's blaming the winter range. You did this on purpose.

Beautiful Segway. Oh. So they don't find a new summer range. These animals are incredibly faithful to their world as adults. And so they don't go find a new summer range. They go back up and do the same thing year after year. So then what that relates to, I have two things I need to get to, make sure I get to, one is reproductive chronology, the other, the other is what it means across generation. of animals. So what that means in that scenario and how that plays out is why did that animal

end up with that summer range and why did it end up with that migratory route? We know, and I've known for a bit now, that once they have their routes as adults, it's functionally a trait of the animal that it possesses, kind of like even saying that this animal is really dark-colored. Well, this animal has a 45-mile migration. It summers in deer creek and it winters down in Nugget Canyon. Like it's practically a trade of the animal because that's what it does. So then the question is how did it get there? Why did that animal end up with that? And so the other thing we've been working on doing is understanding the only way to get to that is to start from day one from an animal when the day it was born and then follow it alongside mom as you were describing

early on. And so we've been working to do that to test this question of ontogenia migration or like how do they learn to migrate? Where does it, where does it come from? And so which is also very hard when you have so many bad winters because it wipes out all your young animals that you've been trying to monitor alongside mom. But we've at least gotten to the point despite the bad winters that we've had 16 mother-daughter pairs that we've been able to monitor from daughters growing up to be three years of age to the point where they're reproductively active. Of those 16, 11 of them adopted mom's migratory route. So they basically do the exact same thing that mom does. five however and this sort of gets back to what you were alluding to five however changed things up and did something differently what's what's interesting in in that is that those there's there's

almost there's not even really like a continuous gradient of like this one definitely did like right on top of mom's route and then you know weekends weekends weekends and then we have some that basically don't adopt mom's route it's either like you do the vast majority of it or you don't at all. Got it. And so there are a handful of young females that disperse and do something differently. They find a different migratory route. And so there are a number of them that do things differently, but not as adults.

Adults is pretty fixed. The young animals, a few do it. But the ones that do change, it seems like whatever they do during their yearling year, so when they turn one year of age is what they then end up doing. for the rest of their lives. Like, that's what establishes it. What's also really interesting and is not what I would have expected,

which, again, our sample size is only 16. We have more to go here to be able to get there to do this. But the ones that adopted a different migratory route, much to my surprise, they largely clung to where they lived on summer range, but then migrated to a different winter range. And I would have thought it would have been the opposite, it, especially with regards to what you just said,

we'll go somewhere else to summer. The majority of them are still residing close to their natal range where they were born, but they adopt a different migratory route and go to a different winter range, which I'm not entirely sure what to make of that yet, but that's what we've seen.

What if they, so you're saying at sort of the yearling stage, that's the pattern that they adopt for the rest their lives. Are they, is there any correlation to like if the mother dies before they turn one, you know, like, are more of those dear likely to be these sort of pathfinders or what's the relationship there? Very good question, which we're only

looking at 16 at the moment, but in looking at those 16, there seems to be no relationship to whether or not mom dies or mom lives. That seems to not play a role, at least as of as of yet. but to then take that to the level of like why we see deer where we do how they get there all of these pieces which determines why animals live where they do and the success that they have for deer anyway it all starts such early in life it's a cross-generational process clearly that we need to be able to document from them and one maintaining migration is clearly something that translates across generation as young learned from mom. But two, and so that means we're, you know, we're also conserving memory on a landscape. Yeah. But two, also, I think the

the few animals that did something different maybe is like a glimmer of hope that, you know, when things are lost, so if we lose certain migratory routes, how do we get them back is the question? Because if everybody's faithful to what they know, then nobody's going to go back there. And I firmly believe with what we've been able to learn about meal deer over the past 15 or so years, that something that is hampering us or has hampered us from the past to the present is when we've lost certain animals across the landscape that migrated into certain places before. I mean, there's, you know, many people can say, man, there used to be deer all over this ridge line and I just don't see deer here anymore. And they may reference a number

of reasons why they think that is. They may reference it as an elk hole now. It's full of elk or whatever the case may be. But the reason why they potentially don't come back is because the only way to get that backfilled is for animals to be pioneers and venture out into new range, which adults tend not to do. And so we're relying on that small proportion of few yearlings to potentially regain that space. And if we lose, this is that, you know, vacant space, Randall, we've, you know, talked about a bunch as well. If we lose occupancy of those places on the landscape over time for whatever reason, we lose memory to those places.

What that's doing is it's functionally reducing the carrying capacity of the range. If you don't have animals using it, it technically doesn't matter. It may be viable habitat that's there, but for it to matter to the population, somebody needs to be using it and integrating that food into the population.

That's so interesting because you look at places like that, and you're like, what is it about it that's not, why don't they like it? That's right. Yeah, and that's what we think. Yeah, why aren't they going here? Well, nobody knows to go there. And so how do you get them, how do you get them back in?

You know, in Salmon, there's a, sorry, Randolph. Oh, God. And salmon, some percentage of a run, I always say they screw up, but some, some percentage of a run doesn't go back to the natal stream. They screw up. End up somewhere else. But think about the implications of it. Yeah. Because river systems change.

That's right. You know, I mean, there could be a river that doesn't have suitable spawning gravel. Mm-hmm. And then a flood, whatever, landslides, I don't know, something, and all sudden, boom, it's great. Yep. Some number of fish, some fish is going to, like, some number are going to screw up and go up that thing. And then it could be a gold mine. Yep.

It's a portfolio. It's a place. It's sweet. Portfolio effects. And also, you create a new, right? And think about, like, the thing I always, I don't think about that, too, is, like, um, as as climate changes you have there's a lot of salmon rivers that would be great salmon rivers

but the too far north it's too cold right so as because you had that dispersal mechanism things could just suddenly become kind of right that's right and some fish is going to take a left when he should have taken a right and wind up finding a new exactly I mean takes two but you follow me yeah yeah yeah absolutely um I got a technical a question for you. If I see it, let's say a fella sees a nice buck on the last day of season.

Say it's November. A fella sees a nice buck on November 24th. So you know no one got him. He could die from other stuff. But the next year on November 24th, in your mind, how far is that deer from where he was the year

before based on your research? all depends it does yeah but he's already an adult he's already set in his ways so best we're working on understanding those aspects of males as well

male dispersal from their natal range how faithful they are to their seasonal ranges as well and yeah I mean in general as you noted they're living within their within their range right and so I think certainly not that far from there he lived up in that country right

the only wild card within that is during a hunting season as males get potentially pushed around. He may have been in a non-normal place than what he often is the one year that he's seen versus the next year. But certainly, it's generally within his- When he was in a spy, he don't want to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. But otherwise, he, you know, he lives in that country. So, yeah, they're there. Yeah. When you're talking about re-restoring a lost migration corridor on this habitat like because you're it's a it would be a yearling of a yearling with some wanderlust that takes off down a new ridge or whatever else there aren't going to

be any other deer that that then convert to that range it's all going to come from that deer's offspring correct most likely yeah so it's so it's a long it's a cross generational process you're talking about but multiple multiple generations before you have like a herd of deer using that that's right yeah which reinforces is the importance of maintaining what you have because you are maintaining and protecting memory on the landscape. And if once we lose it, especially for a such a faithful animal like a deer, we don't, we don't necessarily get it back just like that versus elk or they'll just go anywhere and it'll take advantage of whatever happens to be there. But for deer, their memory is

like their fence around their world of what they do. And I think another thing that I think I think this is just super interesting, and I think speaks to the level of intimacy between animal, female deer and their environment, is that if you consider mule deer who all share a common winter range, okay, some migrate 10 miles, some migrate 120 miles. The one that migrates 120 miles is typically often going to be going to higher elevation potentially traversing a lot of country, dealing with snow conditions and spring, stuff like that. in an ideal world, and for meal deer, they want to go back and give birth to the range they typically give birth in. We've literally had female deer give birth in the exact same bed site one year after the next. I mean, they're very faithful to their birth sites. So then the question is, well, what does that mean for them to time birth to coincide with when food is available on their summer range and for their ability to get to their summer range to give birth?

And so we looked at that, and as we talked earlier, we not only see animals on the day they're born, but we also see them in utero. So when we retouch females in March, we see the fetuses in utero and we measure their eye diameter, which gives us an indication of how far along in gestation they are. So we've been able to put those pieces together to look at what factors influence eye diameter in March. So that gestational progression, what determines where they are in? March, and then what does that mean thereafter? Because one of the strongest signals that determines when animals give birth is how far along they were in gestation and mark. So we can use fetal eye diameter. In fact, we use it to help guide our planning in the spring when we're going to catch mule deer fawns or big horn sheep lambs, the anticipation of who's going to give birth

when we use fetal eye diameter that we measured in March. But that's like fine tuning within a pretty narrow window, though. To some degree. For sheep, it can be pretty broad. But, But for deer, yes, it's fine tuning within a narrow window. That said, what we, so we then looked at, so since fetal eye diameter plays such a major role in when they give birth, we looked at factors that influence fetal eye diameter. And I think one of the most fascinating aspects that influence fetal eye diameter is how far they migrate. So animals that migrate further have smaller eye diameter in March than those that migrate short

distances, if that may. So the ones that migrate short distances are further along in gestation in March, which means they're going to give birth sooner. Because they're closer to the... That's right. That's right. And greenup is going to happen faster on that range than the range that's way up in the mountain. So, and the influence is roughly for every 10 miles migrated, based on our models, for every 10 miles migrated, that's one day behind ingestation. So for an animal that basically hardly migrates to an animal that migrates 100 miles, it can be 10 days expected differences based on their fetal eye diameter from when they're going to give birth. That animal that migrates 100 miles is going to give birth 10 days later.

Now, to take that one step further, and this happened, I forget the exact year. It was 2020. On June 2nd, I was with one of my team members, Rihanna Jacob Peck, and we went into deer 96. up into where she gave birth that morning, collared her twin fawns. And then we went on and did other work the rest of the day. And then we got a birth notification from a vaginal implant transmitter later that evening. We were about two hours before dark and we're looking at it.

And the animal that we just got a birth notification from was about 300 yards down from where we had just been that morning coloring twin fawns from 96. And I'm like, man, wouldn't it be cool to hustle in there to see if we can color, like two animals give birth on the same day. that live in the same place. So we hustled in there and then collared the single fawn from that female on that same day.

So which makes sense, right? Animals live in this same area giving birth on the same day. So 96 was the one that was up the ridge and then it was MFO that was down below the ridge. Now, we had three years earlier in spring of 2017, we had collared MFO who had just been born to 96

in that same place on June 3rd. So I got lost. Mom and grandma are giving birth. Mom and daughter. So MFO, who we went in that afternoon to call her phones, I got that. Was 96's daughter from three years prior. Oh.

Really? Really. 96's daughter from three years prior giving birth on the exact same day on June 2nd. And- 300 yards down the hill. Yeah, exactly. Same place, same birth date. And also, she had been born one-day difference in the calendar three years prior. So, and while that's like seemingly an anecdote, we've seen it and had it happen multiple times within these family groups, which indicates to us that not only are space on the landscape, migratory routes on the landscape inherited across generational time, but even their reproductive synchrony, the reproductive chronology.

is inherited across generational time. Like, that's how in sync they are with their environment. And I think what's also equally fascinating, if you consider how the mule deer ruts happens, not all of it, but a lot of it happens down to winter range, right? They migrate down to winter range. And so on winter range,

we have all these animals with all these different migratory tactics that are showing up on winter range, and they're all rutting in this same place. And then, but what it means is what's happening is Gladys over here who migrates 10 miles. she, you know, she comes into estrus on November 20th. But then Jennifer over here who migrates a hundred miles, she doesn't come into estrus until 10 days later on December 1st.

Good. Right? Even though they're on the same winter range, in the same place, their estrus cycle is tied to actually where they go during the summer and it has virtually nothing to do with where they're at on that day on winter range. Damn. Yeah. Hey folks

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Besides seeing a lot of stuff, that dudes say do you see things that state game agencies are doing or the way they're thinking about these issues and management do you see things if you're like that just doesn't make any sense you're you're wanting me to like step on a landline

yeah i would like that how far how long does it take for the management to catch up with the science and are you in good communication with everybody Well, so no matter, there's one challenge with all of this, right, no matter what, we're all, we're all people. And we've all done things in number of different ways and we've just accepted them to be true over time without necessarily pausing and saying, wait, why do I think that? Where did that come from? What evidence supported? And is it just. Why do I think the screaming at my kids all the time is helping? That's exactly right. It didn't help with me. I mean, so a fascinating example that when I grew up in, I mean, grew up in Northeastern South Dakota, and we hunted deer every year, white-tailed deer every year, just locally there to feed our family. And my dad and my grandpa, I always used to say, like, man, the deer are fat this year. I guess we're going to have a bad winter. Like, they would say that over and over again.

And, I mean, I remember as a kid thinking, wait, how do they know what's going to be a bad winter? How do they know to prepare for a bad winter? And the thing is, we know now, like, they don't. Like, that is technically not the case, although if you consider it relative to local adaptation and the example that we just talked about with this pre-programming and allocation reserves after experiencing a bad winter, there's simultaneously some truth to that. Because it's tied to what animals have experience, maybe less so of knowing they're going to experience something, but it's associated what has happened in the past.

And so I think there's just many things that we operate within that we just, we generally don't question. This is just how we do things. And so that's, that's where we go. And so there's, there's always, there's always some, you know, some challenges in rethinking where we have been and being willing to reconsider new information. I think that's hard, that's hard for anybody. You're being diplomatic. Probably. And the thing.

Do you sometimes? look at management strategies and management practices and think to yourself, it just doesn't make any sense. Well, sure. Okay. Sure. But I can also, like, there's also, and I mean, with full respect for my, for my colleagues with management agencies, like, we're also stuck in this difficult position where,

and it's not necessarily a difficult position, but they manage wildlife resources in trust. right? Fundamental aspect of the North American model. We're all owners of it. But it's managing it as a trust on behalf of the public. And so what that means is they don't get to just sit in a room and just say, well, here's what we're going to do because biologically this is the best thing to do. They also have to consider what the public wants. Social pressures. And so it can be an incredibly difficult balance at times. And so oftentimes I view it as yes, we need to, as we learn things, what can that mean for us in updating how we think about various management practices for sure. That's like maybe that's like, you know, baseline level of what does it mean for us as we consider management practices. But then we don't, you know, to then take that the next step, we don't necessarily get the opportunity to say, okay, we're going to change this. We need to be able to bring that information to the public, which is also what's so incredibly valuable like of your platform here and ability to be able to speak about these things is, I think what's critical is that we can bring this information to the public because, there are a lot of things that were just stuck on that have happened for a really, really long time that, oh, this is a solution, this is what we need to do, but it's not as simple as that. So being able to communicate it in meaningful ways that connects with people

and maybe change their perspective on things is sort of like ground zero for helping institute management change. Would you ever have the time and appetite to take your data sets from your box and take a look at lunar phase stuff. Does this

interest you at all? Well, so I have thought about that. With movement. Yeah, yeah. Movement. We certainly could. We absolutely could. And you're talking from like a rut perspective because there's so much focus on, or are you talking like during the hunting season. Just the idea, just it would be I mean, you could go down a million rabbit holes,

but just generally this. Yeah. that deer are moving at different times, moving in different places, different feeding patterns according to moon phase. We absolutely could. And you could take, because you have so much data, someone could go in and look at what you got and map it out to 28-day lunar cycles and say, like, lo and behold, they do seem to be, they do seem to behave differently according to the lunar, or you'd be like, we can't find it. You know, that would be, that would be very helpful to me. Would it? Yes. Thank you for doing that.

Do we need to end up with our T-shirt proceeds? Should we like endow a... You absolutely should. Like in Dowley, the Center for Lunar Studies. The Renella Center for Lunar. I'm just thinking an intern, crunching some numbers. I already talked to someone the other day about that. We might have them on the show.

Totally debunks that. He debunked. Well, maybe he can... Does he have the data? Do you lend your data sets out? Is that a thing? In collaboration. Yeah.

so it all depends but in collaboration yeah uh here's my next question for you okay what what things are you that you haven't been able to do besides lunar phase work like what do you what do you want to be doing jemmy like what do you want to be doing next like what are the what things do you look at and you're like uh uh i'm inspired by it and i think i can see a way that we might find some answers like with this deer work in particular Just any kind of your work. Yeah. Do you know what I mean?

Like, you got to have 50 ideas, right? But then in the end, you can only do one or two at a time or whatever. I don't know what the numbers are. Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, one of the things which we talked about a little bit is we really need to be able to evaluate the rose pedal hypothesis, which I think we've talked maybe a little bit about. So the rose pedal hypothesis ties to deer in particular, but how they occupy space on a landscape. And the reference to a rose is that you have a matriarchal female that,

that forms maybe the central pedal on the rose. And then you have her daughters that set up shop around her and then her granddaughters. And so what you end up with is this matrilineal line of related females that occupy space on a landscape. You've evaluated this in whitetail deer. It's where the idea came from initially. So for white tail deer, it's been used to implement management practices to reduce agricultural depredation related issues. So we're deer getting into crops and that sort of thing. And the idea is that just reducing, removing a handful of deer from the area won't alleviate the problem because you still have other females that are living there.

And then their daughters and granddaughters are just going to repopulate it. So the notion is if you want no deer there, you need to wipe out the entire rows and then you'll create vacant space and there won't be any deer there and your problem will go away. Well, so as I've thought about one migration, you know, migration is central to our ability to maintain large robust populations. And then, like, as adult deer are incredibly faithful to their environment, then where does it come from anyway? And so we talked about intagia migration, but then taking that one step further, what does that mean for how females occupy space on a landscape, in particular, their natal range? Like, do they, even though they're migratory, do they similarly adopt space for mom on their summer range? So do we end up with these then matrilineal lines of occupied space on a summer range? and that's what determines why we have animals where we do.

And that, again, which we kind of alluded to a bit, but that's central to our ability to maintain an abundance of deer because if we lose roses, we create vacant space and they're not there anymore. And we need, like, a firm answer of that to understand what that means across generational time, to one, both be able to look forward to what it can mean for management conservation now, but also, I think what's equally as a value is to be able to look backwards in time to what it means means for us in the past from what we've seen how the landscape has changed and what we see today and relevant to even just the Wyoming range

when we lose 70% of our deer population we inevitably lost roses on the landscape yeah i mean we had family groups of our radio mark deer that are just completely wiped out so at that level of loss like it inevitably happened so what does that mean for that vacant space over time and if you like when you're somewhere when you're glassing and you like hunt the same place over a few years and you're like, it's always like a little pocket of activity. Yep. In whatever little spot, you can just, yep, gone.

Gone. Why aren't they there anymore? What happened? You know, did they get pushed out of there? Well, no, not necessarily. They probably just all died until. And no one's got no one's back. That's right.

And so what that could mean, you know, we've had a number of which there's a lot of challenges that milled your face. But if you think, this applies to basically like any population of ungulate, if, if animals are not using space, then a population may grow. back up, but reach a new abundance where they don't grow anymore. Because if they're not using all that other forage and space on the landscape, it's not functionally part of their carrying capacity. It's like having a pasture running cattle on a pasture and you have a thousand acre pasture and you split it down the middle with a fence and you run cattle on the southern half of it. Are you going to

run the number of cattle that you have for the thousand acre pasture? Are you going to run the number of cattle that you have for the 500 acres that they have access to? And you're going to run it on the 500 acres, not the thousand. And so when it comes to even as we think about, you know, nutrition, density within any population, and, you know, I hear this a lot, like, man, how could nutrition be limiting on summer range? Look at these mountains. There's food everywhere. There's no way that that could matter. Again, you have to remember what it means for the animals themselves and the spaces that they live and occupy on that landscape because they just don't go willy-nilly wander around unless you're an elk and just access all.

all of those foods so you're talking about i mean basically habitat loss like you were losing mule to your habitat even though the habitat looks the same yeah that's exactly right yeah it's a good way a good way of putting it yeah yeah it's so interesting you think about like spots you're like why are they not here yeah yeah and when are they going to come back man you know where maybe you're already doing work here uh you know where i feel like there's so much um personal bias applied to any conversation around ungulate density and predation, right? You got people who, the first thing they want to do, anytime there's no deer around, they want to tell you about the predators, you got people who basically want to tell you

that predators eat grass. Makes no difference, right? You got these two camps. They're generally not talking about what they regard to be the truth. They're talking about what they wish was the truth or how they've been brought up or trained right these two these two wildly different perspective yes do you have like are you do you consider are there ways to be to maybe freshen up that conversation about what is going on yeah what do coyote like what do coyote numbers mean for deer populations over time what do coyote numbers mean for distribution yeah right Do you weigh in on this?

100%. Yeah. So I actually sent some of my initial predator-related work with, as it translates to, on the population, was actually some of the work I did on mule deer in the Sierra Nevada in California. Okay. And then I read that word. Did you? Yeah.

I didn't know it was you. Oh. Yeah. Really? I did a whole bunch of work on nutrition predation on deer in the eastern Sierra. Oh, you're, you know what? You're right. because you're even not i mean you know you right but i think i saw you now that you're saying this

i saw you cited your work is cited in the bear man california bear management proposal your sierra nevada work is cited there i just read that and left my mind yeah yeah yeah okay i saw your name there yeah so and then of course we've done a number of a good bit of predation related work in in Wyoming as well. To sort of like look at a big picture relative to the two camps that you reference. And which camp is right? Well, here's the thing. The problem is neither camp is right.

I had a suspicion. Yeah. And anybody, the problem is, is the moment anybody wants to say predators don't matter because all mortality is compensatory. or predators matter basically if a canine is on the landscape and it's killing a deer if that canine wasn't there, we'd have the deer back. Both of those camps are wrong. The fact that there's even camps is wrong. And it's wrong in part because the way in which we think about it.

And part of the challenge has been like how do we understand what predation means within populations? And where we have to go back to regardless first, is where, what makes, what makes a population. And what makes a population is everything we've talked about. And it's food and access to the landscape. And so the bottom line is, unless animals have access to the food and their basic requirements, food water cover, then it doesn't matter. And so, for example, if we're in a place where animals are at the capacity of their

landscape, no matter what, basically any young population is going to attempt to grow more young each year than they can actually sustain within the population typically. And so what that means is a number need to die. And hence compensatory. And if we're at that point, one dies and it alleviates some level of competition for the others that remain. And so we end up with this feedback. So that's real. And also we can have this situation. where predators can play a role, as in we have the capacity to grow more animals based on the food that is here, but predators are keeping it from growing. So we first have to consider food, and we can quibble and argue, oh, this level of coyote population, this level of lion population,

whatever the case may be, at the end of the day, you can't interpret anything from that. It actually doesn't mean anything because even for those predators, like they may have alternative prey that's available to them. Where it matters, how we understand how predators affect a prey population is actually to understand the prey population and the nutrition and capacity they have to grow before we can actually interpret it what the predators matter or mean at all. And the other reason why I say both camps are wrong or that the very notion, like the moment you hear somebody toss something into the camp, you already know they're wrong.

and it's because we can be in a situation in one single population, and during one period of time, predators are limiting growth, and during another period of time, they don't matter at all because they're so nutritionally limited that they make no difference. And so you have yes here and you have no over here. Yeah, I got you. And then imagine the whole gradient in between. And I've worked in two systems now as an example in the sierras,

in the eastern Sierra, where predation, mattered for one migratory segment, didn't matter at all for the other. And then also looking at it from a time period of there was a window of time where predation mattered and then a window of time where it didn't matter at all. And we've seen the same thing in Wyoming as well. Same picture within the Wyoming range. Prior to the bad winters, predators really didn't matter. Because we didn't have the nutritional capacity to grow more deer anyway. We were there. So losing some to predators really was going to be a wash and didn't matter. Now that we've dropped to the level that we have now and our females are fat, robust, we have the capacity to grow. Now we're in a different

situation where predators can have a limiting factor and reduce the ability for the population to grow. But then still at the end of the day, well, what does that mean for us? Should we control predators? Should we have controlled predators over here? Should we not? Like, it's the sort of like it all depends. What are the objectives? Just because you remove predators from a system doesn't mean you're going to get more more deer back yeah dude you should be the only guess we ever have on you'd get so bored no it'd be a weekly show where i ask you questions i like it i like it because we're never going to get through it all like we got to wrap we got to do this whole stupid thing we're doing this whole stupid thing it's it's the audio book we haven't even

talked about kevin's fascinating other interests and tax dermist hunter I mean, maybe we should just There are layers to this onion I know Let's not wait five, seven years again I don't know how Whenever it was we did the last one We got to schedule the next round

Because we got to wrap up But dude it's like It's really like you guys are doing Super cool work Thanks I wasn't trying to hack on fishing game agencies man I was more just trying to express this I was trying to express this like

Like I just hope there's not a lot of bottlenecks And in if any efficiencies and and like being able to take the research you're doing and and being able to go and say like I can't tell you anything

but there's a it really looks like this is going on are we considering this? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like is the flow no I get that.

Is the flow good? Yeah. And I'm only saying that because like you know I've spent my whole life talking about wildlife, right? Thinking about wildlife, talking about wildlife. I hang out with people who are obsessed with wildlife.

And we routinely traffic and stuff that just isn't backed up. And we say it like fact. Absolutely. And the guys that are doing management are my guys, they're peers. It's like people are operating under assumptions that aren't as accurate, you know,

and sort of looking at like, looking at lower deer numbers and we're like, well, the reason it's that way is because of whatever. Yeah. And then you go look at me like, man, dude, it's just a different, there's more to what's going on. It's a longer story. Yeah. It's not like, you can't just, everything isn't just looking at what just happened.

Correct. Absolutely. You know, you got to dig back oftentimes. You got to dig back right now. And so in trying to correct a situation, you might be correcting the wrong inputs. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Right?

Yep. For sure. And I think the other, the other side of that is, well is, you know, a number of things that we talked about, some of the things we can't necessarily change. We can't necessarily change the weather and those sorts of things, but which I think can become a bit dissatisfying sometimes when like pre-sip or snowpack or those sorts of things are, uh, play such a driving role. We can manage density and other things like that to help moderate those things. But I also think what's really important is our ability

to simply manage our expectations as well. What does it mean for us, um, which is kind of dissatisfying, right? When you can't say, we'll do this because I want this. Well, maybe we can't get that, but here's the reasons why, and we need you to understand that. So we can all be, we can all be at the same table with the same information, be like, okay, here's what we're wrestling with. What is this going to mean for us going forward? With whatever the situation may be, from how we use habitat to our presence on the landscape, to how we manage hunting seasons. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. now you got to come back on

okay happily no you're not too terribly far away no last time we went to you remember that you did you did we got to hang out for a bit yeah yeah it was great hmm we got to go though

he's such a hard time me and Randall's thing is actually kind of interesting I don't want to talk bad about it I just It's very similar in a way We're trying to find out what happened What did happen

I know I feel like you were very into it I feel like you were very into that project Up until this morning And now the It's dimmed You know It's dimmed We're doing very similar work

Yeah We are I like it We're looking at wow Yeah like what did happen All the Buffalo Nice And why

And what little micro things Might have been different That would lead to a different outcome We toy with all this We toy with all this We toy with all the this good and and but we don't have the data that you have well just different kind of work yeah yeah and we dispel we dispel things so yeah that's important too people like well what happened was

this oh yeah kind of but also this nice you know yeah i look forward to that vison are fascinating yeah i think you'll i think you'll dig it it's it's got all the all the normal gross stuff that we like to put in there too of course i would anticipate nothing yeah we like it to be that you get kind of grossed out, but also you learn some of it. You have to have that flare it wouldn't come from you guys. Yeah, you got to have that cadence of you being like,

oh, yeah. Then you're like, oh. Phil, can we clip that person sound effect? Yeah, that'll be in the new old. We can just splice that in. Yeah. Oh.

Back and forth. All. Hmm. Ooh. Oh. all right thank you for coming on the montief shop university of wyoming um send your resumes you're looking for resumes right now oh man you drown in resumes yeah don't send your resume always looking for supporters if anybody's interested if you're looking to

support something great and i think it was demonstrated here today if you're looking to support if you love wildlife um if you love the west if you love wildlife if you love the west if you love wildlife if you love these like majestic landscapes and you really want to put your money your conservation dollars to knowledge.

This is a great place to put them. If you want to drive knowledge, it's not lobbying, which is important. It's not like on the ground on the ground habitat improvement, rolling up old fences, getting rid of junipers,

which is important. It's not that. If you want to contribute to acquisition of knowledge that can then be extended out into management, I say the Montief Lab is money well spent. Shop. What was that? Shop. Oh, what I just call it.

Lab. Well, that's what they ought to call it. Yeah. If you think about it. I think that's where we started. The more I think about it. It doesn't bode well for a recording session later. The Mon Teeth Shop, damn it.

Thank you, Cub. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. This is an IHeart podcast.