Ep. 746: Hornography

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Kevin Monteith and Randall Williams. Topics Discussed: The Monteith Shop https://monteithshop.org/the-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 https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Steven Rinella?

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• 0:48Steven Rinella?

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• 2:04Speaker 02

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• 2:27Speaker 03

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast.

• 2:37Steven Rinella?

  You can't predict anything. Brought to you by First Light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. Kevin Monteith is here today. Second podcast appearance. You're one of the top favorite guests we've ever had.

• 3:10Speaker 04

  Are you just saying that to be nice?

• 3:12Steven Rinella?

  No, 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.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  That was just a few-

• 3:37Steven Rinella?

  Dozens of times since then.

• 3:38Speaker 04

  Just a few weeks before Corinne and I started, I think, so.

• 3:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:41Steven Rinella?

  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 HOB.

• 3:54Speaker 04

  HOB.

• 3:56Steven Rinella?

  HOB. 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, 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.

• 4:31Steven Rinella?

  A professional hunter in Africa.

• 4:34Steven Rinella?

  He was laying on me the whole genetics.

• 4:37Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 4:38Steven Rinella?

  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 buddy 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.

• 4:54Speaker 06

  You see him stiffen up there?

• 4:58Steven Rinella?

  Like he's itching, like he's itching to get into it.

• 5:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, not that I said, yeah. Lot goes into it.

• 5:04Speaker 06

  I think it might have also been a reaction to some of the.

• 5:08Steven Rinella?

  Listen, this isn't a, this isn't a weapon. This is an antique.

• 5:11Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 5:12Steven Rinella?

  I'll explain it in a second because it's, it's relevant to my life right now.

• 5:16Speaker 06

  Relevant to your life?

• 5:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I'll explain. Not really.

• 5:22Steven Rinella?

  For instance, just to, just to give you a pre-titillation about what's gonna happen. Kevin was just showing me a picture of a buck, a mule deer buck. Anyone on the planet, anyone on the planet would look at this buck. And, and declare it to be the, a classic year and a half old buck, a classic first rack.

• 5:45Steven Rinella?

  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. They'd be like, was it, is it a big one? If they got it, I'd be like, nah, it's a year and a half old buck. It ain't.

• 5:59Steven Rinella?

  It's two and a half years old. At three and a half, you'd look at it and be like, nah.

• 6:06Steven Rinella?

  Probably not a year and a half old, but still looks like that. A buck that'll be the, 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.

• 6:22Speaker 06

  Correct. That's right.

• 6:25Steven Rinella?

  We're gonna get into all that and a lot more. Lots of good research. Lots of good research. For first, tell, we were just talking about how you call your place, your outfit, which is kind of funny. You call it the Monty's shop. And we're talking about in like, in the trades, you know, you meet at 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.

• 6:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:55Steven Rinella?

  Because there's work going on.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  There's, there's work going on there. Yeah. And we, we definitely catch some flack for it. Cause it's not, it's, oh yeah.

• 7:02Steven Rinella?

  Cause it doesn't sound official enough.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  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, 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. Um, and I think despite working in an academic world, I don't think I've ever, uh, 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 as in that way, to me, what made more sense, uh, if we're going to be data generators, hands dirty

• 7:44Speaker 04

  in the field, uh, and you know, being, being able to do the work that puts us in as close proximity to the animals that we do, uh, 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, um, working to hands dirty in there, working to figure out, uh, what's going on, uh, with any, you know, particular animal population and working to understand them better. So, and I, 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, as a lab. So despite the flack that we get for it, we stuck with it.

• 8:27Steven Rinella?

  Oh yeah. I wouldn't pay attention to that. Before, before I explain this, this here knife I'm holding, uh, you got a Monteith shop shirt on that has what I thought was a Bigfoot guy pumping iron.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  You did, you did think that and it's not that. Correct.

• 8:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay. What is it? Cause this is something I hadn't heard of. I'm embarrassed to have not.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  For as much as I hear you talk about beavers, I.

• 8:54Steven Rinella?

  He's got a picture on his shirt of a Bigfoot pumping iron lifting a stick.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  Except, except it's not.

• 9:02Speaker 06

  Yeah. It looks, it actually reminds me of the, the sand creatures in Star Wars when they shake their. Tuscan Raiders. Yeah. The Tuscan Raiders when they shake their things at one another. That's good. That's good.

• 9:14Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 9:14Steven Rinella?

  Speaking of which, we're trying to, I'm trying to license the song right now. That has a line, um, we did a couple favors for a guy who looked like a Tuscan Raider.

• 9:25Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 9:27Steven Rinella?

  No, we did a couple favors for some guys who look like Tuscan Raiders.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  Is this based on a true story?

• 9:33Steven Rinella?

  Uh, I doubt it.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 9:35Steven Rinella?

  Go on.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  So it's a beaver, holding up a stick. Uh, and part of that is the artwork was done by, um, one of our former team members, Rhiannon Jacobekin. We just started doing some work on beavers here, uh, over the past couple of years and sort of, yeah, became, we became aware of this behavior and it's a behavior often that's very rarely seen in beavers. Uh, but there's a scientific paper on it. Uh, and if you, if you Google stick display in beavers, uh, there is a YouTube video, uh, demonstrating them doing it, but, uh, amidst like, territory holders are at the edge, kind of the fringes of potential territories, um, that sort of antagonistic behavior.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  Uh, they'll, they'll pick up a stick and just go up and down and up and down with that, with 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. Then what they're used as is weapons and forms of intimidation and, and display. And beavers don't have antlers or horns on their heads, but perhaps picking up a stick, uh, does some sort of, uh, has some sort of intimidation element.

• 10:49Steven Rinella?

  Sure dude, it's like he's getting pumped, that beaver's like, he's getting pumped.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  No, that's exactly right. Our stickers say, have that saying underneath it, speak softly and carry a big stick.

• 11:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's, he's either, you know, if you really dug into it, i- is it, uh, like a fitness display, you know, is like, is it like, hey, man, like this is a hard thing to pull off? Right? What, what, we were at this, when I was just in, in Africa, we were hanging out with these Maasai dudes. And they, like, they have a,

• 11:26Steven Rinella?

  there's this traditional dance in Maasai culture, where it's generally like young men and young women. And in this dance, there's 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. Yeah. Impressive height. And then the right, it's just a and asking like, what is it all about? It's just like showing.

• 12:08Speaker 06

  Showing what you got.

• 12:09Steven Rinella?

  Your game.

• 12:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. A flat footed jump, you know? And then, um, 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.

• 12:26Speaker 06

  Exactly. Balance, strength.

• 12:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Or saying, I'm gonna whoop you with this stick.

• 12:32Speaker 06

  Or it's like, this is the kind of stuff we got around here.

• 12:36Steven Rinella?

  You know, you know, I had a beaver, I had a beaver interaction the other day, though, my, my, my boys, uh, his buddy's family, they had beavers, uh, plugging up their irrigation, crop irrigation system. And, um, I went over to advise him, I'm trying to get rid of him. And I made some caster mound sets. Just like took beaver, a beaver's, it seemed like just one beaver, kind of like doing his deal. Put caster out, he just left. I like, I don't know. I can't prove this. I feel like he had like a, oh shit, someone's already here. And like left, I'm telling you, he left. He's gone. We keep checking. He's gone.

• 13:21Speaker 06

  That's wild.

• 13:22Steven Rinella?

  He had these little dams in this, in a, in a irrigation deal.

• 13:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:26Steven Rinella?

  He had these little dams. He had a couple little shit and caster mounds the size of a cell phone. You know what I mean? We put like a big old cat, two big old caster mounds.

• 13:37Steven Rinella?

  That dude moved out, which could be like something interesting to develop for like, sort of like non-lethal.

• 13:43Speaker 06

  Right.

• 13:44Steven Rinella?

  Non-lethal deal is get after him early and just like, sorry, boys.

• 13:48Speaker 06

  Making big caster mounds.

• 13:49Steven Rinella?

  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, uh, he's alive. He lived to tell the tale. Yeah. Oh, this knife. So how they do bills in town, A.K. Moosie?

• 14:06Steven Rinella?

  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, by the time I invited her, we started, we're recording at nine. I, I, it occurred to me at eight forty to invite her. She wasn't able to make it. She's shooting pistols. But I'm gonna have her fix this because she's a leather sewer. My old man brought this home from North Africa and whiskey whiskey too.

• 14:34Steven Rinella?

  That's like, gotta be elephant ivory. Take a look at that.

• 14:37Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 14:40Steven Rinella?

  It's gotta be elephant. I don't know what the hell, I don't know what kind of ivory it is.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  It looks exactly like some of the stuff that I have from my grandmother that was from China. So.

• 14:49Steven Rinella?

  From China?

• 14:50Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 14:51Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it's from North Africa.

• 14:53Speaker 05

  No, I know. I'm just saying like, a little Confucius statue carved in ivory.

• 14:58Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I thought you meant that you're accusing my dad of bringing home some kind of souvenir knockoff.

• 15:05Speaker 04

  He's going on the defense, just like that. Where's the stick?

• 15:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he, so, he was real, like, whatever it was, he was, I still remember what he told me about it. He was real particular about it, though. And this sheath is a weird leather. Look at that leather.

• 15:22Steven Rinella?

  I've had some people say maybe ostrich, but you can't see the, a lot of times in ostrich leather, you can see the, you can see the, the follicle for the feather.

• 15:33Steven Rinella?

  I need to have it stitched back up. That was unstitched when I was born.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  Oh, so it's been that way.

• 15:40Steven Rinella?

  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 little, a couple tablespoons of mineral oil in a vac bag and stuck that sheath in there and vac sealed it, which I'm gonna patent as a way to like, bring leather back to life. Picture what I'm talking about.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  It's a good idea.

• 16:00Speaker 06

  Drawing it in.

• 16:01Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna patent it so no one else can do it. Let's say check with me. Put, take like an old, whatever, old leather belt, whatever, that'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 of days and open it up and that sucker is rejuvenated. No leather guy might tell me that there's a reason that's dumb or not a good idea, but I don't know.

• 16:22Speaker 06

  Or he might tell you that people are already doing that.

• 16:24Steven Rinella?

  He could tell me that. He could tell me, you might think it's a good idea, but don't be surprised. Yeah, don't be surprised when he pulls 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?

• 16:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  Love that show.

• 16:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Like, what is up with this thing?

• 16:45Steven Rinella?

  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, uh, I told him I already cleaned it all off.

• 16:58Steven Rinella?

  Randall's got back from Germany.

• 17:01Speaker 06

  Too much to Steve's chagrin.

• 17:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I don't like that one bit.

• 17:04Speaker 06

  Well, you're glad that I'm back.

• 17:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'm glad you're back, but I felt, I was nervous the whole time you were over there that things might break out again.

• 17:14Steven Rinella?

  Um, Norm MacDonald used to talk about that.

• 17:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:17Steven Rinella?

  Everybody's always worried about like, uh, North Korea.

• 17:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:22Steven Rinella?

  Russia. He's like, why are they not worried about the Germans? We've already had two.

• 17:27Speaker 06

  Already done it.

• 17:28Steven Rinella?

  Wars with them. Why'd you think it's over now?

• 17:33Speaker 06

  R I P.

• 17:34Steven Rinella?

  You know, um, oh, one other quick thing. I don't want to take up too much of our time, but you know how, like, I'm, I'm bad on sports. I'm bad on, like, just generally very ignorant about athletics.

• 17:50Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 17:51Steven Rinella?

  I was getting my haircut. I get my haircut at V I P barber shop, um, which is great. You gotta call ahead, but it's great. And one thing I like about it is they always playing sports with the volume off, um, which I was better, you know, that way.

• 18:07Steven Rinella?

  And.

• 18:07Speaker 06

  Cause there's less of it?

• 18:09Steven Rinella?

  Well, no, I like it. Like during the, during the summer Olympics, it was cool. Cause you just watched these people run around the track, but you can't hear what's going on. And I thought it was very soothing.

• 18:19Steven Rinella?

  I'm in there the other day and like the big, oh, there's a huge TV screen. It's the only thing in there. They don't, they don't really, it's not really like 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 back's to the screen, but the other wall is a giant mirror.

• 18:37Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 18:49Speaker 06

  He's running the third.

• 18:51Steven Rinella?

  He'd run the other way. And I'm like sitting there, I'm honest to God, sitting there like, when did they change that?

• 19:00Steven Rinella?

  I swear, I swear, I was almost gonna ask Kevin, the barber. I was almost gonna be like, why do these dudes take off running like the other way that what you normally would run?

• 19:12Steven Rinella?

  All of a sudden it occurred to me, I'm like, oh, it's reversed.

• 19:15Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, you're probably excited because he thought, he thought, boy, the prevalence of left-handers is really going up in professional sports.

• 19:23Steven Rinella?

  Dude, I felt, I was so, I was like so, I was so ready to open my mouth and go like, hey, why are they?

• 19:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Could have been majorly embarrassed.

• 19:40Steven Rinella?

  Couple of quick news bits here. Let me look here a minute. Oh, a movie'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. You ever heard about this? It's called The Reckoning, Bambi, The Reckoning.

• 19:56Speaker 05

  The trailer is hilarious.

• 19:57Steven Rinella?

  Bambi, but isn't it like Bambi's kid? How's it work? No.

• 20:01Speaker 06

  No, Bambi.

• 20:01Steven Rinella?

  Bambi's dad gets killed.

• 20:03Speaker 06

  Yeah. The mom, yeah.

• 20:05Steven Rinella?

  That's who gets killed?

• 20:06Speaker 06

  Right?

• 20:07Steven Rinella?

  No, this is old man.

• 20:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, there is. Yeah.

• 20:11Steven Rinella?

  Remember Spencer tried to work up how many inches of antler?

• 20:16Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, he cause

• 20:19Steven Rinella?

  Bambi and his dad had?

• 20:20Speaker 06

  The buck does get killed, but I feel like Bambi's also an orphan.

• 20:25Speaker 05

  Right.

• 20:25Speaker 06

  So maybe there's a

• 20:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 20:28Speaker 06

  They called It's been awhile, to be honest.

• 20:30Steven Rinella?

  It's a C tier creature feature. I guess that means poor graphics.

• 20:34Speaker 07

  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.

• 20:45Speaker 06

  Interesting.

• 20:46Speaker 05

  Yeah. So the story is like it drinks some toxic something or other, and then it becomes monsterized and it has like a million.

• 20:55Speaker 06

  Just like ninja turtles.

• 20:56Steven Rinella?

  The grieving deer decides to take a sip of the nefarious chemical that local corporation Wilburks.

• 21:07Steven Rinella?

  It's always, there's always a lot of these movies, there's animal movies, there's usually a bad corporation.

• 21:12Speaker 06

  There's a strain of anti-capitalism in all of these.

• 21:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh yeah. My kid's in this little, my kid's in this little song and dance club right now for a week. Like just to keep him busy, my little one, just to keep him busy before we go to Alaska, you know? And he's coming home singing, they're teaching him a song. It's like a, it's like a, it's like a flat out like anti-capitalist song.

• 21:33Steven Rinella?

  He comes home every night and practices.

• 21:34Speaker 07

  Is it the one from the Lorax?

• 21:36Steven Rinella?

  Yes.

• 21:36Speaker 07

  Yeah. My kid's at that same song and dance club.

• 21:40Steven Rinella?

  Is he?

• 21:40Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 21:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh, what's his name?

• 21:42Speaker 07

  I've got two, I've got two kids in there right now. Yanni's daughters have done it as well. Yeah.

• 21:47Steven Rinella?

  Oh, but so you think your kid and my kid are in the same song and dance?

• 21:50Speaker 07

  It's very, it's very, well, he's, he's not doing the Lorax song.

• 21:53Speaker 06

  They're comrades.

• 21:53Speaker 07

  He's doing a Latin.

• 21:54Speaker 06

  They're comrades now.

• 21:55Speaker 07

  There's, there's, 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.

• 22:04Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 22:11Speaker 07

  Well, yeah, but it's about him cutting down the trees to make the needs and, and he's draining the resources dry without a thought of, of the planet or

• 22:19Steven Rinella?

  No, that's not in the song.

• 22:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 22:21Steven Rinella?

  I invite you to look at the song.

• 22:27Speaker 07

  Is it the one that says, how, how bad can I be?

• 22:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, he's like talking about his corporate attorneys are denying. And like, it's like this whole, either way. So.

• 22:38Speaker 06

  Next week, it'll be the international.

• 22:40Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 22:43Speaker 06

  That one land.

• 22:45Speaker 07

  It's over my head, Randall.

• 22:47Steven Rinella?

  Uh, I don't get it. What's the joke?

• 22:49Speaker 06

  That's the old, uh, isn't it the old socialist anthem?

• 22:52Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 22:53Speaker 06

  No. Sorry.

• 22:57Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got weather tech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in weather tech. Cause that way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put weather tech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American made floor liners and cargo liners. Okay. They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weather tech.com. In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy.

• 23:41Steven Rinella?

  At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. Listen, we're all trying to save up for something. I got buddies saving up to buy their new house. I got people eyeing a new boat. I know buddies that are trying to switch out trucks and get an upgrade in their truck, whatever. People are always saving up for stuff. In reality though, we see that it can be hard to actually save money.

• 24:23Steven Rinella?

  But that's what's great about the one pay app. It makes saving money easy. First, you earn 3% cash back on up to $150 in monthly spending. You choose categories. Okay. Like Walmart, gas, or dining, and then get rewarded when you spend in those categories. So you're rewarded for what you're already buying. And with high yield savings, your money keeps growing. Download the One Pay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Cash back is earned as points. Go to onepay.com forward slash rewards dash terms for redemption options and additional details.

• 25:11Steven Rinella?

  Kevin, you got you got stomach for one more news bit?

• 25:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 25:14Steven Rinella?

  Was that a news bit?

• 25:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 25:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Bambi, a Bambi movie's coming out where Bambi becomes a fanged, bloodthirsty monster who will stop at nothing to attack his prey.

• 25:31Steven Rinella?

  And there.

• 25:36Speaker 06

  Stay tuned.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  Are his prey humans or we don't know?

• 25:39Steven Rinella?

  I'm assuming.

• 25:40Speaker 06

  Assuming there's a lot of blue collar men.

• 25:42Steven Rinella?

  That's.

• 25:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, cuz well.

• 25:46Speaker 06

  Driving around in trucks.

• 25:48Steven Rinella?

  Like, there's a whole genre of these movies, like, like animated animal movies. Yeah, there's a whole genre where the bad guy

• 25:59Steven Rinella?

  is a southern, a southerner who hunts. You know, I've talked about this one show a bunch of 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.

• 26:16Steven Rinella?

  One of the bad guys was like a very.

• 26:18Speaker 06

  That's pretty tame.

• 26:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he was a very like effeminate urbanite.

• 26:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and one was like a southern chef.

• 26:26Speaker 06

  Huh.

• 26:27Steven Rinella?

  The bad, the villains. Um.

• 26:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay. We've talked about on the show, this is news-ish. We've talked about on the show and demonstrated in various video projects we've done, the process called Ika Gime. You familiar?

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 26:45Steven Rinella?

  It's a fish dispatch method.

• 26:47Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 26:48Steven Rinella?

  Uh, my first introduction to Ika Gime was not by, it's a Japanese word. My first introduction to Ika Gime was not, um, 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 sitey species. But these native dudes, uh, 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

• 27:30Steven Rinella?

  film this because, um, they were explaining to us that like, it's kind of a no-no, but the turtle had got in the net. So there's what could they do about it? Even though they could let, what, either way. They go get, they go and cut a switch, like a big slender stick.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:47Steven Rinella?

  And peel the bark off it and basically make like a, what would look like a, like a, like a hot dog roast and skewer. Okay. Or like a marshmallow stick.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  Marshmallow.

• 28:00Steven Rinella?

  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

• 28:17Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 28:18Steven Rinella?

  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 it's just how, uh, Schoffier explains it in, in Leguizqulnare. But you hold out a pair of 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 a chicken. This is just how it was demonstrated to 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.

• 28:56Steven Rinella?

  And then took that long skewer and inserted it into the spine.

• 29:08Steven Rinella?

  And ran that skewer all the way down that spine till it was in its tail. And that turtle melted. I mean melted.

• 29:24Steven Rinella?

  It was just like.

• 29:27Speaker 04

  After they cut the head off.

• 29:28Steven Rinella?

  Immediately, immediately. Cut the head off, ran that skewer. And there wasn't, cause like a turtle is a.

• 29:36Steven Rinella?

  I don't know what's going on in the.

• 29:37Speaker 04

  Like disrupting all the nerve.

• 29:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like think of the expression like running around like a chicken 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.

• 30:00Steven Rinella?

  It's just like it melted the turtle. I've never seen anything like it.

• 30:05Steven Rinella?

  Turns out this is a common fish dispatching method in Japan. And, and I've gone with a friend of mine, she was Korean, but still, uh, 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.

• 30:27Steven Rinella?

  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 the hell it was, copper wire. She'd take this copper wire and just.

• 30:45Steven Rinella?

  In that, in that spine. You follow me?

• 30:51Speaker 04

  The spinal cord, they're basically going.

• 30:53Steven Rinella?

  And that fish just again.

• 30:54Speaker 04

  Just reaming.

• 30:55Steven Rinella?

  Like just is like done. You know, you think of a fish flopping for a long time, whatever, you know, and like, and it influences how that fish goes through rigor. And it's just like, the fish is just dead or dead.

• 31:10Steven Rinella?

  This guy here.

• 31:14Steven Rinella?

  There's this company, Shinkles Systems. They've built a robot that uses the Japanese EKG method of killing fish, which they regard as the most humane way to harvest the animal while producing the best quality meat.

• 31:32Steven Rinella?

  The process involves inserting, I forgot this part. It's kind of like a 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 who's that is caught killing it instantly, reducing the stress that can cause the fish to spoil more quickly. Um, hold on a minute. Oh, he's not talking about, what?

• 31:57Steven Rinella?

  That's what he's talking about? Not running the.

• 32:03Steven Rinella?

  Hold on a minute. Cranky Randall, anyone?

• 32:08Steven Rinella?

  Their machine isn't the spine reaming machine. Their machine is just the spike to the head machine.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Do you need a machine to do that?

• 32:16Speaker 05

  That seems, that seems a lot easier to make. It stuns the fish to help humans do that method.

• 32:22Steven Rinella?

  Oh, so it's a robot that stuns a fish?

• 32:25Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 32:25Steven Rinella?

  This is what you get for talking about news articles you haven't read.

• 32:30Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, people are always saying, like, well, I read an article this morning. And I'm like, I always go like, huh, you know, I didn't really read it. I mean, I saw it.

• 32:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh, but the guy says a weird thing. So he's talking about how he's a.

• 32:49Steven Rinella?

  What?

• 32:55Steven Rinella?

  Huh? Okay. Oh, making the subsequent cuts in seven seconds.

• 33:04Steven Rinella?

  Is he reaming the spines or not?

• 33:07Speaker 05

  The human does it. The machine stuns them.

• 33:10Steven Rinella?

  Shinkles, okay. Shinkles refrigerator sized machine called Poseidon is. Is operational.

• 33:18Speaker 05

  Steve reads news, so you don't have to.

• 33:21Steven Rinella?

  Is operational on three fishing vessels off the US West Coast.

• 33:25Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 33:26Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 33:42Steven Rinella?

  It might be that the bad, this is a bad writer who wrote what I'm reading.

• 33:47Speaker 06

  Clearly.

• 33:50Speaker 06

  Subsequent cuts makes me think that it's doing more than.

• 33:54Steven Rinella?

  That it's reaming the spine.

• 33:58Steven Rinella?

  This guy raised 22 billion bucks for this thing.

• 34:02Speaker 06

  Jeez. Should've gotten into robots.

• 34:05Steven Rinella?

  You know what really turns me off though is one of his quotes.

• 34:09Steven Rinella?

  He's got a quote that I think is indefensible. Where's this quote? Oh, here's a quote from this guy who's who bills himself as not bills 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?

• 34:35Steven Rinella?

  He says, "We've been fishing for 40,000 years and the tools haven't really changed."

• 34:44Speaker 06

  Little bit of a oversimplification.

• 34:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. 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?

• 35:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:07Steven Rinella?

  Good lord.

• 35:08Speaker 06

  Plastics, internal combustion engines.

• 35:12Steven Rinella?

  Sonar guided bottom trawls? Which can literally, which can literally scrape underwater spires?

• 35:23Steven Rinella?

  Whatever.

• 35:27Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 35:34Speaker 05

  We don't have to cover it.

• 35:35Steven Rinella?

  No, we're not gonna cover it. I don't care if everybody eats it. I don't want it.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  Well, this was more on the lab, uh, lab grown fish that it's, you know, making its, uh, it's getting into some good restaurants or.

• 35:47Steven Rinella?

  I don't know if I buy that.

• 35:48Speaker 05

  Restaurants in, 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.

• 35:57Steven Rinella?

  Our own, our own great state made it illegal. Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Tennessee, Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska.

• 36:08Steven Rinella?

  Have done various things to like prevent or slow down or ban cultured, sell cultured meat.

• 36:16Steven Rinella?

  Texas just did it in June.

• 36:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I thought they maybe would have been earlier.

• 36:20Steven Rinella?

  That's a little bit, that's a little bit big brother for my likens, but like I can't get worked up about it because that is, 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

• 36:36Steven Rinella?

  in Portland is serving lab grown salmon. Now, I haven't been to like Haitia recently, but is there, is there like a lot of big Haiti? What did I call it?

• 36:47Speaker 04

  Haitia.

• 36:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, tells you how long I've been since I've been there.

• 36:51Steven Rinella?

  Is there, like salmon isn't part of, of Haitian cuisine?

• 36:56Speaker 05

  Uh, good, by good.

• 36:58Speaker 04

  Much less lab grown salmon.

• 36:59Speaker 05

  It's the, the chef is, you know, won a James Beard Award. So I think that that puts him at some kind of level.

• 37:06Steven Rinella?

  I've been nominated for James Beard Awards and I don't feel like I'm at any level.

• 37:11Steven Rinella?

  Okay, you ready to dig in?

• 37:13Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 37:14Steven Rinella?

  All right. How do we start? Because you guys, you guys do so much work, man. Can we start with a recap?

• 37:20Speaker 04

  We can do whatever. We can start with a recap. What kind of recap do you want?

• 37:24Steven Rinella?

  Can you recap for, can you recap for, for us and our listeners?

• 37:31Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 37:48Steven Rinella?

  What, what is that shorthand for? You know what I mean? Like, 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?

• 38:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:11Speaker 04

  I mean, there's

• 38:11Steven Rinella?

  Is that too big of a question?

• 38:12Speaker 04

  No, no, you're good. I'm just trying to figure out how to lean into it. Age, genetics, and nutrition affect antler size.

• 38:18Steven Rinella?

  Tell me again?

• 38:19Speaker 04

  Age, genetics, nutrition.

• 38:21Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  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, it's hard to open up a magazine and see an article written, you know, about some big buck or big bull 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, that is true, like to, to grow, you know, a substantial set of antlers, horns, you need to have genetics that support that, right? But we also, we also get ourselves in this situation as we frequently refer to that.

• 39:07Speaker 04

  And I think, I think where some of that's come from is we've called it our, our hornographic culture, where we're, 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, we've referenced that as our, our hornographic culture. And there's elements of that that are good, that doesn't

• 39:31Steven Rinella?

  I love that. I just thought the greatest shirt, dude.

• 39:33Speaker 06

  Hornography?

• 39:34Steven Rinella?

  Hornography? We got, can you text someone right away before someone steals this idea?

• 39:39Speaker 05

  This is going to Hunter's

• 39:40Steven Rinella?

  It's a buck mounting, yeah, a buck mounting a doe, and it says hornography. A big buck.

• 39:45Speaker 06

  And proceeds go to Monty's shop.

• 39:47Speaker 05

  All right, texting Hunter right now.

• 39:49Steven Rinella?

  And, and, and, and

• 39:50Speaker 04

  See?

• 39:51Steven Rinella?

  Yes, that's perfect. Proceeds, proceeds go directly to me.

• 39:59Steven Rinella?

  Proceeds go to the Monty's shop. Is that fair?

• 40:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, 100%.

• 40:04Steven Rinella?

  You don't care if we steal that?

• 40:05Speaker 04

  I didn't clear that with, with the brass. I just sort of threw it out there.

• 40:09Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  We've used that term in a scientific paper, in two scientific papers. I mean, we laid it out in a, in a scientific paper. So, so it exists.

• 40:27Steven Rinella?

  Can we do the thing? And then if we do, proceeds go to you guys?

• 40:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 40:31Steven Rinella?

  Pornography, that's good.

• 40:32Speaker 06

  I know, I know when I see it.

• 40:36Speaker 04

  Sorry, continue.

• 40:37Steven Rinella?

  I just got so damn excited.

• 40:39Speaker 05

  Texas and the hunter.

• 40:41Speaker 04

  So I think, but I think what that does is in, and of course, like when we, 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, 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 genetics over here for antlers than there is over, over in this other area. So what, what we did to better understand what, what

• 41:25Speaker 04

  aspects of genetics versus nutrition go into producing, um, large antlers is I think, it's fortunately like one of the, 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 whitetail deer, a number of bars and custer and other places that have just stupid big whitetail 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

• 42:06Speaker 04

  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, um, are, 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 fawns. So we captured animals from the Black Hills in eastern South Dakota as newborn fawns, fed them, put them on a high nutritional plane. Um, so we, we bottle raised them as fawns, 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.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  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. It had 40 inches of less antler than animals from Eastern South Dakota.

• 43:13Steven Rinella?

  Cause of bad genetics.

• 43:14Speaker 04

  Cause of bad genetics. Right? And if you, so rate surface level, right? Well, 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.

• 43:27Steven Rinella?

  Hundred percent, case closed.

• 43:29Speaker 04

  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.

• 43:43Steven Rinella?

  So like no local bucks jumping over the fence?

• 43:45Speaker 04

  No local bucks jumping over the fence. No, we allowed them to, 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 one, 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.

• 44:30Speaker 04

  We didn't do anything genetically, same genetics from those, those two groups of animals. What, what was different was the mothers.

• 44:39Speaker 04

  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, 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

• 45:20Speaker 04

  signature of the moms that they're born to in captivity, and those moms are on a high nutritional plane. And there's, 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.

• 46:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  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.

• 46:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 46:38Speaker 04

  So, when you think about that, when we translate that to like, one area to the next, then what that, what that can mean is that... And there's, there's two sides of it. One, each set of these animals is adapted to their local environment. Not every environment has, 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 forbs, 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 as much for them to persist through winter versus the animals that are in

• 47:19Speaker 04

  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, not all of those animals can just operate and do the same thing. They're, 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

• 48:03Speaker 04

  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 all, 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, four to seven. We're going to see differences in 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. The condition of the mom. Yep.

• 48:43Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have in my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you've got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy.

• 49:27Steven Rinella?

  At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. You need credit to buy, well, pretty much any big thing. So how do you get started? Easy. The OnePay Builder Card. It's simple and smart. OnePay is the banking app trusted by millions of Americans, and the OnePay Builder Card is an easy way to build credit.

• 50:09Steven Rinella?

  Just use it to make everyday purchases, build your credit history, and then you can work up to the big milestones, buying a new car, or a new house, or hell, maybe something I'm always thinking about, which is another boat. Those moments start with small, consistent steps with the OnePay Builder Card. Download the OnePay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  OnePay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Builder Card results may vary and aren't guaranteed. Learn more about banking through OnePay at onepay.com/podcast.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  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 conditions, 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.

• 51:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's a body man 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? Anticipating good antler growth. He's not wrong though, right? I mean, 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, two springs ago.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  Correct. Would not.

• 51:54Steven Rinella?

  I saw a lot of fat does. So I'm hoping to draw a tag this year in order to reap the benefits of that great nutritional season that those does were enjoying some time ago. It's just not like part of the lingo.

• 52:13Speaker 04

  Correct. Yeah. And so, which is also important for us to be mindful of as hunters and even as conservationists, when what we, 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 of years. It's actually a reflection of what happened maybe five years ago. And it's in part, and it's in large part because of the conditions that those males experienced from their mom while they were, while they were in utero. And those, and it's called, it's called a cohort effect as well, where we may have years where, that were just poorer years or worse winters where

• 52:57Speaker 04

  moms were struggling in utero and they didn't, 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

• 53:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I was thinking, but it's even more delayed.

• 53:30Speaker 04

  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.

• 54:01Steven Rinella?

  Hit me with that again. What's the timeline?

• 54:04Speaker 04

  So if we, 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.

• 54:13Steven Rinella?

  Like a big winter kill.

• 54:14Speaker 04

  Yep. So nutrition improves for everybody else that remains.

• 54:17Steven Rinella?

  So there's a big winter kill.

• 54:18Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 54:19Steven Rinella?

  Wipes out all the deer.

• 54:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:20Steven Rinella?

  The, the 20% that are still stand and have it gravy now.

• 54:24Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 54:25Steven Rinella?

  Cause they got all the good bedding areas. They got the good feeding areas.

• 54:28Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 54:28Steven Rinella?

  All to themselves.

• 54:29Speaker 04

  Less competition for space and food. Yep. So nutritionally, they're far better off, which means they're, they're meeting their needs. And then those females are able to invest, allocate more resources to their offspring. So those offspring, and I mean, we see this, see this in our, in our work, born bigger, 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?

• 54:58Steven Rinella?

  That's the thing in my little point I was making that it wasn't even accounting for.

• 55:02Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 55:03Steven Rinella?

  Is you'd have to be, I'm excited about this year.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 55:05Steven Rinella?

  Cause, cause four years ago.

• 55:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yep.

• 55:09Steven Rinella?

  There were some big, some big fat dough.

• 55:12Speaker 04

  Yes, that's exactly right.

• 55:13Speaker 06

  There's kind of like two, like.

• 55:17Speaker 06

  Countervailing forces then with a bad winter because I think like the traditional understanding is like there's a bad winter 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 stunted generation right before that generation that's enjoying the more food at the trot that kind of thing.

• 56:01Steven Rinella?

  Phil, can we try to animate what Randall just said?

• 56:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'll get right on that.

• 56:05Steven Rinella?

  With charts and graphs?

• 56:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, sure.

• 56:05Steven Rinella?

  Can you say that one more time?

• 56:08Speaker 06

  Well, like, like.

• 56:09Steven Rinella?

  I 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.

• 56:16Speaker 06

  We should have a chalkboard in here.

• 56:17Speaker 04

  Oh, that'd be great.

• 56:18Speaker 06

  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.

• 56:30Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 56:31Speaker 06

  And then you 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?

• 56:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I would say that. I would say that.

• 56:43Speaker 06

  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.

• 56:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 56:57Speaker 06

  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 a drop in potential and then a skyrocketing potential in terms of those cohorts. Does that make sense?

• 57:14Steven Rinella?

  Do you think he's sitting on a publication here?

• 57:17Speaker 06

  I don't think the it's nearly sophisticated enough to make make it a Monteith shot paper.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  Well, so let let me, I can essentially describe that with what we with what we observed.

• 57:30Speaker 04

  With

• 57:30Steven Rinella?

  I'm tracking.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  Randall's right.

• 57:31Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna get out my markers.

• 57:33Speaker 04

  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.

• 57:45Steven Rinella?

  But can I, can I, a quick question? I want to hear all about the Wyoming range. I just want to, there's one thing I want to clarify.

• 57:50Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 57:50Steven Rinella?

  Cause you, you kind of got at it, but I just want to make sure you get at it.

• 57:53Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 57:54Steven Rinella?

  Your job is not producing. Your job is, your mandate is not to help hunters.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 58:01Steven Rinella?

  Kill a huge bucks.

• 58:02Speaker 04

  Nah.

• 58:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So let's clarify, like, I mean, like, like, what is your sort of, what gets you up in the morning? It's not like guaranteeing hunters bigger bucks.

• 58:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, no.

• 58:13Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 58:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll, I'll, let's 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, our aim is to one, advance science, which means I'm, 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, 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?

• 58:53Speaker 04

  The reference to one data point at a time is, we often joke, like, the amount of effort we'll 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 based. And so 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.

• 59:26Steven Rinella?

  You're monitoring generations of deer.

• 59:28Speaker 04

  We are, yeah, that's exactly right. And so to, to do that.

• 59:33Speaker 04

  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, it 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

• 1:00:17Speaker 04

  do for free, and so, like, I'm, we're also constantly raising money to make, to make that possible. But Wyoming Game and Fish Commission in particular has had a lot of foresight to support us in some of these long-term studies. Groups like Millie Fanatic Foundation, Wyoming Wildlife and 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 and Fish Department, are central to our ability to be successful and support us in the field. And then I, I work with 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, that make all this possible. So, want to be able to at least give credit where credit is due.

• 1:01:02Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:01:03Speaker 04

  And then if any, 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.

• 1:01:10Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:01:20Speaker 06

  And every single one of them, you're taking temperature, you're measuring fat, you're swabbing the nasal passages, you're ultrasounding for pregnancy, you're measuring the size of the fetus, you're, I know I'm missing stuff there, but...

• 1:01:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:35Speaker 06

  Like, I've, I've gone on a 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?

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:01:49Speaker 06

  So yeah, like I think just to bring it to a more concrete level, like you're, you're measuring deer.

• 1:01:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:01:54Speaker 06

  And handling deer, uh, the same deer for, in some cases for years.

• 1:01:59Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 1:02:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it'd be like, uh, a thing, if you go back to the landscape of fear, and we'll move on from the old times, we'll talk about new shit. But if you go back to landscape of fear, you, uh, uh, Kevin explained that you put a collar on a doe. You put a collar on her fawn.

• 1:02:17Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:02:18Steven Rinella?

  You track her fawn through her whole life, put a collar on her fawn.

• 1:02:22Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:02:23Steven Rinella?

  You're starting to get a picture of where did that doe ever go?

• 1:02:26Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:26Steven Rinella?

  Where does the fawn ever go?

• 1:02:28Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:02:29Steven Rinella?

  Does the fawn go to new places or the same places?

• 1:02:31Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:02:32Steven Rinella?

  Um, when, what are the, what are the movement patterns? What are their sort of relative fitnesses?

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:02:38Steven Rinella?

  Cause you're able to look at like, how fit was doe A? What's the condition of her fawn? What's the condition of her fawn?

• 1:02:46Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:02:46Steven Rinella?

  Right? It paints it like a, an amazing picture.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:02:50Steven Rinella?

  When you compare it to a different style of biology, might be like, we flew it with a helicopter and did a count.

• 1:02:57Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:02:58Steven Rinella?

  Right? It's just different. And, and I'm not dogging on that kind of work. This is probably great work, but like, to go like, well, let's look at like, a lineage, like, let's look at these like specific animals over a long period of time. And what can we tell about those specific animals? That might inform what you're seeing when you fly over in a helicopter and count.

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:03:17Steven Rinella?

  Right?

• 1:03:17Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:03:17Steven Rinella?

  It's just, it's like you're, you're adding, you're adding a really important piece to a, that can plug in or inform all these other methodologies.

• 1:03:25Speaker 04

  Yep. That's exactly right.

• 1:03:27Speaker 06

  Like when I, 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.

• 1:03:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:40Steven Rinella?

  I'd have no drink and rule.

• 1:03:42Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:03:51Speaker 04

  Center fuse.

• 1:03:51Speaker 06

  Your center fuse. Yeah. Like it's literally a forest service cabin and someone's making spaghetti and someone's center fusing meal to your blood.

• 1:03:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Speaker 06

  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, someone's sampling stuff. And it's just like, it's a, it's an impressive operation.

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Speaker 06

  Well.

• 1:04:18Speaker 04

  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, the sort of, the getting under the hood perspective as to what, 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, within a population. And that can't happen with like a two-year study.

• 1:04:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Speaker 04

  Right. We're talking many, many years to be able to put that together. And some of our goals with our work in, in the Wyoming range. So we've been fortunate to work there since 2013.

• 1:04:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, let's talk, let's, let's, let's set that up. We'll talk, we're going to talk about a specific place.

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:05:00Steven Rinella?

  So do you mind, what is the Wyoming range? Where are we, where are we talking about?

• 1:05:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. So Wyoming Salt River Range, uh, Western Wyoming and it's, uh, it's home to what either is or has been, uh, one of the largest mule deer populations in the world.

• 1:05:16Steven Rinella?

  Region G.

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  Region G. Yeah.

• 1:05:18Steven Rinella?

  Like you might, and if you, if you hang out on mule deer forums.

• 1:05:20Speaker 04

  Yep. There's a lot to talk about.

• 1:05:23Steven Rinella?

  A lot to talk about Region G. And a lot of the talk about Region G is a county, uh, speculating about its future.

• 1:05:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:30Steven Rinella?

  Talking about its challenges, anticipating what are going to be the good years, the bad years.

• 1:05:35Speaker 04

  It's under the microscope.

• 1:05:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. It is a very discussed unit.

• 1:05:39Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:05:40Steven Rinella?

  One of the reasons that's probably true is because it's like a, a unit that sort of occupies a distinct geographical feature.

• 1:05:48Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:48Steven Rinella?

  Right? It's like, when you say Region G, you're kind of talking about like a range.

• 1:05:52Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:05:53Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 1:05:53Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:05:54Steven Rinella?

  It's, it's, it's very elegant.

• 1:05:55Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:56Steven Rinella?

  And it is a probably in the top three or four

• 1:06:02Steven Rinella?

  mule deer spots to get discussed, be like the Kaibab.

• 1:06:06Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:07Steven Rinella?

  Um, I'm trying to think of the Henry Mountains in Utah. People like talk a lot about Region G.

• 1:06:13Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:06:13Steven Rinella?

  Gets talked about.

• 1:06:15Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:06:15Steven Rinella?

  And, and mourned.

• 1:06:17Speaker 04

  Celebrated.

• 1:06:19Steven Rinella?

  Yes.

• 1:06:20Speaker 04

  Yes, for sure. All of those. Yeah. And so that that population, I mean, is numbered, thought to have numbered, you know, beyond 50,000 deer, you know, once upon a time. 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.

• 1:06:41Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:06:41Speaker 04

  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 what game and fish define as the herd unit objective.

• 1:06:50Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:06:50Speaker 04

  The 92, 93 winter hit and the population crashed. 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.

• 1:07:02Steven Rinella?

  On the high end.

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, and hasn't risen to those levels previously.

• 1:07:05Steven Rinella?

  And what would be a low end since 92?

• 1:07:09Steven Rinella?

  So if, if, let's just, let's just accept, I know you're saying like, maybe 50,000.

• 1:07:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Steven Rinella?

  If we accept like around 50,000 in 92.

• 1:07:17Speaker 04

  Low end since then?

• 1:07:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like it hasn't hit that height again.

• 1:07:22Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:07:22Steven Rinella?

  So the, the new high end since then has been 30, 40?

• 1:07:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, probably mid, mid 30s.

• 1:07:29Steven Rinella?

  And what would you ballpark has been like a low end?

• 1:07:31Speaker 04

  The bottom. So I'm going to get to that. But 11, 11,000. Yeah. So we, we started in 2013, doing the things that we do, as 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, we're 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.

• 1:08:15Speaker 04

  And then in 2016, 17, we had a bad winter. We lost 30%, 30% of our adult females, pretty much all of our, all of our radio marked fawns. And so in, in going into the, going into that winter, autumn fat at going into that winter was around 7%. So think, 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.

• 1:08:50Steven Rinella?

  So 2019.

• 1:08:52Speaker 04

  2018, 19. So the 1819 winter.

• 1:08:54Steven Rinella?

  1819, sorry.

• 1:08:57Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 1:08:57Speaker 06

  We're working on a history project now.

• 1:09:00Steven Rinella?

  I live, me and Randall live in the.

• 1:09:02Speaker 06

  We're thinking across centuries right now.

• 1:09:04Steven Rinella?

  So say the dates again. I'm sorry, that was dumb.

• 1:09:06Speaker 04

  So dumb to me, not dumb to you.

• 1:09:07Speaker 06

  No, no, you're good.

• 1:09:08Speaker 04

  So winter.

• 1:09:08Steven Rinella?

  2018. 2019.

• 1:09:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, so winters overlap calendar years, right? So 16, 17 winter, 18, 19 winter. 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, fawns, because their, their, their, 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, all comes down to allocation related principles, right? And so as a fawn, the energy you obtain is mostly going to grow.

• 1:09:53Speaker 04

  You don't have a bunch of like extra energy to put in body fat.

• 1:09:56Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:09:57Speaker 04

  Versus females, adult females are done growing and whatever extra energy they have, they can put into body fat. Or, or males, part of reason why we see age related dynamics and 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.

• 1:10:26Steven Rinella?

  That's interesting, man.

• 1:10:27Speaker 04

  Body growth. And then, so even, even those age related dynamics, yes, it's age, but it's founded in nutritional principles and how the resources they have and how they allocate energy. So even that's driven by nutrition.

• 1:10:40Steven Rinella?

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• 1:12:02Steven Rinella?

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• 1:12:37Steven Rinella?

  I want to restate that point for people that are at work and they're only half paying attention. Yep.

• 1:12:45Steven Rinella?

  Or me driving down the road, listening to something. I'm listening to Clay's Water Witching episode right now, which is fascinating, but I only catch half what he's talking about because I'm driving. So if you're driving and you're not, you're only half listening, this is good. When a buck throws his, I never thought about this before. When a buck throws his biggest antlers, he's at a point where he's seeing the least amount of body size growth year over year.

• 1:13:11Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:13:11Steven Rinella?

  So he's like growing his body, growing his body, growing his body, growing his body. Boom. He's kind of what he is.

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:17Steven Rinella?

  And then he gets serious about antlers.

• 1:13:18Speaker 04

  That's right. Exactly.

• 1:13:20Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:13:21Speaker 04

  That's right. Yep.

• 1:13:23Steven Rinella?

  So you can get back to work now.

• 1:13:24Speaker 04

  All right. All right. No, no, you're good. So after, after those winters, we see that, we see that uptick in body fat that occurred thereafter, but it, during those winters, we lose almost all the fawns. The females are in poor condition as they exit winter. And then what we see are spikes in stillborns after those bad winters.

• 1:13:46Steven Rinella?

  Huh, really?

• 1:13:47Speaker 04

  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, idyllic 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

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  and then compromise their own survival. So that's part of why we see.

• 1:14:36Steven Rinella?

  Because if she lives, she might crank out three more or whatever.

• 1:14:39Speaker 04

  Conditions will get better next number of years and she's going to have the opportunity to try again. So we see increased still rates of stillborning, 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 stillborning. In fact, in some of those years, it's like the leading cause of fawn mortality after those bad winters. And so.

• 1:15:00Steven Rinella?

  And, and, and that just because like, um. That fetus.

• 1:15:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Steven Rinella?

  Isn't it just, it's not getting fed.

• 1:15:07Speaker 04

  Malnourished essentially.

• 1:15:09Steven Rinella?

  Malnourished in the womb, dies in the womb of malnourishment.

• 1:15:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's exactly right. And they're born dead.

• 1:15:14Steven Rinella?

  Man, yeah, that's another thing I never, like, makes total sense. I just never really thought about.

• 1:15:18Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:15:18Steven Rinella?

  That, that, I, I've never thought about the fact that a doe would like get pregnant.

• 1:15:22Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:15:23Steven Rinella?

  But then not have a fawn.

• 1:15:24Speaker 04

  Right. Oh, yeah, no, for sure. And I think to, to sort of sidestep, I think it's also important to point out for deer in particular, um, both whitetail deer and 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, those bad conditions. We have, when it's gotten really, really bad in those bad winters, we have seen a couple of, um, premature abortions that have occurred, but it's very rare in deer.

• 1:15:57Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so she, she births it.

• 1:16:00Speaker 04

  She births it.

• 1:16:00Steven Rinella?

  At the right time.

• 1:16:01Speaker 04

  Yep, but it's stillborn. It's dead. And so a deer's strategy is to typically carry the term. So they're almost always pregnant. Um, 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 critters like pronghorn or moose, for example, where, uh, 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, sheep, 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, those things are evident along, along the way.

• 1:16:44Speaker 04

  Regardless, what that means is we're almost missing two cohorts of young in those instances. We lost the, we lost the fawns in the bad winter. We lose a vast majority of the fawns 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, um, 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.

• 1:17:13Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:17:13Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:17:31Steven Rinella?

  Dude, I gotta, I'm sorry, man. I gotta, I got two questions.

• 1:17:34Speaker 04

  Okay. I, I have to try to remember where, where I was. I don't lose track, but I'll, I'll, no, no, no, ask your questions. Go.

• 1:17:42Steven Rinella?

  No, I write them down.

• 1:17:45Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna write them down.

• 1:17:46Speaker 04

  Okay. Okay. Now I feel like it just derailed you.

• 1:17:49Steven Rinella?

  I don't know. I just gotta write them down.

• 1:17:51Speaker 04

  Okay. Okay.

• 1:17:52Steven Rinella?

  One sec. I gotta write down.

• 1:17:55Steven Rinella?

  Not joking. Not joking.

• 1:17:58Speaker 04

  Tell me, keep going and wait till you write them down.

• 1:18:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay, right now.

• 1:18:08Speaker 07

  It's almost as compelling as you reading news stories for the first time.

• 1:18:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:18:12Speaker 07

  But there's a payoff to this, Phil. Yeah.

• 1:18:14Steven Rinella?

  Dude, listen, it's just that what you're telling me is so interesting to me.

• 1:18:17Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:18:17Steven Rinella?

  But continue on.

• 1:18:18Speaker 04

  All right. All right. So after, after the bad winters, there's, of course, there's the, there's the flushing in, well, actually, let me sidestep 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 worse 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, sagebrush is critical, the core of their diet through winter. So more and better sagebrush growth on their winter range helps them survive.

• 1:18:58Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:18:59Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:19:05Steven Rinella?

  Is that a function of snow?

• 1:19:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, in part a function of snow. Yep. And then we also see very strong age dependent relationships. 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, 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.

• 1:19:35Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  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 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 thermo regulate costs 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

• 1:20:18Speaker 04

  food so all of those things hamper their ability to meet their daily energy requirements

• 1:20:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah

• 1:20:23Speaker 04

  What fat does is it's basically it's as if they packed groceries on their back from summer range and so if if and if that's one of the most profound factors that influences over winter survival what it means is that over winter survival is largely dictated by what they experienced on a completely different range that could be 100 miles away

• 1:20:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah

• 1:20:46Speaker 04

  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

• 1:20:53Steven Rinella?

  That's a fact you don't consider either

• 1:20:55Speaker 06

  It's like how on the on a loan and some of these survival reality television shows the contestants try to just pack on weight before they go out there

• 1:21:04Steven Rinella?

  Got it

• 1:21:05Speaker 06

  That's my that's my

• 1:21:06Speaker 04

  They're gonna take groceries with them

• 1:21:08Speaker 06

  Yeah

• 1:21:08Speaker 04

  Yeah

• 1:21:09Speaker 06

  You gotta bring your reserves

• 1:21:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I ain't ready

• 1:21:15Speaker 04

  Okay, so after and I think one one significant piece here is after those bad winters we see the we see the upticks in in body fat that's tied to the added precipitation but those upticks in body fat stay even after that first year and it stays for a couple of different reasons one reason is a reduction in density so fewer mouths on the landscape and that signature is profound within our data and some many people don't like to hear that especially when it comes to deer they may argue like oh density doesn't doesn't matter we don't want to hear that but it's true the more mouths that are on the landscape the increased competition for food and that's gonna that's gonna result in lower body fat

• 1:21:54Steven Rinella?

  Who doesn't want to hear that

• 1:21:56Speaker 04

  It it depends well and 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.

• 1:22:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Speaker 04

  But more isn't always better when you consider it from a nutritional perspective of what's happening within a population.

• 1:22:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:27Speaker 04

  And so, and that, that has been very evident within, within the Wyoming range with our data there. And so, increased precip, fewer miles on the landscape, lower competition. What's also interesting, and this, this goes all the way back to our conversation of why we see, for example, even different antler capabilities of size from one place to the next from a nutritional perspective. But what we, what we see after animals have gone through those bad winters, we evaluated what factors influenced their gain in fat over the summer. And it's all the things I mentioned. It's, it's habitat, it's precip, it's 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.

• 1:23:10Speaker 04

  But the other thing is if you've experienced a bad winter.

• 1:23:15Steven Rinella?

  In the past.

• 1:23:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so the animals that live through bad winters, we, what we see within them is this slight shift in how they allocate their, their body reserves over time.

• 1:23:28Steven Rinella?

  You're kidding me.

• 1:23:29Speaker 04

  No, I'm not, I'm not at all. And to the point where-

• 1:23:32Steven Rinella?

  They learn.

• 1:23:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. And not to, not to like anthropomorphize too much because it's a-

• 1:23:37Steven Rinella?

  Like you took notes or something.

• 1:23:38Speaker 04

  It's a physiological component, but what it is is-

• 1:23:40Steven Rinella?

  They're adapting.

• 1:23:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's, it's an adaptation associated with this like subtle pre-programming, pre-programming within the animals that a slight shift, and we call it risk-sensitive reproductive allocation, where the risk, they, they allocate resources to 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

• 1:24:21Speaker 04

  had experienced bad winter past, even after we've accounted for all the other factors that are there.

• 1:24:27Steven Rinella?

  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, when the weather gets bad, I got a little move.

• 1:24:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:35Steven Rinella?

  Where I go down to old man Lawrence's haystack.

• 1:24:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:24:39Steven Rinella?

  It's not that.

• 1:24:40Speaker 04

  No, it's, it's like physiological. Physiological and, and I think what can also, and maybe that sounds crazy. Um, it's not, there's been some very elegant work. And so, 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, um, were from the natural pasture and going to supplemental feeding.

• 1:25:18Speaker 04

  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 whitetail deer, any, any captive ungulate for that matter, except for maybe domestic animals.

• 1:26:04Speaker 04

  Uh, and.

• 1:26:06Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:26:51Speaker 04

  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 can 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

• 1:27:36Speaker 04

  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 while this 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.

• 1:27:58Speaker 04

  So, man, yeah, that dropped the population to eleven, roughly eleven thousand 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 and places where there's like juniper, but no food, the the hedge line, the browse line in 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.

• 1:28:42Steven Rinella?

  I had a, it's probably connected to you, but a buddy of mine has a property in Wyoming, and he was, there was some researchers that were doing a little collaring work on his place. I wonder if he might even been talking about your outfit. It's a western Wyoming. Anyway, she 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.

• 1:29:07Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:29:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. There'd be moments when the mortality signals were like bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. So like within this broad time of like really hard, of prolonged period of intense hardship, there'd be like killing moments.

• 1:29:23Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:29:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so.

• 1:29:25Steven Rinella?

  Can you explain that a little bit?

• 1:29:26Speaker 04

  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%, that entered winter under 15% body fat, we began losing them on February 15th.

• 1:29:56Speaker 04

  Animal female deer that entered winter over 15% body fat. We did not start losing them till till March 15th, a month later.

• 1:30:05Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:30:05Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:30:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:13Speaker 04

  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 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 those drops in temperature. Their energy requirements go up because they're needing to meet basal metabolic man demands through the winter in that day, and they just can't do it, and so they die. And so that's where the spikes in mortality came from during that period of time.

• 1:30:56Speaker 04

  Now, what I think is very, 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 1617 winter, the 1819 winter, the recovery, the recovery in nutritional conditions of 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 2223 winter at over 12% body fat. So if you remember, do you remember what we entered the 1617 winter? 7%. So that's a, that's a huge difference. Entered 7% during the 1617 winter, we lost 30% of our females.

• 1:31:41Speaker 04

  2223 winter, way, way worse than the 1617 winter. We run, we ran, Taylor ran our survival models for the 2223 winter based on a 7% body fat level. So had we started at 7% going into the 2223 winter, we would have lost over 90% of our deer population.

• 1:32:00Steven Rinella?

  No kidding.

• 1:32:01Speaker 04

  Meaning.

• 1:32:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:02Speaker 04

  We go back to 1617, 1819, the reductions in deer density, the recovery in body fat that occurred thereafter. Those winters saved us in the 2223 winter. Had we come into the 2223 winter at those lower levels that we were experiencing previously prior to those those former bad winters, we probably would have lost essentially everything.

• 1:32:26Speaker 04

  Meaning if we go back to the more is not always better perspective.

• 1:32:30Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:32:31Speaker 04

  Especially in that, I mean, that's the very clear demonstration of more is not necessarily always better from a nutritional perspective in, in that way.

• 1:32:41Speaker 06

  Yeah. So you, 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.

• 1:32:56Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 1:32:56Speaker 06

  Than if you had fewer deer going into it.

• 1:32:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:33:01Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. God, it's great, man.

• 1:33:04Speaker 06

  I mean, it's bad, but it's interesting.

• 1:33:07Steven Rinella?

  When I say great, I don't mean it's great what happened to the deer. I'm saying it's a great.

• 1:33:11Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:33:12Steven Rinella?

  With input of information. I don't know. Just like understanding.

• 1:33:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. There's a lot of power in that, just like that scenario and, and how it played out for us. I mean, the, the winters, the winters basically presented to us a, a huge experiment or treatment effect, essentially based on like the, the severe, 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, we'd still just, we'd still be talking about like how bad winters are, and they are bad, but 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, on

• 1:33:56Speaker 04

  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 if, whether or not they brought enough reserves with them from summer range.

• 1:34:06Steven Rinella?

  And you guys thought about, sorry, go ahead.

• 1:34:08Speaker 06

  I was gonna say, and all that stuff would be invisible unless you had those very individual.

• 1:34:13Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 1:34:13Speaker 06

  Data points, right? Like, you're not going to pick that up from.

• 1:34:18Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:34:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you're gonna, I mean, you're gonna see the level of loss.

• 1:34:30Steven Rinella?

  Right. But you're not going to see the underlying.

• 1:34:32Speaker 04

  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 fat that they brought with them this from summer range. We know where they lived on summer range and we can connect and build all those pieces together, which also not only allows us to tell those stories, but tell a number of our other stories associated with, you know, how and how animals learn to migrate. What does it, what does it mean for them? What does it mean for the reproductive chronology and 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, he was

• 1:35:12Speaker 04

  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 were referencing too, Steve, I would have called them, he's either a large yearling or a small two year old.

• 1:35:35Steven Rinella?

  I would have said it in a declarative fashion.

• 1:35:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. And he's three and he's three, three and a half years old.

• 1:35:41Steven Rinella?

  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, five, six years old, but a hundred percent what you're looking at right now.

• 1:35:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

• 1:35:56Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got weather tech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in weather tech. Cause that way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault. Doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put weather tech in there. You're going to be happy you did it. And check this out. American made floor liners and cargo liners. Okay. They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weather tech.com.

• 1:36:36Steven Rinella?

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• 1:37:18Steven Rinella?

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• 1:37:32Speaker 02

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• 1:37:48Steven Rinella?

  Okay, is it time now?

• 1:37:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:49Steven Rinella?

  Because this is the benefit of being the host.

• 1:37:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:51Steven Rinella?

  You get to indulge your questions.

• 1:37:53Speaker 04

  You're driving the ship.

• 1:37:53Steven Rinella?

  I'm going to hit you with a series of very fast questions. So I want more information.

• 1:37:57Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:37:58Steven Rinella?

  A hot tip.

• 1:38:01Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:38:15Speaker 04

  Cash in at this point.

• 1:38:16Steven Rinella?

  At Unit X in four years.

• 1:38:21Speaker 04

  I think Meat Eater should just hire us and Meat Eater should offer that service.

• 1:38:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:38:25Speaker 04

  I think, yeah.

• 1:38:26Steven Rinella?

  It's called the Monte Labs or Monte Tags.

• 1:38:30Speaker 04

  Monte Tags Meat Eater.

• 1:38:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay, we'll do that.

• 1:38:33Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:38:34Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Another quick question.

• 1:38:36Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:38:37Steven Rinella?

  Uh, the other day, me and my boy are driving down the road, my older boy. And there's all these sirens and paramedics running around. And we stopped 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.

• 1:39:02Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:39:10Steven Rinella?

  Two days later. We drove down that road. And there's a doe. Still standing there.

• 1:39:19Steven Rinella?

  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 able to ever able to pull out of your data sets?

• 1:39:37Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:39:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:51Steven Rinella?

  But like, when does she go like, huh? I guess it's time to move on.

• 1:39:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. Interesting question and highly variable from one individual to the next.

• 1:39:59Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:40:00Speaker 04

  In most instances with stillborns though. Uh, we can suspect even just via their GPS data around the birth event, whether or not they had stillborns because they tend to peace out pretty quickly.

• 1:40:11Steven Rinella?

  So she knows what happened.

• 1:40:12Speaker 04

  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. They will often leave. However, there are a handful of females that are just. Uh, their motherly nature, whatever that is, um, may, may be there and even defending the carcass still. Um, when, when we arrive.

• 1:40:37Steven Rinella?

  How long later?

• 1:40:38Speaker 04

  Highly very, um, typically within 24 hours.

• 1:40:42Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:40:42Speaker 04

  By the time when we're working to get in there, but clearly dead.

• 1:40:45Steven Rinella?

  Quicker than that.

• 1:40:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, they're gone by the time we get in there. Yep.

• 1:40:49Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:40:50Speaker 04

  Yep, exactly.

• 1:40:53Steven Rinella?

  Uh, here's an observation. When you're talking about this, this thing of like. Gaming out, how much energy am I going to put into this offspring?

• 1:41:04Steven Rinella?

  It's implied, but, but just to point to an example of something entirely different, like think about a Pacific salmon.

• 1:41:13Steven Rinella?

  When they go, they're going.

• 1:41:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:16Steven Rinella?

  I mean, do you know what I mean? Like, 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 for whatever reason, for a number of years, it didn't click 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. I hope the river's right. Cause it's happening.

• 1:41:46Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:41:47Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 1:41:49Steven Rinella?

  Question.

• 1:41:51Steven Rinella?

  If I took a deer. If I, if I took a, a buck from Iowa. Okay. 180 inch whitetail from Iowa. 200 plus pounds, 180 inch antlers, and I brought them down and put them in. Kuz deer country in Sonora. Does he just die?

• 1:42:09Speaker 04

  Kuz deer country in Sonora, he'd probably die.

• 1:42:12Steven Rinella?

  He just dies.

• 1:42:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:12Steven Rinella?

  Cause his pattern.

• 1:42:14Speaker 04

  Kow's deer. Did you say Kuz?

• 1:42:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you led me right in the same. I'll fight you over it.

• 1:42:22Steven Rinella?

  Cause his groove, his like system.

• 1:42:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:26Steven Rinella?

  Just isn't. Going to translate.

• 1:42:29Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:42:30Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:42:30Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:42:31Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Uh. This one's controversial. So you don't even need to answer.

• 1:42:36Speaker 04

  Ooh. Yeah, that look in your face.

• 1:42:38Steven Rinella?

  Um. 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, but like.

• 1:42:50Speaker 04

  A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, there is, there's a substantial amount and of course I don't.

• 1:42:55Steven Rinella?

  Like maternal nutrition.

• 1:42:56Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Huge. There's lots of evidence within. Um, uh, human, human medicine associated with maternal nutrition, maternal, maternal stress. Yes, that ties, that translates over a generation. Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:43:09Steven Rinella?

  Got it. That's all my questions. Thank you.

• 1:43:10Speaker 04

  Happens in humans as well. Okay.

• 1:43:13Steven Rinella?

  That's all my questions.

• 1:43:13Speaker 04

  Um.

• 1:43:16Speaker 04

  Maybe a couple, a couple of other things related, related to some of these ideas. One of them. Okay, so the other thing that we saw after, 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.

• 1:43:37Steven Rinella?

  To keep the same number cooking.

• 1:43:38Speaker 04

  Yep, yep, 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?

• 1:44:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:02Speaker 04

  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, 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.

• 1:44:44Speaker 06

  They stick it out through the bad winter.

• 1:44:46Steven Rinella?

  And they're like, but I'm sticking it out, but next year, bro.

• 1:44:49Speaker 04

  I'm going somewhere else. That's exactly right. Because Mule deer 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, they, they, they shift, the winter PTSD shift after the bad winters. 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.

• 1:45:18Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:45:19Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:45:45Steven Rinella?

  But they're making a mistake.

• 1:45:48Speaker 04

  What do you mean they're making a mistake?

• 1:45:49Steven Rinella?

  They're not, not to hack on them.

• 1:45:53Steven Rinella?

  They're not thinking it through.

• 1:45:55Speaker 04

  They shouldn't. Okay, what's the, what's the thinking?

• 1:45:58Steven Rinella?

  They're blaming.

• 1:45:59Speaker 06

  What would you do?

• 1:46:00Steven Rinella?

  No, no, I, I, I'm not, I'm, I'm joking, I'm not joking.

• 1:46:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:05Steven Rinella?

  It's, it's summer range. It's like it has a poor experience on summer range. Goes into a season with low body fat, six percent. Goes to winter range. Has a terrible winter on winter range.

• 1:46:20Steven Rinella?

  Its response could possibly be, I need to find a new summer range.

• 1:46:26Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:46:27Steven Rinella?

  But it's blaming the winter range.

• 1:46:31Speaker 04

  You did this on purpose. Beautiful segue.

• 1:46:33Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:46:34Speaker 04

  So they don't find a new summer range. These animals are, these animals are incredibly faithful to their world as adults. And so they don't go find a new summer range. They just, they go back up and do the same thing year after year. So then what that, what that then 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 have known for a bit now that once, once they have their routes as adults, that it's, it's functionally a trait of the animal that it possesses.

• 1:47:18Speaker 04

  Kind of like even, even saying that this animal is really dark colored. Well, this animal has a 45 mile migration. It's summer, it summers in Deer Creek and it winters down in Nugget Canyon. Like it's practically a trait of the animal because that's what it does. So then the question is how did, 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 it, 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 ontogeny migration or like, how do they learn to migrate? Where does it, where does it come from?

• 1:47:57Speaker 04

  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, uh, 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.

• 1:48:29Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:48:59Speaker 06

  Got it.

• 1:49:00Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:49:40Speaker 04

  But the ones that adopted a different migratory route, much to my surprise, they largely clung to what, 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, especially with regards to what you just said. We'll go somewhere else this summer. The majority of them are still residing, um, 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, that's what we've seen.

• 1:50:14Speaker 06

  What if they?

• 1:50:17Speaker 06

  So you're saying that at sort of the yearling stage, that's the pattern that they adopt for the rest of their lives? Are they? Is there any correlation to like if the mother dies before they turn one? You know, like?

• 1:50:31Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:50:31Speaker 06

  Are more of those deer likely to be these sort of pathfinders? Or what's the relationship there?

• 1:50:39Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:50:55Speaker 04

  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 document from them. And one, maintaining migration is clearly something that translates across generation as young learn from mom. But two, and so that means we're, you know, we're also conserving memory on a landscape.

• 1:51:29Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:51:29Speaker 04

  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 mule deer over the past 15 or so years, that something that's 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 ridgeline, and I just don't see deer here anymore.

• 1:52:12Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:52:13Speaker 04

  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. Um, 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

• 1:52:56Speaker 04

  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, into the population.

• 1:53:07Steven Rinella?

  That's so interesting because you look at places like that and you're like, what is it about it that it's not, why, why don't they like it?

• 1:53:12Speaker 04

  That's right. Yeah. And that's what we think. Yeah. That, 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?

• 1:53:20Steven Rinella?

  You know, in salmon, there's a, um, sorry, Randall.

• 1:53:23Speaker 04

  No, go ahead.

• 1:53:23Steven Rinella?

  In 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.

• 1:53:34Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:35Steven Rinella?

  They screw up.

• 1:53:38Speaker 04

  End up somewhere else.

• 1:53:39Steven Rinella?

  But think about the implications of it.

• 1:53:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:42Steven Rinella?

  Cause river systems change.

• 1:53:44Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:53:45Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? There could be a river that doesn't have suitable spawning gravel.

• 1:53:48Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:49Steven Rinella?

  And then a flood, whatever, landslide, I don't know, something. And all of a sudden, boom, it's great.

• 1:53:55Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:53:55Steven Rinella?

  Some number of fish, some fish is gonna like, some number are gonna screw up.

• 1:54:00Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:01Steven Rinella?

  And go up that thing. And then it could be.

• 1:54:03Speaker 04

  Could be something.

• 1:54:04Steven Rinella?

  A goldmine.

• 1:54:05Speaker 04

  Yep. It's a portfolio.

• 1:54:06Steven Rinella?

  This place is sweet.

• 1:54:07Speaker 04

  Portfolio effect.

• 1:54:08Steven Rinella?

  And also you create a new, right? And think about like, the thing I always, when I think about that too, is like, um, as, as climate changes.

• 1:54:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, there's a lot of salmon rivers that would be great salmon rivers, but they're too far north, too cold.

• 1:54:25Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:26Steven Rinella?

  Right? So as, because you have that dispersal mechanism, things could just suddenly become kind of right.

• 1:54:32Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:54:32Steven Rinella?

  And some fish is gonna take a left when he should have taken a right and wind up finding a new.

• 1:54:38Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:54:38Steven Rinella?

  I mean, takes two, but you follow me.

• 1:54:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:54:42Steven Rinella?

  Um, I got a technical question for you. If I see, let's say a fella sees a nice buck on the last day of season.

• 1:54:53Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:54Steven Rinella?

  Say it's November, a fellow 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, based on your research?

• 1:55:15Speaker 04

  Uh, all depends.

• 1:55:18Steven Rinella?

  It does.

• 1:55:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:19Steven Rinella?

  But he's already adult, he's already set in his ways.

• 1:55:22Speaker 04

  So best, so we're working on understanding those aspects of males as well. Male dispersal from their natal range, um, how faithful they are to their seasonal ranges as well. And yeah, I mean, in general, as you, as you noted, they're living within their, within their range, right? And so I think the, the, 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, um, the one year that he's seen versus, versus the next year. But certainly.

• 1:55:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I could have seen him at a moment when he was in a spot he don't want to be.

• 1:55:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's exactly right. But otherwise, he, you know, he lives in that country. So, yeah, they're there. Yeah.

• 1:56:07Speaker 06

  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. 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 then convert to that range. It's all going to come from that deer's offspring, correct?

• 1:56:31Speaker 04

  Most likely.

• 1:56:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, so it's a long.

• 1:56:34Speaker 04

  It's a cross generational process.

• 1:56:35Speaker 06

  You're talking about multiple, multiple generations before you have like a herd of deer using that.

• 1:56:40Speaker 04

  That's right, which reinforces 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 such a faithful animal like a deer, we don't necessarily get it back just like that versus elk where they'll just go anywhere and they'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?

• 1:57:23Speaker 04

  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 in spring, stuff like that. In an ideal world, and for mule 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, 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

• 1:58:07Speaker 04

  they're born, but we also see them in utero. So when we recatch 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 in March. 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 bighorn sheep lambs, the anticipation

• 1:58:50Speaker 04

  of who's going to give birth when. We use fetal eye diameter that we measured in March.

• 1:58:54Steven Rinella?

  But that's like fine tuning within a pretty narrow window, though.

• 1:58:58Speaker 04

  Um, to some degree. For sheep, it can be pretty broad, but for deer, um, 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. Uh, 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, 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.

• 1:59:38Steven Rinella?

  Cause they're closer to the.

• 1:59:40Speaker 04

  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 mountains. So, and, and it, the influence is roughly for every 10 miles migration migrated, based on our models, for every 10 miles migrated, that's one day behind in gestation. So for an animal that basically hardly migrates to an animal that migrates 100 miles, 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, uh, on June 2nd, I was with

• 2:00:23Speaker 04

  one of my team members, Rihanna Jacob Peck, and we went into, um, deer 96, um, up into where she gave birth that morning, collared her twin fawns.

• 2:00:35Speaker 04

  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, 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 collaring twin fawns from 96. And I'm like, man, wouldn't it be cool to hustle in there to see if we can collar 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 living 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,

• 2:01:18Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:01:32Steven Rinella?

  I got lost.

• 2:01:33Speaker 06

  Mom and grandma are giving birth.

• 2:01:35Speaker 04

  Mom and daughter. So, MFO, who we went in that afternoon to collar her fawns,

• 2:01:40Steven Rinella?

  I got that.

• 2:01:40Speaker 04

  was 96's daughter from three years prior.

• 2:01:44Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 2:01:46Speaker 04

  Really. 96's daughter from three years prior, giving birth on the exact same day, on June 2nd. And,

• 2:01:53Steven Rinella?

  100, 300 yards down the hill.

• 2:01:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Same place, same birth date. And also, she had been born one day difference in the calendar, um, three, three years prior.

• 2:02:06Speaker 04

  So, and while that's like seemingly an anecdote, we've, we've seen it and had it happen multiple times within these family groups, which indicates to us that not only are, is 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 rut happens, um, not all of it, but a lot of it happens down at 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.

• 2:02:49Speaker 04

  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 100 miles, she doesn't come into Estrus until 10 days later on December 1st.

• 2:03:07Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 2:03:08Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:03:23Steven Rinella?

  Damn.

• 2:03:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:31Steven Rinella?

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• 2:04:15Steven Rinella?

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• 2:04:40Steven Rinella?

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• 2:05:23Speaker 02

  One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Builder Card results may vary and aren't guaranteed. Learn more about banking through One Pay at onepay.com/podcast.

• 2:05:39Steven Rinella?

  Besides seeing a lot of stuff that dudes say,

• 2:05:44Steven Rinella?

  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 where you're like, that just doesn't make any sense?

• 2:05:57Speaker 04

  You're wanting me to like step on a landmine?

• 2:05:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:01Speaker 04

  I would like that.

• 2:06:01Speaker 06

  How far, how long does it take for the management to catch up with the science?

• 2:06:06Steven Rinella?

  And are you in good communication with everybody?

• 2:06:09Speaker 04

  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, we've all done things a 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 support it?

• 2:06:30Steven Rinella?

  And why do I think that screaming at my kids all the time?

• 2:06:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:34Steven Rinella?

  Is helping.

• 2:06:35Speaker 04

  That's exactly right.

• 2:06:36Steven Rinella?

  Didn't help with me.

• 2:06:39Speaker 04

  So a fascinating example that like when I grew up in, I mean, grew up in northeastern South Dakota and we hunted deer every year, whitetail deer every year, just locally there to feed our family. And my dad and my grandpa always used to say like, man, the deer are fat this year. I guess we're gonna 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 it's gonna be a bad winter? How do they know to prepare for, for a bad winter? And the thing is, we know now, like, they don't. Like, that, that is, 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 of reserves after experiencing

• 2:07:22Speaker 04

  a bad winter, there's simultaneously some truth to that.

• 2:07:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:25Speaker 04

  Because it's tied to what animals have experienced, maybe less so of knowing they're gonna experience something, but it's, it's associated with what's 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, 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.

• 2:07:57Steven Rinella?

  You're being diplomatic.

• 2:07:58Speaker 04

  Probably. And the thing-

• 2:08:00Steven Rinella?

  Do you sometimes look at management strategies and management practices and think to yourself, it just doesn't make any sense?

• 2:08:11Speaker 04

  Well, sure.

• 2:08:14Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:08:15Speaker 04

  Sure. But I can also, like, there, there's also, and I, 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 gonna do because biologically, this is the best thing to do. They also have to consider what the public wants in that regard.

• 2:08:50Steven Rinella?

  Social pressures.

• 2:08:50Speaker 04

  Social pressures. And so it, 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 just 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

• 2:09:34Speaker 04

  are a lot of things that we're just stuck on that have happened for a really, really long time that, oh, this is a solution. This is, 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, is sort of like ground zero for helping institute management change.

• 2:09:57Steven Rinella?

  Would you ever have the time and appetite to take your data sets from your box and take a look at lunar phase stuff?

• 2:10:14Speaker 04

  With rut?

• 2:10:15Steven Rinella?

  Does this interest you at all?

• 2:10:16Speaker 04

  Well, so I have thought about that.

• 2:10:18Steven Rinella?

  With movement?

• 2:10:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. 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?

• 2:10:27Steven Rinella?

  Just the idea, just it would be, I mean, you could go down a million rabbit holes, but just generally this.

• 2:10:32Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:10:33Steven Rinella?

  That deer are moving at different times, moving in different places, different feeding patterns according to moon phase.

• 2:10:40Speaker 04

  We absolutely could.

• 2:10:41Steven Rinella?

  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, uh, lo and behold, they do seem to be, they do seem to behave differently.

• 2:10:56Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:10:57Steven Rinella?

  According to the lunar, or you'd be like, we can't find it.

• 2:10:58Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:10:59Steven Rinella?

  You know, that would be, that would be very helpful to me.

• 2:11:01Speaker 04

  Would it?

• 2:11:02Steven Rinella?

  Yes. Thank you for doing that. Do we need to, with our T-shirt proceeds, should we like endow a?

• 2:11:07Speaker 04

  You absolutely should.

• 2:11:08Steven Rinella?

  Like endow a researcher?

• 2:11:10Speaker 06

  The Center for Lunar Studies.

• 2:11:13Speaker 06

  The Rinella Center for Lunar.

• 2:11:15Steven Rinella?

  I'm just taking an intern crunching some numbers.

• 2:11:17Speaker 05

  I already talked to someone the other day about that. We might have him on the show. Totally debunks that.

• 2:11:25Steven Rinella?

  He debunked, well, maybe he can make, can you lend your data sets out? Is that a thing?

• 2:11:30Speaker 04

  In collaboration. Yeah. So it all depends, but in collaboration. Yeah.

• 2:11:35Steven Rinella?

  Uh, here's my next question for you.

• 2:11:37Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:11:38Steven Rinella?

  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? Jimmy, 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.

• 2:11:59Speaker 04

  Like with this deer work in particular.

• 2:12:00Steven Rinella?

  Just any kind of, any kind of your work.

• 2:12:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:02Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, you gotta 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.

• 2:12:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, one of the, one of the things which we talked about a little bit is, um, we really need to be able to evaluate the rose petal hypothesis, which I think we've talked maybe a little bit about. So the rose petal hypothesis ties to, uh, 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 forms maybe the central petal 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. They've evaluated this in whitetail deer. It's where the, the idea came from initially.

• 2:12:48Speaker 04

  So for whitetail deer, it's been used to implement management practices to reduce, uh, agricultural depredation related issues. So where deer are 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 rose. 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?

• 2:13:33Speaker 04

  And so we talked about untouchable 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 from 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 a firm answer of that to understand what that means across generational time,

• 2:14:18Speaker 04

  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 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. 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-

• 2:14:50Steven Rinella?

  That like when you're somewhere, when you're glassing and you like hunt same place over a few years and you're like, there's always like a little pocket of activity.

• 2:14:58Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:14:59Steven Rinella?

  In whatever little spot.

• 2:15:00Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:15:01Steven Rinella?

  You could just-

• 2:15:02Speaker 04

  Yep, gone.

• 2:15:03Steven Rinella?

  Gone.

• 2:15:04Speaker 04

  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 and so-

• 2:15:09Steven Rinella?

  And no one's got, no one's backfilled.

• 2:15:11Speaker 04

  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 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 the,

• 2:15:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:36Speaker 04

  It's like having a pasture, running cattle on a pasture, and you have a thousand acre pasture and you 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 like, 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,

• 2:16:21Speaker 04

  wander around unless you're an elk and and just access all all of the, all of those foods.

• 2:16:26Steven Rinella?

  So you're talking about, I mean, basically habitat loss. Like you were losing mule deer habitat, even though the habitat looks the same.

• 2:16:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, it's a good way, a good way of putting it. Yeah.

• 2:16:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's so interesting. You think about like spots, you're like, why are they not here?

• 2:16:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And when are they going to come back?

• 2:16:45Steven Rinella?

  Man, you know where, maybe you're already doing work here.

• 2:16:49Steven Rinella?

  You know where I feel like there's so much, um,

• 2:16:55Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 2:17:12Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:17:12Steven Rinella?

  You got people who basically want to tell you that predators, uh, eat grass. Makes no difference, right? You got these two camps.

• 2:17:19Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:17:20Steven Rinella?

  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 perspectives.

• 2:17:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:17:35Steven Rinella?

  Do you like, are you, do you consider, are there ways to be, to, to maybe freshen up that conversation about what is going on?

• 2:17:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:17:47Steven Rinella?

  What do coyote, like, what do coyote numbers mean for deer populations over time? What do coyote numbers mean for distribution?

• 2:17:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:17:54Steven Rinella?

  Right? Do you weigh in on this?

• 2:17:55Speaker 04

  A hundred percent.

• 2:17:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:56Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:18:11Steven Rinella?

  And then I read that work.

• 2:18:12Speaker 04

  Did you?

• 2:18:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I didn't know it was you.

• 2:18:14Speaker 04

  Oh. Yeah.

• 2:18:16Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 2:18:17Speaker 04

  I did a whole bunch of work on nutrition predation on deer in the eastern Sierra.

• 2:18:20Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you're, you know what, you know what? You're right, because you're even not, I mean, you know, you're 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's bear management proposal, your Sierra Nevada work is cited there.

• 2:18:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:18:38Steven Rinella?

  I just read that and it left my mind.

• 2:18:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:18:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Okay. I saw your name there.

• 2:18:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, and then of course, we, we've done a number of, a good bit of predation related work in, in Wyoming as well. The, to sort of like, look, look at a big picture relative to the two camps that, that you reference.

• 2:18:58Speaker 04

  In.

• 2:19:02Steven Rinella?

  Which camp is right?

• 2:19:03Speaker 04

  Well, here's the thing, the problem is neither camp is right.

• 2:19:06Steven Rinella?

  I had a suspicion.

• 2:19:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. And anybody, the, 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.

• 2:19:29Speaker 04

  Both of those camps are wrong. The fact that there's even camps is wrong. And it's wrong in part because of 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 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, then it doesn't matter.

• 2:20:09Speaker 04

  And so, for example, if we're, if we're in a place where animals are at the capacity of their landscape, no matter what, basically, any, 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, 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,

• 2:20:53Speaker 04

  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 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,

• 2:21:38Speaker 04

  Know they're wrong and it's because we can be, we can be in a, 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.

• 2:21:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I got you.

• 2:21:59Speaker 04

  And then imagine the whole gradient in between and I've worked in two systems now as an example. In the Sierras, in, 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 I've seen, 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. Cause we, 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.

• 2:22:44Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:23:07Steven Rinella?

  Dude, you should be the only guest we ever have on.

• 2:23:11Speaker 04

  You'd get so bored.

• 2:23:12Steven Rinella?

  No, it'd be a weekly show where I ask you questions.

• 2:23:17Speaker 04

  I like it. I like it.

• 2:23:19Steven Rinella?

  Cause we're never going to get through it all. We gotta wrap up. Randall gotta do this whole stupid thing we're doing.

• 2:23:26Speaker 05

  It's the audio book.

• 2:23:28Speaker 06

  We haven't even talked about Kevin's fascinating other interests and taxidermist hunter.

• 2:23:35Speaker 04

  Maybe, maybe we should just.

• 2:23:36Speaker 06

  There are layers to this.

• 2:23:38Steven Rinella?

  We, I know.

• 2:23:40Speaker 04

  Let's not wait five, seven years again. I don't know how, whenever it was.

• 2:23:43Steven Rinella?

  No, we gotta schedule the next round. Cause we gotta wrap up. Dude, it's like, it's really like, you guys are doing super cool work. 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, I just hope there's not a lot of bottlenecks and, and, and inefficiencies. And. And like being able to take the research you're doing and being able to go and say like,

• 2:24:13Steven Rinella?

  I can't tell you anything, but there's a, I'm, it really looks like this is going on. Are we considering this?

• 2:24:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:24:22Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, like is the flow?

• 2:24:24Speaker 04

  No, I get that.

• 2:24:25Steven Rinella?

  Is the flow good?

• 2:24:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:24:26Steven Rinella?

  And, 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 in stuff that just isn't backed up.

• 2:24:43Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:24:44Steven Rinella?

  And we say it like fact.

• 2:24:45Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 2:24:45Steven Rinella?

  And the guys that are doing management are the, are my guys, are peers. It's like people are operating under assumptions that, uh, like aren't as accurate, you know? And sort of looking at like, like looking at lower deer numbers and be like, well, the reason it's that way is because of whatever.

• 2:25:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:25:03Steven Rinella?

  And then you go look at me, man, dude, it's just a different, there's, there's more to what's going on. It's a longer story.

• 2:25:11Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:25:11Steven Rinella?

  It's not like, you can't just, everything isn't just looking at what just happened.

• 2:25:15Speaker 04

  Correct. Absolutely.

• 2:25:16Steven Rinella?

  You know, you got, you gotta dig back oftentimes. You gotta dig back right now. And so, and trying to correct a situation, you might be correcting the wrong inputs.

• 2:25:26Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely.

• 2:25:27Steven Rinella?

  Right?

• 2:25:28Speaker 04

  Yep, for sure. And, and I think the other, the other side of that as well is, you know, a number of things that we talked about. Some of the things we, 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 precip or snowpack or those sorts of things are such, 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, well, 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.

• 2:26:12Speaker 04

  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, may be from how we use habitat to our presence on the landscape, um, to how we, how we manage hunting seasons.

• 2:26:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:26:28Steven Rinella?

  Love it.

• 2:26:29Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 2:26:30Steven Rinella?

  Now you gotta come back on.

• 2:26:32Speaker 06

  Okay, happily.

• 2:26:34Steven Rinella?

  No, you're not too terribly far away.

• 2:26:35Speaker 06

  No.

• 2:26:36Steven Rinella?

  Last time we went to you, remember that?

• 2:26:37Speaker 06

  You did, you did. We got to hang out for a bit.

• 2:26:40Steven Rinella?

  Well.

• 2:26:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, it was great.

• 2:26:43Steven Rinella?

  Hmm, we gotta go though.

• 2:26:50Steven Rinella?

  Me and Randall's thing is actually kinda interesting. I don't wanna talk bad about it.

• 2:26:58Speaker 06

  I, I just.

• 2:26:59Steven Rinella?

  It's very similar in a way.

• 2:27:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:27:00Steven Rinella?

  We're trying to find out what happened, what hap- what did happen?

• 2:27:03Speaker 06

  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, the, it's dimmed.

• 2:27:10Steven Rinella?

  You know.

• 2:27:10Speaker 06

  It's dimmed.

• 2:27:11Steven Rinella?

  We're doing very similar work.

• 2:27:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:27:13Steven Rinella?

  We are.

• 2:27:14Speaker 06

  I like it.

• 2:27:14Steven Rinella?

  We're looking at, wow, yeah, like what did happen to all the buffalo?

• 2:27:18Speaker 06

  Nice.

• 2:27:18Steven Rinella?

  And why? And what little micro things might have been different that would have led to a different outcome? We toy with all this.

• 2:27:24Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 2:27:25Steven Rinella?

  We toy with all this.

• 2:27:26Speaker 06

  Good.

• 2:27:27Steven Rinella?

  And, and.

• 2:27:29Speaker 06

  But we don't have the data that you have.

• 2:27:31Steven Rinella?

  Well, it's just different kinda work.

• 2:27:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:27:33Steven Rinella?

  And we dispel, we dispel things.

• 2:27:36Speaker 06

  See, that's important too.

• 2:27:36Steven Rinella?

  People like, well, what happened was this. And I'm like, yeah, kinda. But also this.

• 2:27:43Speaker 06

  Nice.

• 2:27:43Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 2:27:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, I look forward to that. Bison are fascinating.

• 2:27:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I think you'll, I think you'll dig it. It's, it's got all the, all those normal gross stuff that we like to put in there too.

• 2:27:53Speaker 06

  Of course, I would anticipate nothing.

• 2:27:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we like it to be that you get kinda grossed out, but also you learn some stuff.

• 2:28:01Speaker 06

  You have to have that flair, it wouldn't come from you guys.

• 2:28:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you gotta have that, that cadence of you being like, oh.

• 2:28:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:28:06Steven Rinella?

  Then you're like, oh.

• 2:28:10Speaker 06

  Phil, can we clip that person's sound effect?

• 2:28:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, that'll be in the new episode.

• 2:28:13Speaker 06

  We can just splice that in?

• 2:28:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:17Steven Rinella?

  Back and forth, all.

• 2:28:18Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 2:28:27Steven Rinella?

  All right. Thank you for coming on the Montithpe Shop, University of Wyoming.

• 2:28:34Steven Rinella?

  Send your resumes. You looking for resumes right now?

• 2:28:37Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 2:28:38Steven Rinella?

  You drowning in resumes?

• 2:28:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:28:41Steven Rinella?

  Don't send your resumes.

• 2:28:41Speaker 04

  Always looking for supporters if anybody's interested.

• 2:28:44Steven Rinella?

  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,

• 2:28:53Steven Rinella?

  if you love the West, if you love wildlife, if you love these majestic landscapes, and you really want to put your money, your conservation dollars to

• 2:29:06Steven Rinella?

  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 Montithpe Lab is money well spent.

• 2:29:38Speaker 04

  Shop.

• 2:29:39Steven Rinella?

  What was that?

• 2:29:40Speaker 04

  Shop.

• 2:29:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh, what did I just call it?

• 2:29:42Speaker 04

  Lab.

• 2:29:43Steven Rinella?

  Well, that's what they ought to call it.

• 2:29:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:29:46Speaker 04

  If you think about it.

• 2:29:47Steven Rinella?

  I think that's where we started.

• 2:29:50Speaker 04

  The more I think about it.

• 2:29:51Speaker 06

  Doesn't bode well for our recording session later.

• 2:29:55Steven Rinella?

  The Montithpe Shop, damn it.

• 2:29:58Speaker 04

  Thank you, Cub.

• 2:29:59Speaker 06

  My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

• 2:30:27Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you've got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. OnX Hunt is full of great features. I always say it's my favorite app. I use the thing

• 2:31:11Steven Rinella?

  on a daily basis. Here's a new feature I'm very excited about. OnX Hunt's location sharing puts your whole group on one live map. So you can look and tell where everyone is. And if at night it gets dark and someone's not back yet, you don't gotta guess what happened to them or where they are. You can just look and tell where they are. It has implications for safety, coordination, I can't even list all the ways in which this is helpful. You opt in and then when you guys are done, the data goes away. It's not stored. Keep the folks in your deer camp on the same page with location sharing from OnX Hunt. In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military

• 2:31:52Steven Rinella?

  University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.

• 2:32:16Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.