Ep. 783: Does the Moon Impact Deer Behavior?

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Dr. Bronson Strickland https://www.wildlifefisheries.msstate.edu/people/bks10, Mark Kenyon https://www.instagram.com/wiredtohunt/?hl=en, Janis Putelis https://www.instagram.com/janis_putelis/?hl=en, Brody Henderson https://www.instagram.com/brodyjhenderson/?hl=en, Spencer Neuharth https://www.instagram.com/spencerneuharth/?hl=en, Phil Taylor https://www.instagram.com/philtaylor25/?hl=en, and Corinne Schneider https://www.instagram.com/corinnesschneider/?hl=en. Topics discussed: In the name of efficiency and how Steve doesn't have room for pleasantries with the people he's close to; what the moon's doing and how it impacts deer behavior; the wildlife that is driven by moon phase; the buck movement study; the moon position; statistically significance and effect size; tortuosity; the powerful placebo effect; 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

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 0:32Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. 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. OnX Hunt is full of great features. I always say it's my favorite app. I use the thing 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.

• 1:16Steven Rinella?

  And if at night it gets dark and someone's not back yet, you don't got to 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.

• 1:49Steven Rinella?

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We're hunting. The Meat Eater Podcast. 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.com.

• 2:25Steven Rinella?

  Free people, oh no, the show's starting right now with this ring. Can it start with this ring? Yeah, sounds good.

• 2:32Steven Rinella?

  Dialing Mark Canyon. If he doesn't pick up, will we keep it, you think?

• 2:37Speaker 03

  I see.

• 2:37Steven Rinella?

  Oh. Mark, you know who I'm sitting here with?

• 2:42Speaker 03

  I have no idea.

• 2:43Steven Rinella?

  You're on, you're on, you're not on the air, but you know what I mean? Um, you're being recorded.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:49Steven Rinella?

  Uh. It's me, Mark. Yanis. Yanis.

• 2:55Steven Rinella?

  I'm here with, uh, Dr. Bronson Strickland.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  Hmm, great, great guy.

• 3:00Steven Rinella?

  And I'm about ready to start telling him about the last thing you told me about deer in the moon. And I, and I'm gonna like, kinda make you look bad. Then I thought.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  I don't remember what that could be.

• 3:13Steven Rinella?

  That, that, it was a very interesting point. I was telling you about how, you know, you and I have argued about whether deer are impacted by lunar phases.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:24Steven Rinella?

  You're very, I mean, you're, you're very aware of this debate.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Very aware of it. Although I'm not sure what you're gonna say my position is on.

• 3:32Steven Rinella?

  Well, I'll tell you what you said the last time we talked, Mark. It was a long time ago and it's stuck in my head. It's stuck in my craw.

• 3:40Steven Rinella?

  You were, you were kinda hinting at, that science can't detect the subtle differences that could, the subtle, subtle things that could make a difference between your success and your failure. Where you're like, if that buck steps out of the woods a minute earlier,

• 4:03Steven Rinella?

  that could be the difference and science can't find that.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:10Steven Rinella?

  So when I say about how you think that, you still think that?

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Well, that has been not my position, but my.

• 4:21Steven Rinella?

  No, you didn't put it to me like a question.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  So, so I've always said that that is the question that I feel like science has yet. It's like, there's all these studies that show that cold fronts don't, don't impact movement in a statistically significant way. Or the moon in many different ways has not shown yet to make a statistic significant difference. So I've always been curious though, because on one, we see that in all the studies. On the other hand, you have all of these other hunters with anecdotal evidence that, you know, that says that's not the case. And so my question's always been, maybe, maybe we're just not measuring in the same, or in, in quite the right way to, plus these tiny little, um, possible edges that you could get.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  So I'm still like very much on the fence though, Steve. Like I'm just curious. I'm moon curious is how I've always described myself.

• 5:12Steven Rinella?

  We already talked about you being moon curious.

• 5:16Steven Rinella?

  I'm Mark, I'm Mark curious.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  Yep. And, and Bronson has done a really good job of, of a lot of this stuff. So I'm glad you're talking to him because he's someone who I listen to a lot and, uh, and he certainly knows better than I. I'm simply a guy with questions.

• 5:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You remember how I said you're on the air, Mark?

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:33Steven Rinella?

  Well, you know what? I found all this interesting the other day after the, after learning at the other day where the FCC started like threatening people for saying stuff they didn't like.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:43Steven Rinella?

  I was like, the FCC has nothing to do with podcasts. But then I was like, do they? The FCC has nothing to do with podcasts.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  Is that a question or a statement?

• 5:52Steven Rinella?

  No, I'm telling you, it's true. Cause you're not on the air. You're not on the air. You're not, we're not using the air. So we can say like things and the FCC won't threaten us and take the show off the air. So if they get mad about this lunar phase stuff, there's nothing to do about it.

• 6:06Speaker 03

  Hmm. Thank goodness, because we've been saying a lot of crazy stuff about the moon over all these years. I would hate to be brought to court on those past.

• 6:13Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Hmm. You do this the hardware or the easy way, Mark? That's what they say. Um, all right, man. We'll talk to you later. Thank you. Uh, when the episode comes out, why don't you listen? And we'll try to find out if what you're saying is, is a thing or not.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  I'm looking forward to it.

• 6:31Steven Rinella?

  As we just said.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  You didn't even say goodbye to him.

• 6:34Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I don't really do that.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  Never?

• 6:36Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Not even if it's your wife?

• 6:39Steven Rinella?

  Definitely not.

• 6:39Speaker 05

  No, that is a rule of Steve's is it's a it's in the name of efficiency. That please, thank you, hello, goodbye. Once you achieve a certain intimacy with Steve. I fall in this category as well, that those pleasantries are out the window.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think I that happens to me too, but and then I watched it happen to someone else. And I was like, oh, wait a minute.

• 7:03Steven Rinella?

  You want if you really want to dig in.

• 7:05Speaker 05

  You're in the club.

• 7:05Steven Rinella?

  If you really want to dig in, I'll take a quick break to dig in this for you.

• 7:10Steven Rinella?

  I like, there's people I talk to, I like the main people in my life. I like, I talk to him, I like to talk to him a lot. So that anytime we talk, it's only about what we have to talk about. The minute I go too long.

• 7:26Steven Rinella?

  And I haven't talked to somebody, then I dread talking to him because we got to do all the parts of talking that I don't want to do.

• 7:35Steven Rinella?

  You know what I mean?

• 7:36Speaker 04

  How's the family?

• 7:37Steven Rinella?

  So if I keep up like a cadence, like if I call Yanni, I don't need to get into like, oh geez, how you been? Is the house holding up?

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:43Steven Rinella?

  You know what I mean? You know, and like wind up in something like that.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I come to expect no small talk.

• 7:48Steven Rinella?

  So I just like, if I call Yanni and like, hey, blank, blank, and he's like, blank, blank, and then we just hang up because we like kept up on it. And we don't have to do like, whatever did happen to your cousin? You know what I mean? Or whatever, you know what I mean? Like, it's just better that way. So I just like to, but I tell my wife I love her and I can always tell my, how I stand with her. Cause I'll do it because I'm just trying to find out if she's mad at me about something. So if I go, I love you, and she says, I love you, then we're cool. If I go, I love you, and she just hangs up, then I'm like, oh my God, now.

• 8:18Steven Rinella?

  What now?

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 8:19Steven Rinella?

  You know what I mean? So that's how I find out if I gotta like, if I'm, that's how I find out if I'm like cool or not when I go home. Um, the longer I've been gone, the less likely I am to get the return. You know, things get frosty at home. Joined today by Dr. Bronson Strickland.

• 8:38Steven Rinella?

  Of University of Mississippi?

• 8:40Speaker 06

  Mississippi State University.

• 8:42Steven Rinella?

  Damn. Is that a big mistake?

• 8:44Speaker 06

  That's a pretty big mistake.

• 8:46Steven Rinella?

  Well, it's not on here.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  To make up for it, say hottie toddy.

• 8:50Speaker 07

  It's right.

• 8:52Steven Rinella?

  It is on there?

• 8:53Speaker 04

  Oh, shit, I want them to do it again.

• 8:55Steven Rinella?

  Where do I see it on here?

• 8:57Speaker 07

  The, the bigger.

• 8:58Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 9:01Steven Rinella?

  Dr. Bronson is the St. John Family Professor of Wildlife Management and the Extension Wildlife Specialist for Mississippi State University. And what do you say when you say that? Hottie toddies?

• 9:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, do that.

• 9:14Steven Rinella?

  Hottie toddies?

• 9:14Speaker 04

  No, I'm kidding. That's, that's another mess up. You've offended more Mississippi State folks.

• 9:19Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 9:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:20Steven Rinella?

  What does it mean? Hot, hot, hot like Christmas drinks?

• 9:23Speaker 04

  I don't think hottie toddy means anything. It's a different school.

• 9:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's Ole Miss. We booze it up hottie toddy.

• 9:29Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 9:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:32Steven Rinella?

  Mississippi State University.

• 9:33Speaker 06

  There you go.

• 9:35Steven Rinella?

  Um, did his, did his BS degree in forest resources from the University of Georgia? Did a master's degree Texas A&M, Kingsville.

• 9:47Steven Rinella?

  PhD from Mississippi State University. Bronson is a co-director of the MSU. Here's where things get interesting.

• 9:56Steven Rinella?

  He's a co-director of the MSU Deer Lab. A certified wildlife biologist and professional member of the Boone and Crockett Club. We're, this is, we're here to, this is the most important podcast ever, um,

• 10:13Steven Rinella?

  ever done, I would say, because this is going to be the final answer.

• 10:20Speaker 06

  We hope.

• 10:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Dudes out there that are like, that are, that argue about like the moon phase. And if I'm talking to Jay Scott, we're going to go down to Mexico for Kuz deer. And he's talking about what dates to go. And he's talking about what the moon's doing on those dates. Is all of that true or not true?

• 10:44Steven Rinella?

  Every old man, young man, not even old man, every hunter has an opinion about what is the moon doing and how's it affect deer movements? Jay Scott is one of those guys? I don't know where he stands now. Okay. Everybody changes. I used to just believe it too, because I like, well, I used to believe that squirrels, that red squirrels bit the nuts off gray squirrels, because that's what I was told. Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 05

  He, he will definitely pu- push us one way or another in January, according to what the moon's gonna be doing when.

• 11:16Steven Rinella?

  You know, so. I have a lot of, I have a lot of friends that are lunar guys, moon guys, and like, here's the deal, and when we started playing, and I thought I had a conversation with Corin about it, and I'm like, um, it's not ridiculous, okay? I mean, what, what's not ridiculous about it is look at all the wildlife that, that absolutely hundred percent is driven by moon phase.

• 11:40Steven Rinella?

  Okay, like turtle nesting, like when turtles hatch, turtles like, like shore nesting turtles that lay eggs, their eggs hatch on a new moon. Some species hatch where it's real dark, okay? Um, what other kind of examples we have? I mean, there's tons of things, man.

• 12:00Speaker 05

  Um.

• 12:01Speaker 06

  Fish.

• 12:02Speaker 05

  Tides and fish.

• 12:03Speaker 06

  Tides and fish.

• 12:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, think about it, it's huge. Well, here, here's another one for you. I remember they, um, you ever hear the writer Barbara Kingsolver?

• 12:11Steven Rinella?

  She had a book called High Tide in Tucson, and it was a book of like, science writing? Was it Kingsolver, was it, uh?

• 12:17Speaker 06

  It's Kingsolver.

• 12:17Steven Rinella?

  It is?

• 12:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:20Steven Rinella?

  They took these mollusks, um, and brought them to Tucson, to a university. What, what universities in Tucson? I can't remember, they took these clams. Yeah, whatever the hell it is, ASU? I believe it was clams, I'm sure it was clams. They had these clams in an aquarium in Tucson, and, um, they didn't need the ocean to tell them what the tide was doing. Their whole groove became tied to, their whole feeding groove became tied to the moon.

• 12:50Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:51Steven Rinella?

  And it's not even enough, like, it's an imperceptible, like, the effect on an aquarium is like imperceptible, right? But those suckers tuned in and stayed on a lunar, they stayed on a lunar cycle, without even being where there's a giant tide swing, right? They just knew. So, it stands to reason with, with all these different.

• 13:13Steven Rinella?

  Creatures, migratory birds, right? It stands reason like, yeah, the, the moon impacts stuff. So for someone to say that the moon impacts how bucks move, it's not crazy. It's not like dumb.

• 13:27Speaker 06

  It, it's, it's not. So yeah, that there is a lot of evidence for some species. And, and I think the species you mentioned, that does make sense. The gravitational pull affecting the tide or moonlight affecting visibility. All that stuff to me makes perfect sense. And I think there's a lot of examples in, in the literature for that and, and it being useful. But what I come back to is, but what made it that way? How did the story begin for, for whitetail deer? Where has there ever been evidence that is influencing whitetail deer except for pawpaw?

• 14:08Speaker 06

  The, the stories that are passed down from grandfather to, you know, and it just becomes part of the story. And it makes it fun and it makes it interesting and humans are always looking for patterns and we're really good at looking for patterns, even when they don't exist. And so it adds, I think, this element to making it more interesting. When the bottom line is, in my opinion, and I think the evidence is very strong, they're not influenced by the moon whatsoever. And then you think about the natural history of deer and you start asking your question, why would they be?

• 14:46Steven Rinella?

  Uh,

• 14:49Steven Rinella?

  something to do with visibility.

• 14:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 14:52Steven Rinella?

  Well, I, like in reading like historic texts, you'll often find people pre-flashlight and stuff, people traveling by horse. If you read historic texts, you'll often find people planning trips. To have their trip coincide with a full moon.

• 15:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:08Steven Rinella?

  For better nighttime travel. So I used to think on the deer thing, I'm like, maybe just historically, when it's a full moon and you're out at night, because there's more light, you become aware of deer around you.

• 15:21Speaker 05

  Yeah. So you can see.

• 15:22Steven Rinella?

  Like you can see them. And so you think in your head, maybe you wind up thinking, um, maybe people wind up thinking when there's a full moon, the deer are out.

• 15:32Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. They're always out.

• 15:35Steven Rinella?

  Just because you're seeing them. And so you're like, I'm out because I'm out traveling at night because it's a full moon. I can see, I see deer because it's a full moon.

• 15:42Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 15:43Steven Rinella?

  And therefore, I don't know, people land on, on that idea. That's a wild, I'm like, I'm grasping at straws, be like, where did that come from? But, but I like, like probably the other guys in the room, you can, like, I'd love to hear Yanni and Spencer, like how, if you can remember where it come from. Um, where your idea about this came from? And then, and then, um, Dr. Strickland, I'd love to hear, when you guys did the survey, if you could talk about how eighty-three.

• 16:14Speaker 05

  Eighty-three percent.

• 16:15Steven Rinella?

  Eighty-three percent of hunter, of surveyed hunters, um, eighty-three percent agree it affects moon, the moon affects deer movement. What they don't agree on is why and how.

• 16:27Speaker 05

  Right. Right.

• 16:29Steven Rinella?

  They don't agree on like what it does, how it does it, but they believe it does something. But do you remember, Yanni?

• 16:35Speaker 05

  Sure. I would say for me, it didn't really come down generationally. Um, it wasn't because basically for me growing up, before I came out west and started hunting professional, really, it was maybe five to 10 days of archery in Michigan, two or three days of shotgun, and then I'd get three days of rifle in Wisconsin. That was like my entire big game hunting year.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  So we're gonna be hunting no matter what.

• 17:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that.

• 17:07Speaker 05

  On those days, you know.

• 17:09Steven Rinella?

  Like, yeah, it's like, you never got to the point. I'm taking opening day off this year. I'm not hunting the opener because the lunar phase, there's just no way, right?

• 17:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. And my dad just never got into it to that level either, which is where I would have got it. So I just started learning about it once I started reading hunting magazines and doing research on my own.

• 17:29Steven Rinella?

  And you would encounter it.

• 17:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:31Steven Rinella?

  As fact.

• 17:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. I would say that

• 17:36Speaker 05

  where I felt like it actually played a part in my hunting was that when I was an elk hunting guide in Colorado, usually the second rifle season would coincide with a pretty big moon.

• 17:50Speaker 05

  It would also coincide a lot of times with some warmer weather, extreme amount of hunting pressure, and it was always our hardest week of hunting. We'd still kill some elk, but man, it was always our hardest week. So a lot, a lot of factors at play there, but it always would seem like that week would also have a big moon. And in my mind, it was like, of course, they're just up all night feeding. And by the time we get to the meadow, half an hour before daylight, they're long gone, they're, you know, in bed.

• 18:22Steven Rinella?

  That's the version I was raised on.

• 18:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:25Steven Rinella?

  I was raised on, but again, I was raised on, on the, on a full moon, they feed all night. So they don't need to feed in, in the daylight hours. But it had zero, it was just an observa, it was an observation, but it did not dictate your, dictate your habits. Right? It was like you had a two week gun season, you were gonna hunt, you know, whatever. We weren't like going out or not going out based on it, but it was just like, you'd be like, oh, it's too bad that there's a full moon. On the opener, they'll be out less. Cause they fed all night.

• 19:04Speaker 04

  Convenient excuse, or if you're successful, you did it in spite of a full moon.

• 19:09Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:10Speaker 04

  Like, damn.

• 19:11Steven Rinella?

  Was that your awareness of what the moon was doing?

• 19:13Speaker 04

  I, I think, um, when I was a kid, there was a communal anti-full moon take from like the deer hunters in my area. And it was just a very rudimentary understanding of, of, uh, like what moon, what moon phase would do to deer movement.

• 19:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 04

  And it was like today, and I feel like in the last 20 years, there will be very like hyper-specific moments of the moon that are good or bad for deer movement. It's like if a new moon is rising underfoot in the morning, like that's a thing people will say. When, when I was a kid, that was just like full moon bad. And it was, it was not that they were up feeding all night. It was that they were chasing tail all night. So they were tired.

• 19:52Steven Rinella?

  Mmm.

• 19:53Speaker 04

  They were like exhausted come first light. And so now, uh, you're actually going to get some movement like late morning, early afternoon. And so that is like a, a stronger time to be in the woods, or it's now as good as the morning or the evening. That's like a take.

• 20:09Steven Rinella?

  Can you hit me that again?

• 20:10Speaker 04

  If, if the, if it's a full moon.

• 20:11Steven Rinella?

  Since he's been chasing does all night.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  Chasing does all night. He can see things so well. It's like, uh, it's not that no one even turned the lights off tonight.

• 20:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 04

  You know, they can, they can chase them all through the hardwoods, all out in the cornfields. So now they're tired come sunrise at 7:30 a.m. So they're just bedded down somewhere already.

• 20:28Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 20:28Speaker 04

  But now they're getting a little restless come like 11 a.m. And so they're going to be on their feet a little more from that 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. period. Kind of unorthodox.

• 20:37Steven Rinella?

  Cause he's been in bed so long.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Yes. Yep. And then, uh, you know, now it's really thrown off his schedule and that, that like evening movement. It's probably not going to be as good for like that, um, last, you know, 30 minutes of shooting light either. Because his whole schedule's just off at this point.

• 20:53Speaker 05

  You know what's coming, coming to my mind is?

• 20:55Steven Rinella?

  I like that.

• 20:56Speaker 05

  We always think about how the full moon would be beneficial to these animals, right? Like they can chase more tail or they can feed better all night long. Right? But they're prey animals. So like, really?

• 21:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 21:10Speaker 05

  The wolves can see them better. The coyotes can see them better.

• 21:13Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm. Let's hear from the expert.

• 21:17Steven Rinella?

  Okay, let's start out. Tell us about your survey. We just gave you three. Uh, really two.

• 21:23Speaker 06

  Really well reasoned.

• 21:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we just gave you two of the things that are floating around out there, but tell us about the survey you did.

• 21:30Speaker 06

  Okay, so, uh, before I get to that.

• 21:33Steven Rinella?

  Please, do whatever you want.

• 21:34Speaker 06

  Let me tell you how this happened. So, uh, so we did a buck movement project.

• 21:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 21:40Speaker 06

  For a completely different reason. And so, seven or eight years ago, I thought, oh, well, this is gonna be a great opportunity. We have all these daily movement rates. And so, I'm gonna tinker with this, real simple analyses. I'm gonna take these daily movement rates, averaged for the population, day by day by day. And daytime movements, nighttime movements. And it was very apparent that when you plotted that from September, all the way to six weeks, two months, or a month plus, post rut, all the variation in movement was apparent. Is the rut.

• 22:22Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 22:22Speaker 06

  Is the rut. Difference in daytime movement, nighttime movement. So here we go. I'm gonna put this on Facebook. So, on top of that movement graph, I plotted the oscillation of full moon, new moon, full moon, new and had those superimposed.

• 22:38Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 22:39Speaker 06

  On each other. And so, you can see that from, from the phase of the moon, from new to full, in that period, there's a little, there's no variation in deer movement whatsoever. And so, I put it out there on Facebook. Appears to me, you know, the biology and, and the science is very clear that, that there's nothing going on with the moon phase.

• 23:03Steven Rinella?

  What state?

• 23:04Speaker 06

  Mississippi. Yeah.

• 23:07Steven Rinella?

  Come on.

• 23:08Speaker 04

  This is a thing people are with, Steve. This is a thing people would, yeah, okay.

• 23:11Speaker 06

  They will, yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  They'd be like, well, you didn't study the deer in Wisconsin.

• 23:15Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, what the typical feedback.

• 23:17Steven Rinella?

  This is why you can't win. You can't win.

• 23:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:20Speaker 06

  They won't even say, uh, in my state, it'll be, but my deer do this.

• 23:25Steven Rinella?

  Do our moon, our moon deer.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:29Speaker 06

  And so the

• 23:30Steven Rinella?

  I got it. Cause one thing that you got, I never encountered it before. So when you're talking about that you're graphing movement, can you, is this the yards per hour, which is great? Okay. Can you explain that to people? Like when you say like you're, you're measuring movement, but what like, what do you, what does that mean?

• 23:47Speaker 06

  What's the metric? Yeah. We, yeah, we typically do yards per day or yards per hour.

• 23:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 23:53Speaker 06

  That, that, that's the measurement and that's from the sequential GPS locations. So we're getting a location from them every 15 minutes.

• 24:00Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 24:00Speaker 06

  And so it's just the sum of that over whatever period of time. And you come up with a rate of movement from that.

• 24:05Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 24:05Speaker 06

  So I put that out there and a couple of people were, yeah, I knew nothing was going on with this was, but the overwhelming response was this guy's an idiot, me, this guy.

• 24:17Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 24:17Speaker 06

  And that it has nothing to do with the moon phase. That's what grandpa talked about what was moon phase. It's moon position. It's the solar aspect of it. That, that's what's driving it. So it's what time of the day is the moon overhead, underfoot, setting, uh, things like that. Where is the moon on the horizon and the supposed gravitational pull?

• 24:46Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 24:46Speaker 06

  And how that might be impacting? That is what got people interested in that. So that was all the deal. And I, and I didn't have any data at that point to refute it. So I just tucked that away like this.

• 24:58Steven Rinella?

  Just another egg headed college guy. Talking about the moon.

• 25:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, a lot worse than that, but yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 06

  And, and so that data set sat there and, and we, uh, you know, was holding that we got to do this. We got to do something more sophisticated. And I was very lucky to have a, a coworker, a, a research analyst, a postdoc, uh, named Natasha Ellison.

• 25:23Speaker 06

  She has a PhD in mathematics, so undergraduate, masters, PhD in mathematics with the application to biology and movement ecology, and she actually tinkered with quantum mechanics for her masters degree. One of her famous statements was, the math really wasn't that challenging for physics and quantum mechanics with her masters degree. So, she's at the tip of the spear. Okay. And understanding how to disentangle all this. And I'm sure she chuckled and rolled her eyes when I told her, it's like, Natasha. We got a problem with bucks. We got it, we got to do, we've got an opportunity, and this is going to be something

• 26:03Speaker 06

  no other academic is going to spend this amount of time and emotion going into this life, but we got a real opportunity to do, hopefully do something special. And so, she analyzed it at a, at a way, a level of detail that had never been done before. And so, but when we were digging into that, and when we were trying to figure out what we're going to do, how we're going to do it, et cetera, we thought, you know what? We need to do a survey. We need to, we need to figure out what, what people think, and what are their expectations from, if there is a moon effect, how big is it?

• 26:45Speaker 06

  And so, we use the term in science called effect size. And so, is something statistically significant or not? That's what people hear all the time. It's really not as important as effect size. Effect size just means the difference between the treatment and the control. You get a 1% increase, 50% increase, 100% increase, that is what's the most important to people. So, we did the survey, and I got to say this, this was not a sociology sanctioned, sophisticated survey in that department. This was the MSU deer lab, us doing a, a, a social media Yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 06

  survey and just saying, hey, all you people out there, what do you think about this? So, what came back was, yeah, 83%.

• 27:36Speaker 06

  Eighty-three percent of the people that responded thought the moon is affecting deer movement in some way. And then a subset of that, which was always more than half, you say, okay, if it is affecting deer movement, by how much? And the, the effect size they reported, or the differences they reported for something like bedding, the difference in bedding, was at a minimum, they're on their feet thirty minutes earlier, or they're on their feet up to two hours earlier. The moon is stimulating them to get up out of their bed two hours earlier.

• 28:16Speaker 06

  The, uh, the distance that they were moving in terms of velocity was always at least fifty yards per hour to greater than two hundred yards per hour. So these people that are believing the moon is stimulating movement, they're all in. Got it. Yeah, they're different animals under a specified moon condition.

• 28:40Speaker 05

  Bronson, were those respondents, were they all from that general area in Mississippi? Or were they nationwide?

• 28:47Speaker 06

  Nationwide.

• 28:48Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 28:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, nationwide, certainly, yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 07

  Was there a specific concentration among, you know, was, was twenty-five percent, although nationwide, twenty-five percent of respondents from like Texas or something?

• 29:00Speaker 06

  Difficult for us to tell, because that was, I can't remember if it was Facebook or Instagram, and you might be able to disentangle that, I can't.

• 29:09Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 29:10Speaker 08

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to two hundred thousand dollars, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 29:42Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. 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. This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Now, if you've thought about trying therapy with BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session.

• 30:27Steven Rinella?

  Hey, you might not know this, you probably don't know this, but World Mental Health Day is October 10, but your brain does not wait around for October 10. You gotta take care of your mental health at all times. And therapy isn't just for like big life choices. It can be a place to talk through small but important things like a work situation, taking up too much mental real estate, a relationship dynamic you can't quite name, or simply the sense that something feels off. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks, and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance.

• 31:08Steven Rinella?

  If you don't have insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 10% off your first month. Go visit betterhelp.com/meateater to explore your payment options. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash meat eater. If you've got something weighing on your mind, taking a toll on you, don't be afraid to reach out. Betterhelp.com/meateater.

• 31:33Steven Rinella?

  When they did the survey and you had eighty-three percent say that it did something, was it, did you find that there was a lot of, that they had contradictory opinions? Meaning, some people thought they moved earlier, people thought they moved later, or did you find like, was, let me put it a different way, instead of exploring all the exceptions, what, if you had to synthesize it, make it that like, the general impression was, was what among surveyed people?

• 32:02Speaker 06

  Yep. So during the day, they bedded less, meaning they're on their feet more. They are on their feet, if you're thinking about an afternoon movement bout, they're on their feet earlier, and when they are moving, they are moving at a greater rate of speed. All of that, which would result in greater observability.

• 32:24Steven Rinella?

  When there's what happening with the moon?

• 32:27Speaker 06

  Name it.

• 32:29Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay. So it's an idea that there's more movement. But there's, but like, the general conception is, the general perception is that what,

• 32:43Steven Rinella?

  depending on what the moon is doing, it drives more movement, but there's not a lot of, uh, there's not a lot of agreement about what the moon needs to be doing to drive more movement.

• 32:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:54Steven Rinella?

  It's not like a, it's not like a full moon gives more deer movement. People might disagree about the detail, but something happens and there's more movement based on the moon. I'm not doing a very good job of articulating this.

• 33:07Speaker 06

  There is a moon situation for every person and their pet hypothesis for when I want to go hunt.

• 33:15Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 33:15Speaker 06

  It's either I'm gonna go with the moon overhead, or the moon underfoot, or the moon is setting or rising, or it's a full moon, or we're in the perigee or apogee because of the gravitation, it's closer, or it's further away. Every single day, you can pull out a scenario of what the moon is doing.

• 33:32Steven Rinella?

  Got it. And, but whatever that is, it's driving movement.

• 33:37Speaker 06

  No, it's not.

• 33:37Steven Rinella?

  No, I'm saying, no, no. In their mind.

• 33:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:40Steven Rinella?

  And so, and then, and then in their mind.

• 33:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:44Steven Rinella?

  In the mind of a, and I'm not trying to dog on them, but like, in the mind of, because like I said, I used to, I used to think there was something to it. Is it fair to say that, that people that believe it also believe that there's like, the opposite effect? Meaning, let, let's say you're a full moon, like you're a full moon guy.

• 34:03Steven Rinella?

  You're a full moon guy like I see more deer movement at a full moon. Do they, do they usually then believe that there is a opposite effect? So a new moon equals.

• 34:16Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 34:16Steven Rinella?

  An extreme on the other example, like much less movement.

• 34:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's the reason the deer weren't moving today.

• 34:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 06

  It was because of the opposite.

• 34:23Steven Rinella?

  Got you. So it's not just it creates a spike, but it's sort of this, this like trend that moves in and out.

• 34:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 34:29Steven Rinella?

  And it has a top and bottom to it.

• 34:31Speaker 06

  A spike and then a suppression.

• 34:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 34:33Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 34:33Speaker 06

  During daylight hours, and that's what we focused on, what hunters are going to see.

• 34:37Steven Rinella?

  Yep, yep.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  What did your study find that did impact deer movement? Just the rut?

• 34:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. So, um, crepuscular periods, so nothing supersedes this. Nothing comes even close to superseding sunup and sundown and the rut. There is a subtle, subtle effect of temperature. And that is what Natasha, it's really complicated and it's multi variant. All these variables are interacting, but there is a subtle effect of temperature. Meaning in our neck of the woods, it would be different up north.

• 35:16Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 35:17Speaker 06

  And our neck of the woods, when you start getting sub 40 degrees, we will see a little bit more higher of a movement rate during daylight hours.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  I feel like you saying that is like the, the hottest take a deer biologist has ever had on deer temperature movement and, uh, yeah, yeah, deer movement based on temperature.

• 35:37Speaker 06

  Well, th- this is the guy right here that said for more than a decade, it had nothing to do. We do not see any signature whatsoever of temperature, but it took more data and it took the right type of person analytically to tease apart very, very subtle differences, a skillset that I didn't have.

• 35:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Uh, can you lay out, um, you do the survey and then you got to start.

• 36:05Steven Rinella?

  Pulling data, like the survey is just kind of a side project to see where you're at.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:10Steven Rinella?

  So to go get a definitive picture of this, what are you doing? Like, how many deer are you monitoring? How do you monitor the deer? Like, what is the sort of scale of the project?

• 36:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, yeah, this is one thing we we wanted to do different. And probably one of the issues in the past, including the stuff I did in the past, is is treating the population as the population and not looking at at individuals. There's a lot of individual variation in buck movements. Some of them are homebodies. Some of them have very disjointed home ranges that we call a mobile buck personality home range. Some of them move a whole bunch, some of them don't move a lot. So we don't want to just put all of that together and come up with an average. We want to be able to look at every single buck and what is his movement profile?

• 37:03Speaker 06

  And then look at, when you evaluate all these different moon conditions, is the buck's behavior, movement behavior, deviating from the norm?

• 37:12Steven Rinella?

  That buck?

• 37:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:14Steven Rinella?

  You're looking at, I see, like, what is, what is buck A or buck 121? What is buck 121's normal groove?

• 37:23Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 37:24Steven Rinella?

  And then how does buck 121's groove switch at the moon?

• 37:28Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 37:29Steven Rinella?

  And then buck 128, same thing. And one of those bucks might be like a dude that likes to cruise. And one of those bucks might be a dude that likes to stay home.

• 37:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, so the guy that cruises, does he cruise more?

• 37:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, does the stay home guy cruise more?

• 37:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:41Steven Rinella?

  I got you.

• 37:42Speaker 06

  And so Natasha went through, and so for every single buck, she created a 14 day window. And so this is a moving window. And so for every 14 days, she looked at the seven days prior, seven days in it, uh, behind.

• 38:02Speaker 06

  And calculated for every single hour of the day. So for this buck at 10 a.m., she has a movement profile of what the average response for that buck will be at 10 a.m., calibrated for the prior seven days and the future seven days. And so when we have some moon alignment or phase or whatever, we then look at, does that buck's 10 a.m. movement pattern deviate because of the moon?

• 38:34Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:35Speaker 06

  And so then you do the sum of those deviations for every single buck that is in the population to come up with a mean response.

• 38:45Steven Rinella?

  Got it, yeah.

• 38:46Speaker 06

  And that's how we are able to work through, uh, a Saturday occurred, big hunting day, a Saturday. The rut occurred. It was a really warm period. We had a really a cold front. By doing that and having it a moving average for every single buck, you account for all the extraneous noise that can be going on.

• 39:08Steven Rinella?

  Huh. Okay. Off the moon, because now you brought it up, a Saturday, a lot of guys hunting. You mentioned it, preposterous period, so sunrise, sunset impacts, the rut impacts, temperature impacts. Pressure's gotta make them not move, right?

• 39:27Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 39:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 39:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:28Steven Rinella?

  So that's true.

• 39:31Speaker 06

  I, I, I think it's less about, it's not that they're not moving, it is where they choose to move based on hunting pressure. And so i- in another study that, that we did, conducted in Oklahoma, we, and that was set up differently. So that was a treatment area where there was hunting pressure and treatment area two, heavy hunting pressure and a control area. And in those places, the deer were collared, the hunters were collared.

• 40:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 40:02Speaker 06

  They were carrying a GPS unit.

• 40:05Speaker 06

  And so could we could monitor where they were going on the landscape and so forth. And we're watching the bucks be able to move around them. And it literally took three to four days and three to four days of there are hunters on the landscape. It's changed, something is different. Their move, the buck's movement behavior changed, not as much as total distance move during the day, but where they went on the landscape. And the, the academic term is called their tortuosity, meaning the complexity of their movement path changed that we think was because they had to avoid all these different places on the landscape.

• 40:49Speaker 06

  That they had three to four days of info was going to be associated with hunting and danger.

• 40:56Steven Rinella?

  But his yards per hour, his, his yards per hour stay up, stay consistent?

• 41:03Speaker 06

  In that experiment, yeah, yeah. Their movement behavior really didn't change other than the tortuosity and where they went. So quote, they did not go nocturnal. They were still on their feet because they're, they gotta eat. They're on their feet, they're foraging, they're just going to areas where they determine there's not going to be hunting pressure, no evidence, no memory of human activity.

• 41:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, old lady Thompson's house, you know, doesn't let anybody hunt.

• 41:34Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. I was just telling my buddy Seth, we came out of the woods after we killed the bull I was telling you about earlier. The next night, dead. Not that it was on fire the night before, because we only heard like four or five bugles before that bull died. But the next evening, we hear like a bugle, it's just, just dead, still quiet. And I'm remarking to my buddy Seth, I'm like, yeah, it was kind of hot, no wind. You know, it's just like, you know, they don't want to rut when they got that big winter coat on. And he goes, well, where I was at yesterday, we're in the glass in a big herd out in a private hay field and at 4:30 they are ripping. You know, so it's like.

• 42:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they, they found a good place to go.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 42:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 05

  They're going to do their thing.

• 42:20Steven Rinella?

  Huh. So the going nocturnal from pressure. They they just go do what they want to do somewhere else.

• 42:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, they they just change their behavior on where they spend time. Now, I I will say this. There have been cases at the the deer conference we go to, you know, every year, there have act. There have been some cases with GPS or VHF collared bucks where in heavily, heavily hunted places, a buck bedded all day long. But I literally, Steve, I remember that one time in the thirty years I've been going and learning about deer and thinking. I've heard of one instance where objectively a buck had a mark, a radio collar on it or a GPS collar,

• 43:07Speaker 06

  and it did not move during daylight hours because hunting pressure was all around.

• 43:12Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 43:13Speaker 06

  And all these other instances, they're up on their feet and moving. Now, they may not be, you have to look at what's called the the step length, the movement path. So step length is a surrogate for velocity. So if you're getting a ping from that collar every fifteen minutes.

• 43:30Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 43:31Speaker 06

  If he's got a a really high rate of speed, you're going to cover more distance in fifteen minutes. And so what you you will see is that their their yards per hour can can slow down, but they're still on their feet and they're foraging and moving.

• 43:46Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. The other day, we were watching a bull moose. Doing his like rut wander. And he was going through this big alpine area. And, uh, we watched him, I mean, we watched him go a couple of miles.

• 44:05Steven Rinella?

  Fast. And we were waiting for him to stop. He was so far away. We're like, well, when he stops, we'll try to call and see if he registers the noise at all. Um, we watched him go a couple of miles. And never, never stopped once, just moving.

• 44:20Speaker 06

  Just cruising.

• 44:22Steven Rinella?

  And you're like, where, what, you know, what is his concept of where he's going, but just moving?

• 44:30Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:30Steven Rinella?

  And yeah, he's not afraid of anything.

• 44:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:34Steven Rinella?

  You know, not afraid of anything.

• 44:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  Uh, whitetail hunters have this time period between October 10, October 20, they refer to as the October lull. And if, if you were to, if you lived in a state where the deer season is September 1 to December 31st, uh, they would tell you that is the hardest 10 day stretch to kill a buck because they're nocturnal. What do your movement studies say about that?

• 44:58Speaker 06

  That there is no lull.

• 44:59Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:00Speaker 06

  That, that does not exist.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  Not in any form, like they're not, not only are they not nocturnal during that period, but they're also like, they're moving more in that period than they were October 1 to October 10.

• 45:11Speaker 06

  I, I can't say they're moving more, but, but they're moving. And this, this just in Mississippi State data here, this is over and over again that there is no lull. But what can be going on at that time is you have got a shuffling, so to speak. It's a little bit late in October, so think about bachelor groups during the summer.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:35Speaker 06

  Bucks low testosterone velvet. And then we get into September, October, testosterone is surging through their body again, they start getting into hard antler, and then they start shifting and, and moving around and setting up their fall, winter rut home ranges. So I, I think what's going on a lot there is you've had a couple of months or a couple of weeks of seeing the deer that you're normally seeing, and then you get into that period in October where shuffle is coming. And so they're moving in different areas, or they have left your area where your trail camera is at, but they're still moving.

• 46:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, uh, like if I was speaking to hunters in eastern South Dakota where I grew up, I bet they are seeing less movement in that period. But it's because now there's combines in the fields, it's because there are acorns on the ground, it's because pheasant season just opened, and that's kicked deer out of some beds in CRP. Like there, there is a lull happening that's very specific to them, but it's not because the buck is now nocturnal, it's because he's just moving in a different way in a different place.

• 46:41Steven Rinella?

  You're in a, you're in a strategic low.

• 46:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 46:44Steven Rinella?

  Where like all summer, these five bucks come into that bean field and all of a sudden, they're not there anymore.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think it can be true that that's like maybe the hardest 10 day window to kill a mature buck, but it's not because he's unkillable.

• 46:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's just in a different place. Yeah, you gotta go look for him. Now, here's what's really interesting to me is we we looked at, so we had to have deer where we had to have two years of them being collared.

• 47:15Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 47:15Speaker 06

  So we had a lot of deer come and go, you know, that get killed.

• 47:18Steven Rinella?

  Why is that that you had, why two years? What's the significance?

• 47:21Speaker 06

  Because the the question that like Spencer was alluding to is, do they have fidelity for a site the following year? So if you see it in a particular place this October, what are the odds you're gonna see it next year? So so we had to limit our data just to bucks that so it's a subset of that that we had two years of data. And it it was really amazing is that on the average, when you got to after that October kind of breakup and shuffling, and when they went back and started settling in to that area, the the average

• 48:01Speaker 06

  distance on a daily scale. And so what we did is, where is this buck at 5:00 PM October 9th, 2024? Where is it at October 9th, 5:00 PM 2025? About 1,000 yards apart.

• 48:18Steven Rinella?

  Is that right?

• 48:21Speaker 06

  About 1,000 yards apart.

• 48:22Steven Rinella?

  See, if you're hunting 10 acre parcels, that's a lot.

• 48:27Speaker 06

  And that could absolutely be off property and you may never see it again, but but he's in the neighborhood. If if he's alive, he's in the neighborhood. Yeah.

• 48:36Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  I I used to work with a lot of fish biologists and I found that there were equal number of fish biologists who were hardcore anglers as there were guys who'd never fished a day a year. Like they just literally never wet a line. And I found that they would ask very different questions when it came to what they were studying. What do you notice for what percentage of deer biologists are hardcore hunters versus guys who just like never fill a tag?

• 49:05Speaker 06

  Good question. Are you a big hunter? I am. Okay. I am, which. Do you think that's normal? Yeah, yeah, I do. I guess hardcore is a scale, you know.

• 49:20Speaker 06

  I would say probably 75%. Okay. There are absolutely some that love deer and just ungulates, you know, and studied that type of stuff that aren't big hunters. But I would say on the whitetail side, at least the ones I'm thinking about off the top of my head, they all hunt. Until like that 25%, you don't think those folks hunt at all?

• 49:39Speaker 06

  Probably not. Okay. I think they're enamored with the deer and ecology of it, the system really excites them. Yeah. But then picking up our bow or rifle just isn't their thing. And do you notice anything different with like those biologists? Yeah, the questions. Okay. The questions they ask. Typically that type of part, and this isn't good or bad, it's just different, but. I think it needs both, like the field needs both of those. Yeah, yeah, right. I would say they're more the theory type stuff, which is really important. Ecological grounding in theory. And then people like me is more about the application. And, you know, my role's extension. So then what's the application? How do I tell people about it?

• 50:22Speaker 06

  What does it mean to you for hunting your land or managing your land? Yeah.

• 50:27Steven Rinella?

  I want to hit you with a bunch of.

• 50:30Steven Rinella?

  Once we cover off on them, we sold this pretty heavy on the moon thing, but let's put the moon thing to bed. So I want to get into other things that drive, I want to get into other things that drive changes of movement and other things about. Like you mentioned that different deer have different personalities. I'd love to hear more about that.

• 50:46Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 50:47Steven Rinella?

  Let's close out on this moon thing for a little bit.

• 50:49Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 50:49Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 50:52Steven Rinella?

  Put some numbers to us or put some way of expressing.

• 50:59Steven Rinella?

  The, the, how much you can rule out and how much could still be up for grabs? Meaning Mark's thing is like, hey, listen, if a buck comes out, if I'm watching a buck and I can't catch him out in the daylight and he comes out five minutes early because of the moon phase, that's a big deal to me. Are they catching that in their research? You know, that was his question, right? Like, like when they're looking at these general things, like they, they generally don't change their behavior. But he says, but let's say it's just five minutes, right? That to me matters. Like, like when you look at it, how like, what degree of certainty are you comfortable putting on?

• 51:40Steven Rinella?

  That there is or isn't any impact because you're always going to have guys that are like, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

• 51:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:45Steven Rinella?

  Or he's not detecting what I'm seeing because I'm seeing things at a micro scale and he's looking to macro.

• 51:51Speaker 06

  And, and I, I don't ever think we can produce anything that's going to affect that, that person. So when you get and not got feedback from people, and this was part when we, when we reached out initially doing the survey, we had, and, and I would call them the saddle bow hunter. I mean, they are just locked in, they, they're trying to hunt close to cover. And so if, if, if that buck is walking out 30 seconds earlier and five more steps, I got a shot.

• 52:22Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 52:23Speaker 06

  So what we looked at is of course, like we explained earlier, deviation from normal. We, we did 85 different analyses. So we, we, we made 85 different comparisons of all the different moon stuff you can put together. And the, the, the average response for bedding time deviations were less than a minute, a couple of them were two or three minutes. But, and not to get too deep into stats here, when you run that many analyses, you're going to, you're going to hear, your results are going to follow a bell shaped curve.

• 53:05Speaker 06

  You're going to get some results that were positive, you're going to get some results that that were negative. And so when you look at the body of everything that we did, we had a couple instances where the deer were on their feet a few seconds earlier.

• 53:20Speaker 04

  Got it.

• 53:21Speaker 06

  Maybe a minute earlier. We had some results where they stayed in their bed a few seconds or a minute longer. We had some results where the yard per hour, and so think about that, put that in your terms, my pace, one of my steps is a yard. And so when you talk about, yeah, we found a big result on such and such a moon condition, they were moving three yards per hour, more. That's three steps in one hour. Three steps. Now, if that motivates you and that does get back, when I'm giving this as a seminar and people are ready to throw beer cans and rotten tomatoes and all that stuff at me, if it makes you feel good, man, if this is your placebo effect.

• 54:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 06

  Roll with it. If it instills more confidence in you that such and such moon condition and I'm going to be more alert and I'm going to get to the stand 30 minutes earlier because it's a red moon day, you know, then by God, keep doing it. If it makes you happy. But the evidence does not support it.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  In college, I was, would get the Field and Stream magazine and they would always predict the rut, the best days of the rut. And I think it was maybe a sophomore and I had saw that like the best day of the rut this year was on a Saturday, I was available. So I did what you're talking about. I sat in my best stand that day that I had saved for a week leading up to it because I knew it was the best day of the rut. I got there earlier, I packed lunch to be there all day. I was more alert because I was like, it's going to happen. And then a buck showed up and I killed him. And so I was just more confident and I was a better hunter that day.

• 55:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was going to say, this is a great time to bring it up. That.

• 55:04Speaker 04

  And so that I think that that can work for people. That can be a thing.

• 55:08Speaker 06

  And keep doing it. If it keeps working for you, keep doing it. Keep taking the placebo. Placebo effect is really, really powerful. There's some cool science behind that as well.

• 55:18Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 55:19Speaker 06

  But yeah, you took the words out of my mouth, but I wonder if you had gone five additional times under those exact same conditions and you didn't have a good day.

• 55:28Speaker 04

  Totally. If you asked me then, I was like, it was because this was the best day of the run, as Field and Stream had deemed it.

• 55:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:36Speaker 04

  You know, looking back now, and since I've like formed my own whitetail opinions, I recognize I was just very confident that day.

• 55:42Speaker 06

  And Field and that was throughout the range of the whitetail deer.

• 55:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:46Speaker 06

  This was gonna be the day.

• 55:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, yup.

• 55:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, so that should.

• 55:49Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 56:22Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. 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. 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

• 57:04Steven Rinella?

  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 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.

• 57:32Speaker 04

  I got one more moon question before we move on. Uh, Charles Allshimer, he had developed like the rutting moon theory in the nineties that caught on with a lot of guys. And the rutting moon theory is that the second full moon after the autumn equinox is what triggers the whitetail rut. That's like, this is the beginning of it. And, um, in his theory, he had determined there are three types of whitetail ruts you could have at a given year based on when that second moon falls.

• 57:58Steven Rinella?

  I'll keep back, I, I want to make sure I'm tracking.

• 57:59Speaker 04

  Autumn equinox.

• 58:01Steven Rinella?

  Autumn equinox, second full moon.

• 58:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 58:03Speaker 04

  Not the first one, the second one.

• 58:04Steven Rinella?

  But I got that part, but then you said another thing that threw me off.

• 58:07Speaker 04

  So that, that second full moon could land in late October, it could land in mid-November.

• 58:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 58:12Speaker 04

  Based on when that would fall, you could have one of three ruts. You could have a synchronized rut, which is if it's between, uh, like October 31 and November 5. You could have a classic rut, which is like November 6 to 13, or you could have a trickle rut, which is November 13 on.

• 58:32Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 58:32Speaker 04

  And it's, it's basically saying, um, that like some years, if you have a trickle rut, for example, maybe that bell curve you're talking about is flat at the top and it's just wider. Um, whereas if you have a synchronized rut, where you get that full moon on November 3rd, um, now the bell curve has a really tall peak in it and it's skinnier. Is that anything you've ever seen that some years the rut was longer or shorter?

• 58:58Speaker 06

  No.

• 59:00Speaker 04

  No.

• 59:00Speaker 06

  No, never.

• 59:01Steven Rinella?

  Even outside of the moon. Like never mind the moon.

• 59:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, not, not, not from, from year to year in a place. And so when you talk about a, you know, a, a protracted rut or a trickle rut, all that stuff is, is related to sex ratio of the population. So we can manipulate that with management, but it has nothing to do with, with the moon.

• 59:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 59:27Speaker 06

  It, it is about the availability of does and estrus and enough bucks to serve them when they are in standing heat. If your sex ratio becomes so biased that the does and estrus, there is not a buck to to copulate. Twenty eight later, days later, she's going to cycle and come into heat again. And there is your trickle or your extended rut.

• 59:50Steven Rinella?

  Right.

• 59:50Speaker 06

  Or if you have a doe fawns, doe fawns will typically, the proportion of them that do come into estrus are going to come in a little bit later. So.

• 1:00:01Steven Rinella?

  A doe, a doe that has a fawn with her and she's trying to get rid of it in the fall. She'll come into estrus later than a doe that did not, that didn't, was not carrying a fawn.

• 1:00:12Speaker 06

  I'm sorry, I misspoke. No, not everywhere. This varies depending on where you're at in the U.S. In Mississippi, for example, ten to fifteen percent of doe fawns.

• 1:00:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, doe fawns.

• 1:00:25Speaker 06

  Will reach sufficient body size and condition to come into heat. They're never going to come in at the peak of the rut. It'll be two, three weeks, a month later by the time they have reached physiological condition where they can come into estrus.

• 1:00:39Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:00:39Speaker 06

  So that will be part of it.

• 1:00:40Steven Rinella?

  And that can drive a little late rut action.

• 1:00:43Speaker 06

  That's your trickle.

• 1:00:44Speaker 04

  If you do believe in the rutting moon, this year, twenty twenty five, it is November fifth. So you're you're like straddling a synchronized rut and a classic rut. Meaning that like November five to ten period.

• 1:00:57Steven Rinella?

  It's gonna be good. Cause I'm gonna be in the woods, man.

• 1:00:59Speaker 04

  November five to ten.

• 1:01:01Speaker 06

  All right, let's back it up like this.

• 1:01:04Speaker 04

  To be clear, I don't believe in this either. I just love that.

• 1:01:06Steven Rinella?

  But I saw the thing. Throw out this thing.

• 1:01:08Speaker 04

  Because some people do believe in it.

• 1:01:10Steven Rinella?

  And then he, and then he, he says that's not right. And then you alert everybody what day to be out there.

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  Because, because I, I love that people do believe it. I really appreciate that those folks have taken the time to develop a theory and to spread that theory around.

• 1:01:23Speaker 08

  Same reason we had, we had Bigfoot experts on Radio Live the other day.

• 1:01:26Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:01:26Speaker 07

  We need a new believer hat. It's not just the black.

• 1:01:31Steven Rinella?

  A buck of the moon.

• 1:01:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:01:33Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's a great idea.

• 1:01:34Speaker 04

  Ooh, correct.

• 1:01:35Steven Rinella?

  Full moon buck that says believer.

• 1:01:38Speaker 06

  Yes. What's the purpose of the timing of the ruts?

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  You're, um, when the fawns will hit the ground in spring.

• 1:01:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. Why would Mother Nature, why would evolution have that affected by some moon?

• 1:01:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 06

  So the, the most reliable clock, of course, is photo period. They can be calibrated so well. And so it's so important over time of when, when the doe needs to be bred, seven months later, when that fawn is gonna be dropped. Why, why would evolution fold in any of the moon stuff to tinker with that at all? I mean, biologically or ecologically, that, that just doesn't make sense.

• 1:02:22Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:02:22Speaker 06

  However, we did test this. And so we did it two ways. We did it at an individual scale and we did it at a population scale. Individual scale with our captive deer herd. We looked at records of estrus and copulation for all of our does. So population of does over many, many, many years. And so we, we know when they were coming into heat and we knew when they were bred. So we have those records. We then line that up with this rutting moon. And so every year, you know, that rutting moon is moving back and forth a week or 15 days or whatever. And so we should have seen if it was influencing when they are coming into estrus, we should've

• 1:03:06Speaker 06

  seen them moving towards that or moving back. Zero.

• 1:03:10Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:03:11Speaker 06

  We then go to, let's go to wild populations and we looked at wildlife management areas. And our state wildlife agency is very good at doing what is called spring health checks. What that does is they harvest does post deer season, typically March. And they will look at the condition of does and then also look at the number of fetuses that they are carrying. So along with all the general hunter harvest data, that is a way for them to look at what's the condition of this population statewide, so forth. So we know where the rut is in all these places. We know where the peak of the rut is. And so we then line that up with the rutting moon. Zero. Hmm.

• 1:03:54Speaker 06

  No effect whatsoever. So individually, population wise, logic. Yeah. Doesn't make sense to me. Because of the Mississippi deer. That's why. Maybe it's just those Mississippi deer.

• 1:04:07Speaker 05

  I, would it be worth just taking five minutes to, to, to have Bronson explain what confirmation bias is and how that shows up in hunters?

• 1:04:19Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:04:20Speaker 05

  I think so.

• 1:04:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:04:22Steven Rinella?

  My favorite analogy about this is you go, I don't know, surprise analogy, like you go out and you're fishing smallmouths and you're throwing chartreuse. And you get a bunch, you're hitting them real good. And then at one minute, you throw on a pumpkin colored jig. And you fish it for a couple of seconds, you don't get a hit. You put chartreuse back on, lo and behold, throughout the day, you keep catching fish. They were coming on chartreuse.

• 1:04:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:46Steven Rinella?

  And like, there's something to that, cause you know, if it ain't chartreuse, it ain't no use. But I'm saying, like, you do have a way of, you know, like, if you were gonna go design a study about what color smallmouth bass are hitting on in some given day, it wouldn't be like that.

• 1:05:01Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:01Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 1:05:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Steven Rinella?

  So I think that you find, it's part of the fun. You, you find patterns and things and, and, and, um, you know, that works for me, therefore, that's what, that's dictated by nature.

• 1:05:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:15Steven Rinella?

  Right?

• 1:05:15Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, that's a, that's a deeper question. I mean, that would be a psychologist to get into all the logical fallacies and how the brain works with that. But I guess the way I think about it is, um, we're, we're really good as human beings, we, we wanna find patterns. So we're trying to find the shortcut. We're really good at that. That's helped us, that's helped human beings to be able to link those things together. And that's the pattern, let's capitalize on it. But the, the problem that we have is we become enamored with this linkage that we have made between these two things. A leads to B, B leads to C. And we will start ignoring contrary evidence.

• 1:05:59Speaker 06

  So it's like, we become bought in and emotionally invested in our, and hey, in science, it's, it's called the pet hypothesis. That's why we have to get outside peer review. That's why you gotta talk to a buddy, like, help me, help me think about this. I'm really locked in. Confirmation bias could, could be bothering me here. But, but I think that is always going on is we, we never remember the times we were unsuccessful. We disproportionately remember the times that we were.

• 1:06:33Speaker 05

  And I think if we, i- if you are a moon believer, you only go hunt in those conditions, or you mostly hunt those conditions that you think are, you know, positively affect your deer hunting. You're not hunting the other days. And so you only have a data set from, from those days.

• 1:06:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Speaker 05

  And it could be exactly the same from the days that the moon is doing something completely different.

• 1:06:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, and you may be a good enough hunter and you may be hunting in a, enough of a target-rich environment where every day you go, you were gonna see deer, if that's your metric for success. But you're only gonna go on those special days and then that just keeps reinforcing that this moon condition or weather condition or whatever was the reason for my success. When the way to do it would be, and nobody's gonna do this, I'm gonna get a random number generator and I'm gonna get a calendar and I'm gonna pick out these particular days and I'm gonna go hunt.

• 1:07:32Speaker 04

  That's a fun study.

• 1:07:33Speaker 06

  And, or look at camera data.

• 1:07:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:38Speaker 06

  That'd be another way. Just record camera data all the time and go back and look at it.

• 1:07:43Speaker 05

  Is this about the moon?

• 1:07:45Speaker 04

  It's, it's sort of.

• 1:07:46Speaker 05

  Okay, go ahead.

• 1:07:48Speaker 04

  Bloomberg had an article that Bigfoot sightings have decreased in the last decade. They peaked around like 2004 or so, and they've been going down ever since.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  If deer hunters were like very conscious of, of what their trail cameras are telling them, now that trail cameras are so effective and so cheap and cell cams are, are very available, I feel like the same thing would happen, that if you polled deer hunters in 20 years from now, it wouldn't be 83% anymore.

• 1:08:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:08:17Speaker 04

  It would be lower because they, they, if they were trying to like really pay attention, they would maybe notice that, oh yeah, the moon isn't saying that, that the deer movement is different, based on what the moon is doing.

• 1:08:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, I I agree. I just think it's gonna take a long time because it's really difficult to to let go.

• 1:08:37Steven Rinella?

  Right.

• 1:08:37Speaker 06

  With that belief, especially if within your little group, you're you're the the older, wiser, you're the influencer. The the single most difficult thing for a human being to say publicly, I was wrong.

• 1:08:53Speaker 06

  I mean, that's that's real. That's very powerful. It's so difficult to stand up and go, forgive me. I was wrong. I made a big mistake. People are very reluctant to do that.

• 1:09:03Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna hit you with a real, um, I want to bring something up, but I don't want to dwell on it.

• 1:09:10Steven Rinella?

  What's your take on, uh, how do I even ask this, man?

• 1:09:12Speaker 06

  I'm concerned.

• 1:09:13Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no.

• 1:09:14Speaker 06

  He's just saying he wants a real concise answer.

• 1:09:16Steven Rinella?

  I don't want to get into it. I'm just curious because you're a big deer guy. Do you're hunter? Do you're researcher? Give me, give me your basic, like, in one sentence, what's your basic take on CWD?

• 1:09:26Speaker 06

  It it's it's real. Um, it's

• 1:09:32Speaker 06

  it it's the single biggest challenge, I believe, to deer management and the application of science while simultaneously keeping hunters engaged and believing in science. That wasn't very concise.

• 1:09:50Steven Rinella?

  No, it's good, though.

• 1:09:51Speaker 06

  But that's that's the way of it. It's the challenge of our time.

• 1:09:54Steven Rinella?

  You think it's you you believe it's a legitimate threat at a herd level on deer?

• 1:09:59Speaker 06

  Yes. Yes, I do.

• 1:10:02Steven Rinella?

  Earlier, you mentioned, um, different buck personalities. Are there, is it, is it possible to give like a handful of buck personality types?

• 1:10:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, um.

• 1:10:16Steven Rinella?

  And have you heard of a shirker buck?

• 1:10:19Speaker 06

  I have not.

• 1:10:20Steven Rinella?

  Okay, go on.

• 1:10:21Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:10:22Steven Rinella?

  Different buck ter-

• 1:10:23Speaker 06

  We'll come back to, we'll come back to that.

• 1:10:27Steven Rinella?

  You've never heard of a shirker?

• 1:10:29Speaker 06

  I'm not recalling. Valgeist? Oh, Valgeist. I have heard of that word, but man, I'm drawing a blank on.

• 1:10:39Steven Rinella?

  We'll come around to it.

• 1:10:40Speaker 06

  Please do.

• 1:10:41Steven Rinella?

  Give me some buck personality types.

• 1:10:42Speaker 06

  Buck personalities, well, it's just two. From what we categorize. This is just relative. We call it buck movement behavior.

• 1:10:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Yeah, I don't mean like what they're thinking about. I mean, what they're like, personality types in a way that would impact a hunter's experience.

• 1:10:59Speaker 06

  Yeah. So that, that, that we call it a sedentary type. That's going to be your introvert.

• 1:11:05Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:11:06Speaker 06

  And, and then your mobile personality type is going to be your extrovert. Uh, the, what people thought for the longest time until we had the type of instrumentation to be able to see this was that, uh, after yearling buck dispersal, a buck is going to go set up and have his home range and that is where it's going to be. Now, the size of that home range can vary by resources. He may be a 500 acre home range guy. He may be a 1500 acre home range guy. But that is where he is essentially, uh, going to live and die.

• 1:11:38Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:11:38Speaker 06

  Is in that, that fixed home range. What, what we found is that about 30% of our bucks have completely disconnected and disjointed home ranges. And so they will spend six, seven, eight months in one location. And then they will get up and move to a completely different location.

• 1:12:02Steven Rinella?

  Just forget about the old spot.

• 1:12:04Speaker 06

  That, that, that's right. That's right. The, the most sensational example, just to show you that intrinsically in some deer, this is in them, that they are going to do it. We collared a buck, uh, in, in Mississippi, fall, winter. And we started noticing really strange long distance behavior about February. So in Mississippi, so we're on the east side of the Mississippi River. He goes all the way to the Mississippi River, miles and miles and miles. And then paces up and down the river for a few days and then crosses the river. And then sets up camp in Louisiana for essentially all summer.

• 1:12:46Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:12:47Speaker 06

  August rolls around, he does the same thing on the Louisiana side. He goes stages by the river a day or two, getting up his nerve, maybe swims the river. Comes back to Mississippi to that exact same home range he was the year before. Did that two years in a row. So we had four instances of him taking that long distance movement.

• 1:13:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Speaker 06

  And crossing the Mississippi River. So that's an extreme example of of mobile personality.

• 1:13:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:17Speaker 06

  And just the way the crow flies distance, it was just shy of 20 miles.

• 1:13:22Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:13:22Speaker 06

  So his route was a lot, a lot more than that.

• 1:13:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like you could see him doing it once, right? And then he has a good experience or doesn't have a good experience. But the fact that he he goes back to Mississippi, then a while later he wants to. You know what I mean?

• 1:13:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:38Steven Rinella?

  Like, repeat it.

• 1:13:39Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:40Steven Rinella?

  Where, yeah, just felt, or or we wind up thinking that it's a bigger deal that that swim. Is a bigger deal than he regards it as.

• 1:13:49Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:13:50Steven Rinella?

  I was reading this thing like these, these guys were looking at, there used to be this thing that links, they used to think that links didn't like crossing big rivers and they thought these big rivers were. Boxed in links home ranges, so they had these links with collars. They're swimming the Tannenaw, swimming the Yukon. You know?

• 1:14:05Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:06Steven Rinella?

  And people always thought just they had just figured that that's a. A border to a links habitat, that's some bitch.

• 1:14:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, right across it.

• 1:14:13Steven Rinella?

  Shoots across, you don't even think about it and in in in the human mind, you're like, oh, that would be a, he can't get across that, he wouldn't want to cross that, a cat, you know?

• 1:14:20Speaker 06

  And yet we, we had some bucks that, uh, in this one, the Mississippi River, we're talking about a normal river, so think, think a river that's 50 yards across or something. We, we had some bucks that would go across that ev- every single day. Was not an impediment to them whatsoever. We had some bucks that would never cross that river. When you look at at their home range and all of their points, it is directly adjacent to that river, they would not do it.

• 1:14:48Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:14:49Speaker 06

  So there's just so much variation in in their personality and what they're willing to accept.

• 1:14:54Steven Rinella?

  You can't, I guess you probably can't say this.

• 1:14:58Steven Rinella?

  Is one of those strategies better for longevity? Like, do you find that like, like, super tight, stay-at-home box, super small home ranges, um, they have a greater survival rate? Or is it that not, or is it, or is that not fair to say?

• 1:15:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, we didn't have enough of a sample size to tease that apart. Cause again, only a third of them were, had this mobile personality. But, but that, that makes sense to me. I think that's reasonable. Um, I also think of it, this may be a bad analogy here, but I think it's just like embedded within some species and some individuals, there's explorers, there's colonizers. There's individuals that are willing to take a risk and, and go somewhere else. And, you know, I think when you just go way, way, way back in time, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and you think about the, the landscape

• 1:15:51Speaker 06

  and that deer were always having to colonize different areas based on buffalo going through, based on wildfire.

• 1:16:00Steven Rinella?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:16:01Speaker 06

  And so I just want to think any way that, that tendency is embedded within some individuals that I'm gonna go look, I'm gonna go explore, and I'm gonna capitalize on some resources unbeknownst to me.

• 1:16:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:15Speaker 06

  Right here.

• 1:16:16Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, because if not, you could, because as, as environments and landscapes change, if everybody was a super homebody, you'd have awesome pieces of habitat open up and like, word.

• 1:16:26Speaker 06

  Never found.

• 1:16:27Steven Rinella?

  Word doesn't get out.

• 1:16:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Steven Rinella?

  Um,

• 1:16:32Steven Rinella?

  with the, with the idea that like, I, I've heard this expressed two ways, maybe it's not this clean, that like, during the rut, bucks move more. Okay. I remember, I remember someone pointing out, like, they move more, but they don't move to new places more. They just move more in the places that they already move anyways.

• 1:16:58Steven Rinella?

  Is that fair?

• 1:16:59Speaker 06

  I don't think that's fair.

• 1:16:59Steven Rinella?

  That's not fair?

• 1:17:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:17:00Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:17:01Speaker 06

  Um, so what, what, what we were able to do is of course we did all the annual home range stuff. Uh, but we also looked at two week home ranges, daily home ranges and, and a term called net distance or net displacement. And, and the bottom line is you will see the, the greatest home range, if you look at it in, in two week periods during the peak of the rut and during the late rut or immediately after, uh, the peak of the rut. But the amount of area that a buck is spending each day, it did not matter if it was pre-rut, no rut, way after the rut, 200 acres per day.

• 1:17:44Steven Rinella?

  I'm not following what you're saying.

• 1:17:46Speaker 06

  Okay. On a daily scale, independent on the time of year, rut phase or not, peak of the rut, post-rut, pre-rut, et cetera, did not matter. Even though their, their daily, um, ground they were covering could be greater during the rut, the amount of area that they were covered was 200 acres per day. But when you look at the very next day where they're at, it will be further apart, meaning a buck is spending covering ground, about 200 acres of ground per day.

• 1:18:25Speaker 06

  But during the peak of the rut and late rut, those daily areas or places are further apart.

• 1:18:34Speaker 04

  Really?

• 1:18:36Speaker 06

  Maybe I should say it a different way.

• 1:18:38Speaker 05

  Does he make like a single move and then do the 200 yard circuit and then makes a single move and does another 200 yard circuit? Is that what you're saying?

• 1:18:46Speaker 06

  Yeah. So maybe think of it like this, when you get into non-rut and early pre-rut, every single day, there is a great deal of overlap in the area a buck is covering.

• 1:18:59Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:19:00Speaker 06

  He might have an overlap of 80% of the area he covered the day before. He's in this area. But when you get to later in the rut, because now they're seeking, they're chasing, they're looking. Now we spending 200 acres away over here, 1500 yards away. He's in a completely different area. He's covering the same amount of area in a 24 hour timeframe, but the distance away from the dates. He's exploring new spots. Yeah.

• 1:19:29Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:19:30Speaker 05

  So do you feel as a hunter then, are we trying to capital capitalize on that move between the two spots?

• 1:19:39Speaker 06

  If you can. I mean, if, if you can find out where that is, sure.

• 1:19:44Speaker 05

  Rut funnel would be a good place to sit, right?

• 1:19:47Speaker 06

  Okay, I, I think you got to frame it like this. If, if you've got a lot of intel on a buck, I mean, I know from camera data, observation, I know kind of where he's going to be. The best chance for that is pre-rut. But if you want to go out, I'm going to go to the woods. And what are my greatest odds of seeing a buck, a good buck? Then because of that movement behavior, that is absolutely.

• 1:20:15Steven Rinella?

  So the one that hides out at Old Lady Thompson's might be off on your spot.

• 1:20:20Speaker 06

  That's right. That's right. He's going to shift. He's going to move. Yeah.

• 1:20:25Steven Rinella?

  No kid, really?

• 1:20:26Speaker 06

  Mm hmm. I can show you the, show you the data. Yeah.

• 1:20:30Steven Rinella?

  Okay, let me, I'll hit you another one. Then these guys can hit you with whatever they want. Do you, this might not be something you could tell from your data. Do you think it's true? That bucks play the wind and cruise for does by coming on the downwind side of bedding cover?

• 1:20:49Speaker 06

  Uh, I think probably 50% of the time they do.

• 1:20:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So they're not visually looking for them?

• 1:20:58Speaker 06

  I think

• 1:20:59Steven Rinella?

  Or they do, but they, they, in addition to visually looking, they're cruising to smell them.

• 1:21:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, the, the, what we generally think of right now, and this could have a lot to do with those 200 acre daily areas being so far apart and disjointed. What we think is that bucks are cruising to find what are called doe focal areas. So think about the social behavior of, of your doe pop, population, those matrilineal groups. And so here's a group of does here, here's a group of does over here. We, we think of it as a circuit. And so a buck is going to go into this area. He, he knows who all's there, you know, via signposts, scent, so forth. He's going to check it, scent check it.

• 1:21:47Speaker 06

  Who's good or bad, anybody close coming into heat. Maybe she's already into heat, but occupied. He's going to go to another area, uh, part of that circuit and look for a doe in estrus there.

• 1:21:59Steven Rinella?

  Okay, I, I lied, I got one more question, then these guys can hit some. I tried, I asked this earlier, but I kind of screwed it up.

• 1:22:07Steven Rinella?

  During peak rut,

• 1:22:11Steven Rinella?

  is there like a high, is there a strong likelihood, or however you want to put it? Is there a strong likelihood that a buck will go somewhere during peak rut that he has never before been in his life? Or is he usually at some point in his life been to all the places he's going to go? So he's visiting places he knows about? Or is he legit like going spots he's never seen before?

• 1:22:35Speaker 06

  Um, I, I think the answer is yes, but I don't think that is just during the rut. So the way we would define that would be called an excursion. And so that would be different from a, a mobile personality like we talked about earlier, because that is where you set up a new home range and you have affinity for that area. And excursion is I'm in my existing home range and I'm going to take a trip.

• 1:22:59Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:22:59Speaker 06

  A two to three day, I'm going to cut a loop and go here and go here. We see those start to occur during the pre-rut and it really escalates during the rut. But with our data during our study, we saw the greatest amount of excursions in the, in the post-rut. So af- after the rut.

• 1:23:18Steven Rinella?

  But excursions being that he, again, like, He's going to, it might be hard to do this because you can't track him his whole life. He's going to places he's never been.

• 1:23:29Speaker 06

  I, I can't answer that.

• 1:23:31Steven Rinella?

  Um, cause you don't know where he's, cause you can't, you don't know his whole life.

• 1:23:34Speaker 06

  I don't have his whole life history.

• 1:23:36Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:23:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, but we, we definitely saw the, the bucks going to novel areas within the limited timeframe. We had them studied. We did, in other words, we didn't see the exact same excursion loop. Every time they would go different areas.

• 1:23:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:51Speaker 06

  And so, yeah, we think they are looking, prospecting, whether it be those food resources, whatever.

• 1:23:57Steven Rinella?

  Cause that's when you get like really vulnerable, man. Like you get really vulnerable to something bad happen to you when you're in places you've never been. Like you're on like, you're on some, do you know what I mean? You have no idea what's going on. And like, that to me feels like a, that to me feels like a buck would get like, dude, I'm not doing that.

• 1:24:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:24:16Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? Like I'm not like, I've never been there. I have no idea what's happening. It just seems like they'd feel so vulnerable.

• 1:24:22Speaker 06

  And from a deer management perspective, I mean, if you do the kind of stuff we work on with, you know, you're, you're managing for antlers and older bucks and so forth. That is where even with a large area, so you may have a five, 10,000 acre tract and you were primarily controlling the harvest within that population. Except for the excursion.

• 1:24:42Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:24:42Speaker 06

  And so that is where you will see some of those target bucks are going to go all property. And man, they get hammered. Yeah.

• 1:24:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You go over to the place where those, you know, brown, it's down property.

• 1:24:52Speaker 06

  They get shot. And that is so frustrating because you've done everything all year long for years and years and years. And you have that weekend where he decides to take a trip.

• 1:25:03Steven Rinella?

  Dude, what's funny is, uh, I know these guys and they have a big no fence operation in Texas. But they, they want to do in one fence. They fenced one property line because they have some brown, it's down neighbors. And so they just, they tried to like control it a little bit by blocking that spot.

• 1:25:24Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:25:24Steven Rinella?

  You know, the other three sides are do whatever they want.

• 1:25:27Speaker 06

  Yeah. I, I got a couple of places like that too. It, it's that pinch point, that corridor of where they're going to go onto that other property and we're going to block that off.

• 1:25:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And these dudes stands, it was so funny is these dudes stands are all, were all along that property line.

• 1:25:41Speaker 06

  Right. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:43Steven Rinella?

  Just waiting, you know?

• 1:25:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:25:46Steven Rinella?

  All right, I'm done.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:26:16Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. 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. 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 WeatherTech.

• 1:26:59Steven Rinella?

  We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. 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 WeatherTech in there. You're going to be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liner, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com.

• 1:27:26Speaker 04

  The October boogeyman is the October lull for hunters. The November version of that is lockdown. Where there's an idea that there is a phase of the rut for like two to four days, where a buck gets a hot doe around like November 16th. And they bed down and they breed and they just become less visible. And they just become very dedicated to that spot and like rutting with each other. I don't care what he says, this is true. Is that a thing? Do the, do the deer movement studies show that that's a thing? Yeah, they just stand there.

• 1:28:01Steven Rinella?

  Like the does are feeding, he just stands there. He doesn't lay down. He doesn't eat. He just stands there.

• 1:28:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's legit.

• 1:28:07Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it is? Okay.

• 1:28:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Steven Rinella?

  I thought you were gonna tell us, because everything else, you're like, no, that's not true.

• 1:28:13Speaker 06

  That's legit. So you get like in the peak of the rut. This is, this is going to occur all the time when there is a doe and estrus. It becomes a population, a level effect, or it becomes noticeable when a greater proportion of the does are in standing heat and bucks are tending them. So you're gonna have less bucks available roaming the landscape because they're locked in.

• 1:28:37Speaker 04

  If there are too many does. If there are too many does that happens, you're saying?

• 1:28:42Speaker 06

  No, I'm saying that if you had an appropriate number of does.

• 1:28:46Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:28:47Speaker 06

  That's gonna happen.

• 1:28:47Steven Rinella?

  Like if it's some magical world, every doe, like you have something where it was, every doe in a population all came into heat on November 7th, it would be reasonable to assume that on November 7th, no bucks are running around doing crazy stuff.

• 1:29:03Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:29:04Steven Rinella?

  Because they're standing there with all these does that are...

• 1:29:06Speaker 06

  Exactly. And, and then 28 days later, you're gonna have the leftovers because the sex ratio, there's always more does than, than bucks. And so some of them may not get bred. And so then that would follow again 28 days later.

• 1:29:20Speaker 04

  How impactful though, do you think lockdown is? Is it a thing where like hunters are going to have a worse experience in the woods?

• 1:29:28Speaker 06

  Um, I would still go because it's, it's the rut. I would look at it as the, the frequency of just seeing more bucks during that timeframe is going to be less because some of them are locked in with does. But, but you also have the odd man out or the odd buck out, and he's gonna be going around looking for another doe and estrus. And so there's still gonna be general buck movement. You're just gonna have a greater number of them that is occupying a doe.

• 1:29:57Speaker 04

  And there's no crater though in the bell curve when that happens?

• 1:30:01Speaker 06

  Don't see it.

• 1:30:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:30:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:30:03Steven Rinella?

  Man, I wonder if you...

• 1:30:04Speaker 05

  Damn, I was really wishing you could tell me what days not to hunt in November.

• 1:30:08Steven Rinella?

  What I'm thinking is this, man, picture you got like some kind of weird deal where you can, uh, it's illegal.

• 1:30:16Steven Rinella?

  Like you put out some kind of a birth control thing or something. Where none of the does ever come in.

• 1:30:22Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:30:23Steven Rinella?

  Bucks just crazy everywhere. It's a short term play.

• 1:30:27Speaker 06

  Um, yeah.

• 1:30:28Steven Rinella?

  It's not a good.

• 1:30:29Speaker 06

  That'd be some, some evil science there.

• 1:30:32Steven Rinella?

  It's a, it's a bad, long-term play. You're going to see a plummeting deer population.

• 1:30:36Speaker 05

  We're in Wisconsin, uh, you know, CWD's big there, big deer herd. A lot of our neighbors have started shooting more does.

• 1:30:46Speaker 05

  Since they've started doing that, they claim to have a better rut. Because less does mean more bucks moving around, more bucks reacting to calls. Does that make sense?

• 1:30:58Speaker 06

  It, it makes perfect sense. I, I do not know of a study that has specifically evaluated that. But I think that is entirely logical because you've increased competition. You know, there are less does per male, and so they have to compete more, look more, search more, et cetera.

• 1:31:18Steven Rinella?

  Um, it's my turn. We're just going circles.

• 1:31:21Speaker 05

  You said you were done.

• 1:31:22Steven Rinella?

  I was for my turn.

• 1:31:25Steven Rinella?

  On this turn, this turn's gonna be a one question turn.

• 1:31:27Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:31:28Steven Rinella?

  Uh, we have a buddy who has a really great property in Texas.

• 1:31:34Speaker 06

  Whereabouts?

• 1:31:35Steven Rinella?

  Way south Texas.

• 1:31:36Speaker 05

  Brownsville.

• 1:31:38Steven Rinella?

  Way south Texas. Like, when you're cruising around, you see, I mean, you see way more bucks and does. Anyhow, we go down there a couple of times, we've gone there to rattle bucks, which is the funnest thing in the world because it's very effective there.

• 1:31:54Steven Rinella?

  I developed this little theory that the most effective time to rattle them is during the middle of the day. In my thinking, the does are all laying down and they're bored. And they're just more inclined to wonder what's up. When the does are up on their feet, they're like, yeah, yeah, I hear it, but I'm like following my doe around. Then midday, he gets bored. He hears the rattle, he's got nothing else going on, and so he runs over.

• 1:32:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:32:19Steven Rinella?

  What do you think about that?

• 1:32:21Speaker 06

  There's a merit to that, Steve.

• 1:32:22Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:32:23Speaker 06

  But it's wrong.

• 1:32:23Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:32:27Speaker 06

  We did a study on that.

• 1:32:31Speaker 06

  Now, I was a tech, I was a participant as a buddy of mine. So again, my master's degree was in South Texas. Spent a lot, a lot of time down there. And so we did a rattling experiment. To my knowledge, it is the only peer reviewed experiment ever done on rattling antlers and, and doe response. And what we found very generally was we, we varied the, how loud the rattling was.

• 1:33:00Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:33:00Speaker 06

  The duration of rattling, the time of day of rattling, and then the time of year relative to the rut.

• 1:33:10Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:33:11Speaker 06

  For the rattling. And so the clear winner for time of day was crepuscular.

• 1:33:17Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:33:19Speaker 06

  Here's why. Because the real winner on the rattling technique, and, and remember back then, so this would have been, this had been mid nineties. And so this is, you're, you're reading the magazine and how do you set up your rattling sequence? And so you gotta get there and you gotta get crouched and you gotta scrape the, the brush and you gotta kick and you gotta rattle and you gotta, you remember that? Remember all that?

• 1:33:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we don't do any of that. No. But anyways, go on.

• 1:33:47Speaker 06

  Okay. Well, it, it was a thing back in the day. And, and what we found.

• 1:33:51Steven Rinella?

  You're, you're painting the whole picture, like the deer, you're, you're kinda like, you're, you're sort of creating the entire encounter.

• 1:33:58Speaker 06

  You're trying to mimic reality, yeah, where they're bumping into the brush and all that sort of, making it more realistic. But the, the bottom, it was just very, very clear. How loud you are, number one. The louder you make it, you increase the probability that more bucks will hear it. More bucks will hear it when more bucks are circulating during the crepuscular period. More bucks are going to be up and about circulating during the pre-rut. So make it as loud as you can. And the sequence that we were doing, we had a, we had four different sequences. But the, the one that always worked the best was called long and loud. I still remember it.

• 1:34:42Speaker 06

  It's, it's still etched in here. Long and loud was, you gotta go for three minutes. Three minutes. That doesn't sound like a lot. With, with those things as hard as you can possibly go.

• 1:34:54Speaker 04

  Your arms will be tired.

• 1:34:55Speaker 06

  They're, they're spaghetti. I mean, you, you, you're just done by that. But that was the clear winner. And so just the obvious thing is they could hear it better. And so I'm, and I even had chances where, so we had somebody on the ground. This was at, do y'all know where the, the Welder Wildlife Refuge is at? Did you go past it going south? Unhunted population, tens of thousands of acres. They have all these observation towers. So we got an observer that's up top, 15, 20 foot above the brush and somebody down below. And you could literally even see, I saw this to where, uh, the guy below starts rattling. He's doing a long and loud or something like that. And the buck is 400 yards away and he hears it. And he starts coming, coming, coming.

• 1:35:40Speaker 06

  He's not running, but he's coming. He's obviously moving that way. Stopped rattling. Eh. He goes back to browsing around.

• 1:35:48Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:35:48Speaker 06

  And then, and then it was over a 30 minute period. And so then we had an elapsed time and you do another rattle and another rattle. And you rattle him, bring him in, keep coming, stopped rattling. He stopped. Rattled him again, finally closed the distance and brought him in.

• 1:36:05Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:36:05Speaker 06

  The vol- volume and increasing the probability that a buck is within distance of hearing you.

• 1:36:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:36:14Speaker 06

  That was the secret sauce.

• 1:36:15Speaker 04

  Okay. I like your strategy though, Steve, because if I'm thinking about rattling, if it's dawn or dusk, in my head, deer movement is already like a nine out of 10. I don't need to help the deer movement anymore right now. At midday though, maybe it's like a four out of 10. And so I could rattle and bring it up to a seven out of 10. And so I'm, I'm just like, I'm raising the floor of my hunt.

• 1:36:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:36:37Speaker 04

  At that point.

• 1:36:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. We, we were not viewing it as making, we were not viewing it as, hey, there's nothing else to do. We were viewing it as going out in the morning.

• 1:36:47Steven Rinella?

  It's like deer around and you do a few rattle sessions, nothing happened, get to be 11 a.m. And all of a sudden buck, buck, buck. So I had this whole boredom.

• 1:36:57Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 1:36:58Steven Rinella?

  Hypothesis, but it could be other factors in there. Go ahead, ask a question.

• 1:37:01Speaker 04

  Uh, what do your movement studies say about age? I assume it's just real simple that like a one and a half year old moves more and he's more reckless than a five and a half year old. Is that, is that what you've seen?

• 1:37:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, i- i- it's very subtle. You know, there's a lot of, of, of people will say, and maybe we did not have enough really, really old bucks. We had several five and six year olds, but we, we saw a, a general decline, a general contraction in, in, uh, home range. But it was not overwhelming.

• 1:37:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:37:32Speaker 06

  But yes, it did, you know, after the yearling dispersal event, they're typically going to have a larger one. And then it's like they keep figuring out, you know, year after year, it gets a little bit smaller.

• 1:37:43Speaker 04

  I, I feel like, um, hardo whitetail hunters will also say that you talked about how there's more movement after the peak of the rut. And, and usually those are the mature bucks. They're the wise ones who know that not every doe has been bred yet. So they're playing the long game. That's when they're going to get up and, and, uh, be a little more reckless is if, if you think the peak of the rut is like November 14, um, those old mature bucks, five, six year olds, they are really participating in the rut more in that like 15th to 25th time period than a two and a half year old is. Is that, is that, um, like putting too much stock in, in those ideas?

• 1:38:23Speaker 06

  I think a buck is gonna participate whenever he can.

• 1:38:27Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 1:38:27Speaker 06

  And whenever he detects there is a doe in estrus, he's gonna participate.

• 1:38:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:38:33Speaker 06

  If that answers your question.

• 1:38:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, uh, like I said, a whitetail hunter would say that is the time period of the rut for the old bucks. That's like when they are vulnerable.

• 1:38:41Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, they would be exposed more during that time.

• 1:38:45Speaker 04

  But not, not more than a two and a half year old is.

• 1:38:48Speaker 06

  I, I wouldn't think so.

• 1:38:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:38:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'm gonna go out of order and ask my next question, then Yanni and then Spencer.

• 1:38:55Speaker 05

  We only have a couple left.

• 1:38:57Steven Rinella?

  Time wise. Go ahead and ask your question. I was afraid I'm gonna forget mine. We ask you.

• 1:39:01Speaker 05

  No, go ahead. I won't forget mine cause it's sitting right in front of me.

• 1:39:03Steven Rinella?

  How, how far away you think, um, how far away you think a buck can smell a, a doe that's an estrus?

• 1:39:13Speaker 06

  Great question. I would say, uh, I haven't said it depends yet, but I think it's going to depend so much on wind condition, you know, and so.

• 1:39:25Steven Rinella?

  Throw me a wild ass like, like perfect conditions.

• 1:39:28Speaker 06

  Hundreds of yards.

• 1:39:29Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:39:30Speaker 05

  But are you asking about the doe herself or just the scent that maybe she left behind?

• 1:39:36Steven Rinella?

  Just detect the presence of a doe that's in heat.

• 1:39:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:39:41Steven Rinella?

  In perfect conditions, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be crazy to say hundreds of yards.

• 1:39:46Speaker 06

  I don't think so. Not, not at all. Yeah.

• 1:39:49Steven Rinella?

  Like their sense, their sense of smell is that good?

• 1:39:51Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I don't know if it's 500 yards. To me, I think about diffusion. And so, you know, the further and further you're getting away, the more those molecules are, you know, being distributed within the air and can they pick up enough of a concentration to cause a response, but certainly hundreds of yards.

• 1:40:11Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Go ahead, Yanni.

• 1:40:14Speaker 05

  Bronson, why'd you bring that antler all the way from Mississippi up here?

• 1:40:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:40:20Speaker 05

  And if you're just listening, you're just later going to have to go to YouTube and watch to see what we're going to talk about.

• 1:40:26Steven Rinella?

  He's got a big old, he's got a big old buck antler. It's a Michigan 10 with the brow tine sawed off.

• 1:40:32Speaker 05

  Might be a 150.

• 1:40:33Steven Rinella?

  He's got an aluminum contraption. Um, he's got an aluminum contraption glued to the end of it.

• 1:40:39Speaker 06

  Squirrels have been chewing on the tines. That was actually damaged during velvet.

• 1:40:44Steven Rinella?

  Oh. Oh, I just thought of another question.

• 1:40:48Speaker 06

  This is a, um, this is an example from, or this is a specimen from an experiment we did about 10 years ago now. And the question was, let me, let me back up. We always at Mississippi State with the deer lab, we try to do every single thing we do has a, a purpose for the end user. It's going to affect hunting. It's going to affect management, help you manage your property, except this. This has nothing to do at all with man. This is straight up deer biology. Me and, and Steve Damaris, the.

• 1:41:22Speaker 06

  Other co-director of the deer lab, we had this debate going on for years and years about female choice. Oh. Do female whitetail deer, can they, do they have any type of choice whatsoever? Loves it. Now, behaviorally, we don't know if she does because when she comes into standing heat, she's, she's going to breed. You know, if there is a, if she's in standing heat and a buck is behind her, she's going to breed. Doesn't matter if it's a spiky or a... No. Big old rope dragger. So I, I think she has to assume, I guess that's the right word, assume that that's going to sort itself out, that, that hopefully through a dominance hierarchy, she's getting the better buck. Hmm.

• 1:42:07Speaker 06

  But during the peak of the rut, that may not always be the case because the quote dominant older buck, he may be occupied on a, you know, way over here with another doe. And, you know, and we see, uh, multiple paternity. And so in 25% of does, the twin fawns, 25% of those will have two different fathers. Got it. So, so it's going on, multiple bucks are breeding. So I had just always thought that she has to care. She has to care. Now, whether she can do anything about it or not is a different question, but she has to care that if what is behind me and about to breed me, is it a year old spike or would

• 1:42:49Speaker 06

  it be a three, four, or five year old with larger antlers and a big body who has clearly demonstrated, I'm a survivor. Yeah. I can make it. Yeah. You know, she's got all the investment. She's going to have the gestation for seven months, it's all her resources. She ought to care who's behind her. So like, well, how do we do this? So we ended up, we had another project going on and, and we had a way we could set this up. We took all of our bucks and we standardized them. We came up with pairs. We paired them by age, we paired them by body size. So a doe looking at a buck couldn't say, well, that buck is clearly four years, four years old. That one is clearly a yearling and choose one of them.

• 1:43:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:32Speaker 06

  Um, so we standardized by body size and age. And then we got with our ag engineering people and we developed a contraption to where we could manipulate antlers.

• 1:43:44Steven Rinella?

  Can make him look like a toad even when he wasn't.

• 1:43:46Speaker 06

  That's exactly right. So we challenged these does with.

• 1:43:50Speaker 05

  Well, hold on, you gotta explain how you did that.

• 1:43:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Take a little spike and put that antler on his ass.

• 1:43:56Speaker 06

  No, yeah.

• 1:43:57Speaker 05

  While he's alive?

• 1:43:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, we sedate them.

• 1:44:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:00Speaker 06

  We sedate them, yeah.

• 1:44:05Speaker 05

  So they all had the base part somehow attached to their pedicle.

• 1:44:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, yeah, so all the, all the bucks that are, they're in the study, they're going to be sedated. And then we're going to cut their antlers off. We're going to affix that part, the coupling affixed to the antler. And then the pedicle, they're going to get a receiver coupling there. And so. That's it. This is incredible. And so then we will challenge a doe. So then we had someone from vet school reproductive physiologist. They can induce estrus, you know, with a progesterone treatment or something.

• 1:44:41Steven Rinella?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:44:41Speaker 06

  So now we know where that doe is coming into heat. And so now she's behaviorally, she's demonstrating she's an estrus. So we send her down an alleyway and she's got a pen. And then to her left and to her right are two equally aged or equally body sized bucks. One of them's carrying a 160, one of them's carrying a 90. Hmm. And then we monitored her behavior to see which one she would prefer. Now, we could not allow them to breed just the way it was set up, the logistics. But then we looked at all the, the behavioral signs of if we pulled the fence up, which, which one would she go to?

• 1:45:21Speaker 06

  And it was over 80% of the time, she always went for the antlers.

• 1:45:28Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:45:28Speaker 06

  Even a younger buck.

• 1:45:29Steven Rinella?

  Superficial dude.

• 1:45:31Speaker 06

  Good for her.

• 1:45:32Steven Rinella?

  Superficial man.

• 1:45:33Speaker 06

  Hey, man, but there's that 20%.

• 1:45:35Steven Rinella?

  Not interested in personality.

• 1:45:38Steven Rinella?

  It's like totally.

• 1:45:39Speaker 06

  But it wasn't 100%. It was, you know, 20% didn't fall for the, for the big antlers.

• 1:45:44Steven Rinella?

  So there's some selection going on.

• 1:45:46Speaker 06

  Well.

• 1:45:47Steven Rinella?

  But, but like you're saying, whether or not it, I get what you're saying, like in that environment, there's selection going on, but however that's occurring in the real world scenario is hard to determine.

• 1:45:57Speaker 06

  Exactly right. Yeah. Can that even happen? You know, the only, the only thing we can say in the wild of does she have any choice at all is when she's sensing, sensing she's coming into estrus, might she go to an area where she know this, knows this guy occupies and just make herself available?

• 1:46:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17Speaker 06

  But yeah, she can't be very proactive in this thing, but when you standardize all that and controlled for it, that's what she preferred. So it does follow the, the ecological theory about antlers are an honest signal of quality.

• 1:46:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah. I think I've wondered, um, I'm especially thinking about this as you're explaining this, is when you're watching a buck work a group of does and you see like, he's particularly interested, like he's sort of singled out a doe. He's very interested in this doe he's singled out, but you see her every time he approaches, she runs, every time he approaches, she runs. And you wonder like, well, if it was a different buck, would she run every time? Like, is she running because she's just not ready or is she running because she doesn't like, she doesn't want that buck buyer? Because from whatever, in his perspective, there's something very particular about that doe. He's like hounding that doe. So he knows something's going on, but she's not receptive. Um.

• 1:47:16Speaker 06

  I just don't think she's ready. She's just not.

• 1:47:18Steven Rinella?

  He can tell she's close.

• 1:47:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:20Steven Rinella?

  He, he knows she's close, but she's not that ready yet.

• 1:47:23Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:47:23Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Got it. So she might not be making like a not you, not you. I'm waiting for Dave or whatever.

• 1:47:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think she's just waiting to be receptive physiologically.

• 1:47:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:35Speaker 04

  There's a theory among whitetail hunters that if you have an old dominant buck, like a six and a half year old, when he gets killed, you've now created a vacuum where there's an opportunity for another big mature buck to come in and take that home range and own that food source, own that bedding area, own those does. Do you ever see that with your movement studies, that a big buck disappears and so a new big buck moves in?

• 1:48:01Speaker 06

  No, I'm really interested in that. I do think that has a lot of logic and appeal, and I want that to happen, because I think that's something as managers, we can manipulate, doing that, removing particular bucks and creating space for others to move in. We did not have enough data. Well, first of all, we didn't want to shoot all of our mature bucks, but to my knowledge, there's been no good experiment to demonstrate that, but I would love to try it if we could. I do think it's logical.

• 1:48:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, some little bucks like now's my time to shine.

• 1:48:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, they can have this whole area.

• 1:48:42Steven Rinella?

  Things get exciting.

• 1:48:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is the best cornfield in the neighborhood. Does all bedding here?

• 1:48:47Steven Rinella?

  Have you ever heard that bucks avoid certain kinds of cover when they're in velvet? And then they're more comfortable going into that cover once their antlers are hard?

• 1:48:56Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:48:56Steven Rinella?

  You never heard that with elk and stuff like that, too?

• 1:49:00Speaker 06

  Well, I don't think a lot about elk, but I'm biased with my time in South Texas. And so, man.

• 1:49:09Steven Rinella?

  Thorny.

• 1:49:09Speaker 06

  Up in that helicopter, I see a lot of bucks in velvet going through, yeah, the pear and the mesquite and never really saw.

• 1:49:17Steven Rinella?

  That's a good testing ground. Yeah, there's a price to pay for going through that mesquite.

• 1:49:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, and the awareness that they have, you know, when you're pushing them with the helicopter and there's a big mesquite branch coming up and they know how to tilt their head just enough to get their antlers under it and it's a thing of beauty to watch.

• 1:49:36Steven Rinella?

  Can I ask you a moose question?

• 1:49:37Speaker 04

  I mean, you can ask.

• 1:49:39Steven Rinella?

  Maybe there's a deer parallel. You're calling to a moose. You're making cow calls to a moose. And then he comes from a mile away. And he gets up, he comes just beeline, stops, his head's pointing toward you. You call, he comes, you call, he comes, he gets 500 yards away and lays down.

• 1:50:02Steven Rinella?

  Lays down for an hour, gets up, walks the other direction.

• 1:50:06Speaker 06

  The hell's in his head?

• 1:50:08Speaker 05

  You were supposed to come to him.

• 1:50:11Steven Rinella?

  You think so?

• 1:50:12Speaker 06

  Was there, um, was the wind in his face?

• 1:50:16Steven Rinella?

  No, nothing, no.

• 1:50:17Speaker 06

  There's no wind.

• 1:50:17Steven Rinella?

  It wasn't a human thing. It wasn't a human thing. Wind's totally wrong. He didn't see nothing.

• 1:50:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, my, my only guess was there was no, there was no visual cue to stimulate him coming any further.

• 1:50:34Steven Rinella?

  That would make sense. Cause he's like, I'm looking at the whole hill, dude.

• 1:50:38Speaker 06

  There's nothing there.

• 1:50:39Steven Rinella?

  I don't see a cow standing there.

• 1:50:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:50:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:42Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 1:50:43Steven Rinella?

  You know, that, yeah. He's like, at some point, he's like, at some point I need to see the cow.

• 1:50:47Speaker 06

  So you need a cow decoy.

• 1:50:49Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:50Steven Rinella?

  I've seen this happen two times in the same place. Comes all that way and just lays down staring and gets up and leaves.

• 1:50:55Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:50:56Speaker 05

  Hmm. Sounds like you gotta be able to shoot it 500 yards next time.

• 1:51:00Steven Rinella?

  We did one time, got him, but they, they, it's, it's thick and, you know, it's hard.

• 1:51:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:51:07Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:51:35Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. 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. 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 weather tech.

• 1:52:18Steven Rinella?

  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. It 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.

• 1:52:45Speaker 05

  If we have time, I could lay out the shirker buck, but I know we're.

• 1:52:48Steven Rinella?

  Oh yeah. Tell us about the shirker buck. Yanni's a big believer in this.

• 1:52:51Speaker 05

  That's not true.

• 1:52:54Speaker 05

  But I did read Val Geis, a couple of his books and he observed watching mule deer.

• 1:53:02Steven Rinella?

  He felt he observed.

• 1:53:03Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:53:06Speaker 05

  That there were bucks that he would watch that would shirk the responsibility of breeding for many seasons in a row. And then all of a sudden, year five, year six, come in there and because they had reserved all those resources for that many years and built up an extra, whatever amount of body weight, bigger antlers or whatever, then they could come in and rule the roost.

• 1:53:33Steven Rinella?

  Just lay waste.

• 1:53:35Speaker 05

  That's one way to put it.

• 1:53:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:53:38Speaker 05

  Did you ever see that in your captive herd? Where bucks would shirk the rut?

• 1:53:43Speaker 06

  Not, not at that, that scale, but so he, Valerius Geis is talking about a multi-year, right? What, what we would see, which we attributed to, but we don't know this, you know, buck personality, this, in this case hormonally, higher testosterone levels or something. But there were definitely some bucks that at the beginning of the rut, they were absolute madmen. I mean, they wanted to fight. Everybody hated them. The does hated them, the other bucks hated them. They just wanted to fight, fight, fight. And their breeding success was always greater the first half and maybe even longer into the breeding season.

• 1:54:25Speaker 06

  So, you know, we were able to enumerate how many fawns, you know, that they sired.

• 1:54:29Steven Rinella?

  Pummel, he's a fighter.

• 1:54:30Speaker 06

  He's a fighter.

• 1:54:31Steven Rinella?

  And he does good in the beginning of the breeding season.

• 1:54:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then his body condition, all of that fighting begins to take its toll on him. Now, keep in mind too, these are captive deer. They got ad lib food. See, I mean, he's avoiding eating. He is so consumed and obsessed with fighting and breeding. But when you get a month, six weeks, whatever into it, his body condition begins to suffer. And now he starts getting his butt kicked by the more passive deer who now weigh, even though they're the same age, even though they weigh 20 pounds more, those guys, maybe the shirkers, then they have higher breeding success later in the year. So we kinda saw that, but compressed within year.

• 1:55:18Steven Rinella?

  That's super interesting, but it's different than the idea that.

• 1:55:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:55:22Steven Rinella?

  What we told this to one deer biologist, I'm sure you're familiar with Jim Helfelfinger.

• 1:55:25Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:55:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So we told this to one deer biologist and he felt that it was just like, he felt it was a very questionable approach from an evolutionary standpoint. To be that like, you're alive now, you're sexually mature now. To put off breeding opportunity after breeding opportunity after breeding opportunity in order to really kick ass some year down the road just didn't make sense.

• 1:55:52Speaker 06

  Risky.

• 1:55:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like, you know, it just didn't make sense as a way to really, to, to, to put more progeny on the landscape. That you're banking on, well, I'm gonna have a hell of a year when I'm five.

• 1:56:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:56:04Steven Rinella?

  And I'm taking off two, three, and four.

• 1:56:07Speaker 06

  Yeah. And I agree with that.

• 1:56:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:09Speaker 07

  What are the, uh? The guest reasons for this, I mean, it's, it's not, I don't believe it's like a buck makes a conscious choice to do this. So like, what would be the biological underpinnings? If this were a thing?

• 1:56:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, my, well, I don't remember what Valerius Geist, all of his reasoning, but I'm trying to think about of a mechanism of how that could work.

• 1:56:40Speaker 07

  Like onset of hormones and things are happening.

• 1:56:43Speaker 06

  Mine would be differing testosterone levels. And whereas the example I was giving with our data, I think it's within season, different timing in the surging of testosterone. But there's some great research out of Auburn University showing that there's a lot of variation by age class.

• 1:57:05Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:57:06Speaker 06

  And so it could be that those younger bucks, and then there's going to be variation within an age class where some have more and some have less. And so some of them, they just don't have a lot of testosterone when they're two or three years of age. They're looking at this particular older dominant, bigger antlered, bigger bodied buck. And maybe it's a survival strategy. Man, I'm not going to risk it against that guy. But then later in life, greater surge in testosterone and they risk it and go for it.

• 1:57:34Steven Rinella?

  What do you wind up seeing? Like, if you think of an old buck that gets a reputation with hunters as being like, he's so stealthy, he's shy, he's sly, right? Um, that's got to be real, right? Like, but what is that? What is, what do you think he's doing? What is he not doing? You know, when he gets to be that they just seem like they vanish?

• 1:58:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:58:02Steven Rinella?

  Right?

• 1:58:03Speaker 06

  And, and to me, that, that's a really good question of ways you have to think about it. So is it that that buck has always been that way? And the ones that were dumber were killed?

• 1:58:17Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:58:18Speaker 06

  So selection is going on.

• 1:58:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:58:21Speaker 06

  Or, or are they literally learning and modifying their behavior over time?

• 1:58:27Steven Rinella?

  I, like, I love, I love what you're saying. I would have, when I approached the question, I was approaching that he learned it.

• 1:58:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:58:34Steven Rinella?

  Not that he's just always been paranoid.

• 1:58:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:58:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:37Speaker 06

  It's probably a little bit of both.

• 1:58:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:38Speaker 06

  As well, would be my guess. Um, yeah, so what, what are they doing different? I think it's probably just being more perceptive and maybe being more slow in how they process. What's going on, they're not as much of a risk taker.

• 1:58:54Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:58:55Speaker 06

  And so they're playing for the long game of like, uh, I may not breed as many does within a year, but lifetime reproductive success, I may win.

• 1:59:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:04Speaker 06

  Things like that.

• 1:59:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. There, there, there seems like there's some learned stuff like looking up in trees. You know what I mean? Like learning, like in certain areas, he's just like looking up, looking up, looking up. Like, cause he's seen before.

• 1:59:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:59:20Steven Rinella?

  Dudes in trees. Yeah, and like come, they're coming out of the box. Like a year and a half old buck probably hasn't figured out yet to like.

• 1:59:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:59:30Steven Rinella?

  Look up.

• 1:59:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:59:31Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 1:59:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, and so does that yearling buck have to live through a bad experience? And then he's able to, he's gonna be looking from this point forward.

• 1:59:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, or are there year, are there yearling bucks that are just so paranoid, they're looking all around? Yeah, that's a good question.

• 1:59:47Speaker 05

  Or do they learn it from their five-year-old mother?

• 1:59:50Speaker 06

  I think they do.

• 1:59:51Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's a good point, too. Yeah, she's like the big cherry tree. At the point, the point that juts out between the fields, don't go by that cherry tree.

• 2:00:02Speaker 05

  The other thing is.

• 2:00:02Steven Rinella?

  Speaking of a specific cherry tree I grew up by with a deer disorder, the sort of dude like the ranellas are always in that tree.

• 2:00:09Speaker 05

  There's less of those bucks on the landscape too. So we just, we have this perception that we see them less. So there's sneakier, but it's just like a numbers game where you're just going to see less of those bucks. Even if they're moving just as much as the two year olds because there's, I don't know what the percentage is in most populations, but.

• 2:00:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:31Speaker 05

  Much less.

• 2:00:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, it all depends on a hunting rate and mortality, but, but yeah, that's going to be a. Yeah. I mean, even in a well managed populations, less than 25% of the bucks are going to be something like that. And that's just based on age. And then when you start adding in antler size, it's going to be less than 10% or going to resemble something like that. So they're very rare.

• 2:00:57Speaker 04

  Uh, in, in 2015, I tried very hard to kill a cactus buck. And if you're listening, you don't know what that is. It's a cactus buck. It's a buck who does not shed his velvet. And sometimes he, he will grow a unique rack as a result of that. It could be a testosterone problem that his testicles never dropped. It could be that he was crossing a fence and ripped his sack open one time. And that cactus buck was very hard to kill because it seemed as though he didn't participate in the rut. He just like, didn't loosen up and, and become reckless like the other bucks would. Have you ever looked at the movement of a cactus buck?

• 2:01:30Speaker 06

  Have not, have not. We, we've never, uh, I guess been lucky enough to have a collar on one. But a, a property that I hunt has one right now. And I just got pictures from my pun buddy about a week ago that, that the cactus buck is back.

• 2:01:48Speaker 04

  Was he there last year?

• 2:01:49Speaker 06

  He was there last year.

• 2:01:50Speaker 04

  What did you notice him do last year?

• 2:01:52Speaker 06

  He, uh, he hung out with the does.

• 2:01:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. They just like, don't participate in the rut.

• 2:01:57Speaker 06

  Nope, not at all.

• 2:02:00Steven Rinella?

  Uh, the deer writer, Pat Durkin.

• 2:02:04Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:06Steven Rinella?

  He had an observation where he, when he was the editor of Deer and Deer Hunting Magazine, he profiled a great many big buck killers. Okay, and he had come to this kind of realization after a while. There's a lot of amazing big buck killers. They couldn't tell you what kind of tree their tree stands hanging in. Meaning, it's just like, it's not like a wood, there's a point at which it's not like a woodsmanship thing. It's like, they're just good at killing bucks. They're not generalist woodsmen, you know?

• 2:02:41Steven Rinella?

  Do you ever feel like your research? Like in real, on the ground, application as a deer hunter? Does your research guide your activities? Or is like, deer hunting is just deer hunting? And it doesn't matter what you know to be true from all your projects?

• 2:02:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:03:01Speaker 06

  Yes, it, it does.

• 2:03:03Steven Rinella?

  It guides your behavior.

• 2:03:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, and, and a lot of that is about hunting pressure.

• 2:03:07Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:03:08Speaker 06

  And thinking about, and you know, this doesn't work everywhere in the US, in, in the southeast, you know, lot, lot of stand hunting, lot of permanent stand hunting and so forth. And, and just recognizing that deer know when you're on the property. And it's, and it's not gunshots. It's, it's you being there, you being on an ATV. It's the smells, the sounds, all that, they, they know when you're there. And, and one thing that has really changed, and we try to really advise now, is

• 2:03:42Speaker 06

  when, when you hunt, if you're gonna hunt a particular stand, particular area, only go on the days where you're gonna minimize the opportunity of bumping deer. Because we know, the research I talked about earlier, after a couple of days, and deer know you're on the property, they're gonna start behaving differently. So doing whatever you can to minimize your footprint, so to speak, on the property. That's, that's probably one of the biggest things. And then, uh, some really boring stuff. That that people roll their eyes about, but in terms of antler quality, herd condition, things like that, density, deer density, doe harvest, stuff like that, I know how critically

• 2:04:27Speaker 06

  important that is, and people are trying to figure out what the heck's going on with our deer, the quality of the deer is down, we're doing all this, that and the other. You've just got too many deer. You just have too many mouths relative to the amount of range that you have in the food supply. So, pretty mundane, but stuff like that.

• 2:04:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Well, I could definitely picture management information, but just like how you go about where you're putting your stand, when you're out there, what you're doing with the wind. But I could see with the stuff with with the research you've done around how they handle pressure, you might look at a place, look what everybody's up to, and then based on what you've seen, be like, I think when the pressure hits, I think you're going to see more of this, you're going to see less of that, and that might guide your movements.

• 2:05:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, what what I do all the time. So, yeah, what we talked about, approach, try to minimize your disturbance of the deer. I think about during the rut, I think about where are those doe focal groups on the landscape?

• 2:05:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:29Speaker 06

  What are going to be the movement or cover corridors that might link those areas up?

• 2:05:35Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 2:05:35Speaker 06

  And so it won't be hunting on food, it's going to be hunting on a corridor. And then finally, when you get to the post rut, I'm focusing on food. So the evidence is really, really clear with that. When you get a month past the peak of the rut, they got to recover that 20% of their body weight. They're hungry, and food plots in my neck of the woods, that's a great place to hunt.

• 2:05:57Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 2:06:01Steven Rinella?

  Think about that, Spencer Neuharth. Mm-hmm. Can I make two study requests?

• 2:06:05Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 2:06:06Steven Rinella?

  Well, okay, one of them.

• 2:06:08Speaker 04

  I I hunt a lot of places in the west where whitetail habitat and mule deer habitat overlap. But I never see them interact with each other. I'm always like pretty shocked that I could I could in the same hunt. See a couple of whitetails and a couple of mule deers. But they like don't have any social interaction. Um, anything to do with them, I would be very interested in like if if you took that same study and you put a doe. Down a a corral and she got to choose between a muley buck and a whitetail buck. I imagine would be very high, uh, highly skewed for the whitetail buck like 90 plus percent just based on what I've seen. Um, but I I don't know that I I'm interested in anything like a a what a whitetail buck and a mule deer buck would do if they. Encountered each other.

• 2:06:51Steven Rinella?

  That's a great thing, or if you just took like, um. If you just took like odor arrays.

• 2:06:57Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 2:06:58Steven Rinella?

  Like odor from a mule deer doe and asterisk and odor from a whitetail doe and asterisk and like. Put it in front of both box. Is he like, oh, that's the whitetail, you know?

• 2:07:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a great idea. In my observations, they interact as though uh, like an elk and a whitetail would interact. They they just show no interest in each other, but I I can't imagine it's that simple.

• 2:07:16Steven Rinella?

  You know how you get funding for this? Remember how a few years ago you couldn't get funding for anything if it didn't have to do with climate?

• 2:07:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:07:22Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So pitch it like this. More and more whitetails moving into more and more mule deer country. Mule deer are in a tough spot. Mule deer are probably going to be in a tougher spot with increased competition from whitetails, increased competition for elk. So go to the mule deer foundation. And be like, we need to understand more about as these as these whitetails are colonizing more and more mule deer country, how do they interact?

• 2:07:46Speaker 04

  We did it.

• 2:07:46Steven Rinella?

  And there's all your funding.

• 2:07:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:07:48Steven Rinella?

  Got that problem solved.

• 2:07:49Speaker 04

  What do you think on like how they interact with each other in the wild?

• 2:07:53Speaker 06

  Don't know a lot about that because that that's out of my that's out of my home range over there, but. I I did think it it would be interesting to to challenge a whitetail doe. With a fully mature, large antlered mule deer. And then a smaller, younger whitetail. Really, is it the species draw or the the phenotype? Of this is a good father, a good sire.

• 2:08:20Speaker 04

  And biology would tell us that she would be making a poor decision by going with the muley, right? Because their offspring really fail with their escape mechanism like they can't start. Or something like that, is that correct?

• 2:08:34Speaker 04

  I don't know if that's, is that true?

• 2:08:35Steven Rinella?

  I think that, I think it's like, I think it's like a horse and a donkey throwing a mule.

• 2:08:40Speaker 04

  I thought their failure was so.

• 2:08:41Steven Rinella?

  I don't think, I don't think they're viable.

• 2:08:43Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:08:44Steven Rinella?

  I don't think they're sexually viable.

• 2:08:45Speaker 04

  We're gonna learn, he does the study.

• 2:08:47Steven Rinella?

  You know what I'd throw into that study, man? If you got like time to burn.

• 2:08:52Steven Rinella?

  Man, if there's any like, uh, if symmetry matters to those. Do you know what I mean? Is there any like disadvantage to being atypical?

• 2:09:01Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 2:09:04Steven Rinella?

  Probably gets hard after a while to tease out all these little differences though, don't it?

• 2:09:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, but you, you could manipulate it where it would be obvious.

• 2:09:11Steven Rinella?

  Like extremes.

• 2:09:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:09:13Speaker 04

  Drop dine.

• 2:09:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, you could attach stuff to where it's really obvious.

• 2:09:18Steven Rinella?

  He's got a club on one side, you know, yeah.

• 2:09:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, you could do that.

• 2:09:22Speaker 04

  Uh, the other study I'd be interested in is, uh, a deer's response to yellow soybeans. I've been told all my life, and I feel like I've maybe witnessed it some, but I don't know if I'm witnessing it because I'm supposed to witness it. But a deer, given the choice in a, in a big old soybean field, if there's some green beans, some yellow beans and some brown beans, which the yellow is the ripening stage going from green to brown, they won't pick the yellow ones, they just taste worst, taste worse. Is that something you've heard, seen? No?

• 2:09:51Speaker 06

  Uh, I haven't, but that, I think that's logical. So turning yellow from the desiccation that they're growing.

• 2:09:58Speaker 05

  That's a Craig Harper study, sounds like to me.

• 2:10:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, Craig would like that.

• 2:10:02Steven Rinella?

  You know, I, I got some friends that are songwriters and over the years I've learned that they just do not want to hear our song ideas. But they don't.

• 2:10:11Steven Rinella?

  Even when you try to do it like a joke and give them a song idea, but you're serious, but you're trying to act like it's a joke, they don't want to hear it. I like how you use the word "our." My.

• 2:10:20Speaker 06

  But, but do they give you the obligatory? That's a good one.

• 2:10:23Steven Rinella?

  They don't even like, there's just nothing to it. Do you like hearing study ideas?

• 2:10:27Speaker 06

  I, I do, no.

• 2:10:30Steven Rinella?

  I got a pile of them.

• 2:10:34Speaker 06

  Some of them, some of them can be really cuckoo.

• 2:10:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:38Speaker 06

  So you, you know, you've given a seminar and you always say, what's y'all to do?

• 2:10:42Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 2:10:45Speaker 06

  That can get old.

• 2:10:48Steven Rinella?

  What else, man? I could go on all day.

• 2:10:50Speaker 04

  I think just like to cap it off, if hunters want to take what you've seen in your movement studies and apply it to the rut this year, what, what does that look like?

• 2:10:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:10:58Speaker 04

  How can they be more successful?

• 2:11:01Speaker 06

  So if you, again, if you're going after a target buck, a particular buck, your greater opportunity for him to demonstrate sight fidelity. So if you know where he's hanging out, you, you need to do that in the pre-rut. If on the other hand, you are just gonna, there's a lot of big bucks in the area. I just want to increase my odds for intercepting one. That's going to be during the peak of the rut.

• 2:11:28Speaker 04

  A, a pre-rut window being like late October?

• 2:11:31Speaker 06

  Well, it depends on when your rut is.

• 2:11:33Speaker 04

  Okay, let's go November 15 rut. That's the peak rut.

• 2:11:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, so let's go one month or greater before the peak of the rut.

• 2:11:40Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:11:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:11:41Speaker 04

  So like October 15 then?

• 2:11:43Speaker 06

  In, in your neck of the woods, yeah.

• 2:11:45Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:11:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, that'd be about right.

• 2:11:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so just make sure I'm tracking what you're saying. Like when we, when you pick the November 15th, we would agree that peak rut is sort of like the day when you have the highest relative number of does and esters. That's what, is that fair to define peak rut that way?

• 2:12:01Speaker 06

  Yep, but, but rather than day, we might say over a two week, over a two week period, about half of the does have been into esters. So, yes, that, that is going to be the, the, the series of days where the greatest number, greatest proportion.

• 2:12:16Steven Rinella?

  So there's a, there's a two week window, like if you take a, like just generally with whitetail deer, there's a two week window in which 50% of the does come into esters and we're going to declare that two week window to be peak rut?

• 2:12:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, if it's a synchronized rut and so forth, yeah, generally speaking.

• 2:12:34Steven Rinella?

  So that, that's kind of funny because then when you hear a guy's killing some giant that no one's ever seen, never showed up on their cameras. Like that's that dude that's cruising.

• 2:12:45Speaker 06

  Excursion.

• 2:12:45Steven Rinella?

  He's an excursion buck. Yeah, he excurded off your place.

• 2:12:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:12:49Steven Rinella?

  And excurded on some other guy's.

• 2:12:51Speaker 06

  On to somebody else and they got him.

• 2:12:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:53Speaker 06

  Exactly right.

• 2:12:55Speaker 06

  And then if you didn't get them pre-rut, if you didn't get them during the rut, hunt food in the post-rut.

• 2:13:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:13:02Speaker 06

  Yeah. And during the rut, you might want to, here's an interesting finding. We actually looked at food plot use, two different types of food plot use.

• 2:13:14Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:13:16Speaker 06

  And so on our study area, by the way, our study area was 50 to 60,000 acres. So pretty big, pretty big footprint. And we had every make and model of food plot you could have. We had quarter acre food plots, acre, all the way up to 20 acre food plots. And so we wanted to look at, is there any food plot size that deer would come to that disproportionately? And so

• 2:13:40Steven Rinella?

  Just size, you weren't varying what you were growing?

• 2:13:44Speaker 06

  Good, good question. We had so many food plots that we had to assume that some of them had wheat and clover, some of them had brassicas. We had to assume all that kind of smoothed out the actual plantings within it. But yes, it was just size. And what we found, even though two times the amount of like smaller one acre food plots, the sweet spot was three, four, or five acres.

• 2:14:15Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 2:14:15Speaker 06

  They disproportionately selected that size of plot.

• 2:14:20Steven Rinella?

  That feels secure to them.

• 2:14:22Speaker 06

  So, so why? Why, why would they do that? And so we, we think it's because what, what do small food plots not provide over the course of the hunting season? What happens to them?

• 2:14:37Steven Rinella?

  They get eaten up.

• 2:14:38Speaker 06

  They get over browsed.

• 2:14:39Steven Rinella?

  Right.

• 2:14:39Speaker 06

  They get overwhelmed. So not, not only because of the size of it and the number of deer on it, you don't have as many hours of photosynthesis going on because they're smaller and the shade and all that. Then you get to this three, four, five acre. Now you've got a big enough area, you're now producing more forage per acre. And now we've got a social aspect of it too, which I'll get to in a second. But then after that, it was diminishing returns. So we didn't see anything greater of a 10 acre plot versus a three acre plot.

• 2:15:11Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay. They, they didn't prefer five over 20?

• 2:15:17Speaker 06

  They did.

• 2:15:18Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 2:15:18Speaker 06

  They did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we saw a big drop off in relative to their availability on the landscape. Deer were disproportionately choosing those plots over the ones smaller and the ones larger.

• 2:15:34Steven Rinella?

  What's the argument against a bigger plot, do you think, in his head?

• 2:15:37Speaker 06

  Um, I, I think you reach a, a particular size and there's just only so many deer in the area are, are gonna use it.

• 2:15:46Speaker 04

  And I would say they're vulnerable, like there's less edge habitat.

• 2:15:51Steven Rinella?

  Like, like, like, wh- why do you feel a buck avoids?

• 2:15:59Steven Rinella?

  Like, why is he avoiding a big food plot?

• 2:16:01Speaker 06

  I, I, I see what you mean now. Yes. He, he doesn't want to go into the middle of a big old ten or twenty acre.

• 2:16:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, cuz that's security.

• 2:16:08Speaker 06

  Possibly so. Yes. Exposure. Too exposed. Yeah.

• 2:16:12Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 2:16:12Speaker 06

  Um, so when you look at during the year, if you look at the number of visits per day, you will see that they are visiting more during the rut. So you think about how we analyze the data, it's just ding, did he visit the plot or not? Yes. And you, and you tally those up. So they're visiting those food plots more during the day. So some of that is food, some of it is also socially. I mean, they're cruising, looking, looking for those. When you get to the end of the year during the post-rut, they will have just as many or less visits, but their duration is longer. So now they are visiting for the

• 2:16:56Speaker 06

  purpose of forage and not socially looking for a female.

• 2:17:00Steven Rinella?

  Yep. God, man.

• 2:17:03Speaker 06

  Lots of stuff.

• 2:17:04Steven Rinella?

  No, it's a lot of great information.

• 2:17:08Steven Rinella?

  I got such a good study idea, I'd say. So hard to explain.

• 2:17:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm like a post-rut buck right now and all I can think about is some food and we gotta do this trivia in like thirty minutes.

• 2:17:21Steven Rinella?

  Dude, thanks for coming on.

• 2:17:22Speaker 05

  Wrap it up.

• 2:17:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, man.

• 2:17:23Steven Rinella?

  I love your, um,

• 2:17:26Steven Rinella?

  the extension, like, like, tell people go how to go find your work and to see, because I mean, you got, you have your academic publications, but you're also producing stuff for just guys like us.

• 2:17:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:17:35Steven Rinella?

  So tell people how to go, how to go kind of find some of your infographics and.

• 2:17:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, it, it, um, you, a couple of places. So, uh, you can go to the msudearlab.com. That's our website that has all of these publications on there. We also do a lot of this on social media. So we're on, uh, Facebook, Instagram. We have a YouTube channel with a lot of different videos, podcasts where we talk about this type of stuff. Podcast is Deer University. So MSU Deer Lab, uh, the website, social media, uh, YouTube, you ought to be able to get us. If it's on the private side, outside of the university, if you're looking for help with land management, go to wildlifeinvestments.com. And there's a lot of us there that'll help you manage your land.

• 2:18:20Steven Rinella?

  Consulting work.

• 2:18:21Speaker 06

  That's for consulting work. Yeah.

• 2:18:23Steven Rinella?

  That's great, man. Um, and then in that consulting work, you kind of, you probably do, you go survey the property, talk about what's going on, what could be better.

• 2:18:31Speaker 06

  Right.

• 2:18:32Steven Rinella?

  What, what strategies could be used?

• 2:18:34Speaker 06

  Habitat, habitat management, deer, ducks, turkey, quail, whatever you want with wildlife management.

• 2:18:41Steven Rinella?

  All right.

• 2:18:41Speaker 06

  We got an expert to help you.

• 2:18:43Steven Rinella?

  All right. Again, uh, Dr. Bronson Strickland from University of Mississippi.

• 2:18:51Speaker 06

  Hale State, Mississippi State University.

• 2:18:54Steven Rinella?

  Mississippi State University. Uh, we have that same problem in Michigan because we got U of M and MSU. Well, it's the same, we're here.

• 2:19:01Speaker 05

  There's a lot of states, Steve.

• 2:19:02Steven Rinella?

  No, no, we're the, with the M specifically.

• 2:19:05Speaker 05

  Oh, with the M specifically, yes.

• 2:19:08Steven Rinella?

  Um, and then the, the extension material is like the, the extension piece I was talking about that shows like, that kind of puts your study on the lunar stuff.

• 2:19:17Speaker 06

  Right.

• 2:19:17Steven Rinella?

  That's, that's, uh, that's a Michigan State University extension piece.

• 2:19:23Steven Rinella?

  God, a Mississippi State University extension piece.

• 2:19:27Speaker 06

  Right.

• 2:19:27Steven Rinella?

  That puts down, it, it's a great graphic.

• 2:19:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:19:31Steven Rinella?

  Cause it, it, it puts down what people think.

• 2:19:35Steven Rinella?

  Um, the idiosyncrasies of what people think, what's found, um, and then it puts it into all these like percentages and then whatever kind of guy you are, moon underfoot, moon overhead, full moon rising, full moon setting, you can go and track every possible variation and find out, um, yards per hour, all that, and you can go put your mind at ease about what's going on.

• 2:20:01Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 2:20:02Steven Rinella?

  I mean, it's very, it is a, when you look through it, I spent 30 minutes staring at it today, it is a very convincing, um, portrayal of like, looking at something quite thoroughly.

• 2:20:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:20:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's a great piece.

• 2:20:16Speaker 06

  Appreciate that, thank you.

• 2:20:17Steven Rinella?

  In poster form, it would take up a lot of walls.

• 2:20:19Speaker 06

  It sure would, it sure would, yeah.

• 2:20:22Steven Rinella?

  But you might think about a small poster.

• 2:20:24Speaker 06

  We will, yeah.

• 2:20:25Steven Rinella?

  With the real salient points in it.

• 2:20:27Speaker 06

  Next time.

• 2:20:28Steven Rinella?

  Okay, thank you very much for coming on, um, we're all gonna be, if not better deer hunters, better deer observers now, thank you.

• 2:20:36Speaker 05

  Thanks, Martin.

• 2:21:04Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. 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.

• 2:21:34Steven 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. Go and ask any serious whitetail hunter what the best time of the year is to be out in

• 2:22:18Steven Rinella?

  a tree. And it's not a holiday, okay? The best time is not already on your calendar. It's the rut. It's the two or three week window that serious deer hunters plan everything else around. And OnX Hunt's rut calendar does this for you and helps take the guesswork out of your planning. It tracks the different phases of the rut as they move through your area. So you know when to book the time off, when to have the whole camp locked in and ready, or conversely, when it's still too early to burn out your best spots. You only get so many rut hunts in your life. So use the rut calendar within OnX Hunt to make the most of the whitetail rut this fall.

• 2:23:01Speaker 07

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.