Wildlife Investments

Rifle Season Effects On Daylight Deer Activity - Research Results

• Moriah Boggess • Season 1 • Episode 1

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The opener of gun season no doubt alters deer movement, but does it make deer movement nocturnal? This is a common claim among hunters and there is certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence reported from the deer woods on the subject, but what does science say? Dr. Marcus Lashley, Dr. Bronson Strickland, and Moriah Boggess discuss a research project that measured deer activity in Mississippi before and during rifle season. The results might surprise you, but there is much to be learned and applied from this study.

Moriah Boggess:

Welcome to Wildlife Investments, where we discuss wildlife research, habitat, hunting, and land management with our panel of leading resource managers. Wildlife Investments. Have you ever wondered how rifle season affects deer movement specifically in daylight? And as a manager, can you do anything to change how deer use your property in daylight during hunting season? Today we're discussing that question with a cool research project out of Mississippi. We've got three of us on the podcast today. We've got Dr. Bronson Strickland out of Mississippi, one of our real deer focus experts. Bronson, how are you doing?

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

Man, I'm doing wonderful. I'm looking forward to this discussion and how we can educate people to be proactive about management and increase their deer sighting and hunting efficiency.

Moriah Boggess:

We're talking deer. It's a good day. Absolutely. We also got Dr. Marcus Lashley out of University of Florida, one of our very turkey-focused consultants, but Marcus has done a lot of research with deer over the years, and this uh data set is actually from him, his lab, and one of his students. Marcus, glad to have you.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. And, you know, I echo what Bronson was saying. Uh a lot of my interest has come has stemmed from me being a lifelong hunter, and that has driven a lot of research like this. And I'm really excited to get into it because I do get that question a lot, what where did all my deer go? And also what can we do about it? And I think this is a perfect experiment to show some insights into how people might deal with it.

Moriah Boggess:

I love uh I love the topic we're discussing today, and it's very timely for deer season. So just to introduce myself, I'm Mariah Boggus, and I'm another one of the the deer management consultants with wildlife investments. And now we're gonna go ahead and jump into it. I'm gonna throw it over to Marcus and he can set up the study.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Yeah. Well, you know, we all of us have been hunters since we were little, and we've all probably said it. I know I have, and I know I've heard a lot of people say it, and I commonly just hear this around the campfire or whatever, that you know, rifle seasons come in, oh, the deer went nocturnal. And I think that's stemming from people don't see them, right? Um you you especially in a pro place this pressured, uh, the deer that you were seeing disappear. So people assume they've stopped moving. And the data set that we have from Mississippi is actually uh spearheaded by Don Chance, one of my former master's students, and uh Bronson and I were working on this together, and uh he was on his committee. And it essentially we had a property, and uh folks have probably heard about it. We call it the Longview Property. Uh it's one of our research areas at Mississippi State. And uh he went out and put a grid of cameras all across the property, and I think it worked out to one camera per less than five acres. I I don't remember exactly what it was. There was 80 plus cameras on this landscape that were just running around the clock. And the reason he did that was that we were trying to evaluate deer and turkey use in particular of these different habitat treatments, things that we commonly recommend landowners do on their property to enhance habitat for deer or turkeys. You know, this was a demonstration of those on a 500-acre property, and he was monitoring how the species of interest re responded to it. So because he was running the cameras year-round, it allowed us the opportunity to look at some other things of interest like what happens to deer use of these areas when rifle season comes in. So that's what we wanted to talk about today is sort of a spin-off of the major project that we're able to get from this, that we get some pretty interesting insights from what actually happens to deer behavior.

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

Yeah, it was uh it was very interesting to to see this response. And to be completely honest with you, Marcus, it uh my interpretation of this uh has changed a little bit over time. And and what I mean by that is I think initially we attributed this response to being habitat, and that that is certainly influencing it, but I think there's also a hunting pressure aspect to it as well. So I think there's an interaction of the landscape around us heavily pressured, the place we were managing not as pressured, and then we provided a habitat situation that was conducive to daylight movement where deer felt secure moving during the day because they had a little bit of cover.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Uh so just to go ahead and put it out there for folks, I fully thought when we we were looking at deer activity patterns, and we can look at it for males and females, and we'll talk about that some, but I fully expected the last couple weeks of October, first week or two of November before rifle season for deer to sort of be in their normal pattern, you know, that that crepuscular peaking dawn and dusk pattern that we expect deer to be in. I fully expected to see that and then rifle season open and it took shift dramatically to be nocturnal. That's what I expected. But it actually did exactly the opposite of that. And uh when we actually graph out, interestingly, on this property, which I've now looked at activity patterns across probably hundreds of properties at this point, uh it is very common to see deer activity concentrated in morning and evening, but on this site, it has been particularly prevalent in the morning. So you have a big peak in the morning, and then in the afternoon you have another peak around dusk. But what we saw when rifle season came in is we went from about 50% of the movement or the detections on these cameras. And think about this: when a camera detects a deer, that means it was on its feet walking around, right? It walked in front of our camera. The about half of those were during the day or during the night, you know, so equal movement between the two before hunting season came in, and that shifted around to like almost 75% of our detections are of deer walking around during the day. Exactly the opposite of what we thought was going to happen and what everybody says happens when rifle season comes in.

Moriah Boggess:

And then Marcus, so I guess starting out to set this up, there's that 50-50 daylight night. Of that 50% that's daylight, can you speak to how much of that was how much of that proportion was morning? Was that another 50-50? You said it was more morning than evening.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

No, I'd have to eyeball it, but I would say that it's probably 75% in the morning.

Moriah Boggess:

Yeah, that's crazy. And I know myself, and I think most people are evening hunters, it's a lot easier to get out after work or not get up super early and go. Bronson, can you speak to, I mean, with some of the other deer movement collar research that you've been involved with over the years, is that morning time movement being larger than the evening? Is that typical? Or is that more unique to this property?

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

Yeah, I I I think that's real typical. When we look at the data from what we call the Big Black River study, we see the greatest daytime movements, believe it or not, are going to be about two hours after sunrise. And we attribute that to that is when we're gonna have the longest or most linear movement bouts, meaning that is when the foraging bout is over and a buck or deer are going to their bedding area. That is when we see when we look at a movement rate, so distance moved over time, that's where we see the greatest movement rate is about two hours after. This also speaks to um if if we go back to the data set that Andy Little analyzed from Oklahoma, and just a reminder of that was in that context, there was unhunted and hunted, and we documented on those hunted areas and heavily hunted areas, it took deer about three days. That was the average, about three days, and we noticed a very decided difference in movement behavior, meaning their movements were more tortuous or more complicated, more twists and turns and less long linear movements. And what what we determined from that is that the deer, of course, are still moving during the day, but they're moving in areas where hunters were not. So we concluded observation rate would be lower because deer responded to pressure and changed their movement behavior. So, Marcus, this to me is just a great field example of that is that we got rifle season coming in. We've saturated the landscape with hunters. Deer are moving to a place, they're still moving during the day, but they're moving on an area not as pressured and in an area where they feel secure moving and foraging during daylight hours.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Yeah, I I agree with that. I mean, uh they still are at some risk, I guess, on this property, but probably not nearly to the pressure around it, but we've also created a context in the vegetation structure that they feel safe. So those things are interacting, you know. Basically, I think uh Mariah, some of the the uh data from this even supports this idea that we can move to. Um, you know, we kind of created a vacuum on this 500 acres, which by the way is a big long linear property. A deer could walk across it in five minutes, you know, from one side to the other and be on two different property owners on each side. It's it's not like it's a big block of timber. You know, it's uh, you know, we we have essentially created a vacuum on that property where we have the best cover in town and it's relatively low pressure on top of that. And essentially, deer, when they, you know, they're going to move some during the day, but we made it such that they concentrated that movement on this 500 acres. It's not that they're not going on the the adjacent properties, they almost certainly are, and they may be spending a lot of their time there, but during hunting season at high risk, we had the safe haven, so the all the day movement was on us, and that to me is a really powerful thing. I mean, what is the most common thing that people say is their problem? Not seeing them. Yeah. I hear them say, My neighbors are my problem. Well, yeah. Right? Well, I mean, you're not seeing the deer, but uh that's often attributed to the neighbors are getting my deer. They're killing my deer, that my neighbors have them all or whatever. And I think this is a pretty powerful example where we can create high quality cover and ha and mod moderate our hunting pressure on it, and we're just sucking in the daytime data or uh deer activity. So pretty powerful thing to be able to wield as a a property manager and deer manager.

Moriah Boggess:

So, Marcus, speaking now towards those neighbors in that bigger context. Um, so just to paint a picture for everyone listening, it's a very pine-dominated landscape, right? High stocking densities on all those neighbors. They're not near as heavily thinned, and at the time of the study, I don't know if any of the the direct neighbors had actually thinned their pines anytime recently.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Yeah, all of it was uh in need of thinning for a first or second thin and no burning as far as we're aware. And then feeder use. Are they hunting over feeders? Yeah. Is there a lot of pressure? Lots of feeders around it. In fact, I used an aerial one time and could see feeders on the aerial and marked a whole bunch of them just to point out that there weren't any on the property that we were doing the study on, but all the properties around it had feeders all over the place. And food pots for that matter. Although there were food pots on on the one that we're monitoring.

Moriah Boggess:

So And then and then our understory on this property, just to paint that for everyone else, if you were to be standing in it, that's 40-50% canopy coverage of ponds, uh, anywhere from 40 to 60 basal area, and the understory is five feet tall, there's a lot of plume grass, goldenrod, late bone set, a lot of taller forbs. And so if you're standing in it, it you can't see super far. And if you're at deer level, you can't see more than two or three feet in front of you. But in a tree?

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

I would say a lot of so that there is some of the property that looks like that at all times, but we were intentionally burning different units at different times, and there was also some that we had used in an herbicide release and others that not. So there was some a lot of variability in structure across those stands, but all of them had better cover in the understory, and sometimes they also had much greater food availability that was responding right after fire. Other times it might have been better bedding cover. But I think in all cases, uh when you climb up a pine tree, deer are exposed to you, but the deer do not think that they are. They're walking around in there foraging around, picking around like they're safe. Whereas when we're elevated up in a stand, we could easily see deer in it. We've seen quite a few in it. I have personally witnessed them in it. So uh a couple of things that, you know, just for me thinking about it from a from a deer manager standpoint, especially if you're on a smaller property, but just in general, you know, that this was a pretty wild thing for me to see. Uh, we have other data, I think that you were going to show Mariah, showing that we actually saw more bucks and they were even more concentrated during the day after rifle season.

Moriah Boggess:

Right. Yeah, I I was curious because I from talking to you about this, I was looking at the data, and obviously we saw the big increase in day use of deer in general, but obviously the next question is well, is that just a bunch of does using the property? Right. Does this translate to potentially you know buck use as well? And I I looked at the data a little bit differently. I just looked at the first week of rifle season and the week leading up to it, and in those two short windows of time, um being prior to season, it was pretty much 50-50 buck use, daylight, and night, just like the whole population. And then during season, roughly 85% of buck detections on camera were in daylight. And you know that's pretty remarkable. It's the opposite of what you always hear in popular hunting media.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

But if you think about that, the these are the same deer that the neighbors now aren't seeing during the day because they're on our property, which is you know, and I what I wanted to get to is we're kind of creating this vacuum, and that is a really valuable thing for you to be able to leverage from a management standpoint, regardless of whether you have 500 acres or 5,000 acres, creating a place that there's high quality cover that also is a safe haven, and you can do that either by reducing pressure on it, or potentially if you have a large enough property, uh, you could even think about it from having a safe haven sort of in the core of your property, and just something that's high quality cover that deer want to use that you're not pressuring. I mean, w how powerful is this to suck in the bucks day movement? Like we don't really care if they run around on the neighbors at night, they should be safe, right? But during the daytime, we really have concentrated the activity on a small piece of land where they're safe. At least, you know, as long as we uh we don't decide to harvest one. Right. So we're we're making that decision. Right. And and we did that without any feeders. You know, that's another thing. I I hear people talk about that same kind of concept really commonly, where we're gonna put a bunch of food in the middle of our property and try to concentrate activity around that food. And I'm not saying that that can't be helpful, but I don't hear people thaw talking about it from this context where we can strategically locate high quality cover and then reduce pressure on that to concentrate the day activity there so that animals are safe in that in that property.

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

The way I think of that too, Marcus, is in the way that we advise people, and traditionally it is, you know, what should I do on my property to make it better for deer, see and deer, hunting deer. And it's always, hey, we need to go to uh Google Earth or Onyx or whatever and zoom out and look at the landscape and let's figure out what is most limiting around you. And so the example you you provided there, Marcus, might be exactly the opposite of what a lot of people would say. You you may not need a big destination food plot in the center of your property. You might need destination cover. Yeah. Oh, the center of your property, and then you can hunt the periphery of that cover as deer exit your property and go to food plots on your neighbors. That that would create a perfect scenario for intercepting deer during daylight hours. Yeah.

Moriah Boggess:

I I was thinking about something else here too, um, to make this more relatable to the average hunter. And I mean, in all transparency, myself and I'm assuming probably both of you with our personal cameras, I know when I look at camera usage, and this is anecdotal because I haven't actually looked at a large data set like this, it there's a lot of at least confirmation bias. When you're looking at photos during the season, you see a lot of nighttime photos, right? Especially if you're running on a scrape or something like that. And we know a lot of a lot of use of scrapes happens in at nighttime. But I think the average listener will probably hear this and say, well, that doesn't line up at all with my property, right? That just doesn't make sense. But one thing, a point I wanted to make was back to the study design you were pointing out, Marcus, is these cameras were distributed on a grid and they were placed in areas where you normally would not have a camera running. There were cameras running in a big block of cover in just a random spot, and they might only be able to see 20 feet in front of them because of how thick it was. We would normally not have a camera sitting there. Uh, but they but for the sake of this study and being able to actually measure deer movement across this the property and not just selective areas, we were able to see true use of the property. And I bet you at the same time, if we had only had cameras running on road systems or on those few food plots we had on the property, or if we had had a corn feeder, I wager we probably would have seen the same thing most hunters see, where in those openings and those higher um risk areas that deer use, we may have seen more use at nighttime, like most hunters witness.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Yeah, I'd I certainly agree. I would I wouldn't have expected it to skew this much. And uh I think that's largely attributed to the difference in how we placed cameras, but uh I don't want people to read into that as it's not relevant. What what it is telling us is that deer are on their feet at those times of day. They're just on their feet in places we aren't I mean that exactly. You know, what you can ask Don, a lot of these places are not places you would want to walk through to go check a camera all the time.

Moriah Boggess:

Yeah.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

And that was my intent, and you know, w our the vision of that from the beginning was I'd I wanted to create a heat map of the use of the property for deer and turkeys, which we ultimately did. That was uh one of the major things from from Don's thesis that we produced, and it was really enlightening because it was the concentration of use is associated with more intense forest management. So the more we thinned and and uh herbicide use and burning to get that structure uh into that desirable community structure in the understory where we're herbaceous dominated and uh, you know, really thick ground cover, that that's where we saw the concentration of use by both species. They almost look identical, to be honest with you. When you look at the two maps side by side, they look very similar. So that was why we did it that way, but it just happened to really speak well to something of great interest to the hunting community because we were able to look at how the behavior of deer changed when we started hunting season. And to me, this is about as good of an argument as I've ever heard for managing a property intensively habitat-wise, and also modulating hunting pressure to concentrate animals to keep them off the neighbors.

Moriah Boggess:

One thing, and I think this is probably something this is a bigger topic to discuss and break down in a you know a future podcast. But um, you know, managing a property like this for cover, if you didn't manage every timber stand for cover, in other words, if you had a shorter fire return interval in some than others, and those being uh shorter, maybe uh you know, but better forage availability there. And that way you would have some of your timber stands have thicker cover. You were talking about the variability of uh um you know herbicide use and and retention of the canopy and all that. Uh for the study that was somewhat random across the landscape, but when we're working on properties, we often look at creating patches of cover that are somewhat predictable in that we don't manage all of our pines to just be a huge sea of cover with random deer movement all across them. But you can actually be more strategic than that and how you manage them, put cover in some blocks, manage others to be uh a little bit shorter vegetation, more or more or less forage stands, and those forage stands being in between cover and a final destitution food source, suddenly you could take what we're talking about here and this activity curve, and if you're hunting right on the edge of that cover block, you could probably really capitalize on that morning movement we're talking about.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

I I think that's right on the mark. You know, when I have worked with with landowners very commonly, even though they usually, when they come to me, are focused on turkey, but most of them have a secondary deer interest at least. And uh not to say that I don't ever work with anybody with deer number one, but in in every case, consistently I'm talking to them about trying to design the habitat management so that it makes it more huntable, which is what you were just saying. And some of that is based on principles here and based on principles from other work that that I have done, or Bronson or Craig Harper's work with the bedding blocks, that you know, we very clearly can see that deer are anchored to these cover patches, and we can just they don't have to necessarily be 500 acres, they can be five acres. Five to ten acre bedding blocks are are pretty effective at anchoring deer to it, and if you strategically place them so that they are huntable, that can really transform the the value of that property for hunting for you. It's just, you know, it's it takes some deliberate action, but you can definitely plan out and think about from this, you know, based on this data, a lot of the daytime use is occurring in that birth that block. And think about how powerful that could be if you're entering your property already knowing where all of the deer are. Like they're all going to be in your bedding blocks, and now you can navigate around the landscape safely so that you're not pressuring them because you don't know where they're at. Yeah.

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

Literally, Marcus uh gave that recommendation yesterday on a site. There was a 15-acre block, and um the the purpose of it was so we're trying to make a decision, do we and you know, pine overstory, but do do we need to go in there and spray it and really get it back to uh very low herbaceous understory, which obviously is going to be good from a food perspective, or because there was already it's been uh three years since the fire with no herbicide treatment, so there was some sweet gum encroachment, of course. But but we looked at it like this uh relative to the property size, it was a small stand, it was situated perfectly the way the road system is, and it's tucked away in a corner where there's not a lot of human activity. That is gonna be a great place where we may only use fire every three to four years and allow it to become a little more woody dominated in the understory and mid-story, but we are relegating that to be deer cover and even deer sanctuary, and then adjacent to that, we're gonna have a much greater frequency of spire and in the fire, and in this case an herbicide treatment, so that we definitely have more of a this is more cover-centric, this is more food-centric, sets it right up for good hunting.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Yeah.

Moriah Boggess:

Let me let me pose one question as we're as we're thinking about all this for both of you. Um, the average southern property has several food plots, there's a lot of habitat work, uh, a well-managed property, there's a lot of habitat work in the forest, and then there's a food plot, but I would wager 99 plus percent of hunting effort is on food plots in most properties. Do either I I have my answer, but do do do you guys feel that hunters are missing opportunities to capitalize on mature buck you know uh susceptibility to harvest by only focusing on food plots? In other words, what's the hunting application of this?

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

You don't need to go any further, I guess.

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

I'm setting you up. Well, Mariah, like you you and I have talked about on properties before, when you have the flexibility to do it, is absolutely keep a series of food plots or a big food plot. You know, we know with Natasha's work that three, four, five acre is really from an efficiency standpoint and attractiveness, that's like the perfect ideal size to be quote destination. But but let's not diminish the influence of that plot by just sitting on it and hunting it all the time. Of course, if we got a lot of does to kill, let's let's open in day, opening weekend, you know, let's knock some does out into the season, let's knock some does out. So let's utilize it. But then what we can do, since we know that food is going to be a hub of deer activity, let's back off of that food plot a hundred yards plus. Let's concentrate some cover patches and and let's make on the periphery of that several different cover patches, and then based on wind, you can strategically hunt the cover and corridors that go from cover to that food plot and corridors that connect cover patches, and what a great place to buck hunt during the rut. You can just envision those bucks going from cover patch to cover patch, and then also to the food plot.

Moriah Boggess:

Yeah, it's it's got me thinking, um, you know, the the average hunting effort on a property is and I I'm I'm I'm using this average by saying I I look at a lot of hunter effort uh logs, sign in, sign out data that we we gather across properties and analyze and look at sighting rates and everything. Oh the vast majority of of hunting effort on on a lot of these well-managed properties is in the evening. And like we're talking about, it's on a food plot. So now compare that to this activity curve we're looking at. The bulk of daylight movement is in the morning. Speaking, you know, Bronson to the the to the big black data you reference, those long movements where deer are most susceptible, where they're they're going long distances are in the morning, in daylight. They're in the morning. And if anyone is hunting in the morning, a lot of times they're just going to a food plot. It's a generally a low effort. They they wake up 30 minutes before sunrise, get to a food plot. And I'm I'm generalizing, I know there's people that hunt differently. But when we look at at what the data is telling us, people are missing out on the biggest opportunity to kill one of these deer when they're most susceptible, which would be a morning hunt in cover or adjacent to cover off of a food plot.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Yeah, and I you know, just to reiterate, you're you're hunting cover and you know that the deer activity is going to be anchored to that cover and strategically locating it so that you can access it without screwing it up is where the management comes in, the creativity in managing a property to not just make it more productive for deer, but also more huntable has to include how are you going to access it, knowing the deer are going to be anchored to it without screwing that up.

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

It is really empowering when you can do it and you have the landowner willing willing to do it, is that it it literally changes the the whole game and it changes opportunity so much when we focus as much effort on where is a good food plot going to be and how am I going to access that food plot to where is the really good cover and how am I going to access that cover and hunt the periphery or hunt in between food and cover. I mean, it it's just a game changer. But and I don't think it's a game changer not only in seeing some deer, seeing some mature bucks, but just in that overall thing where we started, Marcus, about hunting pressure and disturbance. You don't have the opportunity in the in that afternoon hunt to disturb so many deer on that destination food plot if you're just hunting a corridor from cover to food. It just decreases the likelihood you're gonna bump so many deer.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Yeah. Well, and I was just thinking through like how for people that are listening to this, how much do you want to see the bucks that you see on camera? I mean, how much how often do you guys hear that? It's like, oh, I got you know, I got four or five huge deer on camera, but we don't ever see them during the day. Completely nocturnal. And Bronson's put tags on how I don't even know how many deer. They're definitely not up nocturnal. They're just moving in a place that you aren't. Precisely. We're talking about being strategic about how you manage the property so that you can not only produce higher quality deer, but you're also making them more huntable so that you can see them somewhere other than on your camera at night. Yeah.

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

Yeah, I like the way you phrase that. Be strategic of how you manage the property so you can be strategic of how you hunt the property.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

I I listen to people a lot because I really value what the hunting community is thinking about. And, you know, I'm I'm trying to hear what the general thoughts are about things. And when we're talking about an issue like deer movement, then of course everybody has an opinion on what deer movement is actually doing. And uh, there's probably plenty of listeners that have better data than what we presented here. Uh, at least that's what they're gonna tell us. But I hear it really commonly that my neighbors are the problem or something along those lines, and I'm thinking about we need to put a bunch of food in the middle of our property to try to get all the deer concentrated there. And I don't hear people think about it, you know, like that's a defensive baiting or defensive feeding type of strategy. But I don't hear people say, you know what, I need to put really high quality cover where deer will feel safe in the middle and then leave it alone, and that's how I'm gonna defend against deer going on the neighbor's property. But I mean, our data show that as clear as it can be, that that would be a really effective strategy.

Moriah Boggess:

Kind of uh I was gonna say it's kind of circular reasoning almost, that uh a lot of times the same hunter who will tell you they're not seeing that deer in daylight, they're not getting an opportunity to to kill a buck or or, you know, a deer they're watching because he's quote unquote nocturnal, but they're scared, they're very afraid that the neighbor's gonna kill him on his corn pile versus theirs. But logic would dictate that, and I think this is where you're getting that with that statement, is that deer's no more susceptible across the line than on them, but if they had better cover, the deer would only really be using that that cover during daylight.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Yeah, I mean all of not all of it, but 85% of our detections in the cover during the day when you can shoot one.

Moriah Boggess:

Yeah. That's something that I so um I was looking through this data this morning and I was um I was looking at the times and I was putting them into into 30 minute bins. And as I went through the day, whenever rifle season hit, the thing that struck me the most was yes, daylight movement increased a little bit. Actually, when you look at it, afternoon movement dropped off in daylight, but nighttime movement dropped off the most. And it made me wonder if if we had talked to the neighbors during this study, I bet you they would have all told us all of our bucks went nocturnal, our deer went nocturnal, and that's probably the reason that in the data set we're not seeing a lot of nighttime movement. Yeah, the fact that proportion is daylight.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Their neighbors eating out their corn pile at night when they're safe. And then they all everybody scurries back to our property to hang out all day long in the cover and they walk around picking around in there, eating all day while it's safe, waiting on night, the the cover of night to go back. And I'm perfectly good with that because those animals aren't gonna get shot over there when that happens.

Moriah Boggess:

So if you use that pressure, you can use them hunting over those corn feeders and over those food plots to your advantage. In other words, they are driving those deer to be daylight active, diurnal on your property if you had the right cover.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

What a phenomenal outcome, right? Now, instead of your neighbor being a problem, they are ensuring that it's so unsafe during the day on their property that all the daytime movement, which is going to happen, the deer aren't going to not move during the day based on all these tags on all these deer everywhere. Isn't that right, Bronson? They're gone they're gonna still move. They're just going to now do it on your property where you are moderating pressure and providing a high quality, safe place for them to forge around during the day. And that's exactly what happened in the data set. As soon as rifle season started, uh, we literally started seeing more bucks during the day. And and that also, like you said, it appears that we see less bucks at night because they're on the neighbors.

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

So it begs the question why can't more people do this? Um well there there's one thing is that a lot of people hunt on leased property, so they can't manipulate the habitat. But something I always wonder about too and when I say marketing, it it typically has this negative connotation, and I I I don't mean that. But it's a lot easier to teach someone, I think, to plant a food plot and to, of course, go buy a feeder and fill it full of corn than it is to examine a timber stand or an area and manage it for cover. I think that's another level of expertise and experience and complication that's involved with that.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

And investment. Yeah. It takes more time to do it and it's harder work often.

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

But then look at opportunity, be all that be as it may, what may be most limiting on your landscape is this quality cover. And instead of spending a lot of time and effort, of course we're gonna want to have food on a property, but to me, this just says look at what can be just as much. And from a landscape perspective, even more important is gonna be setting up good cover on your property. You may see better results from that than from food.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

You know, uh it made me I don't know if this wants if we want this to go on the air or not. Uh, but I also just kind of thought about when you were saying that, Bronson, I was like, wait a minute. What how many feeders does well you actually probably have data on this? How many feeders and food plots does the average buck have access to? We'll just say a lot. Lot. So adding another feeder or food plot, why do we expect that to transform how he's behaving? Diminishing returns. But in many of these places, and I I go on a lot of them, and you guys go on a lot of them, bedding cover and place to feel safe is usually more limiting. And I would say far even more limiting is that cover being located and structured such that you can take advantage of it as a hunter. You know, I know people hunt around the edges of cover, but I mean on this property, you can literally hunt in the cover. You can just get up behind a pine tree and see deer walking around in it, and they think they're good. But you can clearly see them walking around in it.

Moriah Boggess:

So, um speaking to Your point there, Marcus. I just looked this up. I remember this report from South Carolina DNR from years ago. They reported it from a survey, they surveyed hunters, and this is uh obviously a baiting state, 10,600 pounds of bait available on the landscape per year. And um so you think about that number and then your neighbors and you and I would challenge some of the people out there that have this frustration. Are your neighbors the problem or are you just like your neighbors? And a lot of the time when folks are complaining about their neighbors, their actions aren't that different from what their neighbors are doing. What is a lot of times different is what they believe they're doing or their intention. Um and I I know in the psychology world there's there's an explanation for this that like we all believe that we are more well-intended than people around us, therefore we always think that that we're the reasonable person in a situation. And I could see where that might extend even into this subject, but the deer doesn't know any different. Your cornpile and your overgrazed food plot full of ryegrass doesn't look any different than anyone else's. And so even though you think that you're doing the right thing, and I know people are probably upset hearing that, I just don't know that that a lot of people are moving the needle like they think they are.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Yeah. Well, I I just maybe that will help people work through this, you know, that uh when Bronson's saying zoom out and look at what's going on around you, that's not just food. But, you know, we we can differentiate, and one thing that we know to be true is that deer are gonna anchor to cover, and you can be strategic about how you place it around your property. One note, Mariah, a little more updated and from closer to home for you, in North Carolina, it's about three thousand pounds per square mile per year. It's still a lot of food. That's a literally a ton of food. Yeah.

Moriah Boggess:

I just that's just feeding, not food plots. I just think about the intangible or they're m probably measurable, but we don't necessarily know how that's affecting the ecology of the animal and plant world on that landscape because you just think about the food that's being put out there and what it's subsidizing and well, here's what I do know putting more of it out there is not gonna transform the animal's behavior to make them concentrate on your property.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

I I don't believe that that's gonna happen.

Moriah Boggess:

Well, that's where I was going with like the are you any different than your neighbor? Because to if you want to have a property that's truly special, you have to be willing to step away from the mold. And oftentimes that means uh it's going to be uncomfortable, at least mentally, trusting the process and following actual habitat improvement versus the typical corn on the ground small food plot and hunt the food situation. Not that I'm against hunting food, I don't think any of us are, but well, here's another topic for another day.

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

You're talking about adding all this food on the landscape, and the data are clear that there is. So why doesn't everybody have big fat deer if there's all this food? Again, there's some answers there, and we we probably need to devote that to an episode of just that question would be interesting.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

I think that'd be a great episode. If there's so much food, why aren't there big fat deer?

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

Why doesn't everybody have big old boonin' crockets everywhere? So there's that's still not addressing the limiting factor, is it?

Moriah Boggess:

And why do we still have coal bucks if people have been calling bucks for decades?

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

Why are there still coal bucks? If they've improved genetics with all this culling, why why isn't every deer 170?

Moriah Boggess:

I I re I remember even as a kid logically thinking through like, why are there still coal bucks if we've been culling? Because it's not, you know, everybody has that that mindset. Or I I say that like it's pretty common. Um both great discussions for the future. Yep, absolutely. And I I'm gonna use this to tease a future episode that I want us to have, which is talking about how to set up pine stands and how to break up pine stands strategically for this very thing. Because a lot of properties are rectangular or they have large rectangular stands, and they might only have one age of pine on their property. Um in the the general forestry approach would be to manage that as one large one large even age stand. The same year across the stand, a management uh activity is implemented and so on. And in the future, we we need to sit down and hash out and discuss how we are all approaching those types of stands because I know we we're splitting those up in some cases, we're managing some parts of them differently, whether that's variable overstory retention, understory management uh with herbicide or fire. And there's a lot of options I think landowners um maybe sometimes don't realize they have for making a property even more intricate and man and hunable, even in a landscape like the Southeast where we are swamped with cover.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Yeah. Along those lines, Mariah, I think we also ought to talk about how to make it not here, but in the future, we should talk about how to make it more hunnible for turkeys. Yes. I know you guys are deer nuts, but there's a whole bunch of folks out there who want to know how to do that for turkeys.

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

Hey, I've got no problem with that. I'm not any good at it, but I got no problem with that.

Moriah Boggess:

Well, then I'll drop this right here for uh this is one of our earliest podcast episodes, but all these subjects will be discussed more. We're just uh, you know, scratching the surface on some of these topics, but we'll be alternating through um, you know, the guys that are on right now, the three of us, but also the rest of our team. So there's seven, eight, nine, ten more of us to to alternate through on different uh topics of expertise. And when it's time to talk turkey, we'll let the turkey guys talk.

Dr. Marcus Lashley:

Well, uh, I'll just remind the audience, you know, one of the things that helps these podcasts be successful is for you to to give us feedback and rate it and share it with people. But, you know, if you have topics that you want us to cover like this, drop us a comment when you rate the podcast, and we will come back to those if especially when we get a lot of them. That uh, you know, that feedback for both uh, but I guess Bronson, I'm assuming you would be in this boat, so I don't want to speak for you, but we'll let you agree. Uh, the feedback from our audience from all of our other endeavors has been a driver of not only making us want, you know, have the motivation to continue bringing content, but it's also helped drive what that content is because we want it to be relevant to people. And here I think we're able to connect this much more specifically to hunters and land managers than we have in other venues. So, you know, drop us a line on what you'd like to hear about and we'll come back to it.

Dr. Bronson Strickland:

Yeah, that that has been um that has been one of the most fulfilling aspects of my career is when we hear from people, Marcus, and they tell us of how this information is helping them manage their land and their hunting is better and they're happier and they're more satisfied. That's what it's all about. And so, yeah, it truly does motivate me to do more and to get more information out. All right, fellas, if y'all gotten what you need out of me, partially.

Moriah Boggess:

Thanks for listening to the Wildlife Investments Podcast. For more information on these topics or to see some of the projects our team is working on, follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Wildlife Investments, or visit wildlifeinvestments.com.

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