Do We Need Deer Population Estimates

How many deer are on the property you hunt, or state you live in? Do we really need to know these numbers to effectively manage deer populations? Deer management is saturated with talk about deer population estimations, but seldom do you hear discussion on why we monitor populations and more importantly what information we need to do so. Bronson, Bonner, and Moriah discuss these questions and how they approach deer population monitoring effectively and realistically.

Transcript

Welcome to Wildlife Investments

Moriah Boggess 0:01

Welcome to Wildlife Investments, where we discuss wildlife research, habitat, hunting, and land management with our panel of leading resource managers. Wildlife Investments, resource management by scientists.

The Obsession With “How Many Deer Do I Have?

Why State Population Estimates Are Basically Useless

Dr. Bronson Strickland 0:21

On this episode, the Wildlife Investments podcast, I am joined by Bonner Powell and Moriah Boggus, and we are going to talk about the number, the deer number, deer density, how many deer are on my property, how many deer are in my county, how many deer are in the state? And there's obsession's probably too strong of a word, but people are always very, very curious, wanting to quantify the number. How many deer do I have? And so we want to, I guess, delve into that topic. And is that a number that need you need to spend a lot of time on? Is that something you need to chase? What are some pros and cons of doing that? What's it going to cost you to pursue getting that number? And I guess we'll give our opinion and insight as to why we think that is not a critical number that you need to know. And so, Moriah, why don't I start with you? You have served as deer program coordinator for the state of Indiana as well as the state of North Carolina. And I'm sure you were asked that question all the time. And I know in my life experience, I have heard hunters in various states. Some hunters will even say it very condescendingly. So how do we trust their credibility when they don't even know how many deer we have in the state? Blah, blah, blah. So I'm curious if you were ever posed that question and and maybe how you responded to it.

Moriah Boggess 2:05

Yeah, I was definitely posed it, and I would give them the answer we had, and then usually qualified and say, hey, this is probably right, plus or minus 50% of the number. Something like that. I think in North Carolina it's like 1.2 million, something like that, for the state is usually kind of how it worked out. And and we actually did have a model there. A lot of states do have a model. I was actually looking at the most recent NDA deer report uh the other day, which I always enjoy pouring through there and kind of looking at all the data that the different states report to NDA. And you know, one of those one of those data that they do ask for is the the total deer population of the state, and and they vary widely. And you see those numbers kind of compared sometimes on social media, and something will be like, oh, the X state has this number of deer, and that state has this number. And it's so apples to oranges, because I think what most people don't understand is that the model that each state uses is if there is a model, it's so wild. And then the kind of data that's going into the model, even if the models were the same, maybe they're just based on age and sex of harvest in number. If if those were the variables going in, even how a state collects age of harvest can vary widely. If they're doing that at check stations, that age structure is going to be wildly different than if they're doing it at, you know, through their DMAP program. As you can imagine, DMAP program data are often older, at least with bucks, older age classes. Oh, yeah. Because those are properties that are managing very specifically. And those might even be a little bit younger in that sample. Yeah, because they're killing a lot of deer. And so anyway, there's just so many ways that those numbers can be different, and it really doesn't mean anything. And that's something that I know for me has become kind of a pet peeve, and that I I I truly like I wish I knew how many deer were on you know a property we manage or in a state. Like that would be cool, but it wouldn't mean anything to me. If I knew that there was 1.5 million two hundred and fifty-three deer in the state of Virginia, cool. What what what do I do with that? It doesn't really mean anything. And the same thing applies to even you know local properties. And so a lot of states, I don't I don't want to speak for them, but at least when I was in that role, I kind of viewed it as everybody wants a number, we're gonna do our best without breaking our back and spending a million dollars to come up with a number, report that number, qualify it, and move on to things that actually matter, which at the state level would be you know regulatory stuff that's actually just monitoring the population, maintaining it over time. And that's I think that's applicable even at the at the property level, that viewpoint. You see you you see my concern with my answer.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 5:04

No, no, no. You are yeah, I was like, all right, where where do where do we go from here?

Stop Counting Deer, Start Measuring Deer Condition

Moriah Boggess 5:12

I I'll take that a little bit further because I guess there's a little bit more I'd like to add. So something now kind of thinking about more at a property level, a question I know I've gotten many times in the last year, and I'm sure you guys are getting it, is people will ask, what do you think my carrying capacity is? And should we truly know the population of deer that you have, you know, on your property, that would be a relevant question. Be like, well, if you have 153 deer on your property, what is the carrying capacity? Now, most properties aren't self-con, like they're there, there's ingress and regress, so there's deer coming and going. There's not a finite carrying capacity on their property, it's more of a landscape thing and there's really no bounds to it. So it's carrying capacity. That this is kind of where I get down in the weeds about even asking about deer population size is that even like in the case of carrying capacity, with carrying capacity, there's is a theoretical number. A lot of different ecologists have differing views on what carrying capacity truly is and how they define it. I really like the definition of carrying capacity being the population where that animal starts to negatively affect its habitat and therefore the long-term capacity of the landscape to you know carry it. But there's you know, other people would define it very differently. But at the end of the day, carrying capacity is just kind of it's one of these numbers that, yeah, we can talk about it and we could throw around X number of deer, a Y number of deer that might make us feel smart, but it really wouldn't accomplish anything. And then so where I've kind of gone in response to that question about carrying capacity is like, all right, let's take a step back and what are we really trying to accomplish here? The reason most people are asking about carrying capacity is that they want a deer herd in good condition. They want individuals to be in good condition because they're also concerned with antler size. They're they're concerned with trophy quality, they they want to have a quality hunting experience. And so the bottom line is if your population were truly at carrying capacity, you would not have good quality animals in that population. They would be nutrition, uh nutrient limited, the whole thing back to you know, density dependence and all that, obviously, that taking density dependence playing out would decrease the quality of animals. And so that's kind of where I've gone with with that answer is like, hey, let's not talk about the number of deer you have on your property, because we could spend a lot of time trying to come up with a number, but at the end of the day, that really doesn't help. But let's flip it back the other direction. What are you actually trying to achieve? Oh, you want better quality deer, and now that's like this huge conundrum I've been talking for minutes, and everyone's eyes are googly and like what the heck is he talking about? Really, all we need to talk about what's the condition of the deer.

Bonner Powell 8:08

Yeah.

Moriah Boggess 8:08

So now we can cover all that, all the numbers, all the carrying capacity. What is your condition of deer? That's what we're really talking about.

Bonner Powell 8:15

That's what I was gonna say. Everybody's concerned about how many deer per square mile. That's what I hear all the time. Like, I, you know, I you know, I heard a 60 deer per square mile is good to have. Yeah, sure it might be. I mean, it it's so property and landscape dependent, you know, across the state, across your soil region, all of that. Like you said, it's less important to worry about what if you've got 40 or 60 or 80 deer per square mile, and worry more about when I when I shoot a three and a half year old doe and I strip the skin off over there's fat everywhere, you know. That deer condition is really telling us what we need to know. But I will say it it does help us sometimes, you know, a little bit of an estimate here or there, but the exact count's probably not important. I know I know that if somebody tells me they've got a hundred deer per square mile, I don't care if you're in the Mississippi, we probably got a few too many. We we can probably take that back a little bit. And and I think sometimes people get a little bit too hung up on holding holding too many deer as opposed let's back that off of what would be quote unquote carrying capacity. Let's back that off a little bit and have really healthy deer. Like like I got a call yesterday and it it was like, hey, we've been planting this American joint vetch and and the deer aren't using all of it. Like it's growing up and it's it's three foot, four foot tall. And I just I don't know. We're you know, they're not using all of it. I'm like, well, that's probably a good thing. You've probably uh overwhelmed them a little bit with food availability. I think people get you know too hung up on holding too many deer sometimes. And they won't and just strictly because of the number.

Moriah Boggess 10:16

100%. Yeah, the that question you you raised about the American Joy Vetch, I've heard that so many times. About cool season food plots, about warm season food plots, then that is the point. We are always trying to overwhelm deer with nutrition, tonnage, and options every season of the year.

Bonner Powell 10:34

Yep. Well, I mean, you can look at me. I eat all the food on my plate, but I get I keep some in the cabinet now, you know what I'm saying? Like I ain't trying to get rid of all of it.

The Trap of High Deer Density

Dr. Bronson Strickland 10:46

But anyway, you know. Well, the the example too with j deer vetch, joint vetch, etc., it also depends on the novelty of it. So if it's if it's the first year they did it, we can fully expect that. But guarantee if they do it again next year, they'll see, unless they had a drastic reduction in deer population from harvesting, they'll they'll probably see much greater utilization the the following year. So here's what I want to make some contribution to the conversation is you know, we're typically dealing with people that want to maximize the number of large antlered mature bucks on their property. So that is the the the target they are chasing, and depending on the region, property size, et cetera, they may be chasing the frequency of 140s or 150s or 160s, etc. Which is going to have to, which which is going to be affected by deer density and food availability, and of course those bucks getting older. But there's a counterpunch in here, too, with whether it be the hunting club or whether it be the manager, is sometimes I have sensed that a manager might be concerned that they're not doing a good job of managing the property if they're not seeing a bunch of deer, if the hunters aren't seeing a lot of deer. I know for a fact with some people, they will get worried that the landowner who they work for, if they send out family members, clients, et cetera, to hunt on that property, and they did not have a good hunting experience because they saw very few deer or didn't see any deer, which might be precisely what the three of us are working towards on that property to get it down really low. The manager is gonna feel like, ugh, I'm failing because my boss or whoever, you know, the hunting club, they're not seeing a lot of deer and their hunt quality is diminished. So I I know I have been caught in that mismatch of we need to figure out exactly what your target is. And how are we gonna deal with the seesaw effect, the number of deer, and if seeing a lot of deer, that is the definition of your hunt quality, that's okay. That helps us, you know, help you obtain that. But if your if your your end product is the number of trophy bucks, then we've got a problem. We got to reconcile with your deer density and the deer number and so forth. Have y'all ever sensed that working with landowners and managers? They are affected by the the number of deer. They really want to have an evening sit on a food plot and they want to see 10 to 15 deer. They're concerned when they're not seeing that many deer. There's been a population decline and it may not recover.

Bonner Powell 13:48

And I I see that a lot more in places, Bronson, that have held high deer densities for a long period of time. They get kind of, you know, they get you very used to seeing a lot of deer a lot of the time, and you can go just about any time and see five to ten deer. You know, when we when they start harvesting the appropriate number of does to really start making a difference, whether they're really knocking down the number of does or they're not seeing deer in the wide open, whichever one, they'll get they'll get very concerned just because it's so different from what they've seen for a such a long time period. Now, on the other hand, you know, places with low deer density, man, if you start if they start increasing deer populations, I think they're very sensitive to that. They're they think that is like astronomical win. And that's something that we're trying to kind of hold down a little bit, you know. So I think it's all dependent on kind of what you've seen in the past, what you're used to, so on and so forth. You know, I would kind of relate it back to, you know, it's all just their own experience and their concern for, you know, what they think is a good job. Like you said, you know, 15 to 2 is a big jump. You know, if you go from seeing 15 on a on a good sit to three or four on a good sit, that's a that's a really big jump.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 15:21

Yeah.

Moriah Boggess 15:22

A lot of times the number of deer, you know, obviously is higher than we would want. Like their goal, what they want to see, is higher than than we would want. But it doesn't make sense for it doesn't really make sense for you to have the expectation to see the same number of deer if you're also trying to achieve better quality. The whole you can't have your cake and eat it too principle. It's is great in practice, or it's you know, it's it's great in thought, and we always talk about it, but it's a lot harder to accomplish in practice or to accept in practice. And I think going from one of those sits where it's like, oh yeah, I always used to see 20 or 40 deer in that field to now something that's actually more normal, like, okay, there's only eight or twelve, yeah, feels like such a huge loss for them. But I don't know about y'all, but anytime I hear anyone talk about seeing that many deer in a field, I start to wince because like that. That cringe, yeah. That is a big warning flag. Yeah, that there's probably some issues. There's some there's some limitations on the landscape. Not only because that many deer, but if that many deer are having to be concentrated on one suit food source every single night, it's probably because there's a lack of food elsewhere that's driving from there.

Why Hunters Panic When Numbers Drop (Even When That's the Plan)

Bonner Powell 16:30

I also think people discount how much they attribute seeing deer to feeling like that was a suc that was a successful hunt. Like harvest be left out of it, you know, if I saw ten deer on this food plot this evening, that was a success, regardless of what they say their goals are. You know what I'm saying? Like, my goal is to kill big deer. Alright, well, to to do that, we're gonna we're gonna make the habitat better, and we're also gonna start shooting some deer. But I think they discount how much that plays into their hunter satisfaction. And I don't I don't think they know, like you know what I mean. And then when you go two hunts, three hunts without seeing a deer, or or you go two or three hunts where you only see one or two, they they really realize they're like, oh, I did not know how much I like sitting here and seeing deer, you know. And you gotta you gotta get used to that.

Moriah Boggess 17:32

You gotta get used to that. Then the question comes, how many deer do we have? That's exactly right.

Bonner Powell 17:38

That's where they go. That's where they go.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 17:40

We've killed them all. We've killed them all. So to me, Bonner, and I I don't think anybody would know well, maybe they would. So I'm a normal human being as well.

Bonner Powell 17:52

Yep.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 17:52

A human hunter. I enjoy seeing deer. If I went three or four hunts in a row and got skunked, that would diminish my excitement about it. But so I think the question you would need to tease out with a club, a landowner, etc., is at what point is it diminishing returns? And so you could do it, okay, you want to see a deer every other hunt. That's an answer. That's a bookend. Do you feel better about your hunt if you saw 15 versus 25? And that, you know, they might come around, no man, as long as I see a couple deer, okay, a couple deer. And so then I think we're all right. Now we're being both sides can be reasonable now. You still want some deer on your property, you still want to see deer, you don't have to see 20 plus deer every time you go hunting. That is biologically reasonable to work through that. So you can lower the deer population and still accomplish the goals the landowner wants.

Bonner Powell 18:54

Yeah. And I I think I think sometimes, especially in the deep south, you know, we went through that we went through the generation where, you know, you didn't harvest those. No dose. It was illegal. All right. Then we came out of that, and you know, a lot of the recommendations, and and I know you've seen some Bronson in the past, but I mean, I've seen some recommendations where I'm like, oh my God, at the number of deer per acre they're recommending for these people to shoot. And I think people have gotten sensitive to that over time, you know, especially if if they personally or somebody they've they've known in the past has had a bad relationship with that, where, you know, I've I've talked to biologists that say, well, if you want them to kill 50, recommend a hundred, you know, because they're gonna they're gonna ease up at halfway. Well, I've also heard people say that and then be like, I'll be dadgum, I come back, they killed a hundred. Now we're now we're in trouble. Now we've created a problem. And I think people are sensitive to that, and and I think that's Moriah, I think that's always why we get the question, well, what you know, how many deer do I have? Because people people aren't willing to take it to to zero or close to zero, you know, to your point.

Trophy Goals vs. the Reality Check: You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

Moriah Boggess 20:14

Uh to to d dive into this a little bit more. So we start out with, okay, how many deer do we have? That that question everyone wants to know. Now we're kind of diving down into what is it that hunter really wants. Yeah, what do they really want to know? When when we come on their property, they'll tell us, hey, we want to shoot the biggest bucks possible. Don't we all? Right. Trophy management. But to achieve trophy management, we would have to have a super low deer population. You know, theoretically, the lowest it is, the better. So is that a deer per square mile? Well, even we know to not take people at that much literal of their word. But we're shooting at something oftentimes like 50% of the population they start with, if they start at a really high point. And where there's a lot of pushback oftentimes or concern with the number of deer, is when they start to see the immediate result of that work, which is fewer deer, then the result that they're actually wanting, bigger ones is a little bit delayed. Yeah. And so they start to realize, hey, I'm I'm not as serious about the trophy side of thing as I thought I was. And then we start to get into back to this thing, all right, well, how many deer are there? And my same, you know, and I started out with saying, well, we don't really need to know because all we need to do is measure quality. That's making the assumption that they are truly, objectively, only interested in quality animals. But even if that's not fully the case, we're getting some of this, you know, kind of mismatch about what they're saying and and and you know, from what they're seeing and maybe happy or unhappy there versus the trophy side of things. It's the answer still isn't, oh, we need to do a survey and say you have X number of deer and we only are managing for Y. The to your point, earlier, it's talking to them and saying, Hey, how many deer are you seeing? You happy with that? Can we knock it down a little bit more to help you achieve the objective you first told us? Or maybe we do have to back off and we're we know we're going to give up quality long term, but you'll be happier. You might still be in a better place than you started. Now you you don't see 40 deer per se, but maybe we've got it to the point where you're happy only seeing 18. And at least you're going to see some improvement from that. You're not going to be a trophy management property. We can talk about trophy management all we want, but if we don't actually apply it in the field, if we don't actually manage the population properly, all the talk in the world doesn't make that reality on the ground. And I think that's where there's oftentimes a mismatch between us as biologists, taking things too literal and saying, hey, that's what they said they want, versus hunters when they're seeing, you know, myself, like Ross made the point earlier, I'm a regular hunter. Yeah, I like seeing deer too. You know, I think we all do. And but I also don't approach hunting from a trophy management standpoint myself. I want to harvest good deer, but I want to see deer. So I would, you know, on a property that I would own, I would fall somewhere in that middle ground where I'm like, yeah, I do want to see deer. I don't want to have deer at carrying capacity because I want to have good quality habitat and enjoy the aspect of that. And I want to have, you know, an abundant population that's reproducing well. But I also don't want to have five deer per square mile so that I can produce the very best antler quality possible.

Bonner Powell 23:27

Yeah, and I think I think more people fall into that category or a little bit on either side of that category than you know what we give credit for. You know, if you've got if you've got a property and and you're killing enough does and you're seeing enough deer that you're happy, and you're killing bucks that are on average or slightly above average for your soul region, a lot of people are very, very happy. Because most of the people that you talk to in in your area, whether you go to church on Sunday and show somebody the deer you killed, and they're like, oh, for this, for around here, that's a good deer. You know, that's all anybody ever wants to hear, really. But there are those the select few where we won't take them down and take them down quick and let's get this this game started.

Moriah Boggess 24:17

But it's very you just reminded me of a pet peeve of mine when people say that's a mature deer for around here. Yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Three year olds or two year olds. Well, around here, that's a mature deer. I'm like, bro, you don't understand that the idea of biological maturity.

Genetics and the "Rolls of the Dice" Strategy for Big Bucks

Dr. Bronson Strickland 24:33

Yep. You know, we we also have I guess context here. A lot of the properties we work with, we're we're relying on the process of density dependence to to operate. In a lot of these places, they are food limited or food restricted. And when we reduce the number of my my mouths, there is more food availability per individual and they respond. We we also make the assumption, and it holds 99.9% of the time, that you are going to stimulate reproduction. So when you are increasing deer quality, you're gonna increase fecundity and you're gonna increase recruitment. So the the the luxury that we have is even if you overshot. So, Bonner, your point, you recommended 100 so they would kill 50, but they actually killed 100. One or two years later, they're right back, you know, to where they were. And a lot of people may think, well, isn't it always like that? No, it is not. So, you know, my personal example, you you go to South Texas, and especially if they're not any supplemental feeding, you go float out there a really big heavy dough harvest, you may be sitting there for a decade waiting for that population to build back. So you gotta be, depending on how extreme the environment is, you got to be more and more careful with these recommendations. Another counterpoint, guys, is we talk about lowering that population for the reasons discussed because we want to increase quality. There's also an argument can be made to where what is the sweet spot for the greater the number of doughs I have on my property, the greater the number of buck fawns that will be produced. Some of them will disperse, some of them won't. And we know that we're waiting for a 150 or greater buck to be produced. We gotta have some genetic magic there. We gotta have the the right union of the mother's genetics and the father's genetics, and we can do everything in the world in terms of having food production, but genetics do come into play here. Your your average buck in the in the south is gonna be eight points. And depending on where you're at in the south, it's gonna be 115 to 120 inches, and in some places 135 inches. So to produce a 150 or greater, you got to rely on that genetic random chance of the union of this particular dough and that particular buck. So all of that, that was very long-winded. But I think of producing that way is I want to maximize the number of rolls of the dice. The dough is one die, the buck is one die, and when you roll those, are you gonna get a two or are you gonna get a twelve? And we're shooting for tens, elevens, and twelves if we want to produce one fifties, one sixties, one seventies, etc. So I just I don't want three deer on my property to do that. Right. I've just decreased my odds. So we are always looking at that delicate balance. How do we maximize the number rolls of the dice, but not diminishing quality of the herd?

Moriah Boggess 28:12

And it's complicated. I'd like to take a second just to explain that because uh we're relying on a principle of density dependence there in reproduction. I don't I don't want us to glaze over that. And I know you you kind of caveatted that with, hey, what if what you know, what about properties where this isn't working? But in general, for for folks listening, when you harvest more deer, you alleviate some of that resource limitation, which helps successful reproduction by allowing those does to carry those fetuses to term and then be able to feed those fawns in those early weeks, which can be a huge limitation on fawn survival. I mean, yeah, we've got predation, we've got, you know, there's some of that going on, and obviously that importance of that varies big time based on you know individual properties and where you're at. But if we have malnourished those, those fawns, chances are aren't going to survive. And then we see that's how we get these populations where, yeah, you might be seeing 40 deer every night, but your reproduction rate, your successful recruitment might only be 20%. And so what we might actually get by, you know, instead of seeing 40 deer every night, now you might see 25, because we knocked that population way down. But now instead of a recruitment rate of 20%, we're now at like 60 or 70 rolls of the dice. So that's the logic behind shooting more deer to increase turnover of the population. You're allowing those mothers that are left to successfully reproduce because you can have a lot of deer and not have much reproduction.

Speaker 4 29:47

Yeah.

Moriah Boggess 29:48

That happens a lot.

Bonner Powell 29:49

Well, and Bronson, I think I've even heard you say this, but it's kind of like the 6A school versus the 1A school theory. You've got more c you know collegiate athletes that come out of a 6A school than a 1A school. And it has not a whole lot to do with the talent of the kids. It's more that there's just more rolls of the dice. You got more kids coming through. There's just a higher statistical probability that you're going to have an athlete.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 30:16

The 1A school may have the same level of expertise with the coaching staff and the weight training program and the nutrition program, but you've got an option of, hey, there's 30 guys in high school at this school, there's a thousand guys at this other high school. And so, yeah, you you're you're you're increasing your odds of putting the best athletes on the field because you have a bigger pool of people to choose from. But I I think that's a very similar concept there.

The Lag Problem: Why Better Antlers Don't Show Up Right Away

Bonner Powell 30:46

Moriah, you mentioned earlier, you know, when we start heavy harvest on dough and and people start to see the results of well, they see dough numbers go down because we're we're shooting them, you know, but they don't necessarily see butt quality increase. Could you talk just a little bit about that lag and what hunters could expect and and how that's going to shift over the next four or five, I mean, even maybe a decade.

Moriah Boggess 31:13

I think that also ties into some of the response variables that we pay a lot of attention to, being like body weights and eventually antler size. I think the best explanation of you know, broad level, we can't really expect a huge change in quality of bucks until we are starting to see deer reach maturity that have lived their whole life without resource limitation. And then going to some of the epigenetic works or work from Mississippi State is you know, you lengthen that out, and then you start to have fawns that were born to mothers who also were never resource limited. And we start to see this kind of a compounding effect. And so what we see, if you come into the property and we kind of start in a crappy spot, maybe our average mature dough weight is like 95 pounds. That next year we've we've removed a bunch of mouths, and so there's there's less competition for resources. We probably go in there, cut a bunch of trees. You know, we've done some thinning, we've done some fire. All of a sudden we have way more food, and the proportion of food to deer is way greater. So the first thing we see, the most sensitive and quickly reacting, you know, assessment you can make is when you pull that height off, like you mentioned earlier, you see a lot of fat. And that is sensitive to the last few months. So, like this past fall of 2025, even crappy properties, we're seeing some fat on deer because we had a really good acorn crop. So that's really that's that's more kind of temporary and time sensitive. But we should see that that improvement in carcass condition right away when we start to make improvements in the balance of of availability of nutrition. But then over time, those body weights should start creeping up. And Mark Turner's research, you know, he looked deer all across the the east, and I forget the exact correlation or the exact relationship, but there's a direct correlation. When dough body weights are higher, antler size at maturity is higher on average. And when we can move that average over time, then you know, I obviously everyone's happy, but it we kind of start at the beginning. First, we have to make the deer skeletally bigger. Well, we have to make them in better condition. Eventually, that trans that transfers to skeletal condition being larger as those young deer grow up with better resources. We're not, by providing resources, we're not making a four and a half-year-old doe all of a sudden grow a bigger skeleton. She is what she's gonna be. She's she's mature at that point. She'll get in better condition, but then her offspring are suddenly born to a mother that wasn't resource limited. Then the whole time they're in their womb, they're in, they're getting you know better nutrients. When they're born, they're gonna have all the milk they need. They're gonna have a lot better, you know, nutrition in their their early months. And that translates, of course, to a size at maturity. And therefore, again, we see that same relationship with antler size. And so it is kind of a catch-22 in that you you gotta go, there's ripping off the band-aid, but then there's the sting of a couple years where you're like, man, that the antler size doesn't seem like we had an effect. But if you really wanted to sort of preemptively measure that, now in year two, we're not gonna necessarily see a huge increase in in mature buck antler size. We might see a little bit of, you know, yeah, a little bit of a rise as those deer are just in in general better conditioned, but their their skeletal development, their whole body development wasn't improved because they kind of, you know, they were still born into the old, the old habitat. But if we start to look at the yearling cohort, that is the most sensitive because those are you know young deer that were born into the new habitat, for lack of a better word. And if we start to look at yearling body weights, we start that first year, start when the population is at poor condition. We look at yearling body weights of those in bucks, if we have any yearling bucks on you know on the skating rack. And then year two, year three, year four, we should see those body weights increase. And then in the case of bucks, even antler size increase if we're taking those measurements. And that would be the best way to you know provide some self-assurance that, hey, you're doing the right thing. And so on most properties, we don't have the yearling antler characteristics to measure and see that rise. But if we're looking at at least yearling dough body weights, that should provide us a very sensitive response variable that we can very quickly see, hey, we've made a big difference. Now we just have to believe, follow this a few more years, and it's going to pay off with larger antlers.

What Data Should You Actually Be Collecting at the Skinning Shed?

Bonner Powell 35:49

Yeah. So Bronson, I know you've you're the leading expert in this field, or at least helped write the book on some of it. But what if a property manager, a property owner, a hunter, if they're wanting to either ease into this, you know, a couple toes at a time, or whether they're wanting to jump off in the deep end, you know, obviously we have all our properties doing this, but what do you recommend these properties keep up with as far as harvest data and and what what does that what does that tell you?

Dr. Bronson Strickland 36:26

Yeah. Well, what what I would recommend is probably going to be overwhelming and no one would want to do it. But I'm an egghead and I like this stuff, and I think it addresses just what Moriah was going into detail. I think the longest term response is going to be the structural size of the deer. And so we've we've all seen this to where you can have a very small deer that appears to be heavy and appears to have fat on it. And that's an individual, but when you see over and over structurally small deer, but they have some body weight and they have some fat, that is an indicator of a short-term response. So they've had food in the last year and they've had a lot of good food, especially like this year with mast, right before you killed them. And so small deer that are fat, or small deer that have a lot of body fat, what you want to move to, and it will take a couple generations to do this, but like Moriah referenced the epigenetic effect, is you want to move to structurally larger deer. And so you will get that both in their frame, their skeletal frame, and then you'll you'll get that with their body weight. So to circle back to your question, I would love it if it's like what we would do at the deer pens years ago, is measuring shoulder height, total body length, and all that, and track that over time, age specifically, and and pairing that, of course, with with body weight. And everybody does body weight, so that that's not an issue. I would I would ask them to do the structural size, a couple metrics there, and nobody will do it because it's a pain. But the one thing people can do, and a lot of a lot of our clients are doing this, it's very useful, is a carcass condition score. And I ask people just from one to five, one being there's no fat on this deer whatsoever, five being on the back, on the rump, visceral fat, you just get grab handfuls and handfuls of fat. I think keeping up with that would be very beneficial and educational. And you you see the the footprint of mast this year, don't let that be a misdirection for a manager and go, everything's okay. Look at all this fat. That's great. That is because of an abnormally high acorn production year. You need to also be pairing that with the body weight as well. So if the deer are not appreciably weighing more, but they have fat, that's just saying they had some carbohydrates available for the last couple months. They're not getting bigger, they're just responding to acorn production. So it's just parsing all of that out and and gauging it as a short-term response and a long-term response. Was that too long-winded or too complicated? No, that's a great idea. Did that make any sense?

Moriah Boggess 39:32

No, that was great. I think I think that does a good job of kind of explaining why we care so much about these data and why we and all other, you know, biologists ask for this. I think there's oftentimes kind of an eye roll, usually not visible, usually, uh, but it you know, it's kind of there because a lot of times that data doesn't get collected. And I get it. Like the last thing I want to do after I've been out hunting all day, shoot a deer. I got to get it back, I got to gut it, you know, stop and do all these things. But if you truly do want to know if you're moving the needle and if your you know population management or habitat improvement is actually making a true difference on the thing that you care about. Truly, because what people care about is that they're gonna have larger deer in the future. They don't necess, you know, they not necessarily that they're doing the right things. I mean, yes, that's part of it, but the ultimate payoff is are the deer gonna be bigger? So we've got to be measuring that. That is the response variable we care about. So we should be measuring it.

Reading the Signs: Lactation Rates, Yearling Weights, and Carcass Condition Scores

Bonner Powell 40:32

Yep. That's the only way we know we're headed down the right road, you know. If you if you do what you think is right for five years and you're hoping to change buck antler size, you do what you think is right for five years with no data collected and it doesn't end up working, well guess what? You just wasted five years. You know. The the good thing about the data collection is is we can make you know pretty dynamic decisions year to year on what kind of needs to be done and what direction we're headed.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 41:05

It's also important, it helps us ascertain what the problem is. So, an example, I think you, Moriah, were talking about the the antler measurements. And so, you know, what is also important, if we collected yearling bucks, as we've talked about before, you know, nobody's harvesting yearling bucks, but you know, a very sensitive indicator of what's going on with the population, yearling buck antler growth. But uh another that can be good is that yearling dough, as you mentioned, but then also the lactation rate of your young dough. So in Mississippi or the deep south, when you start getting a yearling dough lactation rate above 15%, things are really, really good. And when you get to where those two and a half year old doughs and you got about an 80% lactation rate with those, things are pretty good. So we look at the data and we look at that signal. That signal just said nutritionally for the female stuff's really, really good. But then we start getting to where, well, what's happening with the antler response? Typically that moves us towards bucks are not either getting old enough, they're they're being over harvested, or the wrong ones are being killed. And so that is where all this stuff fits together. As we got to know what you're seeing, we got to know what's out there from like a camera survey, what is out there, what is being killed, what is the nutritional condition relative to the habitat and the carcass. And you when you get all those pieces of the puzzle put together, we can be pretty efficient at diagnosing what the problem is and how to address it.

Moriah Boggess 42:50

I gotta also throw in there when for everyone listening, when we say yearling, we're talking about a one and a half year old. There's a lot of people that still call fawns yearlings, which is is a misnomer. But we're we're talking about one and a half-year-old does in this case, or bucks in the other case. Yeah.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 43:07

A fawn is still a fawn until it reaches its one-year birthday. Yeah.

Moriah Boggess 43:13

So previously in the other podcast, we were talking about drones and stuff, and we we talked about the use of a drone to kind of get an early snapshot on a property, and we've done that ourselves. But even in this case, when we're talking about body condition or body size, we use that as a snapshot all the time on new properties when we get involved with a landowner because we're comparing them, like Bonner, you mentioned earlier, compared within your soil region. But if we can access a lot of data, whether it's clubs we're working with or or broad broader state data of what is the average dough body weight at three and a half or older in that soil region, and we can say, Hey, you're you're you know, you're in the ninety five percentile or no, you you know, you're you're You're 20 pounds too light, that gives us a really good starting point. And that itself is a really good indicator of like where we're at and gives us a direction. And then once we start playing with those levers of dough harvest and we we make some changes in habitat, then we can see we can get confirmation. Hey, we're right, we're moving in the right direction. We kind of knew from the get-go with that snapshot where we were, but now that we've made some changes, we can see ourselves heading, you know, so that we're at that average and now surpassing it. Now we are now we're on the right side of the curve where we want to be.

The Takeaway: Worry Less About the Count, More About Condition

Dr. Bronson Strickland 44:35

Hey, put a pen in this, Moriah. You you both have mentioned it. You talked about soil region. We need to do an episode on that with some of the latest research relative to vegetation or forage quality relative to soil region and get that fully explained. The whole picture, the whole story with that, is it's very interesting. Yeah. But let's don't get into it now. Let's do a whole episode on it. Little teaser, little teaser there.

Bonner Powell 45:04

So basically, what we're saying for this episode is worry less about the actual number of deer that you have on your property and worry more about what those deer look like when they come through the skin and shed.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 45:17

Yeah. And be aware of the relationship. You got to be honest with yourself of what makes for an average high quality hunting experience versus inches of antler at the skinning shed. And there's going to be a relationship there. So if you want to maximize hunt quality and you define hunt quality of seeing 20 plus deer per sit, as long as you recognize what you are giving up, that's okay. We'll help you get there and we'll help you maximize hunt quality. But you don't hold us accountable for I want to see 20 deer per sit, and three of those need to be booting crockets, or I'm not happy. That's just not going to happen. Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Moriah Boggess 46:04

Well, this was good, guys. I think we've covered it all, and there's definitely more to dive into next time, but thanks for all the conversation.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 46:12

Yeah. Enjoyed it. Really important stuff, what we're talking about, because it's things we deal with all the time. And we're just trying to help people understand and manage their expectations of what's possible on their property.

Moriah Boggess 46:25

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.