The Dunning-Kruger Effect & Deer Management

You may have never considered how psychology might be intrinsically linked to deer management, but it is. On this podcast Bronson and Moriah discuss a psychological phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and specifically how this psychological bias affects all of us. From taxes, car repair, and highway driving to fine-scale deer movement, the guys discuss how they consider this bias in deer management and life.

Transcript

Introduction: What Is the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

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. Okay, the name of this podcast I think is going to be the Dunning Kruger effect, which is a very looming name. If you're not aware of what the Dunning Kruger effect is, then you're probably wondering: is this Bronson's new theory on what makes buck antlers larger on full moons? Or it's nothing so wild as that. It's actually a psychology theory that kind of explains how we as humans relate to the understanding of any given subject. And is something that Bronson and I have just because we like nerding out about things and various topics, have talked about over time that we sometimes see being very relatable in the deer research world or management world, probably just simply because that's the world that we spend all of our time in. But we wanted to just kind of talk about this today as a broader concept and relate it to how we probably butcher other areas of expertise. I'm not a car mechanic. I can change the oil and the truck or car and do some stuff just enough to get me into trouble. So I'd be on the front end of the Dunning Kruger effect. But anyway, we're gonna discuss that today, and then we'll relate it to deer management a little bit, but today's just gonna be a little bit of a curveball because we're not talking about anything really, really specific to any kind of management principle.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 1:49

Yes. Simultaneously, though, I think it will be helpful. It'll be it'll be it's a very different topic. And it's we may be partaking in the the Dunning Kruger effect regarding us talking about the Dunning Kruger effect. We probably are. We probably are. But yeah, it's something we see often, but we also say with humility, if you're a human being, if you're alive and well, and you interact with other human beings at some level, at some time, you have fallen victim to this. And maybe why don't we go through what it is, and then we can talk about some examples. But essentially there's a there's a continuum, and there's a lot of great examples online. There's pictures with graphs, charts, and go go into great t detail, but it's essentially the the relationship between competence and confidence. And what we generally see, and again, we are bad actors in this as well, is that people with the least amount of competence have the greatest amount of confidence. So they're very new to some type of theory. They think after listening to a single podcast or reading a single article, and maybe it coincides with something they saw in the field or they experienced, they are an expert on this, and they will defend it. They will, you know, be fighting mad about it. They know this is going on, absolutely certain of it. And someone that truly is an expert is back and looking at them and going, essentially, buddy, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't realize it. You're suffering from this phenomenon, you don't realize it, but you don't have enough experience or enough competence in this subject to realize what you're saying is wrong.

Moriah Boggess 4:02

And oftentimes that expert would probably follow that up with saying, I can't even be as confident about this whatever conclusion as said novice thinks they are.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 4:14

That's right. And and we uh joke, Moriah, about maybe this is one of the reasons for the evolution, and a lot of people say it, not just us, but maybe this is the kind of the impetus for why we always say it depends. And that frustrates the heck out of people when we say it. Yeah. Well, I guess it's conditional. It's conditional. Maybe we need to start saying instead of it depends, maybe we need to say context. Context. So here is a scenario where what you're saying would be valid, but here are three other scenarios where what you're saying would not be valid. So here's the context around it.

Moriah Boggess 4:54

And oftentimes the it depends response usually is on the front end of a longer explanation. So it's really kind of an irrelevant phrase. I guess that's what annoys me specifically about it is it is not so much the it depends, it's more so that it's conditional, and here's how it's conditional. I think that's how we all answer it. So that's why I just anyway, that's an aside.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 5:18

Yeah. Well, you're you're being real persnickety about that, Moriah. You you've just revealed to me that I annoy you every time I say it depends.

Moriah Boggess 5:27

So I'm over here bristling, bristling up a little.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 5:30

I'll try to get better.

Moriah Boggess 5:32

I I'm gonna just, if you're good with it, I'm gonna go ahead and describe the continuum because I love the labels on it. That's probably my favorite part about all this. I don't have any tattoos, but I have joked that if I got one, that I would probably get the Dunning-Kruger effect. Like on my forehead or something. And I put a little arrow, be like, I'm here.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 5:52

That would be a good conversation starter for sure.

Moriah Boggess 5:56

So, okay, I'm on the Wikipedia page real quick, just so that I can announce that. So this was first described by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. So all credit to those folks. So imagine a graph in front of you, and as Bronson said, on the yeah, the y-axis would be confidence from on the low

Mount Stupid, the Valley of Despair & Expertise

Moriah Boggess 6:23

end at the bottom, it's low confidence, high end at the top. Along the bottom from left to right is competence. All the way to the left is low competence, all the way to the right is highest competence. Like you're number one in your field. Um, you know, so imagine like all right, you're an electrician. When you first start, you're all the way on the left end as you learn over the years, you move to the right, and somewhere there's somebody who's farthest on the right. Okay, so that's the two scales, the two axes. Now the the line starts at the very far bottom left. That's low confidence, low competence. This is me on brain surgery. I know nothing about it. I just know that they go in there with knives and lasers, and probably a lot of other things. I'm I'm demonstrating my my ignorance here. So you start at the bottom left, and the crazy thing about the Dunning Krueger effect is that the slope of the line immediately starts almost straight up. It shoots up, meaning that your confidence in a subject as you begin learning about it shoots up very quickly, and you hit this peak, and they named the peak Mount Stupid, which is the best. Actually, it's the second best label on this. And that line peaks pretty quickly. It it you know on the on the y-axis on the bottom, in the first quarter of that axis as you're moving in competence level increasing. You're a competence of like a two. You're at like the peak here of your confidence. And then that line drops off super sharply. This would be analogous to if you you went to school. I I guess I'll use the electrician example again. You went to trade school and you take your first exam after learning a bunch of concepts around electricity, and and you flunk that exam, right? You get like a C or a D. You hit the bottom. That's called the Valley of Despair. The very best, the very best label on here.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 8:35

And everybody's been there. Everybody's been there. On everything. Yep.

Moriah Boggess 8:41

I think we probably all went through that, you know, in school early on, biology, chemistry, whatever. Early on in your class, you hit that valley of despair where you realize, whoo, there's a lot more to this than I thought. The forefront, a lot more than I have to learn, and I might even feel overwhelmed that I'll ever understand it. Okay, so now confidence has dropped very low. On the competence scale from left or right, we've moved to like a three of competence. So you're you probably know more than than the vast majority of people, average folks on that subject. You know less than experts in your field, but you know more than the average person you'd walk up to in Walmart. So your your your competence has increased a little bit. And your confidence, because you're in the valley of despair, is like a one or a two. You in fact, you are way less confident than anyone on the peak of Mount Stupid, which is the frustrating thing about it. That's right. Right? Absolutely. Because you would talk to somebody who has not taken the class yet, has not even begun to learn, and they're like, dude, I can wire your house up. I got it figured out. Anyone can do that. Yeah. Yeah. Positive on positive, negative on negative. Red is right. That's all there is to it. Yeah. And then, all right, so once you hit the valley of despair, the only gratifying thing about the valley of despair is that it's the lowest point from here on. Because then as you increase your competence, you learn more and more. You move from being a novice in your field to being somewhat of an expert, you move up the slope of enlightenment. And the slope of enlightenment is a lot more gradual than the slope that goes straight up to the Mount, the peak of Mount Stupid early on. And that's what I enjoy most about this graph is that it depicts that as we learn more about any subject, we do gain confidence. And I know like I feel this way about plants. The more plants I can identify, the more I'm I become a little bit more confident in the plants I can identify, but I don't increase in very much confidence or I guess arrogance about it because I realize just how many more there are. I don't know. Right. For for everyone I learn, it's like, oh, there's two more, you know, that I'll run across. I'm like, oh, I've never seen that before. And that's and to me, I think that's why the slope of enlightenment is so gradual.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 11:24

Yeah.

Why Real Expertise Creates Humility

Dr. Bronson Strickland 11:25

And I I would even add another dimension to that, Moriah. Once you have bottomed out on the valley of despair and you're on the ascent with your competence and confidence, I would say running parallel with that is is humility. It is the recognition from what you just described. Now you have this realization, this is a lot more complicated. And I I don't know it all. I'm trying to get better, and I certainly have increased my competence, but I'm never gonna I'm never gonna know it all, but I'm gonna keep striving to be more educated on this topic and to get better. But you have the existing humility to recognize, recognize that. And it and it affects your attitude. And I even think you become more professional and more effective with people when you demonstrate those qualities.

Moriah Boggess 12:16

The interesting thing about that is that the more you realize you don't know, the less assertive you become about those gaps and not stepping too far forward of like, oh, I know this to be true because I think it is, and that sort of thing. You might know a few data points that are like, oh, I'm very certain of this, whatever the topic is. I'm very certain of these data points. But unlike when I was on Mount Stupid, I'm a lot less willing to fill in the gaps and then stamp my name of approval on it as, oh, this is correct, because I just realize how often I'm wrong.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 12:58

Yeah. That's right. And you you see the evolution of this too with with behavior and life experience on things, Moriah, that are the the most mundane. And I I think a real good example is I'll I'll pick on guys here, driving. You're 16 years old, you just got your driver's license, you understand the fundament the fundamentals of the brake and gas and steering and a little bit of physics, maybe. And uh then you also watched a couple NASCAR events and you you think you've got this whipped. You know, you can drive 100 plus miles an hour and you can whip in and out in traffic and you've got it. And then hopefully what happens is that you start gaining more confidence, and maybe you don't go into the valley of despair from a devastating wreck. That's the worst case scenario. Hopefully, you start realizing of maybe some near misses of that that could have gone really bad. You know, man, that that was a close call. And then it's like the older you get, of course you may speed, of course, you may drive a little a little faster. It doesn't mean like, you know, you're some 80-year-old man and you never get above 55 miles an hour, but now you have a healthy respect for how things can go very, very badly. Yeah, I think that's just one of an infinite number of examples you could come up with. But I know I'm of the age I am downright, I'll get angry when we're in tight traffic and you can start seeing it from behind. You you see that car or that truck. Here they come. They're bouncing back and forth, coming up, and they they go past, and I want to yell at them. I'm like, are you crazy? You know, you're you're going 90 miles an hour, whipping in and out of traffic. You're putting yourself at risk, you're putting all of us at risk if you have a wreck. But being psychology, Mr. Psychologist here, I'm thinking they are so overly confident in their skill set, they cannot fathom anything would go wrong, you know. So it's that little amount of competence and a great amount of confidence.

Moriah Boggess 15:15

So if that if if you're that person and you're driving in East Mississippi, Bronson was the one flipping you off.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 15:22

That's right.

Moriah Boggess 15:22

I was the one that hogged the horn. Yeah. And then, all right. So the one last one I forgot to mention is that eventually you move up the slope of enlightenment, and as you reach the the peak of your career, you might be one of the top in your field, maybe the top. You are on the plateau of sustainability. And the interesting thing is that that point is at the very far right scale for competence, and it just barely scrapes to where your confidence is the same as when you're on Mount Stupid. That's right.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 16:02

Yep. And that that's the way I feel, you know, as much as you too, I'm sure, as much as we have learned, we have recognized what what we don't know, and I'm not near as confident. When I was on a competent scale of one, I just you know, I just took wildlife biology 101. I'm on the third day of class. Oh man, I've I understand how density dependence works. I've got this licked, I got it figured out. And it's like, oh my gosh, I was woefully ignorant of how it really works. And yeah, you you you approach that confidence later in life, but you never you never supersede it.

Moriah Boggess 16:46

Yeah. Before we recorded, we came up with a couple just for fun topics. We're gonna ask each other here essentially in quiz where we're at on the Dunning Kruger effect, self-assessment, which is probably bi bias, by the way. It very likely is. Unless we're just so self-aware. And we'll answer these and then and then we can move on to to a little bit more relevant discussion to like habitat management and deer movement and all. So

Testing Ourselves: Taxes, Investing & Other Knowledge Gaps

Moriah Boggess 17:15

I'll ask these and I and I want to hear your answer and and just why, and it just a short answer as to why you answered the way you did, and and then I'll I'll do the same. First one, Bronson, where are you at on a Dunning Kruger effect when it comes to business taxes and tax law?

Dr. Bronson Strickland 17:36

Valley of Despair. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, not on Mount Stupid, because if you're on Mount Stupid, you have a lot of confidence. So somewhere along the way, I must have gone through thinking I knew something about it and realized I don't because I am at the very bottom in Valley of Despair. I realize I don't know anything about it.

Moriah Boggess 18:01

I'm not sure that I ever climbed Mount Stupid. I'm I'm at the same level as you, but I'm not sure that I that I ever felt like I understood it. But I I'm at that same latitude as Valley of Despair.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 18:14

Yeah, so maybe I'm at confidence low and know nothing because I've never even really attempted to try to learn anything about it. Uh enough self-awareness for me to go be like very specialized law. You know, don't know anything about it, need to hire an expert to help you with that.

Moriah Boggess 18:33

So if anyone's interested, we are doing business taxes from now on, too. Um vehicle repair and mechanics.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 18:44

Moriah, it depends. No, not really. I think I am further to the right. I I don't think I'm in the slope of enlightenment, but I I realize I don't I know a few things. I have baseline competence on some very simple things. But when you really start getting into the engine or a transmission, then nope. I admit that I don't don't know. I'm probably never gonna have the time or take the time to learn. So I will stay I will stay ignorant and I will have low confidence associated with that.

Speaker 1 19:32

Okay.

Moriah Boggess 19:33

Yeah, I I will say I'm I'm early on the slope of enlightenment. There's things I know not to tackle, but I just changed my blinker fluid the other day and it worked out perfect, so we're still running.

Speaker 1 19:46

You changed your what fluid? The blinker fluid. Blinker? Yeah. Fluid. There's no blinker fluid.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 19:58

What are you talking about? I I changed the blinker. I changed the light bulbs.

Moriah Boggess 20:03

Yeah, no, actually, if there's if there's blinker fluid, oftentimes that's why you have to change the light bulb because it blew it out to show it.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 20:09

I said, man, I'm vastly don't understand that system at all. I almost just sent you back to the Valley of Despair there.

Moriah Boggess 20:17

Yeah. Just with a little overconfidence. That's right.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 20:20

That's right.

Moriah Boggess 20:21

All right. Next one I have is exercise science and nutrition.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 20:27

Relative to the prior two subjects, I am further along the continuum of competence. I still have great humility that I am not an expert, but I would say that I am well above average in my competence. And I wouldn't say relative to the human side of it, but you know, there's a lot of analogous things. If you kind of understand biology, physiol, physiology of a deer, you know, humans and deer are both mammals, so a lot of those things translate and are similar, but also different. You know, we're not a ruminant, for example. So the way we get resources and extract them nutritionally are very different, but still the the foundations of our needs for energy and protein and things like that are similar. So I I guess I I would put myself on the competence scale from one to ten, let's say ten as a guru. I'm I'm gonna go six or seven. Ooh, that's strong.

Moriah Boggess 21:37

Okay. I'm realizing that this question is as well as the last one with vehicle repair. Anytime you get in a bind, you can just go to YouTube university and I'll be like, you know, whatever year, whatever car, I need to do this, and then man, I'm an expert. That's right. Just like that. Yeah. I would say I'm early in the slope of enlightenment on yeah, exercise and nutrition. I do I follow the keep it simple, stupid method. And I think it works pretty well there. Yeah. All right. Last one, and this one is

Buck Movement, Hunting Success & Overconfidence

Moriah Boggess 22:08

is a little bit this one is closer to home. Okay. Where are you on the Dunning Kruger effect when it comes to fine scale buck movement and resource selection?

Dr. Bronson Strickland 22:20

I'm going to go back with I would say no greater than a seven. I I have so much respect for number one, individuality. So they're not not all the same. I also have respect for temporal relationships and needs. And I'm not talking about seasonal from the rut, non-rut, or bucks in the summer in a bachelor group versus the winter. I'm literally talking about daily, how things can change based on feedback systems nutritionally, a particular need, a nutrient that buck or deer may be seeking. Also thinking about the deer's understanding or having a history of dangerous aspects of the landscape. So the route that it took to get a particular resource a week ago, they may be taking a different route to get that resource today because they bumped into a hunter or a bobcat or a coyote or a cougar or whatever three days ago. So confident confident, but certainly not guru. And I think I can confidently say I don't know if there are many gurus. If you think you really can explain all deer movement.

Moriah Boggess 24:40

How does that make you feel after a long career?

Dr. Bronson Strickland 24:45

Man, I just think so many of these things, you know, we started out uh at the beginning of this episode. Humility is really, really important here. It's you know, that what when when I've looked at this too, I've heard one of the descriptions of Dunning Krueger is the more you know, the more recognition you have about what you don't know. The more you start realizing, man, this is a lot more complicated than I thought. And so part of the competence part too, is me trying to answer your question competently, is also where do I think I am in the realm of possibility of competence, and where do I rank right now relative to other human beings on the competence of this subject? I think those are those could be different values.

Moriah Boggess 25:43

So it might not, based on that assessment relative to what's actually happening. What you're saying is it might not be possible to get to a nine and a half or ten competence and able to predict deer movement.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 25:58

Yeah. So I may give myself of, you know, if there was an explanation out there, you know, you could derive a model to predict every step for every deer for every day. I would say I'm below a five, maybe a three or four. Relative to hunters and the realm of, you know, deer biologist types that have looked at this, I would put myself in the group that's, you know, pretty good.

Moriah Boggess 26:28

Yeah, and I think you're being a little humble there. I would I would put you up there as well, maybe a little higher. And so I think maybe your your slope of enlightenment or even your valley of despair clouding your judgment a little bit there and pulling you down further than where you're probably at. But in other words, you're rating yourself lower than you probably should.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 26:52

Maybe or maybe not. I also recognize that the the teamwork that goes in, and I'm not talking about the field work aspect of the team, I'm talking about the analytical teamwork. And very much with these things, I'm always paired with someone, a Natasha type, someone that's a lot more mathematically apt than I am, and a movement ecology type who's also looking at these are the types of models, the behavior that we're seeing, this is the kind of model that we need to apply, and then we're going to extract the information from it. You know, I'm more of the deer biologist contribution, providing an explanation for here's what I would hypothesize is the reason for why they're demonstrating this behavior. So even within that, I mean, it's it takes a lot of people and a lot of different expertise.

Moriah Boggess 27:46

Yeah. So just full disclosure for anyone listening, I would put myself squarely in the valley of despair here. Right. I've read the research, I've looked at the maps, I, you know, I've I've seen all that kind of stuff and to the point where to me, when I'm hunting, I feel like there are way too many conditions that, you know, too many covariates to be able to predict something like that. I'm way more focused on sign, I'm way more focused on, you know, what's been happening more recently than analytically looking at the landscape and saying, oh, a buck's gonna do this because the pressure is this and it's you know a full moon and all this sort of stuff. So I would I would put myself squarely in the valley of despair because I just I look at it as probably too analytically, honestly. I look at it too much as a scientist. And it's kind of interesting. So we've been talking about this from a standpoint of what's true and what's not, and I think that's how you answered that question. We they're wild animals, they're individuals, they're making these decisions. There's at the end of the day, they're still individuals, so that we could never truly predict what they would do. And I think that's what's figuring into the back of your head and in answering that question. But that in and in and of itself, you answering that way, I think reveals one of the ways that someone who is farther to the right on the competence scale analyzes that question compared to someone on Mount Stupid. If I'm a a new, and I don't mean that in a demeaning way, like we've all been there or are there or and I'm there on other subjects. It's nothing to be ashamed of, right? But we move through this period where we have a little success. And it's like, dude, well, that worked. You know, I can do that again. And and that's like that's the the Mount Stupid part of it. And then I hit this valley of despair where now when I hunt, I'm less confident in just looking at a map and saying, hey, deer's gonna do this because of this, and then hunt there, because I understand analytically what has gone into all of those models and the sea of data points that have found that those criteria don't lead to a concrete conclusion that we would be able to predict that kind of movement. However, and I want to point this out, there are people listening that probably believe things that I would I would say lean more towards Mount Stupid that hey, we can't know that, that will outhunt me and you because they believe it. And this is something I've I've heard, you know, on some of the podcasts you've done with some of the bigger ones around the subject. There will be someone in the room that'll say, Yeah, but you know, how do you reconcile the people who go out there and believe these things, whether they're true or not, and and are really great hunters? And dude, it's true. There are people, and you see it on hunting media and whatever, and they believe some of the craziest stuff, right? The moon charts and all this sort of stuff, but they're really good hunters. And so there's there's one side of the equation, which is what is true, and then there's the other side of the equation, which is results. And at the end of the day, if it if if you believe it and you believe it hard enough, and that is what causes you to go and sit downwind of a random little bench where you believe the buck is gonna bed, and then a buck actually does it, doesn't matter what the probability was based on our models, if a buck actually does it, they're gonna kill the big one and the you and I won't. And I just speaking for myself, I look at hunting too analytically from that standpoint, and I know it. I think about all the other things that are affecting deer movement. And instead of being hyper focused on looking for one, you know, one set of criteria and only hunting there, where someone who has one of these theories about, you know, buckbetting or whatever the subject is, they'll do that. And it might only happen that you know, 5% of the time it works out. But the thing is, they're so far committed that 5% of the time that they're gonna they're gonna shoot a big deer. And I also think that because of the way those types of people hunt that believe a really niche theory like that, they probably can or they're probably more likely to kill an almost unkillable deer. And I'm saying unkillable, probably in that case, it's a buck that just has a weird pattern that the average that if we did a research project on that, on that herd, he wouldn't show up in the mean. He would be an outlier.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 32:28

He would be the outlier.

Moriah Boggess 32:29

It only takes one outlier to make it all worth it, right? And I think that's what's going on there. Yeah.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 32:34

Yeah, I would say there would be in that in that case a difference in uh cause and effect is quote, the expert might be attributing the cause to the moon phenomenon or something like that. But another phenomenon may be actually going on in kind of placebo type effect, and the the moon condition may be giving that hunter a great deal of confidence. And so they get there early, earlier, they sit longer, they're hyper-focused because they know at any moment it's about to happen. Also, the the skill relative to the type of hunter that's consistently harvesting above above average deer is also giving the moon condition too much credit when it was about scouting that location and being on the right trail, picking the right tree, picking the right distance from the trail, the orientation of the stand to be able to pick the buck up and to be able to get your bow drawn or rifle raised or whatever. All of that stuff, to me, especially relative to the moon, is abundantly more important than any type of, you know, moon phase effect.

Moriah Boggess 34:03

Yeah. However, now that is a confounding variable, all of those details, because I do believe that the hunters that are out there, and whether there's any amount of meat to any of those theories, the people who are paying attention to them are more analytical, I think, on average, and they are paying attention to the small details, to your point, which make the difference between Dead Buck or not. And so whether or not it was the moon or whether or not it was just a happy coincidence, that kind of hunter when they commit and they're they might not see anything for five days, but when they see one, it's an outlier and he walks in and they've got every you know everything down to a T figured out. And I think that happens more than probably we analytical types would like to admit, because I see it happen around me all every year. And I think that's the other, that's the flip side of this, is that being on the peak of Mount Stupid can work out for you sometimes. I think it works for a lot of people in a lot of situations. Because confidence, confidence can really go a long way. And I I don't want to crap

Luck vs. Skill in Hunting and Management Decisions

Moriah Boggess 35:10

on that by any means.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 35:12

Well, you know, if we took 10,000 people and gave them all a thousand bucks and said, go to the casino and place a bet on the roulette table, and you know, there could be one person, they're gonna put all of their money on one spin, they're gonna go black 27, if that's even a viable combination or not on roulette, but and and come out a winner. And and so, you know, every once in a while the stars align for an individual. I think what is therapeutic here is recognizing, my goodness, boy, I got lucky. It could have been a different color, a different number, and you know, it did not work out for these other 999 people, but don't look at that instance where you won and start going, oh, well, let's see. I had this for breakfast this morning. I was wearing my lucky socks, you know, whatever. Had my my good ball cap on, my lucky ball cap. It was on Tuesday, probably wouldn't happen if I'd done this on Wednesday. You know, get away from the superstitious reasons and just say, Oh, that's probability. The laws of probability. I got lucky. So that there's some of that too, with one or two or maybe even three instances of connecting with a good deer. Sometimes that's just luck.

Moriah Boggess 36:40

Yeah. And I think, you know, this kind of uh is is as we relate this more to management. That is why, in general, for anyone who sees any of the stuff we put out content-wise or even the podcast, we do not speak very definitively, and it's not from a lack of understanding or familiarity with the topic, like to the point of you know, buck movement again. And and Bronson, you did so much of that research and and worked on so many of those research projects over the years. It's not from a lack of you know, competence, it's actually from a lack of probably more competence than the people that are talking super definitively. The more I understand, this is just a for instance, the more I understand and pay attention while being out on different properties looking at deer food use, diet selection, one plant over another, the more I see that, I mean, almost by the day I find more and more and more exceptions. And when we look at like research projects or data as a whole, we can often find means. And that's really what research looks at is you know, what does the average do? Which is all well and good. But if your property is one of the outliers, or you're in a situation where suddenly you've shifted into an outlier, then the mean is irrelevant to you. Having an open mind and being able to shift to what's actually happening is is more important. And so, like when I think and talk about deer diet selection, I am not nearly as absolute in my language as I see elsewhere in the habitat management consulting industry. And I think sometimes that kind of absolute language sells. And that's, you know, that's one thing where we're not, just for anyone listening, we're not comfortable, you know, throwing out our morals or what we believe to try to make more sales and overstate claims of what we truly can know in general, no matter how much data we have. There's certain things that we know, there's limitations on the knowledge and absoluteness of it. Uh you know, a great example is fine-tuning, you know, fine-scale deer movement. There's a lot of people out there that make a lot of money designing plans to make a buck step one in one certain spot or another. And there's some validity to that for sure. You can absolutely affect deer movement. But where I know I become uncomfortable around some of the marketing there is the claims, how absolute those claims are.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 39:26

Yeah. So confidence does sell, and it's it's reassuring to people when you're very, very confident. What's kind of difficult with that is someone like me or you, when we might be watching, hearing, reading someone that is so very confident about something we're very competent about, is uh, you know, are they being intentionally disingenuous? You know, are they just selling you that, you know, through their their confidence, or or do they really not know any better? You know, are they really way to the left on the continuum of competence? And because of that, they are very, very confident. So that's what, you know, difficult for me anyway to figure out sometimes. Like, man, they are really, you know, so assessing it like that. They are really confident. So now I've got two decisions. Maybe they are, maybe they are really competent as well. Or maybe they're on the peak of Mount Stupid.

Moriah Boggess 40:35

Man, and disingenuous salesmanship is so common. Great example. Just look at the diet world. If you you'll see ads or whatever sometimes like pop up on the TV or something, and you know, there's some on social media, it's like, oh, all you got to do is download my ebook, and you're gonna be

Red Flags: Spotting Oversimplified Hunting Advice

Moriah Boggess 40:55

drinking, you'll drink lemon water and you know, do 10 jumping jacks and then stand on your head for five seconds, and this is proven to work every single time you see this kind of stuff. And and I am by no means a nutritionist or an exercise scientist, but I know it enough just from seeing the common trends across science that whenever something is sold as a shortcut like that, like, oh yeah, done and dusted, gonna work every time. This is the diet pill, this is the the magic bean, whatever it is. Oh, just plant this and you'll have big bucks, man, run the other way. And it's not that that whatever that is couldn't be beneficial. It's it's really comes down to okay, yeah, but if it was that easy, just you know.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 41:39

All right, here's another red flag is you've discovered something. You know, I discovered something in my research developed by a Russian scientist in the 1800s. And hey, let me give you a tip. The fitness and diet industry are trying to suppress this knowledge because they know it will be game-changing. But I'm the one that uncovered that, and for a small price, I will share that with you. Gamesmanship.

Moriah Boggess 42:10

Yeah. You know, and what it always comes down to is that the real answer is is for whatever reason, I don't actually, I'm sure there's some kind of if we were gonna start a psychology series here on the Wildlife Investments Podcast, I'd wanna, I would wanna research this more, but there's there's something in the human psyche that we're always looking for a shortcut, right? It's evolutionarily advantage advantageous for us to figure out a shortcut. I mean, that's how humans have always progressed. Like we figured out, yeah, it'd be nice if I could, you know, do work at night and we invent the light bulb or, you know, be able to get places and we invent the gas engine. So it's it's definitely a good trait, but I think it gets hijacked in those instances where we're looking for more instant gratification and shortcuts to get to the end result. That the real answer is it just takes a lot of hard work and determination. Yeah, getting in you know, good shape, losing weight, whatever, like that is a is an excellent example. The recipe is very simple. Cut calories and exercise more, you know, exercise or work in a little bit of a calorie deficit, and that is that is really the true answer. But that doesn't sell. And you know, the little infomercials on social media aren't going to tell you that. And I see that same parallel in the deer world when you see some of the, you know, some of these little supplemental feed stuff that there's at Walmart and and whatever, and it's like, okay, come on. And I have to say, it's just to full transparency. When I was a kid and I first got into hunting, I I you know, I didn't come from a hunting background. I was immediately like, you know, hook line synchron on those things. When I was in high school, I was like, oh yeah, this is gonna be it. And then, you know, obviously figured out pretty quickly. It's like, no. No, it's it's actually pretty simple. You know, age, nutrition, genetics, and you have to be able to move all those in the right direction. And it takes time and money and effort. Time. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 44:09

And, you know, for you to consistently kill either a lot of deer or good deer or whatever, it also means you got to spend a lot of time in the woods. You know, you're just not going to be able to line up one particular day, one particular afternoon, and expect everything to work out. It's it's the repetition and doing it over and over. And kind of a pretty cool correlation. The more time you put into it, the better result you'll get out of it.

Moriah Boggess 44:35

Yeah.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 44:36

But that's what we're always trying to fast forward, right? The time. We're trying to get a disproportionate positive response without the amount of work putting into it. Well, I've got one a topic for you, Moriah. I want to see where you're at on your competent scale from know nothing to guru, and are you to the left of the valley or to the right? Are you on the slope of in enlightenment with chronic wasting disease? Man, that's a loaded question. And I ask you this, Moriah, genuinely, because I I don't know if anybody in the hunting community has any opinion on CWD. They don't. Nobody has any opinion on CWD.

Moriah Boggess 45:25

Okay. I'm gonna pull a Bronson on this one. Uh-oh. I think I'm early on the slope of enlightenment when it comes to the knowledge that's out there, scientific knowledge. I'm not as well read as I used to be when I was in the agency world because that was my job and going to conferences and whatever related to CWD. So I've probably fallen behind a little bit there. I'm I've probably actually backslid on the slope, actually, if we're telling the truth.

CWD, Scientific Uncertainty & What We Still Don't Know

Moriah Boggess 45:55

But I think that in general, you know, I might upset some researchers here, but I think in general as a scientific community, we're still pretty close to the valley of despair when it comes to the implications of CWD. There's so much about it when if we want to talk about population effects, health effects, and how those will play out long term. Will deer, you know, evolve to be able to live longer with it or live with it, or, you know, even even be fully resistant to it? Could that ever happen? There's so much there that we there's so many foundational questions that we're still trying to answer. But the the long and short of it is with CWD, the long and short of my answer is that I think that we all are probably close to the Valley of Despair and hopefully climbing out. There are a lot of folks on closer to the peak of Mount Stupid that probably feel like we know more about the disease. And conclusion aside, conclusions about what we should do or what we shouldn't do aside, I think there's a lot of opinion out there that comes across as much more certain about what is or isn't happening, or what could or couldn't happen, than what the science shows. And that's probably the most frustrating part about being someone who's hopefully a little bit past the valley of despair and climbing out, is that the vast majority of the information getting pushed around and opinion getting, you know, voiced is coming from a place of much more certainty than than we really can have about it. That's right.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 47:50

Yeah. Yeah, I I don't want to dig in too deeply here, but I feel very similar and and just relative to this topic, that the sitting to get into what all we know and don't know and and the implications thereof, I just thought that is something that I routinely will see on social media people's responses. And I can just go, Dunning Kruger, Dunning Kruger, Dunning Kruger, you know, the the certainty at which they are saying something is or is not happening, that person cannot possibly know that. I know enough to know they can't possibly know that. And the wheels are are turning slowly with this disease, the complexity. It's also really kind of even about that disease. The more you know about it, the more you realize how complex this is. And it's not going to be something easy to solve. And it's one of those situations where it may not be year-to-year incremental progress in our knowledge about it, it might be more decade to decade due to the complexity of it. So, yeah, it's a tough nut to crack. And to me, just a wonderful, tangible example within deer biology and management of how get on social media, you can see the effect pretty clearly.

Moriah Boggess 49:21

This is not related to CWD at all. But uh, and this was not a subject related to wildlife management. Sometimes I'll read comments. I don't comment on Facebook because it's poor practice in my opinion, not changing anyone's mind, but I I will get entertained by reading them. And there's this really out of pocket comment, and the best response to it was someone commented very benignly. They're like, Oh, I can see you're early on the Dunning Kruger curve. And so anyone who like, you know, hopefully everyone listening now will be like, oh yeah, now I get it. But that that was like a little nugget for me. I'm like, I see what you did there. They didn't know they were insulted, but it was it was kind of funny.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 50:03

Exactly. And I have no idea if I saw the exact same post. I don't even remember what the post was about. It may be that the exact same person may be commonly making that reply to people, but I I have seen that as well, and I chuckled. I thought that was nicely done. Yeah.

Moriah Boggess 50:23

Yeah, and I and I think again, because I don't want to sit here like we're on some high horse. There are so many subjects I know very little about. And I know everyone who's listening to this, heck, they might be, you know, their expertise is in wildlife management or something very different. Man, I am not, I am absolutely not going to go tell a logger that I know anything about true operations and the equipment and and maintenance and everything that goes into a logging operation, or you name it. And that that's just the beauty of, you know, our society, the economy, whatever. We've got a lot of really specialized people. Everyone has sort of their own expertise. And there's, I think there's a little bit of maturity in realizing that, hey, just because I have an opinion does not mean that I can, that I I know better than the expert that's worked in this field for so long. And obviously, I say this, you know, you can tell that this is close to home for us when it comes to deer management. But man, I that is something I have tried to apply, just being self-aware in life as I've grown older, to apply to every professional that I come across. Okay. They went to school, they know what they're talking about. And I I do think that there, that's kind of a uh, I don't know, that's that's a realization that I think probably a lot of professionals get to honing a craft and really understanding something inside and out.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 51:52

Yeah. And maybe we can just kind of circle back and end where we began with if you're a human being, you are predisposed to to falling prey to this effect. And e probably uh, you know, with with the greatest amount of humility, Moriah, even being aware of this phenomenon, you can likely still fall prey to it. Because so much of it is having some self-awareness, but I mean it it it's literally you don't know what you don't know either. And it literally takes time and effort to start accumulating more knowledge before you reach that threshold of realizing, oh my goodness, the complexity of this. I had no idea. But you have to put in some effort to get there. So it is good, you know. Didn't want this, you know, for us to sound like a sociological or psychological public service announcement here, but but it is something that we see a lot. It may serve some listeners well with what you and I have planned for a few episodes upcoming. I don't know if it'll be the next or or after, but we're going to be talking about uh publication, some work. Me along with others, I was part of their research looking at the effect of calling. And talked about it before, but this big study was finally published, and I wanted to wait until it was published and had been through peer review to go through the results. But I'm gonna go ahead and tell you there's gonna be some people that aren't gonna like the result, and they're gonna be an expert, even though they're

Final Thoughts: Staying Curious and Avoiding Certainty

Dr. Bronson Strickland 53:45

not, and try to poke holes in it and not believe it, and so forth. So it's like it's kind of a good opportunity for this episode. We hope they would listen to it, so maybe then they would open their mind to man, I I really don't have as much experience with that as the people that are talking about it do. Maybe I should open my mind up and listen a little.

Moriah Boggess 54:08

I think whenever we start a podcast from now on, we ought to pull everyone who's participating on the subject about where they think they're at on the Dunning Kruger effect. And if someone can't answer that, they probably shouldn't be on the podcast. Yeah. All right. Thanks for the talk. I enjoyed it. I always love talking about this kind of stuff. Yeah, it's fun. Enjoyed it. 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.