EP 62: Big Game Management with Utah DWR. In this episode of the Epic Outdoors Podcast Jason Carter and Adam Bronson sit down with Phil Tuttle and Josh Pollock of the Utah DWR. We talk about mule Deer in the state of Utah. History, growth, trends, management, etc. We dive into findings of telemetry studies, and what we are learning through technology in deer management. We also talk about what is being done to bring the quality back on Utahs elk units. This is an extremely informative podcast about big game management and strategies to improve our overall big game health.
Disclaimer: this podcast has been transcribed from the original audio and likely contains errors. This transcription does not reflect the views and opinions of Epic Outdoors LLC. Please consult the original audio with any concerns.
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You are gonna see some of our big bulls come back. I think we’re
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Saving 500 deer a year on the ponant just from vehicle collisions on that.
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E H D breakouts usually occur in these long Indian summers. The technology of G P
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Ss cars is going through the roof. Anything to do with Western Big Game.
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Welcome
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To the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour.
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Hey everybody. Jason Carter and Adam Bronson here with the Epic Outdoors Podcast coming at you from Cedar City, Utah. Got a couple guys in the office, Mr. Josh Pollock, as well as Phillip Tuttle. Super excited to get into this podcast with these guys. They’re super knowledgeable, great hunters as well, and and really care about the resource. But before we do, we wanna say thanks to Under Armour for sponsoring everything we’re doing here at Epic Outdoors. They are involved to a degree on everything from print to podcast to YouTubes to about anything we do. So anyway, thank you to Under Armour. Got a lot of great things coming out. I know they’re even working on products for 2020. So anyway, they’re definitely not going anywhere and looking to continue to revolutionize the hunting industry. So anyway, thanks to them. And what else, Bronson, am I missing anything?
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It’s down to the wire here with our Epic Outdoors Winter membership drive deadline to enter that is February 28th. You have to join our service by then or refer someone that joins our service Epic Outdoors. By February 28th, both the new member and the person that refers them will receive a name in the hat for that. There’s no way to purchase tickets. The prizes are either an Alaska Doll, sheep Hunt, or a Utah deer hunt or a Utah elk hunt. Both the Utah Deer and Elk Hunt will be guided by us. The Epic Outdoors crew. The Alaska Doll Sheep Hunt is fully guided and outfitted by one of our epic approved Outfitters lits in Guide service. Great outfit. It’s for August, 2019, fully paid for by us, as are the Utah Deer Hunt. Utah Elk Hunt will be fully paid for by us, whichever one you choose. Something kind of for everybody, whoever wins will get their choice. So one of those three hunts, again, February 28th. Coming down to the wire here, you cannot buy tickets if you join online, just make sure in the referred by box you put the person’s name that referred you. If you’re referred by somebody will make somebody happy here shortly after the 28th. We’ll get that drawn and out. Probably put it on a podcast or on YouTube or something like that. Get it out there for everybody to listen to. So don’t miss it. Get a few days left. So we say one more time, who we got here?
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We got Mr. Josh Pollock. I, I’m not sure his title. Terre said terrestrial biologist. Every time I hear terrestrial I think of like, I don’t know, like I think of iguanas and stuff. I don’t know what it’s
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As opposed to an extraterrestrial biologist.
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I’m thinking Nevada, we have those Nevada. Nevada non-game section. They might as well be extra terrestrial. All right. And then we got Phil Tuttle, Phillip Tuttle. What’s your title, Phillip?
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I’m the outreach manager for the Southern
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Region. The outreach. So what does an outreach guy do? We reach out. So anyway, he You deal with a lot of information, education stuff. Yep. Stuff that we’re doing today. Yep,
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Exactly.
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All right. So anyway, they have been in our office here for a few hours. We’ve had a good time with them and just going over a lot of the cool things here in that are going on here in Utah. And so anyway, really appreciate you guys spending a little time with us here today. Got, so
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Just a couple of days before the Utah deadline March 1st coming up. So if you guys are listening to this, get, get your apps in. You do have till March 15th if you are just doing points only. But who wants to just do points only? Who wants to do that? There’s no anticipation.
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Especially you can turn your tag back in, get your money back,
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There’s no anticipation
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Points and everything else. So
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Get your apps in. So anyway, I guess maybe let’s start off with, you know, where, what’s new. We got some, any any main major changes, Josh coming up with some tag stuff that you’re foreseeing in southern Utah in the areas you’re, you’re
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Overseeing, you know, not, not a whole lot this year. Few reductions, trying to get some age on the, on our, a couple of our elk units at Dutton Pon or Dutton and Pengu Lake units. We adjusted those ages to seven year old bulls, essentially back two years ago. So we’ve been trying to get those ages up. So we’ll see a little deduction in the permits there. But overall, not a lot of change from this year. I, I feel like a lot of things have leveled out for us in a lot of our management stuff. We’ve added a few new hunts this year. You know, we’ve got that early season rifle hunt now that we’re calling. And that’s gonna be basically
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General? Yeah, general
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General units. It’ll be a few of the units, 20% of the tags are gonna go to that. So now you’re gonna see we used to have a, a 20 20 60 split on the rifle to the muzzle loader and archery. Now it’ll be a 20 20, 20 40. So, okay. It should help with, with congestion. Yeah. Congestion units. Units.
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That’s on Pine Valley. Zion, Zion and Pine Valley. Is that the only two in this?
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No, I, I wanna say the fish lake was in there as well with it. We had three or four. We’d recommended the penguin but it was taken off. But it’s one of the uniform. We’ve had some crowding issues.
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So of the previous years, total rifle allocation, approximately 20 to 25 percent’s what’s being proposed? Yeah, it’ll have to go through the public meeting process in April. Ratified by the wildlife board, but, but, but shouldn’t be a whole lot of hunting pressure then. It does come off just a few days after the muzzle loader hunt in. So it’s not like there’s buck standing around ready to get shot for all intents and purposes.
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But it, it will be interesting to see. They haven’t really been shot at that time of time of year except for like Adam said, right at, you know, you are coming on the heels of a muzzle or season where you need multiple power scopes. Yeah. And you knows, basically got a rifle in your hands.
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The cool thing about it too is you could, if you want, you can get a, a spike tag, a rifle spike tag so you can hunt elk and deer at the same time if you wanted, you know, it’s running during that same, same timeframe for those
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Five days. So even though there’s only 20%, you’re still gonna have congestion with other Yeah,
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And we see the weekends pretty busy with that spike,
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Spike hunt, Zion especially is a big, it’s an any bull unit, heavy private land. Most of the elk are tied to private land. But there’s gonna be, you won’t be on the mountain alone Pine Valley. It’s a Wednesday Pine Valley. It’s an any bull unit. It is an any bull unit if I’m not mistaken. There’s no, it’s Pine Valley still. There’s like no way. It is. I mean it’s, there’s a few. There’s a few, but
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It’s,
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It’s not like the masses are gonna go out there. So it’ll be mainly just deer hunters.
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Yeah. And it’s a Wednesday start, so it’s not a weekend. It’s gonna be five day hunt a Wednesday through Sunday. Dedicated
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Hunters can hunt up that one as well. They can. Yeah. They
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Get four seasons now. So just three. So it’s pretty significant change for, for there. We’ve never done that before. Yeah, it’ll be awesome.
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And it should, when the regular rifle, I call the regular one the later October when it comes around. It should be, there should be a little bit less under pressure. Less pressure. Yeah. It should be a overall better hunt there and maybe better for both. Yeah, that
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Was kind of the goal between it. So that’s,
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I think it’s one of the keys that we’re talking while we’re talking about the general so much and I kinda wanna, this will lead into our, you know, whole giant subject is, is our general deer are doing better than, than they have in a long time. At least in our short lifetimes. We’ve seen significant ch increase in quality. And, and I’ll let you guys maybe dive into why you’re seeing that and some of the different things and what that means overall deer numbers where we’ve been, you know, in the far past where we’ve been in the recent past and then where we’re at today and kind of what you’re seeing as a biologist perspective. But you know, the general people, you can get points for both. You can get the limited entry deer point you can get the general preference point and, and Adam and I encourage guys to do the general just because you know, especially from a non-resident perspective, they can hunt deer of decent, decent two to
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Three years and you could actually put in for both, you know a lot of guys are do to do the dedicated hunter program. I do it myself and I apply for dedicated hunter first. They draw the dedicated hunter tags first. Yeah. But I also put in for a general season point just in case. So now I’ve been doing that for a couple years. So I’ve gotta reapply this year hoping to draw dedicated. But if I don’t, I’m sitting on three general season points. So hopefully I can at least pull a muzzle loader tag so you can Yeah, you can almost still hunt every year in between your dedicated hunter
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And for non-residents that are, that can apply for everything. We’ve towed this to a lot of people but they draw all of the limited entry in once in lifetimes first. So Right. Anything you’re thinking about dedicated hunter deer wise, which are available to non-residents or general season doesn’t affect that they draw them last. So it’s not like it’s kicking you outta your pons agon. If you get a general and
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Even take it back a little bit further out. ’em is what you’re talking about is you can draw deer or L Yes. Or or the one on the once in lifetimes. And you’re just saying it doesn’t kick you out of the draws for those for general because you’re not eligible to have more than one tag.
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Yeah. Yeah. And they don’t do the general and, and I’ll put the general umbrella over the dedicated hunter and the general very last. Those two are done last a hundred first not affect your feet draw. Yeah, that’s right. Or it doesn’t kick you out of the gon deer hunt if you put general stuff or dedicated. But, so definitely do it. Or at least gain points. Now for those of you gonna go online, try to do, do dedicated a hundred points on that. There is a 18 question hunter ethics, just kind of a general overview test you have to take. Yeah, it’s, don’t jump on there last minute. Think you’re gonna do it and get caught off guard. It’s not gonna take you much time to do, but Yeah. But go do it and if you wanna gain a point, do it. It is somewhat expensive for non-residents only because most people can’t come and do all their hours. So you gotta just re re read up on it, see if it’s worth it for you to get a general deer tag for three straight years.
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That’s right. So on this, you know, the dedicated hunter program, I guess we, this wasn’t, this podcast wasn’t designed to go species by species, unit by unit, the whole, but since we’re talking about it and we’re kind of gonna talk a lot about deer today, the dedicated hunter does allow guys to hunt all the seasons. She killed two deer in three years. And in our opinion, I mean there’s only one other opportunity to do that, to hunt all seasons till you kill a deer. That’s Nevada. Nevada Lanor attacks. Lanor attacks. So it’s kind of a cool opportunity to allow guys to, you know, hunt until they kill one and you can kind of be selective ’cause you can only kill two in in three years. So anyway, great opportunity for guys. Not that expensive in the realm of a non-resident price tag. So. Alright, so let’s talk dear. Yeah. Should we talk deer?
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Let’s talk. Yeah, let’s talk maybe historically, just so we set the table a little bit about, because I would agree with Jason right now, 2018, I would feel that our general season deer are doing as good as they have been. I’d just say in 20 years, you know, since we were maybe in high school or know since the heavy winter, 92, 93
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Things killed, killed. There were giants
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Everywhere. Well, it feels like it, but remember we were 15 to 16 and any, any four point any point
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With an everything
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A giant giant was giant. Yeah. We were all, you know, we were still hunting, archery hunt until, and if we didn’t kill ’em we could hunt rifle. Yeah. And then muzzle late, late in November. So it was dedicated hunter without calling it anything back then. Yeah. And so, but since in that 20 year period, I would totally agree and a lot of things have happened and, and I think maybe most notably the amount of habitat you guys, Utah, d w r has, has, has turned dirt statewide. That that is a big thing. We, we all know, we’re all familiar hunting in western US of the chainings that have happened all throughout some of these western states in the fifties and sixties. And a lot of good that that did removed a lot of the competition for pen juniper grew deer at that same time. We had 10 80 and other things working in our favor to help grow fawns and all that.
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Some of those things like 10 80 removed and over 30, 40 years those chainings matured grew in. And so you guys through a lot of different funding mechanisms within Utah D W R conservation permit program and others have turned so much more dirt. So that, that’s number one. The other thing is, I really believe, you know, for the first 16 or 18 years, ’cause after that heavy winter of 92, 93 is when the state went limited draw general season, instead of buying ’em at Walmart, went to a draw and it was five pick your region. Yeah. It was, you know, five regions in the state and roughly had 20 to 25,000 tags in a whole region. And so for those 16, 18 years, you kind of lack, you lack the control. As one unit started coming on within a region, people would go and hunt there and just crush it. So it wouldn’t come on for very long until it was, it
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Was managed, it was kind of started the whole management idea Yeah. Of managing geographic locations. Yeah. But you had the polarization depending on what was good that’s and what
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Wasn’t good. That’s right. And so in addition to the habitat that’s gone on heavy the last, I’ll just say the last eight to 10 years heavily, the unit by unit general season approach, I think is just that last piece of management oversight for our general season units to issue tags on a archery, muzzle rifle standpoint on a unit and
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A
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Unlimited entry mentality, even though it’s a general season unit. Right. So
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For all intents and purposes, it’s not general anymore.
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Yeah, yeah. You know,
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Meant Sure. We’re calling it that maybe
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The h classes are slightly different. Yeah. But, but basically it’s limited entry units. I mean it’s limited
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And, and we’re seeing that too. I mean, we’re killing two 50 bucks, you know, on general in these general units since it’s, we’re
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Gonna have to answer the calls, Phil,
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Where, where,
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Where,
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Here’s the deal. We’re gonna save all those messages for you, buddy. Hey,
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Sounds good.
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So anyway, and I, and I have to agree with Adam as far as setting the table for that is we, we, we knew there needed to be a change. There was demand from a, from a, the public court of opinion to have change and to increase the quality and what are we gonna do? And the division was forced to look at new, new strategies.
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And it was hard. I mean, it was, well
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We even out away a five day, remember we were trying out the five day rifle and we saw a change with that. I remember that. I agree. People were pissed. I would agree. But we saw a change. And I think that’s in my mind, and it’s, it may or may not be true, but in my mind that’s when we started seeing big deer. It might’ve been weather, it might’ve been like Adam for sure. It was chainings and, and turning dirt, things like that. Yeah. But everything was coming together. We were aggressively changing strategies. Yeah.
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If in that timeframe, if you look at kind of history throughout our state, you know, when the, the first early settlers came over here, we really didn’t have that many deer. You know, there was big horn sheep everywhere.
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That’s what s like what are we talk, what are you talking about? Not many,
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I guess you don’t know in the early late s 18 hundreds to know what there was, but they didn’t mention it in all their journal. You read it over and over how infrequently they talk about deer or elk. Yeah.
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She, there’s there’s trappers. Yeah. There’s trappers journals from like the 1830s, 1820s that are frequently Yeah. Mentioning elk and sheep, even buffalo and Yeah. And pronghorn. But just very, very incidental mentioning of, of mule deer. There was one, you know, I was kind of digging through some of the historical stuff and there was one guy up in Cash Valley in the early 19 hundreds, I wanna say it was like 19 10, 1900 ish that talked about it by providence coming across a mule deer track. And that was like, kind of a big deal. And he followed it for four days straight and killed it. And then he caught a glimpse of it. So I, I don’t know that, it’s interesting. I think a lot of, a lot of, he a sportsman in Utah think, you know, back in the day, how would it have been to show up when the pioneers were here and there was millions of deer here. You know, it
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Wasn’t Yeah, it wasn’t
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He said it, he said it wasn’t there’s millions. It wasn’t
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Until, no, that’s what I’m saying is there wasn’t, but that’s what, that’s what people
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See.
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It wasn’t all the Garden of Eden from a Mulder standpoint prior to European sailors. It wasn’t, it wasn’t
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Until the twenties through the forties when we saw pretty extensive grazing, you know, problem. I mean, that was kind of what brought on Mule Deere. We kind of changed our habitat from a fairly heavy grass component. And the sheep and the, the cattle grazed it down. And so a lot of the Forbes and a lot of the shrub, that kind of stuff, the brows, the deer rely on came on. That’s when the deer herd started taking off was after the forties. And so you see when it gets into the sixties, and even in the eighties, I mean there was in, in 83, there were 228,000 buck cutters
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In Utah. In, in
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Utah. Utah in 1983.
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Wow. Wow.
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That’s pretty significant. So I mean, the deer were on rise.
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Was
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That roughly a, was that including party hunting and everything else? Grandma,
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Grandma’s tagged, let’s
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Just say tag sold. So there’s another a hundred thousand hunters that didn’t have a tag. That’s
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True. How many other dealer in
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That’s good point.
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Wait to be tagged. I mean, so let’s just say there was a significant number of, is that Josh,
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Do you think that was, is that roughly the highest number or do you not know, I don’t mean to put you on the spot. Was it 2 25? 225,000? Was that roughly a peak? As many as
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Was ever, ever sold. That was the highest. Yeah. Hundreds of fields
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Was
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There was
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2000.
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That would be Antlerless
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And Buck.
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Oh, everything. But Game and Fish got new trucks that year. That’s
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True. Oh yeah.
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Two wheel drives. But they were dead
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Single.
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Alright.
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But yeah, that would be kind of the peak. And
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There we haven’t
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Been back there.
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Well, and it’s interesting too ’cause I mean, I, I believe just a few years before that, we kind of hit our peak of, of the highest harvest Yeah. Of Bucks, which was just over 80,000 bucks killed in
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Utah. 81. We had a,
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I think it was 83.
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83 was 82,000. It says, was Buck Harvest 8,000 bucks killed in the state?
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Was that the big winter that we had about then 82 3 when Billy Billy’s mountain sl, there’s
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The big floods and Yep. Yep. That’s,
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That was that winter, the you 82, 83 when we were kids. I remember we couldn’t, we couldn’t get to Salt Lake, remember we had to go clear around to Yeah. Either go to Du Shane and up and around or go to You were in Moab. I was in Monticello. We were, I
00:17:25:17 –> 00:17:29:24
Was in Moab, but dude, I was barely out of diapers. I was seven years old. Well, eight
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Years old. But I just remember when you high all I remember Salt, salt Lake,
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You had to go clear to salt that the time of high interest rates. That’s all I remember. So,
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And good dear.
00:17:37:26 –> 00:17:46:16
Well, what’s interesting, you know, that that era, there were a lot of buck hunters out. We were killing a lot of bucks. But I don’t based what populations, what
00:17:46:16 –> 00:17:49:13
We’re told. Well, I a lot of graphs right here. What does all this mean mean it’s,
00:17:49:13 –> 00:18:07:14
That’s just a big mess. But, but, but you know, according to what everything we read, you know, there’s just kind of this gray area between, you know, the early 1940s and really, you know, the mid eighties where we don’t know exactly where the populations were. And you hear guys throwing out numbers. Yeah,
00:18:07:21 –> 00:18:09:00
Well you did it million, you
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2.2 million. That’s what I heard
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You heard.
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Was there ever two millionaire in the state of Utah? No.
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No, there wasn’t. I would,
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Was there ever a millionaire in the state of Utah?
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This is, this is Phil’s humble opinion here, but no, I I don’t, I don’t believe there was, we as believe
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As the highest you figure that could ever have
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Based on this is not just Phil, this is looking at trends. They still sold licenses in the sixties and
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Seventies. Well, that’s thing is before 80 three’s the thing we have, you know, we have the harvest data and you know, in the sixties we were killing a lot of deer too. We killed just shy of 80,000 deer in 1961. And you know, a lot of people kinda make the assumption, well, we killed a lot of deer. There must have been a ton of deer, but we were also pumping hunters into the system. Right. Then there was a lot of hunters coming, coming the system. We
00:18:52:04 –> 00:19:00:17
Had no, well I’ll say no, but almost no elk hunting for, you know, very little compared to competition. Right. General season outcoming. Right. We had some general season, but Yeah.
00:19:00:17 –> 00:19:25:28
But, but in the, you know, in the, in the mid forties, the early fifties, you know, there’s some old articles out there that are, that are throwing just ballpark estimates out there of 375,000 deer being, you know, on the map. It was increasing then it, it could have gone higher than that. It probably half million Itprobably did. It probably did. Did it, did it go all the way to 2 million? I’m I’m gonna, I’m gonna say no. Yeah.
00:19:26:13 –> 00:19:27:05
A resounding
00:19:27:19 –> 00:19:29:12
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Well,
00:19:29:12 –> 00:20:19:20
And the, and and as, as Josh talked about some of the changes that happened as, as you know, pioneers or European settlement came in late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds. And then over the next decades, you know, cattle grazing, heavy sheep grazing, you know, changed habitat. You know, the grass that was belly deep as we all hear, you know, back in the day it was fed off and, and, and re started to be gradually replaced with stuff that cattle and sheep didn’t eat as much. You know, the, you know, they, they eat what they want. Now sheep are sheep eat brows too. But, but you know what I’m saying. So the, the species switch from brows that benefited deer, that was what was left by cattle more than grass. And so that, that propagated deer. But then you get things like, as the sheep came out, then they had to have all the poisons that came with it to, to poison everything that ate a lamb or all that. The 10 eighties and all that through the forties, fifties,
00:20:19:20 –> 00:20:20:10
It totally helped
00:20:20:13 –> 00:20:27:01
Sixties till till that tool was removed. And so you had a lot of things going right for mule deer. Yeah. For
00:20:27:01 –> 00:20:33:12
Over a 40 year period. I, you would say our population exploded per se, because all that stuff was just lined up correctly.
00:20:33:27 –> 00:20:46:01
But, and it, but from what I’m reading too, you know, it, it did swing and start coming back down. Yep. You know, it didn’t, it didn’t take that long and things started swinging the other direction and we kept thinking things were, were pretty good and we kept, you know,
00:20:46:05 –> 00:20:48:18
So set that for us. When did it start coming down roughly?
00:20:48:28 –> 00:21:16:28
You know, when you read in the articles? It started coming down in the seventies. Yeah. So, you know, late sixties, early seventies, it started coming down. I don’t, who knows how fast. It’s, again, this is all speculation how fast things were coming down, but, but it, it was definitely coming down that for, but, but you know, it’s funny too because we’re, we’re kind of, right now, what are we at Josh 2017 estimate statewide about
00:21:16:28 –> 00:21:17:24
375.
00:21:18:01 –> 00:21:34:02
So it’s kind of funny to me that, you know, we’re kind of right back up there in the realm of, you know, we’ve got a pretty good chunk of deer and I’ve got guys asking me, well, you know, back in the sixties we were killing way more big deer, you know? Yeah. You look at Utah’s greatest bucks, we’ve got all these
00:21:34:05 –> 00:21:35:02
Significant deer,
00:21:35:02 –> 00:22:18:06
300 inch deer, two 70 inch deer. And you know, one thing you gotta keep in mind is look at how we were hunting back then. Oh yeah. You know, versus today. And, and those, the hunters were walking around with their 30 thirties. They were jumping a buck, they were shooting it. There’s obviously gonna be a lot more older age class deer getting through every single, every single year. And so there’s just gonna be more big bucks. Even, even if you were, even if you said the population estimate was the same of deer today than then. And I’m not saying that, but if it were today you’ve got, you’ve got an elite force of hunters out there with trail cameras with a thousand yard guns with, you know, well that’s
00:22:18:06 –> 00:22:31:29
What you’re saying. So let’s just say we had 3 75 equal equal. There were more, more big deer killed back then. There were more big deer. We’re killing ’em all. We’re good at killing ’em all. We have long range rifles, we’re hunting them very aggressively. We have long range everything bows, whether it be
00:22:32:08 –> 00:22:33:01
Binoculars, bow,
00:22:33:01 –> 00:22:34:24
Archery, muzzle. I mean, and
00:22:34:24 –> 00:23:27:01
It’s like Adam and I talked a lot about the Henrys, of course Adams got it on there extensively. I guided the first non-resident to draw on the Henry’s Lynn Green, where we’ve come from since year 2000 is unbelievable as far as technology. And so it’s like Adam said, he didn’t necessarily want to guide a deer hunter on the rifle Henry’s because they’re dead. Because the archery hunters are good and the muzz hunters are good and multiple power scopes. And yeah, it’s true. People have learned how to bait. It’s whatever it is, there’s been a lot of factors and we’re letting, we’re killing two 20 and Nevada’s the same way. I’m out in Nevada and you know, we have a decent buck that’s got splits and light mass, but he ends up grossing two 20 governor tag’s killing it instead of not killing it because the truck cameras, we know he is there. You know what I mean? And so there’s so many factors that are going on with why these deer aren’t living two twenties, if they’re gonna get to two 50. And I know you brought up that number earlier and, and I wish you wouldn’t have,
00:23:28:02 –> 00:23:30:01
I heard him say 300 too at some point.
00:23:30:09 –> 00:23:31:00
He said million.
00:23:31:01 –> 00:23:32:08
That was in 1961.
00:23:32:20 –> 00:23:52:07
Phil’s talked about 19, number 19, the two 50 number. He’s talking about all these big numbers. But anyway, I’m sorry we’re watching these deer not live because of where we’re at today. We can still have three 75,000 deer and not killing the numbers of big deer. It’s true. It’s happening. We’re not killing them. Well, because they aren’t there because we’re not letting them live. Go ahead. Go
00:23:52:07 –> 00:23:58:19
Ahead. No, I’m, I’m, I’m gonna make an argument that there, that there are some pretty dang good deer out there on the landscape right now. You know, I mean Yeah, we, I’m
00:23:58:19 –> 00:24:03:16
Not, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re not saying we we’re not we’re Right. I agree with you. Yeah. Literal.
00:24:03:16 –> 00:24:23:01
Yeah. It’s, it, you know, it’s just interesting to me that, that people can, you know, I hate to say this, but there’s a lot of people complain about the deer hunting and, and, and yet you talk to a lot of the guys, you know, in my opinion that really, really know And they’re going, holy cow. It’s, it’s the good old days you guys. Yeah. It’s, it’s pretty dang good right now.
00:24:23:08 –> 00:24:37:18
Well, my little rant was based off of the very top end, you know, those very top end giants. It is, it does feel good. And I think that goes back to why Adam and I tell people to go ahead and apply for the general points. Only prepare for a tag in the next year or two. Yeah. Hunt decent and deer have
00:24:37:18 –> 00:25:38:01
Expectations when you come. It’s not gonna be a limited entry hunt. You’re not, you’re gonna gonna see a lot of other people. But you know what else, you know, to a large extent, how often are you gonna be able to hunt in Utah if you don’t do something like a general, you know, if you’re only after limited entry deer, elk or once in lifetime, they don’t come around very often. So no, use the general as your opportunity to come hunt and bring your kids family, whatever, if you’re for non-resident have, have modest expectations. But having said that, there’s one 60 to 180 bucks on, well I’m gonna speak of the southern half of Utah, Northern Utah, I’m, there’s a lot of private land. There’s other issues up there that go on. There are good deer and big deer and really big deer in other places. Yeah. It’s up there. But as a public land as a whole, the southern half is dominated by 90% plus let’s say public land. So just come to Utah and hunt. And those are the units also in the sixties and seventies where we had the California and Texas camps that were giant. The Yeah, I mean the big, the big Southern Utah units. So yeah. It’s something you should be at least building points for in my opinion. No
00:25:38:07 –> 00:26:12:29
Question. So I think, I think a lot of this is, is come to the credit of the D W R and you guys and being able to manage strategically and smart and have the tools to do it. We’ve talked, we’re gonna talk about radio telemetry, talk about the new cactus hunt. I mean, there’s things that we’re willing to do now that we didn’t do. Yeah. You know, since 93, you know what I mean? And that’s what, and I think we’re seeing a change 93 to oh five let’s say, or 10 2010. Now we’re seeing these changes and you guys are, you guys are more, more, I don’t wanna say you’re more engaged than maybe your predecessors, but it just feels very aggressive and it feels like you care. Well you
00:26:13:02 –> 00:26:46:04
Can’t, you can’t just let mule deer just be, you know, you can’t just, you can’t just let ’em go and say, oh they’ll be fine. They’ll always be there. And that’s when that big change that you’re talking, 92 to 95 was a big change for Utah as far as as deer hunting. And that’s when we had those significant winners. Numbers were down and Utah said, you know what, it was 94 when we decided we were gonna cap it at 97,000. And we’ve never, never gone over that as far as our general season buck permits. They cap it at 97,000. That’s when they went this first come first serve. I remember waiting in line at the high school camping overnight, you know,
00:26:46:08 –> 00:26:52:18
School. The school been so glad I had a lifetime license in my life. Yeah. I’ve been watching those people camping on concrete. Yeah. That was
00:26:52:18 –> 00:26:53:07
Me. That was
00:26:53:07 –> 00:26:55:12
Me. You drive by. I remember
00:26:57:00 –> 00:26:57:10
I used D
00:26:58:02 –> 00:27:01:00
Like going down the bubble jet paper on, on the game. Remember
00:27:01:07 –> 00:27:01:16
Remember going
00:27:01:16 –> 00:27:04:00
To the window over here at the office on Main Street and looking and see,
00:27:04:00 –> 00:27:05:13
Ah crap, I just don’t see my name.
00:27:05:25 –> 00:27:10:00
I remember they’d read ’em over the radio. Do you remember that? Somebody on the radio and we’d be sitting there on the couch
00:27:10:00 –> 00:27:10:10
Listening.
00:27:10:10 –> 00:27:12:05
But, so that was kind of a big change.
00:27:12:18 –> 00:27:13:11
Probably am probably
00:27:13:19 –> 00:27:14:02
Am. Yeah.
00:27:14:14 –> 00:27:29:10
In, in 95 they kind of started doing management plans. That was when we really didn’t have a deer management plan until then to try and set some standards and Yep. And go off that. So if you look back at that in 1993 we had, we were averaging statewide eight bucks per hundred dose.
00:27:29:10 –> 00:27:33:12
That’s what I can’t get over. How do they all get bred? You know what I mean?
00:27:33:21 –> 00:27:44:14
And, and I mean unbelievable. Yeah, those was Dough. They were saying that a 12 to 15 range, all the dough can get covered with, with that low. Hard to believe. But they
00:27:44:16 –> 00:27:46:24
May take an extra month or something. They have to cycle again.
00:27:46:24 –> 00:28:01:06
Yeah, yeah. There’s usually a second cycle with a lot of those dough that you’ll see if they don’t get breaded the first time. But, but so we’ve gone from in, in 2 19 93 from eight bucks per hundred dose to, in 2013 we were at 19 bucks per hundred dose and we’re over 20 now.
00:28:01:10 –> 00:28:03:18
Are you talking that’s general state Henry
00:28:03:18 –> 00:28:04:06
Statewide,
00:28:04:06 –> 00:28:05:16
Statewide state Henry’s San Juan?
00:28:05:19 –> 00:28:07:25
No, no. This is just state. This is just general, general, general.
00:28:07:27 –> 00:28:08:06
Yeah.
00:28:08:06 –> 00:28:11:25
This are general season units, so this doesn’t count the 50 bucks per hundred dose on the pomp
00:28:12:09 –> 00:28:12:24
Henry’s.
00:28:13:13 –> 00:28:23:20
So no, this is just general season. So now we’re at, I just threw some of the numbers together to get, we’re almost 22 bucks per hundred dollars. That’s a statewide general average general season averages general. So that’s, that’s phenomenal when you
00:28:23:23 –> 00:28:27:20
Go back and what is your, what are most of the management plans called? I think there’s a two. There’s
00:28:27:20 –> 00:28:39:00
A 15 to 17. Yep. There’s a 15 to 17 range, which is more of an opportunity type range. And, and then there’s an 18 to 20, which isn’t that much difference. But it’s, they’re, you’re thinking you could see a thousand permit difference between going from those
00:28:39:01 –> 00:28:42:08
Two wages on big public land units that have a lot of deer. You could have a really
00:28:42:08 –> 00:28:44:26
Good, so we want a petition to a 25 buck per hundred d
00:28:45:24 –> 00:28:46:12
Decrease garter,
00:28:46:28 –> 00:28:51:02
Decrease the tags and let’s kill some guns. You know what I mean? But,
00:28:51:03 –> 00:29:02:25
But if you look at it now, you know, I think that’s why our deer’s doing so good. And and Phil, you know, saying this, the good old days is when you look at those numbers, when we have 20 bucks making, and this is a post-season count as well in the, this,
00:29:02:25 –> 00:29:03:28
This season, November, December.
00:29:04:24 –> 00:29:06:00
Every fork horn that was in front of
00:29:06:00 –> 00:29:25:11
Them. Yeah, exactly. This is a post-season classification that we do every year. And there’s that many bucks left over at the end of the year. You’re gonna have bucks getting by and, and we’re seeing it, we’re seeing some great bucks that are, that are getting killed on general season units every year just because those buck do ratios have been up. We don’t manage for an age class on these units. It’s just a strict buck to do. But those older bucks are gonna get through if you, if you have
00:29:25:13 –> 00:30:05:06
’em so well, you can’t have all, if it’s 20, that’s a pretty high ratio for general generosity’s. That’s not all gonna be yearning bucks. It’s unbelievable. It’s just not gonna happen. It’s unbelievable because the yearning bucks are the highest prevalent one shot anyway because they’re in the, any single year biggest cohort alive out there, you got fawns, they, they grow two points for sure. Spikes whatever they, that’s what most people have an opportunity to harvest. And so that 20 is, is a little bit more uniform of say one to one to four with a few 5, 6, 7 sprinkled in there. Yeah. So it’s, and it goes back to what we talked about earlier about having, having individual unit management plans objectives and permit numbers. And that’s
00:30:05:28 –> 00:30:24:10
A big difference. Which goes against the grain. It was, it’s hard to change basically. It was hard. We used to bike tags over the counter. Okay. Yeah. So you’re changing. I mean, kids were outta school for the deer hunt, so we had to change and to change that. You guys got kicked in the teeth a ton. Yeah, it was tough. We were kicking you in the teeth. ’cause not with big deer. Well I remember they’re kicking you in the teeth ’cause they don’t have a tag and it’s, it’s really
00:30:24:10 –> 00:30:45:16
Hard. Well it was like this back, back in, you know, early 2000 I worked for the division and so we were getting bombarded by sportsmen to get something changed. And so you go to anything, whether it be five day and it’s like, wow, that’s not even worth going hunting. Farm kids don’t even get a second weekend. I mean, it’s like they want both ends of the spectrum. They want their cake and eat it too. And it’s
00:30:45:16 –> 00:30:46:16
Opposition and all things.
00:30:46:29 –> 00:30:47:10
It’s a
00:30:47:13 –> 00:30:58:15
And it’s tough. And so that’s why we kind of have those two range of the 15 to 17. If you’re looking for an opportunity to draw permits put in for a 15 to 17 unit if you’re, if you’re wanting to maybe to have a chance at a better buck put in for an 18 to 20 because
00:30:58:24 –> 00:31:01:27
It could be there. Which is what, 18 to 20 is what, what which what units roughly?
00:31:02:01 –> 00:31:44:22
The entire Southern region Okay. Is all 18 to 20. Okay. That was changed. So any, any of the other regions, I don’t know exactly some of the units, but most of the units, you know, up north or even central Utah, some of those 15 to, there’s some 15 to 17 units. But yeah, so you see the, the change, I think the main thing is the change for Deere. The reason why they’re doing so good. We changed the, the management plans. We’ve, each unit, we have a statewide plan. Each unit has its own management plan that we manage to where we specifically look at these couple hundred thousand acres to see what we can do to this unit to make it better. And since then, I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the W R I, it’s the Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative. It was put in tact, I’m not sure exactly what year. Probably I can’t Late two thousands. 11
00:31:44:27 –> 00:31:46:22
2008 to 10 ishish seems like.
00:31:46:26 –> 00:31:55:10
Anyway, basically, you know, you go to these, these hunts or these expos, places like that. We just had the hunt expo that raised, I can’t remember whether it was $8 million or something like
00:31:55:10 –> 00:31:57:16
That, the word million coming up.
00:31:57:29 –> 00:32:26:21
But that some of that money goes into this Utah watershed Restoration restoration initiative to where that money goes back right on the ground into projects. We’ve just barely been meeting this last week with, with Forest Service B l M, you know, park Service, a lot of other state sitler state agencies that are trying to do projects on the ground, putting that money back in. And so since that was put in, in the late two thousands, there’s been 1.4 million acres of habitat restoration done in the,
00:32:27:02 –> 00:32:35:24
In the name of water. Right? Well, yeah. Yeah. Essentially habitat restoration. Habitat restoration indirectly, which directly affects deer.
00:32:35:26 –> 00:32:55:05
Yeah. And, and it’s hard to tease out how much goes to deer, how much goes to sage grouse, whatever. But if you think about it, deer thrive in like those earl early successional radio, you know, they want Forbes, they want browse a little bit of grass, that kind of thing. And so when you have that back, and there’s some places probably in the eighties that used to have that, and it was taken over by pinon juniper. Just dead
00:32:55:08 –> 00:32:55:26
Trees. Yeah.
00:32:55:26 –> 00:33:12:05
Yeah. So now we’re going and taking that back from pinon juniper and putting it back into those earl early sal stages that are healthier for deer. The deer are doing a lot better. And I’m, I’m convinced that that’s why, I think that’s why you saw a big jump on the Henry’s. You had that big fire that was there. Yeah. You know, and it resets that Oh yeah. Back
00:33:12:05 –> 00:33:15:24
When mean it was closed when it first opened, there wasn’t, the fire was not yet gone through there.
00:33:16:03 –> 00:33:37:20
It was closed for a time, thick stuff. But the fire came through kind of resets that ecosystem. And now it’s better for us if we can reset that ecosystem without the use of fire, we can go in. They, they usually go and reseed it before they do it. Then they, they bull hog the trees or chain ’em, that kind of thing and get it reset. And the deer have, it’s helped him tremendously. I’m, I’m convinced that that’s why the ponson Yeah. Has
00:33:37:20 –> 00:33:44:07
Just blown through. There’s gotta be something with this fire though. The fire, you know, reinvigorates the ground just brings in a lot more things. Yeah. Maybe you
00:33:44:07 –> 00:34:02:11
Can’t. And, and, and because we can’t really go do Chainings up in spruce and fur conifer for us up on top of Pengu, which lake. Yeah. So instead we had a fire that blow through there and helped us out to do that. So we went back in re-seed it. Millions of dollars were spent to re-seed those to try and get ’em. We’re not just gonna let ’em sit there and let sheet grass take over. Well,
00:34:02:11 –> 00:34:21:26
And I, and I know you breezed over it, but you have reduced tags on Penguin as well as Dutton for elk. And we’re pretty excited about that. Really. I’m as well. Yeah. You’re gonna see some, you’re gonna see some of our big bulls come back. I think it’s little early projection from, you know, Adam and I and what we’ve looked at in you as well. How many bulls are we saving? Oh, you know, and
00:34:22:11 –> 00:34:31:08
Well over the last few years, I mean one year, this year’s probably the smallest cut that’s occurred over the last three to four. But I mean, collectively we’ve cut here 40
00:34:31:08 –> 00:34:31:26
Permits almost
00:34:32:08 –> 00:34:33:10
On both those units. It’s a lot,
00:34:33:14 –> 00:34:40:22
Lot of both. It’s gonna be awesome. So along with the fire and everything else, I mean, it could be could be pretty impressive. Yeah. Not too far down the road. So
00:34:40:22 –> 00:34:44:20
With that predator control, I mean, we’ve spent, we’ve did the new Mule Deer Protection Act,
00:34:45:11 –> 00:34:47:12
Put money. We talked with doing the
00:34:47:12 –> 00:34:49:02
Bounty system as well as we’re paying.
00:34:49:08 –> 00:34:52:06
Is there anybody else that pays hunters to kill coyotes? I can’t think of it.
00:34:52:06 –> 00:34:53:06
No, I don’t think so. Mean
00:34:53:06 –> 00:34:57:22
No. I mean, Chris can go out and kill a coyote and go on a date tonight. That’s, you know what I mean?
00:34:58:17 –> 00:34:58:25
Mike
00:34:59:00 –> 00:35:01:13
Have to go to Taco Bell, he’s gonna have to buy a G P S
00:35:01:21 –> 00:35:02:17
Might not work. We
00:35:02:17 –> 00:35:19:10
Could even Chris here, 50 bucks. I got a new business he could open up like Chris’s Predator Control and then, and the, and his sole revenue is from Game and Fish, you know, the $50 bounty. And then he could ride off his truck, his horses, his horse trailer, everything. All this stuff right off he, what do you think Bronson? No, go for it.
00:35:19:13 –> 00:35:19:22
Yeah.
00:35:21:03 –> 00:35:34:06
So 2017, I mean, we had 11,000 coyotes checked in, in that bounty program. So that’s huge. That’s a pretty big impact. Holy cow. That’s a lot. And, and over $500,000 paid out to those guys as well as we put money into wildlife services to go and Target. Target.
00:35:34:06 –> 00:35:34:20
Yeah. That’s still
00:35:34:20 –> 00:36:12:04
Going off target range. Yeah, we still have them. If we get winter, you know, we’ll pass some snow, but we have them go kill and we’ve kind of moved some of that from winter range killing where they go do that into some of the fawning grounds up high. There’s coyotes that’ll stay up high and don’t move with the deer. So we’ve tried to target those deer fawning grounds. So with that as well as, I mean, highway crossings and fencing, you know, we’ve just tried to save deer right on, on own. We’ve done the gon that high fence down there that was on the buckskin where those deer migrate. And from this, from the telemetry we found they don’t just migrate on the Saigon, it’s from other units. But we were killing five to 600 deer a year on Highway 89 outside of Canna between Canna and and Page that
00:36:12:04 –> 00:36:14:00
Add, I mean, that adds up after
00:36:14:00 –> 00:36:18:01
Years. We’re talking about a few tags here and there. What about cars? What about
00:36:18:02 –> 00:36:18:17
500?
00:36:18:17 –> 00:36:33:12
And we have that. Yeah. How about 500? And we have that right here on the way to Pinnel from Cedar to pin. It’s unbelievable. I’ve had to repair two or three vehicles alone. Yeah. I just think, you know, we ought to do something by the way, by the, a little pitch out there. We you gotta do something right here. But, but yeah, it’s significant.
00:36:33:12 –> 00:36:39:11
And we’ve, and we’ve gone, this year we had zero, zero deer were hit down there. We finally got that fence figured out. We got to manzo the
00:36:39:11 –> 00:36:40:19
Deer. Well the deer out,
00:36:40:21 –> 00:36:42:26
The deer figured it out. Where are these crossings? I,
00:36:42:27 –> 00:36:45:28
Where do I go mean first when they first met the fence, they’re like, that first year
00:36:45:28 –> 00:36:47:11
It was a little rough. But,
00:36:47:21 –> 00:36:48:06
But hey,
00:36:48:20 –> 00:36:51:14
They are survivors. They’re either gonna die or cross the fence.
00:36:51:14 –> 00:36:54:18
They’re either yeah. Gonna die or go in an underpass. That’s right. Go under there.
00:36:55:03 –> 00:37:02:28
So yeah, we’ve had for that like 13 mile stretch, we’ve had zero deer hit. So if we are saving 500 deer a year on the ponson, just from vehicle collisions on that, that’s huge. And
00:37:02:28 –> 00:37:08:22
They’re not going around the ends of it and getting killed there. I mean, you don’t have big spikes towards the prea buckskin stuff.
00:37:08:22 –> 00:37:13:18
They’re just walking down it until they find the other underpass and then they learn that once they learn it, they’ll know it forever. They’re going
00:37:13:18 –> 00:37:19:10
Through. So I think all that is kind of a, a deer success story. Yeah. You know, we’re trying and
00:37:19:15 –> 00:37:38:25
To help, we need to document all these things because you know, you’re, there’s, you’re bound to be replaced at some point there’s gonna be new biologists and how are we gonna fix here? And you know, you know what those factors are. We gotta figure that out and, and document all the changes and why, why we’re going through all this. It just, anyway, go ahead. That’s
00:37:39:01 –> 00:38:06:13
Interesting. You mentioned, you know, the deer out here on 56. You know, as we, as we, as we dive into, you know, these, these g p s collar deer, we’ve got, I don’t know how many deer we have. We had like 40 something out there now. There’s even more than that. Yeah. You know, as we, as we really look closely at that data, we’re learning Right, exactly. Where you’re hitting here, your deer, you know, and, and, and yeah. We’re, we’re, we’re gonna make at some point we’re gonna make changes. We’re gonna make changes.
00:38:06:28 –> 00:38:08:02
That’s a huge problem. Usually
00:38:08:18 –> 00:38:24:22
Whenever there’s another highway scheduled highway project come along, like, Hey, it’s time for a passing lane, or because of traffic increases, they do those little things. You run over and they know how many people are going on the highway. We’re, we now need to double it. That’s when it’s easy to dovetail it in and the money comes with it. Right. Exactly.
00:38:25:03 –> 00:38:25:28
You know, we’ve
00:38:25:28 –> 00:38:26:26
David Fisher, who does it
00:38:27:00 –> 00:38:27:16
Well we’ve got a
00:38:28:01 –> 00:38:28:23
With udot
00:38:28:25 –> 00:39:06:18
Yeah. Udot. So, you know, right now we have a, what we’re calling the migration initiative, you know, know this. This is kind of an, in an initiative, a movement. We’re, we’re going gungho on this. And we even have a coordinator in Salt Lake that’s the migration initiative coordinator. And you know, he’s sitting down in meetings with Udot saying all the time Yeah. Saying, look, whenever this is, look, look at this. Look. Look what these deer moving, look at this corridor right here up, I mean take 56 right here. We’ve got a spot that is just a highway three miles long. It’s not that long. It kills a lot of, so what can we do? You know, and UDOT is on board, you know, because they’re seeing the data and, and it’s, we’ve gotta have, the data doesn’t happen
00:39:06:18 –> 00:39:31:11
That first year. We talked about it, I think on the ponds for handful of years. But again, as, as traffic studies increase and funding mechanisms are in place to revamp part of the highway, it’s natural that that’s when it’s all open and dovetail it in and Yeah. And get it done and, and have the sportsmen involved and putting them there and, and you know, you guys I know have cameras, you know, on those, you can’t help but drive by 89 and look at all the cameras and overpass underpasses down there. So
00:39:32:02 –> 00:39:40:12
It’s, so it’s pretty cool. You know, this migration initiative and, and the things that we’re doing and things that we’re learning from, from the caller and the telemetry stuff is pretty amazing.
00:39:40:23 –> 00:39:46:06
Well, let’s talk about that, that we talked about a lot about that last year, almost a year ago. Maybe it has
00:39:47:03 –> 00:39:47:28
Have both of you guys here in
00:39:47:28 –> 00:40:08:24
The office, but you guys were freshly putting callers on or just had the first year. Yeah. And so tell us where, at least in the southern region, where most of that effort, just for maybe people that listen the first go around where this collaring studies where you’ve been targeting the units. I know it’s been heavily involved on the ponson, maybe some other places, but maybe it’s just there. You
00:40:08:24 –> 00:40:44:10
Know, I think one of the biggest significant ones, I mean more so than the gon even is the Pine Valley and the Monroe. We’ve, we’ve been collaring deer there for a long time and doing a lot of studies, especially fawn studies, deer survival be, and because of those studies, we’ve been able to better kind of wrangle in our deer population models because we can take a real time data and we can say, look, we only had 40% fa survival this year. So we can throw a realtime data instead of a, well guess we could have this, this is what we saw. Right. Instead of a visual, we know, okay, we had X amount of fawns die, we had x amount of do die. And we’ve kind of, we can throw that in a model and give us, I mean, it, it’s a really good thing. Numbers
00:40:44:16 –> 00:40:46:17
You put in the model. Better model. Exactly.
00:40:46:23 –> 00:41:22:26
So those have been going on those two units for a long time and that’s helped us out tremendously just to figure out what’s killing deer and how and when and all that kind of information is just priceless to us. So then from that we’ve kind of got those and they’ve actually been doing those statewide, you know, every, every unit or every region has some units that they focus on and do that survival study stuff. But now we’ve kind of shifted into some of it as a migration corridors. And from that we’ve, we added the ponant this year, which well, last year, which was really huge. We collared some doughs in the, the winter of 2016. And I think we talked about it last time we were here where we did, we actually had
00:41:23:07 –> 00:41:26:14
Teased you about collared bucks and then all of a sudden I see a buck hanging from a chopper.
00:41:26:14 –> 00:41:26:18
Yeah.
00:41:27:14 –> 00:41:28:25
How awesome was that? Yeah, that
00:41:28:25 –> 00:41:43:00
Was sweet. It’s pretty cool. And so we’ve, we’ve, from that, we’ve said, look what these deer are doing. We kind of just threw ’em on to see what they are. These callers are taking a point we can get on, on Google Earth and see where that deer was standing yesterday or this morning kind of a thing. It’s pretty amazing. What,
00:41:43:01 –> 00:41:54:18
What numbers are we talking about in terms of individual deer on pon, on this Ponson callers, roughly, if you had to put it within, are we talking 30, 50, a hundred? How many collars? 150 hundred
00:41:54:18 –> 00:41:58:19
50 collar have collars of Yeah, we’ve got that are currently talking to your computer. Yeah,
00:41:58:19 –> 00:41:59:08
Yeah. Yep. Wow.
00:41:59:08 –> 00:42:02:05
Right. 30, 40 something bucks, right? Yeah.
00:42:02:19 –> 00:42:03:24
Oh, almost 50 bucks.
00:42:04:11 –> 00:42:05:17
10 cactus bucks. Oh
00:42:05:17 –> 00:42:09:19
Yeah. 10 of them. We, we collared, we sought out in collared cactus box. So
00:42:09:19 –> 00:42:16:26
If anybody draws the cactus hunt, come talk to you. We’re gonna open up a little gray computer and we’re gonna get you to it.
00:42:18:09 –> 00:42:19:26
But just teasing, just
00:42:19:26 –> 00:42:20:14
Teasing Jason.
00:42:20:28 –> 00:42:25:18
I know, I’m just teasing. Just think outside the box once in while. That’s all. All right. So anyway,
00:42:25:25 –> 00:42:44:23
But, so yeah, we call her, we call her fawns. We’re doing our FA study with that as well as we do do and, and the bucks as well as targeting cactus bucks. A cool thing about it was, was we learned last time when we did it, we didn’t have a single deer go to Arizona and we know those deer go to Arizona, but we didn’t have any deer. Go to Arizona, we collared them too late per se. So you
00:42:44:23 –> 00:42:50:23
Caught ’em on the winter range in 16, right? Yep. But they were all Utah, all on Utah side. So yeah,
00:42:50:29 –> 00:42:57:06
It was the end of November. We were thinking, man, if we catch deer here, if the winter gets bad, maybe they’ll pile into Arizona something. You know,
00:42:57:06 –> 00:42:58:29
There was kind of a, they, they were already where they were wearing,
00:42:59:09 –> 00:43:02:25
But they exactly, they were there. Oh, I see. The deer were already in Arizona. They
00:43:02:25 –> 00:43:07:22
Fly on the Arizona side, snack some deer and then watch ’em go back to Utah and that’s back up on the ak
00:43:07:25 –> 00:43:10:22
Or do the summer deer and see what portion of them go into Arizona.
00:43:10:29 –> 00:43:19:05
So we were throwing that out, what should we do? And we said let’s go to Arizona and catch ’em. So we actually did that as well this winter. Oh good. We went, we went and caught last
00:43:19:05 –> 00:43:20:04
Couple months ago. Yeah.
00:43:20:09 –> 00:43:29:00
Just in, it was in December. We had to wait. They have some hunts that are later there on those units. So we had to wait until those hunts were over. But we caught bucks and dos both in Arizona. That’s awesome. Some
00:43:29:00 –> 00:43:31:18
Within a five mile roughly of the border. Some
00:43:31:18 –> 00:43:40:11
Of ’em were about eight, five to eight miles. A couple of ’em were as far as 12 miles south of Fredonia. So Wow. We’re gonna lose some of those deer back to the, the Chiba. But Arizona
00:43:41:00 –> 00:43:41:24
Provided colors
00:43:41:24 –> 00:43:49:01
As well. Yeah, yeah. So we’re gonna see just this big mixing of those deer and, and where they go. So we’ll see what that does.
00:43:49:05 –> 00:43:55:16
Did we catch, are you been mainly doing there or did you guys catch summer deer too? Anywhere on summer we
00:43:55:16 –> 00:44:04:25
Have not yet. Okay. We’re, we’re talking about, we kind of have talked about it this year. We’ve got some collars that were left. We didn’t get all of them put out that we wanted. We’ve got a few left and we’re gonna try and do that on some of the deer this summer.
00:44:04:25 –> 00:44:13:02
Always a little tougher too. ’cause you’re talking about fawns that are just given, just having, or those that are just having fawns and you’re gonna, it’s, we’re gonna throw her mom in a neck. It
00:44:13:02 –> 00:44:17:19
Almost feels good. But what you’ve been doing on the winter range almost feels good. But I just do remember,
00:44:17:29 –> 00:44:23:05
We’re likely just going to call her over target some bucks if we call in the summer, the summertime, trying to
00:44:23:05 –> 00:44:48:07
Call her some bucks in the summer. Because the study I’m remembering was from the late nineties, around 2000 when they did that from around the out area. And I think that’s where that, I’ll call it old number of 25 to 30% of the deer went to Arizona. Came from, yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, back then, that’s where they, I first identified those heavy migration corridors as well that, that led to the, you know, hey, the signing and then obviously the fencing and underpasses. And
00:44:48:07 –> 00:45:01:14
It kind of makes sense because we collared all these deer down there and we had deer go all over the ponson unit, except there was a section on that south end of south of Alton in that C W M U. We didn’t have a single deer go there, but there’s deer there, so, yeah. So
00:45:01:14 –> 00:45:04:13
The winter range deer that you caught ’em, they, so, yeah. So,
00:45:04:21 –> 00:45:08:13
So we could have missed that portion that they, wherever they go kept, go heavily to that section. Five
00:45:08:13 –> 00:45:08:26
Miles different.
00:45:08:27 –> 00:45:39:19
Yeah. Saw the, the old study could have been biased as well, if that’s, I, I’d have to go dig it up to see how uniformly they call their deer. But I think it was very heavily, ’cause it was my major professor that had a different grad student doing that. So I know I can remember some. It was heavily involved with the, out in c w I member. Right. Was so, could have been a, you know, I’d have to, I don’t wanna speak outta turn. It could have been a somewhat biased sample that those deer happened to go there. Th a third of them go there. But uniformly the ponson deer, you know, don’t, so it might end up being 10% or 15 or whatever ends up being there.
00:45:39:19 –> 00:46:10:25
Sure. And so that was cool. We just kind of threw ’em out in areas where we had high deer numbers and let ’em go. And that was the, the most amazing part was that you have deer that are standing right next to each other, going to the same watering hole. One of ’em went 80 miles, the other just went 30 miles, you know. Yeah. Crazy. But they, but the, the interesting part was they’re taking the same route. And then finally at one point, one of ’em just said, this is far enough. My mom took me here and I’m staying. And this other deer said, well, my mom took me another 50 miles that way. Yeah. So we had that, that fawn, she was a yearling deer come all the way from canna all the way to Cedar City. We talked about that
00:46:11:12 –> 00:46:14:04
Last year on the Shish Lake, you know, on the west face, just
00:46:14:04 –> 00:46:29:19
Right above cedar, which is what’s crazy. I think you’re drawing a line around some of these units saying this is a unit boundary, but we, they’re actually deer coming, crossing, you know, multiple units. Yeah. More than one. Yeah. You know what I mean? Multiple units to winter range. And maybe they’re getting harvested on the ponca or maybe they’re getting harvested up on the penguin or, yeah,
00:46:29:19 –> 00:46:43:00
Well, in in general units too. It’s, that’s what’s unique is, is it kind of gets hairy because there could be bucks that are ponson bucks, at least the winter during a certain time of year, they could be there. They
00:46:43:00 –> 00:46:43:18
Come in on the zoo
00:46:43:19 –> 00:46:58:04
And they, and then, you know, they’re coming from a, the summer range on a general unit and, and then they’re, you know, maybe they’re leaving earlier than the hunts, who knows when they’re leaving. But then they show up on the ponds and maybe then they’re getting passed on ’cause they’re not quite there then they’re getting big. You know, it’s just interesting.
00:46:59:08 –> 00:46:59:17
All that,
00:47:00:07 –> 00:47:01:14
All that dynamic of
00:47:01:20 –> 00:47:09:05
How that migration affects all of a sudden, this general unit’s coming on strong. Yeah. You know, and, and basically it’s because they’re hunted on the bleed
00:47:09:05 –> 00:47:11:00
Over from the bleed over neighboring premium unit.
00:47:11:00 –> 00:47:11:23
Exactly. What
00:47:11:23 –> 00:47:13:26
Do you, and I think you can see that with the Zion and Pengu, which lake? So
00:47:13:26 –> 00:47:23:13
What, what kind of data besides just tracking routes, obviously you are, you guys checking, like collar goes dead, you’re checking what killed it. Are you checking multiple, multiple things?
00:47:23:19 –> 00:47:42:23
That’s been a big deal, especially this year because with this light winter, we say, great, the deer are all gonna live. This is is gonna be great. And up north they’ve had like a 90% survival on fawns this year. You know, some of those are Yeah, it’s high, extremely high. But yet on the gon and someone in southern Utah in these areas, I’ve been picking up a lot of dead fawns. Really? It’s stress. It’s
00:47:42:27 –> 00:47:46:16
Dry watered. They’ve got a trail too. Farm burned too much. Just we
00:47:46:16 –> 00:47:49:13
Were hearing some of those. It’s just dedicated hunter projects. Were hauling water. Yeah.
00:47:49:17 –> 00:48:22:07
In January, we’ve started hauling the b l m started hauling water in January. You wouldn’t think of it, but they’re hauling water in January. Some of the, the local sportsman’s groups stepped up and the landowner’s association on the gon, they stepped up huge. So kudos to them. And Wow. They completely funded a 7,000 gallon water trucks to go out and fill up some ponds for us out there. So that’s, that’s huge. And because of that, we’ve seen, you know, all the deer doing. Okay. I went down there the other day to pick up a fond collar, and I’m not kidding you, there was probably 200 deer just within 50 yards of this pond. Half of ’em just beded on the pond bank just because
00:48:22:13 –> 00:48:23:13
Dry pond or wet area.
00:48:23:15 –> 00:48:27:06
It was a wet pond. But they’re just kind of hanging out. Right. They’re not going far. Yeah, because
00:48:27:29 –> 00:48:33:10
So they can’t trail too far. Too far. So it’s affecting their foraging and then the habitat around there’s probably getting crushed. Yeah. And where
00:48:33:10 –> 00:48:36:12
Are the predators? The predators know where to congregate. Yeah, we’re chill on water.
00:48:36:18 –> 00:48:48:23
We’ve been seeing our, our lighter fonts, 50 less than 50 pound fawns are kind of getting picked off right now by the coyotes, because I am, you know what the, the cause of death is a coyote. But you could attribute to that, to condition
00:48:49:06 –> 00:48:52:01
Tion wheat. They’re, they’re trailing too far. I mean
00:48:52:11 –> 00:49:00:07
That fawn, she couldn’t run fast enough to get away from the coyotes. Everybody else got away and she didn’t. So we’ve, we’ve seen a pretty significant loss of fawns this year. All
00:49:00:14 –> 00:49:07:20
So light winter doesn’t mean always mean. Yeah. We’re in these dryer air at Nevada, Northern Arizona, you know, southern Utah doesn’t always mean
00:49:07:21 –> 00:49:10:26
Nevada. Nevada’s getting hammered too. If fa is getting hammered, Nevada’s getting
00:49:10:26 –> 00:49:41:08
Hammered. Yeah, I know Dustin Mitchell over in that Monticello area down in there. They’re even seeing it too. They’re extremely low fa survival this year. So yeah, it’s, yeah, great winter, they’re gonna make it, but if it’s down these desert areas, it’s too dry. So we’re able to learn, learn from, from some of that as, as well as we’re seeing. I’ve gone down there and had to pick up some, some cougar mortalities on some more adult deer. And it seems like, on the other hand, it’s kind of some of our old grandma do nine year old do or kind of in that same predicament. You know, they’re not in the best body condition either, so they’re getting picked off. If
00:49:41:08 –> 00:49:45:00
You survived 10 years without getting eaten by a line already, you did something right. Oh,
00:49:45:09 –> 00:49:50:24
It’s true. Your day was coming. You lived. That’s what bro feels nothing for that dog. Well, your
00:49:50:24 –> 00:49:57:18
Day was coming. I’m grateful for the 1.1 average fawns that she threw every year. Thank you. Survived. Thank
00:49:57:18 –> 00:49:58:22
You. You’re now feeding the line,
00:49:58:27 –> 00:50:07:12
But it’s just, you can’t, you can’t outrun ’em forever. Yeah. It’s just a lot to overcome. We’re at highway a deer, a a, a vehicle or whatever, so bound
00:50:07:12 –> 00:50:33:00
To happen. Tell us, you, you mentioned, you know, callers up north and whatnot, statewide. I don’t know, obviously we talk a lot about southern region. There’s a lot of, are some of our big deer down here. We’ve got a lot of demand down here. You guys are from down here, we’re from down here. But tell us statewide, what kind of maybe some of the other projects we got going on out there. I mean, as far as you know, sheep and moose and, I mean, there’s all kinds of telemetry and studies that are going on, not just down here.
00:50:33:00 –> 00:51:01:22
Yeah, I mean, we’re trying to call her. I mean, a lot of stuff is, is being collared right now. We collared even some pronghorn up, like out on the Parker this year to kind of see what they’re doing. Again, that’s still southern region. But also we had plans to collar some more elk on Southwest desert. Even some bulls. We, we were planning on collaring this year, which will be unique a lot. Sheep, there’s, there’s a lot of sheep that have collars right now, statewide. Just whenever we’re moving sheep around, we take every advantage we can to put some collars out there. And, and
00:51:01:22 –> 00:51:49:14
This technology that’s changed back from my day, which was not very long ago, but we had V H F and g p s were so expensive and so brand new, you couldn’t afford to put very many of ’em on because they cost, you know, two, three grand for a collar. They do. You know, and I don’t know what they are now, but now it feels like almost all of these are g p s, you know, now’s, that’s all we’re doing. I mean, that’s all you do. And so, I mean, sure as technology’s changed, it just allows you to get real time stuff back on your laptop. You can sit down and see what’s going on. Now you can get a mortality. Used to be, oh, I’d, I’d schedule a sheep flight every 30 days to go fly my sheep. And if it was bad weather in Salt Lake and you couldn’t get out, I got bumps. So then it was two months and oh, now I got some mortality. How long have they been dead? I don’t know. And by the time then you get there on the ground, they’ve been there three months. So it was a problem. So, yeah.
00:51:49:15 –> 00:52:08:08
Well it, it’s not only that, I mean even even the g p s callers, just in the last year or two, the technology of g p s callers is going through the roof where we used to be getting data points every, every, you know, once a day or twice a day or whatever, you, you look at that data win a deer is really moving and there’s these big gaps in the data where you don’t really know where she went. They
00:52:08:09 –> 00:52:11:02
Move in a week. They’ve made their whole migration sometimes. And
00:52:11:02 –> 00:52:28:26
So, right. And so, and so now we’re throwing out collars that are taking, you know, g p s corners every two hours. And it really tightens that up, you know, so like this, this dough that ended up Yeah. You know, over here by Cedar last year, you know, we were kind of really curious to see what she was gonna do. And she ended up going all the way back to the right where
00:52:28:28 –> 00:52:29:06
She was
00:52:29:07 –> 00:52:44:22
Called Right in the exact same path. And we were able to re catch her this year and put a collar on her that now takes a data point every two hours so we can fill some of those gaps of what she’s, what she’s doing and really, really tighten in on the migration corridor. So
00:52:44:22 –> 00:53:14:29
That’s pretty awesome. That’s, that is, that’s really good. And it just at leads to better management, you can, you know, we’re not just doing it for g whizz. It’s, it’s interesting to hear about the g whizz animals, the outliers and all that, but there’s really the 90% of the callers that are, that are, you can learn something really from that Right. Can, can put something on the ground, either in a management prescription, whether it be the highway stuff and the fencing or season date, timing of season dates sometimes. I mean Yeah. Or you know, predator stuff. I mean Well, and
00:53:14:29 –> 00:53:50:13
That’s what a lot of these studies have been done for years and years. Clear back to when my dad was gaming fish. You know what I mean? And it’s like we keep trying to, you know, reinvent the wheel, so to speak. And a lot of it’s because of the technology. Yeah. They didn’t, you know, there was always, you know, ambiguity in some of these things where, you know, we think predators hurt deer, but we’re not sure, let’s do another deer predator study with deer. You know? And so I think a lot of that is like what you guys are talking about with all the, you know, innovations and technology and even lion hunters and their dogs and having g p s callers and you know, oh yeah. Realtime trail cameras. Everything’s changing. Yeah. And it’s such a rapid,
00:53:50:15 –> 00:54:14:17
So with some of this year, you did the bucks for the first time this winter, right? Correct. This winter you call her, I think you said 44, something like that. Yeah, 40, 50. Yeah, it’s about 50. And that’ll be, that was after the hunts and all that. And these have different, are they, are they only gonna last for years? Is that because the two two hour thing in battery li or is that just because you want to get ’em off? Do they blow off break off callers?
00:54:14:29 –> 00:54:18:00
We still, even with a two hour life, we’re gonna get three years out of’em. Oh,
00:54:18:00 –> 00:54:19:01
That’s as long as they stay
00:54:19:01 –> 00:54:19:25
On. Which is pretty amazing.
00:54:19:29 –> 00:54:23:14
So you don’t have to retrieve it every year. Unless technology changed, then it’s better.
00:54:23:14 –> 00:54:24:11
So we’re powered collars.
00:54:24:11 –> 00:54:27:13
Yeah, no, we threw one on what we threw one on. You’re kidding me.
00:54:27:15 –> 00:54:30:00
No, we threw one. I thought I had a 500. You’re so
00:54:30:00 –> 00:54:30:11
Far behind.
00:54:30:28 –> 00:54:33:28
We we need to stick to our, what we’re doing, Carter,
00:54:35:01 –> 00:54:51:06
We, yeah, we threw one on a dough and of course she was the one that got killed. So how long it’s gonna lab. But, but no, it’s, it’s something that they put on there. We’ve, you know, these, these deer. The cool thing about these callers is I was just talking with one of the guys up in Salt Lake the other day. We can actually turn up the amount of points these are taken to every half hour
00:54:51:11 –> 00:54:52:29
On your computer. Yeah. We’re
00:54:53:02 –> 00:54:53:11
It’s
00:54:53:11 –> 00:54:56:19
Pre-program it and whatever goes on the deer as that’s what you’re stuck with. So
00:54:56:19 –> 00:55:01:18
We’re gonna probably hear in the next few weeks, go in and set those collars, starts taking a pinging every half hour
00:55:01:20 –> 00:55:02:28
When the migration starts. When
00:55:02:28 –> 00:55:10:00
The migration starts. We’re going, I mean, we’re gonna be tracking these deer almost, you know, live. Wow. You know, and it’s gonna be pretty amazing. And then we can turn it back off
00:55:10:05 –> 00:55:12:22
In May or June, then shut it back down to Yeah. Save the, when they
00:55:12:22 –> 00:55:13:04
Hit save
00:55:13:05 –> 00:55:14:25
Twice a they save the battery
00:55:15:00 –> 00:55:16:10
When they hit summer range. We’ll,
00:55:16:10 –> 00:55:17:02
That’s incredible down.
00:55:17:12 –> 00:55:18:10
It’s incredible. So
00:55:18:10 –> 00:55:18:17
It’s,
00:55:18:29 –> 00:55:25:18
It would be really cool if it did like selfies when they were getting attacked by a predator. You know, you have a little video camera rolling. Just the whole rolling. And
00:55:26:01 –> 00:55:36:08
Whenever the, the heartbeat reaches 120 or 30 beats or higher. Yes. Boom. Something’s going on. Video camera turns on. Video kicked on. Yeah. Serious. Oh, that’d be awesome. That’s good. I like, we’re digressing.
00:55:36:14 –> 00:55:41:28
We actually had no, we had a collar that had a camera in it that we put on. Yep. See, see then again
00:55:41:28 –> 00:55:43:20
You thought you had a 500 dude, it’s already been a,
00:55:43:21 –> 00:55:45:10
We’re getting squashed left and right. Yeah.
00:55:45:10 –> 00:55:52:01
So we had one, but of course that deer died as well. Oh geez. So took bad decisions at picking deer to put these
00:55:52:07 –> 00:55:59:00
Collar well of deer die. Like how, how much mortality do you truly get when you do, when you, when you stress ’em out, put these collars on ’em,
00:55:59:03 –> 00:56:03:02
You know what happens? It’s part of it, you know. Yeah. But it was extremely low. I mean, we had
00:56:03:10 –> 00:56:03:28
One in 50
00:56:04:12 –> 00:56:09:10
With no, well probably that was about right. 50. That was about right. And that was
00:56:10:05 –> 00:56:10:18
The first week,
00:56:10:18 –> 00:56:11:16
Right? Yeah, 2%.
00:56:11:19 –> 00:56:12:28
Yeah. If they’re gonna after
00:56:12:28 –> 00:56:16:19
That, you’re good to go. Yep. And if you recapture ’em, do they just say, all right, I I get it. Yeah,
00:56:16:19 –> 00:56:27:18
There’s some of those, there’s some of those dos on, on the Monroe, the Pine Valley. I’m not kidding you. They get caught in December, they turn around and get caught in March again and then they get caught in December and March and so forth. They hear that last 45 years.
00:56:28:28 –> 00:56:31:00
Oh, I could just imagine what I just
00:56:31:13 –> 00:56:32:25
Lay down. Just lay down, take it.
00:56:33:15 –> 00:56:37:00
Yeah. Don’t get running 40 miles an hour and get tripped up in the day.
00:56:37:20 –> 00:56:38:14
Just stand there with your,
00:56:39:02 –> 00:56:39:17
Here we go.
00:56:40:22 –> 00:57:02:25
So tell us on these bucks what, I mean other than some of the movements and obviously how, what percentage of ’em go back to summer range gon so they’re truly, you know, summering hunted and wintering on Pongan versus dispersing to general season units. There’s things like that you can learn. What other things you hopeful they learn or have you learned already through, you know, handling some of these bucks? Or what do you hope to learn? Yeah,
00:57:03:03 –> 00:57:56:28
Just body condition on a lot of ’em. You know, that was one of the things that when, when we originally were doing it, we weren’t gonna have any of the bucks brought back to us. We were just gonna give the collar to the capture company and, and have ’em put ’em on. And I said, no, let’s bring ’em back. I wanna see ’em, I want to see what they’ve got going on. So we did a lot of body condition scores and it was pretty interesting. I mean, not what you would not expect, but a lot of these dos we’re measuring a, a rump fat measurement on ’em. And most of ’em are coming in at two to four millimeters of rump fat, which is technically poor condition, pretty small. But most times they don’t need to be in great condition to survive a winner on the ponson. But some of those bucks, some of ’em had up to 21 millimeters of raw fat. So it kind of shows you that this dough, how rough of a life a dough has that has a couple fawns that are on her for so long compared to this buck that’s just out there walking around feeding. Wow. But then you see some of those bucks that were actually starting to rutt pretty good. ’cause we were catching ’em in the end of November. So some of them were rutting pretty hard,
00:57:57:02 –> 00:57:58:05
They’d already leaned out
00:57:58:15 –> 00:58:01:00
And some of those were down to five to 10, you know. Yeah.
00:58:01:09 –> 00:58:21:04
So it’d be kind of cool to, to, and I know this has nothing to do with nothing, but it’d be kind of cool to, you know, the body condition, how that affects and the growth. If there was any way you could possibly, and I don’t know how you’d quantify it, the growth other than B n C score, but, you know, if you could kind of get those and then based off of preci precept levels, what time of the year we got the precept. I mean that’s a whole nother,
00:58:21:04 –> 00:58:46:23
Because if you think about it, that’s what it’s gonna be. A lot of people say, oh, it’s gonna affect antler growth. Well really it’s not necessarily the antlers, it’s the condition of that deer. Yeah. Like you said, because that deer’s gotta, he’s got, he’s gonna put everything onto his body to survive first. Yeah. And that’s gonna go first and then it’s, the rest is gonna go into antler growth. Yeah. So these years, like last year, 2016, where we had some phenomenal, phenomenal antler growth, probably the best I’d seen in a long time. Those deer were healthy, they were in good shape. Yeah. They didn’t have to fight rest,
00:58:46:25 –> 00:58:49:07
Rain, all spring and summer. Early summer. Yeah.
00:58:49:07 –> 00:58:55:05
Yeah. So it went into antler growth and they looked great. But on a year like this, I don’t know, you know, I
00:58:55:05 –> 00:59:23:22
Don’t know how it’s gonna be. So these, it’ll be interesting, these cactus buck stags. You said you caught 10 or so of then 10. I don’t remember. Yeah. What do you guys take blood from ’em? What do you start, I mean, we talked a little bit about this last year preliminarily, so obviously anything we talked about today is not like, hey, don’t take it to the gospel and print it. But Right. Yeah. But there has been always a, a propensity of high cactus bucks on there. And, and even from when I was there, it’s always been the case. There’s not one other place in the world that I’m aware of that has them. Well
00:59:23:22 –> 00:59:26:06
Deserts in Nevada have quite a few, but not like what, you’re
00:59:26:11 –> 00:59:27:19
Not as many. And so did
00:59:27:19 –> 00:59:27:23
You,
00:59:28:11 –> 00:59:41:06
Did you learn, I mean I know you guys have targeted some of those. You, you obviously took, looked at testicles, but probably took blood and all that. Yeah. What are some preliminary findings of those? Or compared to the other bucks you caught, perhaps things like that.
00:59:41:09 –> 00:59:51:14
There was actually one kind of outlier that was pretty interesting was they flew, they were flying some man, we actually caught seven of them in the same hayfield. It was pretty weird. I mean, although there was kinda some ridges around there,
00:59:51:16 –> 00:59:51:29
Cactus.
00:59:52:01 –> 00:59:54:24
They were all, they were kind of congregated there. And they ranged from,
00:59:55:01 –> 00:59:55:25
They know they’re different. Yeah.
00:59:56:05 –> 00:59:56:20
They ranged.
00:59:56:23 –> 01:00:06:14
They’re like, the women don’t accept us. The men don’t accept us. They beat us up. We’re kind of not sure if we’re boys or girls, we’re just gonna head down the middle and hang together. Laugh about,
01:00:06:16 –> 01:00:16:07
Laugh about that. But we, we caught, we caught some that were actually regular. If you were to see ’em in August, you’d say, oh, 24 inch, four point buck. Really? I mean, regular antler growth. Four points. Yeah. Good, good
01:00:16:12 –> 01:00:17:13
Looking bucks. But
01:00:17:13 –> 01:00:18:10
This was November. Right.
01:00:18:14 –> 01:00:21:19
But it was November. Still retain the velvet testicles were very small
01:00:21:25 –> 01:00:22:04
Size
01:00:22:04 –> 01:00:25:24
Of peanuts. And, and it didn’t appear that they were ru at all. Their necks weren’t swollen. They didn’t, and
01:00:25:24 –> 01:00:27:25
They, and they looked, they were velvet four points.
01:00:27:27 –> 01:00:52:20
Oh yeah. Full velvet, four point, normal looking atler. Well if you were to see in August, you said it’s normal deer. We caught anywhere from that to just some weird junk all over the head. Some spikes here and there to one of the deer. They came flying in and were like, oh man, that must be like a yearling cactus puck. He’s really small compared to the rest. ’cause most of those, everything goes to body conditions, body. They know they to grow, aler to try and rutt to fight. That kind of thing. So they’re just gigantic steers. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. They’re just gigantic deer.
01:00:52:25 –> 01:01:01:12
I’ve got a cactus bucket. Nevada. It’s unbelievable. Yeah. I mean just like, I don’t know, 13 inches around all the way to the top. That one I’ve showed you, Adam. Yeah. Giant. Anyway,
01:01:01:12 –> 01:01:10:25
Kick going. No, but there, so this one comes flying in. We’re like, oh, that’s weird. It’s a small size deer. Anyway, we’re getting down there and you know, my job was the technical testicle measure, you know, and Oh yeah,
01:01:10:29 –> 01:01:11:25
Enjoy job.
01:01:12:08 –> 01:01:13:17
I get down there and
01:01:13:17 –> 01:01:15:05
I go to, I, I am the manhood guy.
01:01:15:07 –> 01:01:15:20
Got your caliber.
01:01:16:17 –> 01:01:18:02
I’ve got a certificate if you want to see it.
01:01:18:08 –> 01:01:22:26
Oh, really? Really? No. Who taught? You won’t. That’s the
01:01:23:01 –> 01:01:25:12
Interesting part. We, I had to go to Nevada for that, for that
01:01:25:20 –> 01:01:26:29
Training. They are a little weird over there.
01:01:27:14 –> 01:01:44:07
But anyway, going. But we bring it and we, we get it and I go down there, I’m like, there’s no testicles on this one. That’s weird. We got one with no testicles and then we look and it was a dough. No way. It was a dough. An antler. It was a dough that had antlers like a cactus p They were kind of velvet heavy. Yeah, heavy ve velvet. Just two spikes coming up.
01:01:44:10 –> 01:01:45:26
No fonts, no indication, no
01:01:45:27 –> 01:01:50:26
Fonts. No it didn’t, it didn’t appear. She looked like we aged at about three. But it didn’t appear that she’d ever even bred. You’re
01:01:50:26 –> 01:01:51:05
Kidding me.
01:01:51:14 –> 01:01:51:20
Wow.
01:01:52:09 –> 01:01:53:06
So, well
01:01:53:06 –> 01:01:55:01
The bucks are like, I don’t know about breeding out.
01:01:57:27 –> 01:01:58:04
So
01:01:58:21 –> 01:01:59:04
Anyway,
01:01:59:09 –> 01:02:00:04
That was a weird one. So
01:02:00:04 –> 01:02:04:14
That was kind of some initial findings that was just kind of crazy. Yeah. Just kind of cool to see in way. Really
01:02:04:14 –> 01:02:05:26
Cool. You did call her? We
01:02:05:26 –> 01:02:08:06
Did, yeah. We put a collar on her. Be
01:02:08:11 –> 01:02:16:13
Interesting to, yeah. She see if she has even antlers the next year. I mean, what if they fall off and something weird. C Chemistry in her body change. She doesn’t grow. Ans
01:02:16:22 –> 01:02:57:13
Actually every feature on her was dolike except the antlers. You know, most of those all still have fairly buck features. Bigger, you know, that. But she was just a straight dough. I don’t know if that was just a complete fluke. I, I have no idea what that was. But anyway, we did a lot. We drew blood on them and that kind of thing. And we actually just got some results back the other day. Similar to what we had found when we did, we actually had gone and taken 10 hunters out last or two falls ago. Took ’em out and killed some cactus bucks. And we tore these deer apart as, I mean we got samples from every organ, blood samples, you know, everything we could. And we kind of found that these deer are getting the hd essentially like blue tongue is kind of wow. What they’re getting. Every single one of those bucks tested positive for that last year. How are they
01:02:57:13 –> 01:02:58:14
Getting it? How are they getting it?
01:02:58:17 –> 01:03:04:06
Just the bug, the bugs a certain time. But they get it. And it obviously they don’t succumb to it, but it did something. No, it
01:03:04:07 –> 01:03:23:28
Can kill some, but it doesn’t kill ’em. And what we’ve kind of figured out, talking with our vet, you know, they’re, they’re temperature’s getting really high and so it’s, it’s causing a lot of testicle problems with them and stuff. That kind of soft tissue is where it’ll start to affect them. And so we caught those. Every single one of those had been positive with that.
01:03:24:16 –> 01:03:27:10
For the E h d for the h d The pathogen in their blood. Exactly.
01:03:27:21 –> 01:03:28:08
And it showed for that
01:03:28:22 –> 01:03:37:24
For on the scon. Is it it, does it exist in other units? I mean, is it, is it based on, you know, specific moisture in the spring? What is, where’s this coming? It’s pretty well from,
01:03:37:24 –> 01:03:44:01
It’s pretty well nationwide really. You see it a lot back east with whitetails. They’ll have significant, A whole county of deer will die off
01:03:44:03 –> 01:03:45:07
From blue. But I just wonder, like,
01:03:46:05 –> 01:03:46:18
It appears,
01:03:46:19 –> 01:03:47:04
Appears
01:03:48:06 –> 01:03:52:05
A, it, it happens in more arid areas it seems like. And so,
01:03:52:17 –> 01:03:56:10
So you think it’s been a problem forever? It always will be a problem forever.
01:03:57:03 –> 01:04:13:22
My theory is because those deer, they’re so congregated together. They do everything together. They winter together, they summer together, they travel together. I think they’re, they’re together more. And anytime you have deer where they’re coming together, like that disease is pretty prevalent. You know, c w d, all this. Anytime you’re having contact with other deer. So I would think those
01:04:13:25 –> 01:04:24:14
Pathogens that are biting them, they’re, they’re biting a bunch more deer versus a widely distributed deer population. Yeah. That they’re, you know, those insects only have a short lifespan. So if they don’t, and
01:04:24:14 –> 01:04:26:25
If you get 150 deer coming into the same water hole, they’re
01:04:26:25 –> 01:04:27:26
Pound several times,
01:04:27:26 –> 01:04:41:08
Times a day. Them it could, it could happen. And so we see that. We actually found, it was pretty interesting. We found two normal bucks that had actually tested normal looking. Normal looking. I mean like could figure one was a four, three guy guards, middle aged
01:04:41:20 –> 01:04:42:10
One eight looking buck.
01:04:42:18 –> 01:04:58:22
Yeah. Four, five. And we, we, the one we caught, we went to catch him and we’re like, this is weird. He’s not rutting. ’cause most of his other buck, they stunk so bad and their neck were swollen and they were wanting to fight us the whole time. And this buck just laid there. His neck wasn’t swollen, but he was normal looking as anything as far as antler growth. Wow.
01:04:58:24 –> 01:05:00:18
What did he, what did he look like between the legs?
01:05:01:05 –> 01:05:03:25
His, his testicles were smaller. They were, they were smaller.
01:05:04:03 –> 01:05:05:01
Way smaller. Really? What
01:05:05:01 –> 01:05:05:23
Did he look like between,
01:05:06:22 –> 01:05:09:06
I’m sorry. Well, where I’m going. Some of those,
01:05:09:24 –> 01:05:13:14
Some of those bucks, I mean they said like an egg size, you know, I mean pretty large from
01:05:13:18 –> 01:05:14:05
National perspective.
01:05:14:13 –> 01:05:17:04
They’re pretty large and his were pretty significant almond size.
01:05:17:05 –> 01:05:19:11
So he could be going okay, he could be going half and
01:05:19:11 –> 01:05:22:10
Half. Like he was getting enough to shed, he’ll get enough testosterone to shed or
01:05:22:10 –> 01:05:24:10
Whether it stays might lose. Did you call him though?
01:05:24:10 –> 01:05:33:28
Yeah, we did. We did. So interesting. So we colored him, we ca we two bucks that came back. That positive, the vet was thinking that maybe could have been in that moment in the process of switching
01:05:34:14 –> 01:05:34:26
Become
01:05:35:09 –> 01:05:37:10
Buck to a cactus buck, which is kind of
01:05:37:10 –> 01:05:38:26
A new concept. Wow. Yeah. You
01:05:38:26 –> 01:05:40:02
Know, we didn’t anticipate
01:05:40:02 –> 01:05:46:28
That. They’ve said that even some of these guys that have picked up sheds watch a buck go cactus. Yeah. And they talk about that down there on the
01:05:46:28 –> 01:06:00:16
Pond square. And you could say it could come with age, you know, as an older buck, his testosterone’s gonna decrease. And so it could come. But we, I always figured that when it’s happening, these, these cactus bugs are getting to when they’re fawns and so it’s affecting them for their whole life. But maybe they’re getting it when they’re older.
01:06:00:16 –> 01:06:34:07
Better at any time. Or you get some, or you get some year down there. ’cause the e h d breakouts usually occur in these long Indian summers in October, November. Yeah. When those bugs, I can’t remember the species when they don’t freeze and kill ’em and they, they annihilate ’em later like that, which we had this year. So you could get certain ears down here, you get early frost and all that. Maybe not be an issue. But then you get a couple really mild years and those are the years that, that maybe spreads a little bit more than, than normal. So did Yvette say when he speculated these could be in the process, was it based on blood or testicle size or both It
01:06:34:13 –> 01:06:35:17
Or levels? It was kind of testo
01:06:35:17 –> 01:06:36:13
Testosterone levels.
01:06:36:19 –> 01:06:39:24
They had, the titers had showed that it had e h d, both of them.
01:06:39:24 –> 01:06:40:02
Both
01:06:40:02 –> 01:06:51:00
Those. And that the testosterone was down significantly lower than the normal bucks it should have been been running. So they, she’s saying that maybe those, the testicles were in the process of destruction. Oh. And, and going.
01:06:51:10 –> 01:06:59:05
So it’s gonna be real interesting to see that deer next know September october if he rubs and Right. And or if he’s Yeah. Yeah. That’s gonna be really
01:06:59:10 –> 01:07:04:16
Interesting. So the effects of light winters are who knows how drastic and wide ranging. I
01:07:04:16 –> 01:07:05:01
Mean we, here
01:07:05:01 –> 01:07:06:23
We are. Everybody’s happy light winter light winters.
01:07:06:23 –> 01:07:07:11
There is, except
01:07:07:11 –> 01:07:08:12
For down here obviously. ’cause
01:07:08:17 –> 01:07:14:19
There is no unit I know of that, that congregate steer like that on water in inside Utah. It’s just,
01:07:15:08 –> 01:07:22:26
And like I said, they’re traveling together, you see ’em, you know, they’re just, they’re together a lot. So kind of my speculation, but yeah. You know, it’ll be interesting to see. So
01:07:22:26 –> 01:07:24:02
Let’s move, we, we we’re
01:07:24:02 –> 01:07:24:20
Gonna hunt them. We
01:07:25:02 –> 01:07:25:11
Us hunt.
01:07:25:11 –> 01:07:33:12
We’re gonna hunt this year. Just made some recommendations. Not gonna throw a million guys out there. Yeah. But gonna throw a handful of guys are gonna have to check these deer in.
01:07:34:12 –> 01:07:35:22
Much like the management boat guys.
01:07:35:22 –> 01:07:36:24
Right? Yeah. It’s the first time
01:07:36:24 –> 01:07:38:28
They’re gonna test everything. Test every organ, the whole thing
01:07:38:28 –> 01:07:46:06
If we can. Yeah. If we can some of that. We have to get it pretty soon. So we’re gonna actually probably go down and run a, have a trailer down there down and say, Hey, they guys
01:07:46:14 –> 01:07:46:29
Know where they can
01:07:46:29 –> 01:07:50:10
Find you. Right. Get to us as fast as you can. If we can get something off it. We’ll,
01:07:50:10 –> 01:07:52:23
Well Josh, here’s my gut pile half at it. Yeah, pretty much.
01:07:53:15 –> 01:08:09:02
That’s what we did last time. So yummy. So we’ll be doing that. It’s gonna be a two week hunt. I, I don’t know, some, sometimes you’ll go down there and you’ll see several of ’em in a day. Sometimes you’ll go a couple days without seeing ’em. Yeah. It just depends on where they’re at. And that papa unit’s a little bit hard to hunt. And you guys
01:08:09:04 –> 01:08:19:20
Later define that as, I know there were some back and forth on it, but you define that as a buck, a legal buck on that hunt has to have 50% of it Sandler’s covered in velvet, right? Yeah. Is that where it’s, is that,
01:08:19:23 –> 01:08:31:08
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, it’s gonna be good enough those bucks, they’re either, they’re either full velvet or know a little scalp you’re not seeing, so it’s so gonna be like, oh, I’m gonna have to measure that one to see you
01:08:31:08 –> 01:08:36:13
Didn’t want something that just had something on a G two dangling to get shot and say Yeah, it’s got velvet big. Exactly.
01:08:36:19 –> 01:08:42:06
Big. Like I sent you that picture. Big old buck killed in Colorado. He had a lot of velvet on him. Yeah. I don’t know if it was probably about 48%.
01:08:42:15 –> 01:08:44:10
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. 40. Yeah. That was a really,
01:08:44:12 –> 01:08:48:23
That was a, he’d a pass the two 50 bucks. That was a really valid argument when it
01:08:48:23 –> 01:09:08:26
Came through the Well I bet. Because at some point, I think it was initially, I don’t know who proposed any velvet and that then you start, we all realize through our lifetime of hunting deer, we see, we see ’em and kill ’em that have something. Yeah. Just a weird spot. If they’re living in a new burn somewhere and there’s not as much Yeah. To rub on or whatever, you know.
01:09:09:02 –> 01:09:28:19
Well it seems like the pons con’s doing really well at right now. A lot of guys that argue and, and rightfully so that maybe the best unit in the state of Utah right now. What do you, obviously the entire state’s doing well, but what do you attribute some of that to just management styles? Do you feel like it’s weather conditions? Do you feel like it’s all, everything all of the above, do you
01:09:28:19 –> 01:09:33:22
Think? I think so. I think, you know, it’s, it’s because of the biologist. When it’s good, it’s good. You know,
01:09:34:07 –> 01:09:35:12
I next year, next
01:09:35:12 –> 01:09:35:20
Year I’m
01:09:36:13 –> 01:09:37:25
A friend of the pongo. I’m
01:09:37:25 –> 01:09:40:23
Not even gonna be allowed in the office next year because it’s gonna tank.
01:09:41:13 –> 01:09:44:24
Yeah. They might be lynching you by obviously next November. And obviously
01:09:44:24 –> 01:09:47:19
Last year was a great atler growth year for it. But maybe, no, you
01:09:47:24 –> 01:10:35:26
Know what we’ve, the thing that I’ve got looking at, we’ve kinda leveled out on permit numbers. We’ve kind of hit a permit number That’s good. You know, it’s, it’s given some opportunity. But we’re still, our average age is five year old deer. 40, 50% of our deer this year we’re harvested five year old deer harvested deer. So we’re harvested deer. Yep. So that’s good. I mean, so we’re managing for fif 40 to 55 bucks per hundred dough. We’ve got that buck to dough ratio at about 50. Wow. So we give out some management permits off of that. So we’re keeping it about 50. So if we’re keeping deer at five years old and 50 bucks per hundred d it’s seems like for the pons of gone, it’s, it’s a great recipe. I mean, I don’t it, I don’t doubt that if we decided that we wanted to up and cut it, we, I’m pretty bold, but we could be competing with the strip. I think if we, if we cut clear down, there’s no question with the genetics that we have and that, but you know,
01:10:36:01 –> 01:10:42:14
I think we should move to 70, maybe six and a half, seven year old deer. It could be retarded. What the No,
01:10:42:26 –> 01:10:58:22
The cool thing about it though is, is those deer down there take, they kill a lot of four and five year old giants. I know. I mean there’s That’s true. There’s a lot of those bucks this year that were killed. There were six year old deer that were in the two 40 range. No question. You know, and I don’t know how much bigger that deer would’ve gotten or if maybe it was in his prime. ’cause you think to
01:10:58:27 –> 01:11:02:16
It’s, you know, six to nine ish right there, five to five to nine,
01:11:02:16 –> 01:11:09:16
They’ll get in a point where they start to decline. Yeah. So you, you kinda gotta kill ’em when they’re, they’re in their prime and I think it feels like a pretty long, those deer pretty
01:11:09:16 –> 01:11:10:14
Sweet spot right now. Don’t
01:11:10:14 –> 01:11:16:29
Yeah. Because we’ll kill some seven and eight year old deer with trying to keep it at five. Sure, sure. You know, it seems like we’ve done, it seems like a
01:11:16:29 –> 01:11:17:24
Fair bit of escapement
01:11:17:24 –> 01:11:29:14
Too. The the main thing, the main thing as well though, is just that habitat treatment that we’ve talked about, you know? Yeah. There’s a lot of, it’s happenings. There’s, we’ve switched a lot of that and we need to continue to be proactive with it too. We can’t just do it and let it sit. Well
01:11:29:14 –> 01:11:46:19
That’s what happened in the fifties and sixties is widespread chainings and then nothing for 30 something. Yeah. 40 years, you know? Yeah. And without continual upkeep, maintenance and or continue, you know, the different successional stages that you talked about earlier, that’s what Deere thrive on throughout their, their life. Right. And
01:11:46:19 –> 01:12:18:01
Because you’ll hear guys say, oh man, this unit used to be so good. What happened to it? And and I think you could argue the gon as well, when I was growing up down there, I, you know, fortunate enough to grow up there, I Sunday afternoon drives, we’d go up and drive that top by Tropic Reservoir and there’d be so many deer up there. Yeah. And now you go up there, it’s not that great. You know, a lot of those deer have moved down a little bit lower. They’re in that midsection where there’s some great habitat. If you look at it, that upper gon, it’s not the best habitat, it’s grass that as Aspen, the aspens have all been encroached with that spruce and fur. You could, and I think you could say it with the beavers are
01:12:18:01 –> 01:12:21:22
Raised, all the fons are raised better habitat. And then pretty soon that becomes Yeah,
01:12:21:22 –> 01:12:27:19
You’ve broken some of the Yeah. You’ve not, they’re all, they just going up there in the metals off the creeks and having fawns anymore. They’re
01:12:27:19 –> 01:12:40:01
Right. Yeah. So it’s harder to, and it’s harder to get some projects done in some of that kind of country. Yeah. A lot of that just takes a burn. And so it’s longer to come back. So if we can go out and bull hog a place and seed it Yeah. We can see results in a year or two. Yeah. So that, that’s, you’re talking
01:12:40:01 –> 01:12:56:20
About logging, which is Yeah. You know, we’ve gotten to where we can chain p opinion juniper, but, but the red tape that has to go to get timber cells and things like that to, you know, it’s, it’s another story. And that’s what we’re talking about summer range projects to, to help stabilize that or just
01:12:56:26 –> 01:12:58:28
Convince guy to burn trash in June july. Yeah.
01:12:59:22 –> 01:13:23:11
And I, and I think you’ve seen that as far as now with the pen witches, we’ve got a pretty good habitat project that just happened in some areas that we normally couldn’t get it to really go as as easy. So I think you’ll see that. And I think that’s, you’ll see it, you saw it with the Henry’s I think when a lot of that, some of that timber stuff burned there, changed it back. Now it’s some shrub and oak and Yeah. So habitat I think is a big thing for Deere. And we gotta have habitat for ’em.
01:13:24:02 –> 01:13:41:10
Well, what else you guys got going? I know you’re, you came in here this morning saying you’re gonna go chase bears. I use that term chase, you know, loosely because fire a hole. You’re asleep in a cave right now, but, but you’re gonna go, you know, either collar or you already got sows collared and you’re gonna go check
01:13:41:14 –> 01:13:59:29
Cubs and stuff. Yeah. That’s what it is now. You know, we catch those bears in the summertime and then, and then they’re in their dens right now. So we’ll usually try and go catch ’em. Or we, we go hit ’em with first after they have their cubs, seeing what they have. This particular sow one of ’em we’ve gotta go do tomorrow. She had three little boar cubs with her last year. So Ned
01:14:00:11 –> 01:14:02:06
Ups maybe yearly. See what followed her into the den
01:14:02:06 –> 01:14:23:00
This summer. Yeah. And those, and those, those bears, they don’t have cubs every year they’ll take their bear their cubs out with them and then they’ll go back in the den with them for, for, so for two years she’ll have ’em essentially. And, and we, we will go back in there and check to see production, that kind of thing. How many of ’em survived if all three of ’em are back in there? So we’re gonna, I’m expecting to go in there and see just a big ball, massive fur pieces trying to figure out
01:14:23:05 –> 01:14:32:28
As warm, as warm as it is. They might be half one eye open. Yeah. Yeah. That’s fill in there. First they, you got to head first. You got three bores and a mom have at it. Yeah.
01:14:33:05 –> 01:14:41:23
If it’s a, if it’s a sow with, with brand new cubs, it’s easy. But now it’s like, okay, there’s a leg. There’s a leg and we don’t want to tranquilize the same bear twice. So it can be,
01:14:42:17 –> 01:14:42:25
Then
01:14:42:25 –> 01:14:43:02
You get
01:14:43:02 –> 01:14:45:24
Two of them down, stab and run. Stab and run. One of them tries to
01:14:45:24 –> 01:14:50:28
Come out. So sometimes the UR stuff is, oh yeah. Sometimes the yearling bears are kind of,
01:14:50:28 –> 01:14:54:17
They’re, you send your beard out a little, so they that’s you’re one of them. Yeah.
01:14:55:03 –> 01:14:56:10
Haven’t showered for a week.
01:14:57:07 –> 01:14:59:16
Send no clean shaven fill in there first. Yeah.
01:14:59:25 –> 01:15:03:26
Yeah. He’ll come back scratches all over his face and get you a bleeding. Yeah.
01:15:04:02 –> 01:15:06:14
Let’s do a podcast. How, how would you, that sounds
01:15:06:16 –> 01:15:19:22
Fun. Yeah. So we’ll have that. But then b y u’s been studying some bears on the ponson as well. Cool. And I think they’re considering maybe being at the end of their, of their study. So what we’re probably gonna, we’re gonna take some of those bears over. What
01:15:19:22 –> 01:15:22:16
Were they getting out of that study? What were they doing? Who
01:15:22:16 –> 01:15:46:06
Knows? Several different things. Okay. I guess. All right. They, it kind of changed a little bit here and there. You know, they first started out they wanted to, to talk about different hazing things, what’s gonna help. But none of the bears that they collared got into trouble. Oh, okay. So it’s just like with some of those studies they changed throughout time and, and you kind of see, so some of it was whether they like the smell of sweet stuff or dead meat, you know, I mean there’s all kinds of
01:15:46:06 –> 01:15:47:19
Different things they’ve been doing. Dumpster divers,
01:15:48:00 –> 01:16:11:17
Some of it was movement. I, some of the best things we’ve got, I think off of it has been movement. You know, we’ve had two bears that left the gon as as young male boars that just got kicked off from their mom in the summer that one of ’em went to the Mountain Dutton unit and never came back. He’s still up there running around on the Dutton. And one of them came over to the penguins unit as well. That’s cool. It’s pretty interesting that, you know, the Bears are moving around that much. You know, like you said earlier, we’ve got these units that we say we’re gonna manage bears here.
01:16:11:20 –> 01:16:23:19
Bears and lions are another story. Yeah, they are. Yeah. Lions are even another story than bears. But bears can wander. I know there’s San Juan County that biologists over there talk about ’em coming from Colorado or vice versa and Oh wow. Big movements over there.
01:16:23:19 –> 01:16:35:28
But, and I think that’s where B Y U might pick up and move that way. They’re, they’re gonna talk about going over there to do some stuff. ’cause they, there’s a lot more bears over there. They run bears a lot and they’re gonna kind of just see some of the impacts. So we’ll see what that goes. So
01:16:35:28 –> 01:16:46:19
What, you know, what are you seeing? How are we gonna get our elk back? What are you seeing on the elk overall? We talked, we did talk about pen, which, and Dutton a little bit. But overall, what are you seeing? What are we, what are you thinking?
01:16:47:25 –> 01:16:59:29
You know, I think a lot of it’s just age, you know. Yeah. And that’s gonna help. I, you know, we, we adjusted those ages a couple years ago and, and couldn’t hurt. I went back and looked and probably in the heyday of when those units were doing really well, which
01:16:59:29 –> 01:17:00:06
Was
01:17:01:12 –> 01:17:20:07
Four, four to oh eight. Yeah. You know, in that range. And that was, they were, they were hitting seven year old elk on those units. Both of those. Yep. Yeah. And so, you know, I’d like to see that. What happened after that, they had, there was a management plan change and the age was, was decreased reduced five to six or? Yeah, it moved down to a five and a half to six year old. And, and
01:17:20:07 –> 01:17:25:08
We’re talking about, we’re talking about Pengu Lake and Dutton Yeah. Specifically just so so people know about Yeah.
01:17:25:16 –> 01:17:30:25
So anytime you do that, I mean it’s an increase of 40 to 50 permits, which is pretty huge. Yeah.
01:17:31:09 –> 01:17:37:17
So what are your long-term plans? Is there, you know, is there any change coming? Are you gonna kinda stay the way it’s been going? Just
01:17:37:17 –> 01:17:58:28
Decreasing some permits till we can get that age and, and we’ll see how it is. You know, it’s, it’s kinda one of those things. Some guys, I’d like to see everything be an eight year old, you know, the Boulder, some of these units. Yeah. But I, I think Utah’s got a pretty, pretty good system set where we have, we’ve got a mix of units to where if you want to just go hunt and elk, you can put in can for the gon and you can draw it with two points on an archery tag and you can go hunt your elk
01:17:59:05 –> 01:18:00:00
Resident perspective. Yeah. Yeah.
01:18:00:08 –> 01:18:05:02
And or if you want to have to wait for 22 years, then the boulder’s your line get
01:18:05:02 –> 01:18:06:01
The boulder’s your game get
01:18:06:01 –> 01:18:34:22
Line. Yeah. So it’s, I think it’s a good mix. But there’s some of these units, especially the reason, one of the reasons why I wanted to change those units was because we’ve got elk that are coming from the Boulder, the beaver that are these eight year old units and they’re coming over for the winter time. And when we’ll see, especially on the Dutton where we’re, we kill older bulls in the wintertime on that late hunt, late hunt. Yeah. And so just trying to get it so there’s not two years of age discrepancies on there. Yeah. ’cause it was kind of hard to keep it at five and a half to six on the Dutton because we kill older bulls. So just trying
01:18:34:22 –> 01:18:37:25
To, it kind of got a managed similarly ’cause there’s a lot, so much crossover. Yeah.
01:18:37:26 –> 01:18:48:19
Right. Yeah. So that was kind of one of the main things and just trying to make ’em good. I, you know, still provide a opportunity for guys get some permits but yet a great opportunity at Better Bowl when they get there. Yeah.
01:18:49:23 –> 01:18:53:17
Well, is there anything else you guys wanna talk about or any other cool things you got going on?
01:18:54:26 –> 01:18:55:05
Phil,
01:18:55:28 –> 01:18:56:20
Other than fishing,
01:18:58:19 –> 01:19:06:07
Are we gonna have anything to fish this, this summer? It might be kind of scary, huh? It was looking pretty. Pretty sparse. Pretty dry for a little bit. Little puddles. Yeah.
01:19:06:09 –> 01:19:08:16
Yeah, yeah. We finally got a little bit of snow, which
01:19:08:16 –> 01:19:10:01
Is good. Hopefully we get more. Yeah.
01:19:10:02 –> 01:19:49:26
Yeah. Well we just want to say thanks to you guys. You guys are awesome. We really appreciate you doing the job you’re doing out there. Sometimes it’s a thankless job, you know, from a lot of perspective out there in the sportsman. But we do appreciate it and I know there’s a lot of sportsmen that feel the same and seeing a lot of great things coming from what you’re doing. And it’s obvious you’re enthusiastic about it and you Yeah. And you really do like your job and, and are trying to do the best job you can. And so we just wanna say thanks from Adam and I and the Epic crew as well as everybody that’s listening out there. Love to have you guys on. We’ll continue this, you know, down the road and talk about all these cool things that you’re learning and, and continue to, you know, give everybody updates on some of the studies we’re doing. So yeah,
01:19:49:27 –> 01:19:50:23
Thanks for having us.
01:19:50:24 –> 01:19:51:26
Yeah. Thanks for learning on.
01:19:52:03 –> 01:19:52:25
You bet guys. Thanks.
01:19:52:25 –> 01:19:53:17
Okay, sounds great.
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