Ep. 966: What Science Tells Us About Hunting the Whitetail Rut with Duane Diefenbach and Matt Ross

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, we are reviewing what science and in the field research studies can tell us about the whitetail rut and how to hunt it. All right, welcome back to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camera for Conservation Initiative, and today we are getting ready for the super bowl of the white tail season, the rut. We are just about their, folks. If you’re listening to this right when this episode drops, we are in that la third of October. The pre rut is ramping up across most parts of the country and the rut is just ahead of us. We’re all very excited about it. We are all amped up about it. Our rut cations are about to start, and over the next two weeks we are going out more than that. Really, the next three four weeks probably we’re going to be discussing all things rut. But today I want to start with a scientific perspective. Next week a little teaser here, I’m going to be reviewing and doing a November kind of decoding November breakdown, similar to what I did a few weeks ago for October. So we’re going to hear from a number of different experts on how they approach hunting during the rut. Today, I want to take a step back and not just talk tactics and actually talk science. So what do the studies show. What does the research show about the breeding phase of the year for whitetail deer, About behavior during this phase of the year, About how deer utilize their territories, how do they move, how do they interact? What does all of this mean for us as hunters? How do you time the rut? How do you predict the rut? Can you predict the rut? All of this and much much more will be discussed today. I have two different guests joining me. The first guest is Dwayne Diefenbach. He is a affiliate professor of Wildlife Ecology at Penn State University and the lead on a more than ten year study now through Penn State University called the Deer Forest Study, in which they have been radio coloring GPS, coloring bucks and does in several different sites across Pennsylvania and studying their movements and impacts on the landscape and much much more. But for the purposes of our discussion today, Dwayne and his team have analyzed, looked at, and parsed out a ton of data related to how deer moved during the rut, how they behave during the rut, how their movements change, you know, day by day, week by week. They have a really interesting rut tracker on their website which you can go back and look at more than ten years of data and the averages of that data to see you know, cumulative distance traveled and you know when those you know, movements start changing and ramping up and all that kind of stuff. So today, the first portion of this podcast is my conversation with Dwayne about what he’s learned about the Whitetail rut, what their studies have shown, you know, comparing and contrasting some conventional wisdom about the rut with what his studies have shown as well. Very interesting stuff. That’s part one of this episode. Part two of this episode is actually a little bit of a time machine. We’re going to go back more than ten years ago to a previous episode that I recorded on this very same topic. We did a similar take a science of the whitetail rut type of episode, but this was way back in twenty fourteen, back before most of you were probably listening, and it was a pretty darn great episode. I really enjoyed it. My guest for that one was my pal Matt Ross, who is now the Senior Director of Conservation for the National Deer Association. Back then, it was the QTMA he worked for, and I don’t know what his title was back then, but he’s smarter, older, and more senior in the organization now, so we’ll give him the title of senior director today in twenty twenty five. But what he shared then is still really interesting today. So I went back and listened to that episode, and I pulled out several excerpts from that conversation that I thought would be relevant to our conversation up today. So part one Dwayne, Part two, Matt Ross. Both conversations are about the science of the white tail rut, what the research shows, and how we as hunters can kind of take what that research tells us and overlay it on top of our own personal lived hunting experience, and you’re gonna hear a lot about this, a lot of this discussion around well, the research says this, but as a hunter, I see that. How do you make sense of that? How do you take those two data sets, you know, your anecdotal experience and what the research says, and how do you bring those two things together to put together a plan that makes sense. Especially in part two of this where we are talking with Matt, you’re gonna hear us kind of wrestling with that challenge. I think it is a valuable wrestling match of sorts to think through all of this to say, how do I use this data but then also my intuitions as a hunter to make sure I make the best of the white tail rut. That’s what I’m hoping we can do here today with this conversation. That’s why I’m excited to bring it to you today. So one more heads up for the second portion of this conversation with Matt, we don’t have video, so I apologize to those of you watching this on YouTube. Back in twenty fourteen, we were not recording video. Also, back in twenty fourteen, I was a lot younger, maybe less articulate, So forgive me if my questions aren’t so good, if the quality of the interviewing isn’t quite so good. But I will say we got a little humor in this excerpt because my buddy Dan Johnson was co hosting with me back then, so you will see a little Dan Johnson cameo in the Matt Ross excerpt as well. So, without any further ado, I’ve been rambling too long as I do, Let’s get to my chat with Dwayne Diefenbach from Penn State University, and then an excerpt from my chat with Matt Ross from way back in twenty fourteen, all about the science of the whitetail rut. All right with me now on the line is Dwayne Diefenbach. Dwayne, thank you so much for joining me.

00:06:36
Speaker 3: Oh, it’s a pleasure to be here.

00:06:38
Speaker 2: We chatted. I don’t know if you remember this, but we chatted on this podcast. It did not seem this long ago, but I went back and checked. It was twenty seventeen, so about eight years ago we last had a conversation about your work and the Deer Force study, and I know you guys have been hard at it ever since. Uncovering many other secrets and mysteries and discoveries when it comes to the world of interactions between deer and the ecosystem around them. But I wonder this, I’m just gonna rip off the band aid. There’s gonna be no niceties here. There’s gonna be no beating around the bush. If you were to look back over the course of this study. If I’m right, I think you guys started the deer for study in twenty thirteen, right, yeah, okay, And then you just mentioned to me that you’ve been studying whitetail deer for even longer than that, for twenty five or so years. What would you say, since beginning this set of studies, what would you say is the single most fascinating discovery or insight that you’ve uncovered about the whitetail rut since beginning this inquiry.

00:07:48
Speaker 3: Well, I guess it would be the work that we did in the early two thousands where Pennsylvania implemented Antler point restrictions. So we greatly increase the number of males in the population, and we also, because of high deer densities, reduce the population overall by about twenty three percent. So we had fewer deer, fewer females, more older males, and nothing changed in recruitment in the population.

00:08:24
Speaker 2: What do you make of that?

00:08:27
Speaker 3: Well, I make it. What do I make of it? It’s I think what it is is white tail deer are so productive, especially in Pennsylvania, we’re kind of at the sweet spot. We don’t have severe winners. We’ve got fairly product high productivity in our forests and food resources, so fairly high recruitment that that you can that white tail deer populations can sustain real changes to their sex and age structure and it has little effect on recruitment.

00:09:09
Speaker 2: So one of the pieces of conventional knowledge that I that I’ve picked up over the years, and that’s been discussed much throughout the world of deer management, is this idea that a unbalanced, aid structured deer herd with a disproportionate number of young bucks and many more bucks than dough So maybe this is what Pennsylvania used to be like that in that type of scenario, the belief was that you might have a more spread out rut and a rut that’s less frenzied and less uh, you know, there’s not as much competition for breeding rights, And so the idea was, if you have a deer herd like that, the rut is going to be less concentrated, less exciting for a hunter. The alternative was, if you had a better managed deer herd with a more balanced a structure, a more balanced sex structure, that you would have a more intense run. Did you look at anything like that? Is has there been any change when it? Is it a little bit more concentrated? Is it a little bit more intense from a visible perspective? Or or truly is there zero difference?

00:10:24
Speaker 3: We failed to detect a different So, and I’ll let me explain a little bit.

00:10:29
Speaker 4: Uh.

00:10:29
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania before and after implementing Antler point restrictions would check roadkilled females to look at the number of embryos. So when you do that, you can measure the size of the embryo and you can then calculate when that female became pregnant, and you can look at that by the age structure of the of the females. You know, we would expect older females to probably breed earlier because they’re in better physical condition. We would also expect them to have more offspring, you know, year and a half old, or excuse me, females that got pregnant as a fawn and we’re giving birth as a one year old. You would expect that to be a fairly low percentage, and it varies widely in Pennsylvania because in our northern tier we have lower quality habitat and very few of those fawns get pregnant, whereas in the southern tier it can be up to fifty percent of them. So you would yeah, so this is kind of complicated, but hopefully I can make a story that makes sense here. So, so we’ve we tracked deer before and after we reduce the population, so and there were more older bucks, so you could make we could make some predictions.

00:12:03
Speaker 2: Right.

00:12:04
Speaker 3: First of all, we could predict that if what you were saying is true, the conventional wisdom that we would see less variants in the in when females got pregnant, so you would expect that to read to decline over time as we reduce the population, had more older bucks in the population.

00:12:29
Speaker 2: A smushed in bell curve, right, yes, exactly.

00:12:32
Speaker 3: And then and then the other thing you might predict, well, maybe it’s a little bit earlier because they’re getting bread, right, away, right, And and also you might expect more young animals eventually if you reduce the population and there’s more food out there. So what limits you know fawns is they have to hit a certain weight before they will go into estros. And so if there’s more food out there because you have fewer deer, you might expect the percentage of funds to increase that get pregnant. And so we were able to test that and it nothing, right, The variability didn’t change, The timing didn’t change. Nothing. It’s November thirteenth every year. You can just set your calendar to it.

00:13:32
Speaker 2: Okay, So let’s cover our bases, kind of working backwards from what you just stated, which is that the peak of breeding that you found in Pennsylvania is November thirteenth, year after year. Despite that, everyone loves to theorize about all the different other things that might impact the rut. So you have been studying and tracking collar deer specifically in the Deer study for I guess twelve years now, thirteen years now, let’s just walk through a few of the things that folks typically like to say might impact the rut. I know what your answer will be, but let’s just dive into it and see if there’s any maybe small discrepancies. The moon is popularly pointed to as an influence on the rut. I believe you’ve done pretty extensive work comparing and contrasting all of your data to possible moon phases. Can you tell me what you saw there?

00:14:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, that it doesn’t affect it at all. I mean, there’s no relationship. It’s a flat line. It doesn’t matter what the day is of the peak. The half the females are bred by November thirteenth every year. So but let me back up a little bit because I know you’re going to ask what the next question is going to be, probably, but we have.

00:14:57
Speaker 4: To do it.

00:14:58
Speaker 3: I think we have to talk a little bit about the ecology of wait tail deer, so please so and actually an evolutionary ecology standpoint. So why why do deer get pregnant in the fall?

00:15:18
Speaker 2: You know?

00:15:19
Speaker 5: Why?

00:15:19
Speaker 3: Is that date? Well, female gets pregnant and that that fawn is going to be in gestation for about two hundred and ten days. So that means that if you add two hundred and ten days to November thirteen, that’s basically Memorial Day. So what’s the advantage of being born in Memorial Day versus April first or July second. Well, the advantage is from a long term perspective, is that fawns that are born on that date are born as early as they possibly can to be as big as they can going into winter, and they’re born as late as they possibly can while minimizing the risk of being dying from exposure to harsh weather conditions. And so really, fawns funds or wait tail deer have evolved to give that peak birth in the spring to maximize the survival of fawns in surviving the next winter. Well, what’s the best thing that’s going to tell you? What can you rely on in November every year to tell you that you should get pregnant now in order to give birth at the optimal time in the spring.

00:16:58
Speaker 2: And I believe the answer is the answer the the number of pumpkin pies sold at Costco and how that rises out.

00:17:07
Speaker 3: It would be if that’s if that’s related to day length and that people buy more pumpkin pies. So so there’s day length is the trigger and people have proven it so as days get shorter, that triggers hormonal changes in wait till deer. And and because that’s the best predictor of when the best time is to get pregnant, to give birth at the best time of year. So yeah, because otherwise I don’t know of any other predictor that’s going to tell you when’s the best time to give put that phone on on the ground.

00:17:49
Speaker 2: So so follow up question to this because yes, yes, so so photo period as you described has been well proven to be that consistent factor. That lead is too consistent. Uh, you know, bonder up. Some people would say, and I just simply don’t understand the physiology enough myself to dispute it. But some people would say that why couldn’t the moon, the light from the moon somehow influence deer, just as light from the sun influences deer. Why why is that not the case? And I simply just don’t understand the biology enough to answer that myself.

00:18:28
Speaker 3: Well, a couple of things. I mean, you know, it’s a reasonable hypothesis because there’s lots of things that are affected by the moon, especially if you relate live in the ocean. But but I’d say two things that complicate that. One is moonlight. Despite the fact that you can read a newspaper in the in the middle on a bright, you know, full moon. I do not believe that that is enough light energy to trigger hormonal changes in deer. You really need that day length is what’s going to cause it. Second of all, weather could screw that all up, right. You can have a week of rainy weather and it might be the full moon.

00:19:18
Speaker 2: And so.

00:19:20
Speaker 3: Why would you rely on something that or actually they’re not relyingt you’re saying it could change it, but it could you know, be messed up by just random weather.

00:19:33
Speaker 2: Well, and it must be deeply programmed in a deer because because the same thing could hypothetically happen with weather, I mean, sorry, with with photo period. Right, So what you just described, we might have ten days of cloudiness where it feels very dark and they are not actually feeling the typical effects of changing sunlight, right, But it must be this circadium rhythm, this internal clock that is built into them over years and years and years in which their body has adapted to what the typical daylight changes would be, so that even if they do have a ten day stretch where it’s not what it should be in late October or early November, the body is programmed to still have that is that is that?

00:20:19
Speaker 3: And I think you know that day length is acting over months, it’s not for weeks, so yeah, it’s acting at a different timescale, so there’s less variability that can be introduced into it.

00:20:37
Speaker 5: You know.

00:20:37
Speaker 3: It’s kind of a subtle point and in when you think about deer, and it’s easy to talk about decisions that they make, but it’s really you know, we it’s a tough concept. I don’t know if we want to get into it here, but we talk about approximate and ultimate reasons for doing things. And the ultimate reason and that the deer get pregnant in November is because of that fawn survival. But there are the approximate queue is that day length, right, that’s what’s causing it. But the evolutionary advantage of giving birth in May is the ultimate reason why that behavior or physiological response shifts. And I would say that, you know, to point out I’m sure you’re going to talk about predators or I don’t know when you want to get into that, but it could be another thing. The reason why they all give birth at the same time that’s been hypothesized is that if you dump all these fawns out at the same time, there’s too much food out there and some of them the predators can’t eat them all before before the deer get big enough, the fawns get big enough to evade predators, And so that’s another hypothesis, but that really and I’ve published research with colleagues where you can show that, yes, there is some evidence that fawns that are born out at the tails, the ones that are born really early and really late, are more likely to die. But if that was truly driving that behavior, the peak and birth would exist in other parts of the white tailed deer’s range. And when you go down to South America, when you get close to the equator and the day is almost twelve hours every day of the year, deer give birth. Other things drive when deer give birth, like rainfall. Even in Texas, rainfall drives the timing of birth more than predators. So you know, that’s another hypothesis that yes, it has some effect, but we can look at other parts of the deer’s range and see that no, that can’t explain that pattern and not reproduction.

00:23:20
Speaker 2: So, as you mentioned, it’s it’s well established that the timing of breeding is consistent, relatively consistent, but on a bell curve. So there’s a peak where most give you know, most most conceived, and then of course there’s tails on either side. But as you mentioned and as every hunter knows, every single year, we as individuals experience a different kind of activity during the run, right, And so you have two different things we have here. We’re measuring the date of conception, the date of peak breeding versus running activity, which would be you know, as hunters, we’re thinking deer chasing, running around, looking for does fighting, doing all that kind of stuff that’s typically what many of us hope to see during the rut. I’m curious in your tracking, whether it be through the things you guys have documented through the RUT tracker, where you’re tracking you know, average distance or absolute distance traveled or any other metric. What about what some people have talked about with maybe the moon doesn’t impact breeding, but might the moon, or might a cold front, or might some other factor uncover running activity or enhance running activity. So some theorize if you have a certain moon, you will see more of this daylight activity, while if you have a certain other moon, more of the running activity just happens after dark because they’re moving less in daylight or let’s insert cold front in there. Some folks say, well, if you you know, all things being equal and November first, sure there’s going to be a lot of running activity. But if it’s eighty degrees, a lot of that running activity is probably happening after dark. But if it’s forty degrees, a lot of that running activity is happening in the daylight. And that makes a big difference on a hunter’s experience. Has your data or observations validated any of that?

00:25:22
Speaker 3: Maybe sort of? I don’t know. How’s that.

00:25:27
Speaker 2: Love it?

00:25:27
Speaker 3: So it’s it’s kind of tough, right, I agree. So a lot of my data is big picture, like the study that I said where we monitored you know, timing of births or pregnancy was over six years data statewide. You know, we found no changes, no variation across the state or anything. And so so I’m looking at the big picture in the average, and the average is oftentimes or it’s misleading, right, So there’s it doesn’t capture the variability it’s out there, and I really think that it’s it’s low, like there could be lots of variation locally. So for example, one of the things you talked about that bell curve. Well, yeah, it’s a bell curve with a tail out to the right. So the breeding picks up really quick in early October, but it dribbles on into December. But what you find in December is that many of those deer there to getting bred in December are fawns that are just getting big enough to come into estrus. And and so you part of the reason people so much, very see much, so much variability and might claim that there’s a second runt right there’s that all these females got missed and now thirty days later they’re coming back into right into estra’s again that that isn’t really happening. I think you know, some of that variability is like, yeah, all the adult females are bred, and then suddenly you’ve got a few fawns that hit that body mass and they’re in estra. So there’s lots of local variability that you know, hunting on your same property year after year, you’re going to see different levels of rut activity in the bucks. And the reason I say I sort of don’t have data is that if you really could track, what you would need to know is if you could put a collar on a buck and know, okay, this buck is now tending a dough and this buck is not tending a dough. And what we found is that you can’t tell you have to have the female. So we’ve had situations where we had both a buck and a dough rate collared and we could see that twenty four hour twelve to twenty four hour tending period because they would just be lockstep together that whole time. And but if all you have is tracking the buck, you cannot detect those types of movements. So so what I’m saying is that I don’t really have the data to look at what causes the variability in a buck’s behavior. All I can do is look at this buck and say, all right, here’s he’s going one mile per day in early October and it and by you know, the first week in November, he’s doing three to five miles a day. So that’s my caveat.

00:28:47
Speaker 2: A quick aside here, you just intrigued me. In these cases where you have been able to document a buck and doll pair together and actually have both of them collared. What have you seen a lot of us hypothesize. A lot of people tell you what a buck and to do a buck and a doe do when they are tending and together. But were you guys able to pull out any specific insights as far as you know, how far they traveled on average, how much time they spent together on average, anything anything else that might be of interest, because I think there’s there’s a lot of theories. I’m not sure how much is it.

00:29:25
Speaker 3: So nothing nothing jumps out in terms of movement, because, like I said, we followed this buck and the movements while he’s tending a dough aren’t any different than when he’s just walking around, or we couldn’t distinguish We couldn’t distinguish that, Oh, it’s very particular what happens while he’s tending the dough. So nothing there that you know that I could point to to say it’s what’s unique about it.

00:29:58
Speaker 2: So so what about that variability you mentioned? How like there is some variability? And for example, I went back and looked through some of the data you guys have collected and shared, and something I noticed is that you guys have been tracking average cumulative distance traveled by bucks during the rut for a number of years, and there have been some years where it’s dramatically different. For example, in twenty fifteen and correct me if I got these wrong, but I believe these are the correct numbers pulled from your website. In twenty fifteen, the average cumulative distance traveled by Bucks in November was eighty eight miles. In twenty twenty three, same month, average cumulative distance traveled it was one hundred and fifty miles, so nearly double the amount of travel during the November of twenty three versus the November of twenty fifteen. Can you speak to anything that might help us understand why twenty fifteen and it’s so little travel, twenty twenty three had so much. And I gotta believe there’s other years that have been you know, bouncing here and there and everywhere. As you have collared and studied all these deer, that makes me think there’s something happening.

00:31:14
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:31:14
Speaker 3: Part of it is you know the sample, right, they’re different deer every year, and so we know that there’s huge variability among deer. Like some guys, some of these Bucks will have home ranges of five square miles and some might only have two and a half square miles. And we don’t have huge sample sizes, right. We try to collar across our four study areas about oh ten bucks or so, so it’s not a huge sample size. So part of that variability from year to year is just the sample of deer that we have to capture. I do think there must be uh. I would think that there are some other factors that could influence that movement, like food availability. In fact, this year is gonna is already looking to be an extreme year for white tail dough doughs in that they’re for the first two weeks in October they are averaging movements of about half a mile a day, and and and the long term average is about a mile and even like all of the deer are below average. Yeah, and now the perfect thing is like, this is what’s so difficult about studying deers. We have no control on a lot of things. So you’ve had a drought, and we also have a bumper acorn crop. So is the fact that there’s lots of acorns or is it because it’s a drought? Right, I have no idea. If I had to put money on it, I would say acorns because you know, some of the reports and I’m sure people reading our blog will write in you know, people have already commented that you know, it’s like walking on marbles out there in places. And if that’s the case, then your does aren’t going to move, They’re going to move very little. So the question is does a buck have to move more to find more dough or does he not have to go as far to find dough because they’re easier to find because they don’t move as much. You know, because I’ve always you can you can see either no change in dough movements during the rut or actually a slight reduction. And you know, that could be like I say, if you’re lost in the woods, would you’re supposed to do You’re supposed to not move because you’re more likely to be rescued, and so that could be the behavior of white tailed deer. So anyway, there’s the short The short answer is I don’t really know, but I know there are things that are influencing their movements, and I can’t really parse out the difference between my different samples because I have different bucks every year, or you know, or what factor is actually driving because because I don’t even well, there are some measures of acorns, but acorns can also be very spotty and you know, spatially distribute on the landscape. So yeah, it’s it’s the challenge of studying creatures in the wild is is we have You know, radio callers give us great insights that we wouldn’t others see. But until we have cameras on those collars and see what they see, there’s a lot that we’re missing.

00:35:07
Speaker 2: What do you think would surprise people? You guys have shared these videos on occasion on your blog where you show the actual path, the travel path that some of these deer taking. If the general public were to sit down and watch the travel of every one of these bucks that you have collared over the years during the rut, is there anything that you think would surprise people?

00:35:31
Speaker 3: Well, I think the interesting thing is when you watch our movies, it looks like they suddenly speed up because and in a sense they do, but it’s they’re not. It’s just that they’re probably walking in more of a straight line distance between locations. Because so our radio callers for the readers, if you don’t know, the way they work is we program them and tell them, Okay, get me a location once an hour, or get me a location once every thirty minutes. Whatever you want, you can do. It just depends on how good your battery life is, and so it looks like these deer are just cuttsing around and then suddenly they go boom boom boom, like a you know, a paddle ball, you know, a ball on us on a rubber band. But those bucks really most of the time they are walking under half a mile an hour, So they aren’t walking faster, They’re just they’re just walking twenty four to seven. And and so that to me was I mean, I guess from my perspective, that’s what I found the most interesting was, you know, slow and steady wins the race, and those guys are just plodding along. But they’re just going twenty four to seven if you look at their activity patterns. Yeah, maybe it dips down in the you know, four o’clock in the morning or something, but basically they are just going twenty four to seven.

00:37:10
Speaker 2: So so are you are you saying that your data validates the idea that many popularized that at least during the rut you should be hunting even during the middle of the day, because those bucks will still be on their feet and moving quite a bit.

00:37:27
Speaker 3: I think so, although they still show up on my game cameras only at night, So I have no idea. I have no idea why I don’t see them. But but again, you know where I live, it’s a mixture of forests and field, right, so they could be sticking to the woods. And my game cameras are always on the edges of a field, you know, on a scrape or you know that sort of thing. But you know, we we study, you know, the deer for studies in what we call the Big Woods of Pennsylvania. So these are just contiguous tracks. They’re ninety five percent forested over twenty twenty five square miles. So in that context, we just basically see these bucks walking around twenty four to seven And you know, so you know, one time, I think, I you know, tried to figure the calculations and this one buck he started and ended up in the same place within twelve hours. And over those twelve hours he went up and over three ridges, like almost a mile in elevation change and did I don’t know how many two or three miles in that loop. And that was just you know, just walking. I mean, you know, so in a month time they’re ended up walking most most of them are doing over one hundred miles. Some are over one hundred and fifty miles. So yeah, it’s it’s amazing that we have the technology now to document that, and it explains so many things like why does this buck show up that I’ve never seen all summer long? Yeah, because their home ranges are, you know, tripling.

00:39:17
Speaker 2: You guys have a really interesting page of Elbow on your website, your rut tracker that shows both this year’s average movement I believe it’s cumulative distance or average distance, and then you show what this year’s data is compared to the average from the previous ten years. Could you walk folks through what generally that timeline of movement looks like when you see it really picking up, when it kind of exponentially hockey curves up, and then what that bell curve looks like just from a date I think I think a lot of folks have a general idea of when these time periods are, but I think it’ll be interesting just to hear from you on exactly what that date range that you’ve document it is.

00:40:00
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:40:01
Speaker 6: Yeah, So what I’ve been doing is just calculating the distance that each deer travels every day, and then we can average that to show the average distance that a deer moved and I think our locations are hourly at this point, and.

00:40:23
Speaker 3: So the bucks and doze in the first half of October and moving about a mile per day, and it’s not until the third week in October that that actually starts to increase. It gets going in the fourth week, and by the first week in November, it’s that hockey curve has almost got you up to the peak. And yeah, and so that goes through into the middle of November, and then you know the rut our hunting seasons in Pennsylvania are start the Saturday after Thanksgiving and the rifle season where most of the deer harvested, so we still have a lot of or actually not a lot, but so most of the deer. Half the deer bred by November thirteenth, but a week later, you know it’s going to be eighty percent of the deer are bred. And by the time that rifle season opens, you know, there’s one out of five dough that could get pregnant. Is you know in estris so and the rifle season, because there’s so many hunters out there, just changes deer behavior and so if you’re just looking at those averages, it just kind of all falls apart. And even the females start moving a lot because of all the hunter activity in the woods. But yeah, from you know, starting this coming week and by the end of October, things those bucks are really moving. And then for the next two weeks in November, lots of movement, and then it quickly falls off.

00:42:26
Speaker 2: So there is a commonly discussed phase of the rut that a lot of folks refer to as lockdown, which would be when we hit peak breeding. The idea being that when the most does are available to breed, you’re gonna have a reduction in deer movement because there’s gonna be a lot of bucks locked down, a lot of dos, and those pairings will not move as much, and then there won’t be as many solo bucks cruising around searching. And so the idea being that, man, when lockdown hits, which for a lot of people is the middle of November, you’re gonna have some slower hunts. When I look at your data, when I look at this rut tracker, it kind of does show that because it peaks, you know, as you just described, you see movement on average peaking around that first couple weeks of November, but then right around you know, November seventeenth, sixteenth, right around that ballpark, it does start to kind of precipitously decline and then a plateaus again for that like third week of November, and then as you mentioned, continues to trickle down from there. Does that, in your view, validate the theory that I just described or how would you interpret that?

00:43:38
Speaker 3: I I don’t think so, because from from that first week in November, that’s when the bulk of females are being bred. So if it’s because there’s so many females available to be bred, is reducing movements, why don’t you see that during the first two weeks in November. And the other thing is, like I said, when we’ve had males and females where we’ve had both of them and can see that that male is tending that female, there’s no evidence that they don’t move. He’s just following her around. And you know, they’re not like elk where they have a harem that they’re trying to keep in one place and all together. He’s just trying to follow that female and breed with her, you know, at the best opportunity and fend off other competitors. So when we know that a buck is with a female. We have no evidence that they don’t move as much.

00:45:00
Speaker 2: Okay, so here here’s another one, another theory. I guess I’m throwing a lot of theories. That you were throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall, not a lot sticking on the wall. Dwayne, I’ll tell you that, but you can’t deny the science. Here’s another one, and I’ll see what you have to say. And then, actually, this one’s not necessarily a theory. This is actually a study. There used to be an idea that you could not pattern bucks during the rut, that they are completely random and completely unpredictable. A study relatively recently came out that described bucks using certain focal areas a disproportionate amount of time during the rut. That there were, for many bucks, certain places that they spent more time than others during their rut. Have you seen anything like that in your data.

00:45:53
Speaker 7: No.

00:45:53
Speaker 3: In fact, we tried to replicate that. So you would expect that those focal areas might occur because they’re coming back to check on a female to see if she’s in heat or not. And when we had known females and males, we could find no relationship between focal areas by just looking at where the buck went and whether they actually had a mating event. So I mean, they may have focal areas, but I think those could be explained by environmental factors too. I mean, is there something about that site that they go back to for food or shade or who knows what. So I would say that the there’s a lot to be learned. I’m not going to discount it, but we tried to to, you know, say, okay, if this is what’s going on, does that match up in situations where we know this buck is following this female and we couldn’t We couldn’t get that to match up. But you know, with better technology we might be able to answer those questions. Because I was just at the at a meeting and talking to some of the reps for some of these companies, and they’re coming out with radio callers now that they can get a GPS location like every thirty minutes, but then the onboard caller has an accelerometer and a and a magnetometer, so they can they can actually predict the movements that a deer spends in between those two locations that you get, and that could be a game changer because now we kind of have to interpolate what that deer is doing between location and location x plus one, and this time they could potentially draw an exact path where that deer goes. So I’m not gonna discount it, but I’m gonna say right now, I don’t have any evidence that would support that.

00:48:16
Speaker 2: So one other kind of local variable, then one idea be here. There might be actual environmental you know, focus areas. I think you kind of alluded to this earlier, but I want to ask more specifically, what about localized variations and timing a little bit. So I know, in general, we have this you know, pretty hard evolutionary biological queue for when the peak of breeding should happen, but we frequently hear about how there might be localized situations where it might be a little bit over here, a little bit over there, Like for example, you hear the hear the story like, well, there’s a Doe family group that always to come in early in my neck of the woods. And honestly, I can say that anecdotally, I do have a place that I hunt that it sure seems like every single year for fifteen years now, it sure seems like the last week of October is like when everything breaks loose, But everywhere else I go, it’s it’s, you know, the typical first two weeks of November, but it feels like November seventh for me on October twenty fifth in this little zone. Has your data shown that that might be? Is that a possible thing. Do you have one of your study sites where it’s a couple of days earlier on average some years or most years or anything like that.

00:49:38
Speaker 3: Well, I guess two things to say. One from my data, so northern Pennsylvania spring green up is like might be a week or so later than southern Pennsylvania. But we really see no spatial variation in the timing of birth. And in fact, you know, if you look at maps of the timing of breeding across for the white tail deer across most of North Americas until you get like south of the Carolinas, it’s all November. And I’m sure it varies a little bit, but it’s basically it’s November sometime in November. But with your respect to like local variation, well, you know, when a female goes into estrus is really strongly related to her physical condition, and there’s research to show that a female that’s in good condition is going to give birth to offspring in better condition, so you could have some and they’re also right, in better condition, they’re going to produce more offspring. And so I could see in an area that you have, you know, some females that have are in better condition come into heat and there’s right, variation is a good thing when it comes to evolution because you never know when the future is going to change, and if it does change, certain individuals are going to be you know, they didn’t know about know it, but they are preadapted. So I could say that there could be physiological there could be genetic reasons. There potentially could be local food resource reasons, but I mean, I don’t think I could ever collect enough data to actually parse that out, and it would have to involve some sort of experimentation. I mean, our genetic tools are getting better these days. So and I think that deer research should be focusing on stress level deer, which is an indicator of physiological condition, because some of our research has shown that that stress is a better predictor of fond survival than how many predators are on the landscape. So yes, I could envision local variation in the related to you know, either intrinsic characteristics of the white tailed deer in that area or external factors that are influencing it. But yeah, I haven’t been able to collect enough data yet to tackle that. Interesting.

00:52:37
Speaker 2: Okay, so let’s let’s tie a bow on this, Dwayne. Let’s imagine that I were to set one relatively new hunter, Let’s say, someone who’s been deer hunting for a handful of years, but they’re not a salty old fifty years in kind of guy. And this person is trying to have more hunting success during the rut. And they came to you and said, Dwayne, what would be the three most useful insights from your study of the white tail rut that could help me as a hunter this year? What would those three things be? So, the three most useful observations or insights from your studies that could be applied for hunters during the rut?

00:53:26
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, you’re supposed to ask me that question beforehand, so I have time to prepare. So ah, so uh, what would you do?

00:53:43
Speaker 2: I guess?

00:53:43
Speaker 3: So one thing I would say is so, game cameras are awesome, right, we know so much more about what’s in the woods out there. I would say, if you see a buck in September and early October on your game camera, odds are you’re in the core area of that buck. And what you could do is and I know, you know people that have harvestered our bucks and talk to them. They got lucky and they had a bunch of cameras out that basically encompassed his core area, so they knew that that’s where I need to focus my time. That’s probably the biggest thing that I know. Otherwise, I mean, I’ve stared at and made lots of movies of bucks, and you know, I’m not as smart as Ai. I guess, but I cannot find a pattern too, you know interview Does does he go up this draw? Does he go up and down this draw instead of this one? No, I’ve never been able to to pattern a buck when I’ve had these bucks, you know, radio.

00:54:56
Speaker 2: College, even with radio Calordetta.

00:54:58
Speaker 3: So yeah, so I don’t think I can come up with three because you didn’t give me enough advance warning. But one, Yeah, go ahead.

00:55:10
Speaker 2: I was just going to say, as I listened to you, and as I have gone back and read through the many different articles that you guys have published and the data you’ve shared with the public in a certain way. One of the main takeaways I’m getting from this is keep it simple, stupid, you know, as a hunter, because what you’re telling me, and what this data seems to show, is that deer are deer, and they’re going to do basically the same thing every single year, with a little bit of regional variability, a little bit of localized variability, but in general, the data seems to show that the rut is consistent every year, that movement’s going to generally increase at the same time of year that it’s generally difficult to pattern them. That generally, all these weather factors that vary from day to day today don’t have a net statistically significant impact on any of that. So rather than all of us racking our brains every day all day trying to discover some silver bullet that’s going to tell us that, oh, you should hunt this day and not that day, maybe we just simply need to know that during the rut, which there’s a very simple calendar which can show you when those periods of the rut are as you describe late October into the first couple weeks of November and slowly tailing down from there. During that time period, be in the woods as much as you possibly can. Is it just that simple? Thank you?

00:56:37
Speaker 3: Thank you for my number two reason. Yes, explaining my number two reason. Yes, you just got to be out there in the woods. And if you need to plan your vacation a year ahead of time, easy, pasy right, it’s going to be the first two weeks in November. Well in Pennsylvania, you know, the real excitement is the first two weeks in November.

00:57:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dwyane. Is there anything else that you wish folks knew about your study that’s been ongoing for so many years now or where it’s head. Is there any final thought you want to leave folks with.

00:57:13
Speaker 3: Well, the project is actually wrapping up. It’ll be done June of twenty twenty six, and so this will be the last year that we’ll be collecting factor telemetry data will be ending in February. So we have, you know, the twenty twenty five RUT tracker, so you can go and see the averages, will show you some of the variation. And I think what we’re going to do this year is, I guess kind of like the Big Fat Bear week I can’t. I can’t show you the actual movements of deer this year just because you know the ethical issues of you know, this deer is radio collared, it’s available to be harvested. I don’t want to share you know, current location information, but we’re going to go back through our archives and find deer that have really interesting movements and share that on the blog for folks if they want to come see that. So I think I think that’ll be fun and we’ll, you know, update on how things go this year and then kind of share what some of these bucks that we’re not following them anymore and I don’t even know if they’re alive or not, but you can see what they actually did during the rut.

00:58:34
Speaker 2: Very interesting. Well, I have been following the blog for a long time now. I’ve found it to be really fascinating over the years. I appreciate all the work that you guys have been putting into it and certainly would encourage anyone listening to go check it out. Am I right that the URL that’ll take you to the main homepage at lease is that deer dot p SU dot edu.

00:58:55
Speaker 3: Correct.

00:58:56
Speaker 2: Perfect, All right, Well, Dwyane, thanks for all your work and thanks for this chat.

00:59:01
Speaker 3: Oh, you’re welcome, it’s fine.

00:59:05
Speaker 2: And now are excerpts from my twenty fourteen conversation with Matt Ross about the science of the white tail run.

00:59:16
Speaker 4: Well hunters want to know about the rut is how can it kill something?

00:59:18
Speaker 6: Right?

00:59:19
Speaker 4: When should I be out there? Yes, for the most part, it’s consistent year to year. You can pick the first or second and in some cases third week in November and take time off and go out there and hunt, and you’re going to see some activity. It’s a bomber when you’re out there and you’re not seeing much, and that is impacted by other things. There are other influences that can change that. And again this goes back to the research where you know, I can tell you, you know, in terms of weather and things, what the research says. You know, my gut tells me some of that stuff is not you know, there’s something that we haven’t found out yet. And I’ll just tell you for the most part, there hasn’t been any research that says weather and I’m talking everything from barometric pressure to rain events, to temperature drops to all this stuff. As we’re talking about collar deer, hundreds of collar deer in some cases in some of these studies and have not seen a correlation to a weather change almost every variable you can think of with weather and see any difference in deer activity. Again, we don’t know. We don’t have cameras on these deer. We don’t know if they’re actually breeding, but we can actually monitor activity, how much they’re moving in a day or a twenty four hour period, or how long those distances are, and there hasn’t been any. My gut tells me there’s something weather related out there, and I still want to plan when I’m hunting based on some of that. But the neat thing is I can go out there and sit out there and see a frenzy of activity. I get of a buddy two counties over that I’m texting that’s seeing completely something different, and that’s property specific. It’s even the deer herd specific to that property. Based on those deer. I mean, maybe the the doze on the property I’m on are all synchronized and they’re all coming into estress around the same time or just before, or maybe there’s those handful of early breeding events that are happening that are making all bucks so crazy. I mean, it’s so site specific and one of the cool things that we’ve done at QTMA is partnered with some other organizations Sitka, Cabelas and others with powder Hook and developed an app to track some of that stuff, to create a heat map of daytime activity where you can just log in your observations of what you’re seeing or the deer you’re killing, and they take all that into account and create that. It’s a really, really neat thing. So when it comes down to the rut, I mean, why do people want to talk about it. I want to talk about it because they want to figure out how they can best be successful to go out there and show it a deer specifically a buck. One of the best things that I can offer to you is take this science and use it to the best of your ability. I mean, but at the same time, a lot of it has to be site specific, and some of the stuff that you get to talk about on your show is you as a hunter, you as a lease or a landowner, just keeping tabs on that deer herd, either through trail cameras or individual box and tracking them throughout the year and getting a sense of when stuff is happening and trying to be ready for when it happens within the window of when the bigger science says, you know what, there’s about a two to two and a half week window when I should be out there, and then just try to target when you need to be out.

01:02:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I think it’s, you know, right in line with what you said is looking at this the high level scientific data, but then to your point, understanding the site specific uniqueness of your property and the situation at hand. And that brings me to something that I that I am equally fascinated by that I know you looked into, which is actual buck behavior during the rut. I know there’s been a number of GPS studies that have looked into this. Two things specifically that I have found interesting about behavior that these studies have shown are the phenomena of how they relate to focal points and then also this other phenomena of taking these excursions. Could you share with us a little bit about what these studies have found about buck behavior during the rut related to those two things.

01:03:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, no problem. Let me talk about the focal points first. Aaron Foley, who’s a research at Texas A and M, and a lot of his co authors looked at this. There’s a multiple year study looking at a bunch of different things related to bucks and their use of space, and again out of Texas and for people that aren’t qtm A members. This was actually a feature article and Quality White Tails that’s our publication that comes out every other month with the last issue. Really really interesting stuff in terms of how bucks, you again, their home range or their core areas over during the rut and how that changes. And for the most part, we’ve always and the research does point to bucks meeting individuals. You know, some are up on their feet a lot and they move a lot, you know, day or night. Some don’t move that very much. Some have large home ranges, some have very small home ranges, and there’s combinations of all four of those, and it really varies based on the individual buck. When it comes to the focal points. What Mark is asking about is this was one of the first studies that actually showed spatial memory, meaning a buck remembering, if you will, where dough groups are and returning to those places on a fairly consistent basis. What the researchers found there was about every twenty to twenty eight hours they had both Bucks and does collared and they were able to document multiple bocks visiting what the research is called focal areas. There would be somewhere between one to three focal areas within that BUX home range. So if a buck was traveling, you know, one thousand acres, that’s what their home range is. I’m just that’s a just a random number I’m coming up with. They might have a core area throughout most of the year of five to ten percent of that and that’s basically what the research shows. You know, between five to ten percent of a bus home range will be its core area, and it might not be one spot, it might be one or two. During the run, their home range expands, sometimes excessively three four times of size, and they are using more of that space. So the home range I defined it earlier as the space a buck is ninety to ninety five percent of the time the core area has many hunters call them, it’s like their bedroom. They’re there fifty time. Half the time you’ll find the buck there. During the rut bucks, he’s less of their core area less often, they’re not in that fifty percent space as much, and they’re they’re using way more of that ninety ninety five percent of their home range. They’re out there a lot more than the user, so they’re shifting where they are in their home range. The really interesting thing though, is these researchers found that these bucks are not doing it randomly. They are picking these focal areas. They’re you know, a handful of them, usually three or four of them within the buck, within that buck’s home range, where he’s concentrating on it, spending some time there, leaving it, going to another one, leaving it, going to another one, leaving it going to another one, and returning to the original one. Every twenty twenty eight hours, that buck is returning to one of those spots. And with multiple bucks collared, they were able to see this on the landscape where there was and they also had those collared that there were spatial memory where bucks were returning to these spots, saying, you know, there’s a dough group there and you’d have one or two or three bucks returning to that spot at different periods to find them. So that gives a lot of confirmation to you know, the whole adage. You know, if you hunt where the dos are, you’ll see bucks or along those lines. Yeah, that is true. I mean during the rut, bucks are trying to find these does they’re checking the receptiveness possibly and returning and that research is ongoing, but that that is something that’s really interesting. The other thing that Mark asked about was about excursions, and that’s something else I’ve been able to look in depth at. And one of the things that we found with excursions is that they happened year round. By far, they’re more rut related fall time excursions in there are spring, but there has been documented cases from Pennsylvania all the way down to Louisiana and everywhere in between, from agricultural environments like Iowa and Maryland to heavily forested environments. But bucks are making these excursions, and what they are is within that home range where a buck is ninety to ninety five percent of time, they might spend take sometimes one, sometimes multiple events where they leave that space. They’re gone for a very short period of time, usually a day for thirty six hours, and they return quickly. There’s by far more rut related excursions that are happening, almost probably a three to one, and it’s generally about half of bucks make them and all the ones that do go the majority do it multiple times. It’s almost going back to that individuality where you know, if a buck’s got the propensity to do that, he might do that. So it lends a lot of credibility to the hunter that he’s a buck show up on his trail camera, or you’re sitting there and his deer comes cruising through that you’ve never seen before, and you know you miss your chance at it and you never see that deer again. That could be a buck that was on an excursion. Or likewise, if you’ve been following a deer and you have great documentation of that buck even out of the summer getting into pre ra or even getting into you know, in the next couple of weeks, you’re seeing this deer on camera and then all of a sudden, poof, that deer’s gone. He may have actually made one of those excursions and the ones that this isn’t confirmed, but the ones that are revelated or assumed obviously to be in search of does there might not be enough receptive dos in his home range, she’s checked all his focal areas and he’s going elsewhere, or you know, very likely the case he’s on a dough that’s not quite receptive and she takes him outside of his home range. There’s actually been one documented case of a booty calling deer where there was a doll that was collared and she left her home range and he left his where they were both ninety nine, and they overlapped a little bit and they rendezvous and they were together for a day or so, and that was in Tennessee, and they went back to their respective home ranges.

01:10:22
Speaker 5: Yeah for a college bar.

01:10:25
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah. So there’s all this interesting stuff going out there. And that’s probably also you know, when one of those guys that you know, you see a social media post or somebody shoots a buck that looks a lot like the buck you’ve been following, and it’s a couple of miles away, I mean, it could very well be the same deer and Bill travel anywhere between one to five miles. That’s the average distance in these excursions.

01:10:50
Speaker 7: So the question, I’m sorry in regards to the annual patterning, then, me and Mark have been talking a lot about annual patterning patterning the past couple of weeks and trying to, you know, maybe hunt where we got a trail camera picture of a deer the previous year.

01:11:08
Speaker 5: Are these excursions or.

01:11:09
Speaker 7: Focal points like annual, like on the second week of October, you can expect the deer to do the same thing.

01:11:18
Speaker 4: Now, there’s not a lot of there’s not a lot of reasons to say that they are continuous in the same place or direction. Some of the research does show some weird stuff where they might have a lot of the collar deer going in the same way, and I think some of that has to do with the terrain and the landscape in those cases, I don’t know of anything dan that has said that, you know, you can count that on that deer leaving and then coming back. I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that was the case. But again, going down to the individuality of a deer, you know, you might have some that are likely to do that and other ones that are way more random. They just pick up and leave because their brain told them to. The reason I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened was, you know, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of habitual behavior with deer. That’s how they survive. Obviously, they know how to how to do something, and even coming down to like when they drop their antlers, you know, you’ve seen before in some of the research. You know, bucks can drop antlers within a day or two of when they did in the last year. So it wouldn’t shock me if somebody had had a collar buck and they showed that these deer were doing the same thing year and then you you’re out around the same time. I just don’t remember or recall any of the research showing that, and that’s probably because the bucks would have to be collared for multiple years, and a lot of these collars don’t have the longevity of that. I mean, they’re very expensive, but they usually only last year. Sometimes they only last a couple of months, believe or not. But so that hasn’t been documented to my knowledge. But I’m I’m a huge fan of what you’re asking. Yeah, I mean, I’m I’m kind of in a little bit different stage. I was talking to a friend the other day about the stages of hunting. You know, you’re supposed to go through the shooter stage, and then the limiting out stage, and then the trophy stage, and then it goes on to I think the fourth one is the type of tactic you use, and then finally sportsman stage where you’re just enjoying the experience. I’m somewhere in the middle of that.

01:13:22
Speaker 3: I don’t think.

01:13:22
Speaker 4: I think there’s something missing for the young father who’s got a toddler and a preschooler and flies around the country a lot, and I don’t know what I’m doing this year, but I’m a big fan of patterning based on everything from finding sheds to trail camera images in the same part of the property year and you’re out and learning a deer and actually going deeper than that, finding a buck early in his life that’s patternable that has daylight behaviors, that seems to be up and out at daytime, a lot, that’s got above average anler growth, and trying to protect that buck and see him through an older age. That’s kind of the niche that I like is just finding a deer that’s one or two or even three that’s just showing extreme potential, that is up and at him a lot at daytime, and just trying to keep him safe to the point where you might get a shot.

01:14:21
Speaker 2: And that’s pretty fascinating when you can learn a single deer like that over course of several years, and then you know, if you’re fortunate enough to put all the pieces together by the time he is fully mature and then actually you know, harvests that deer that’s abouzz cools it gets. Yeah, so here here’s kind of related to this point. All the ideas here about when you’re trying to pattern a deer and understand a deer. And I have two takeaways from the study that you just mentioned that tracked mature buck movement during the rut, and the two big takeaways obviously mentions that yes, deer are taking these excursions, which I think is something that popular common knowledge when it comes to deer behavior during the rut has always been, you know, during the rut, bucks are going everywhere, They’re going different places that they’re changing the changing the usual routine, and you can’t pattern a buck. So part of this I’m seeing in the data here shows that yes, there is some of that excursion behavior. But you know, from what you said and from the stuff I’ve read, it sounds like that’s a little bit less than maybe some have made it out to be. I think a lot of people think it’s happening every single day all the time. These bucks are NonStop moving all over to new places, But it sounds like they’re actually the majority of time, Yes, they might take a couple of these excursions, but the majority of the time they’re focusing still in their home range on a couple consistent places. So my big takeaway from this, and you tell me, Matt, if this is correct for me to take this, but my big takeaway is that during the rut, while there is going to be some randomness, there actually is still some type of consistency that we can dial in on and potentially pattern to a degree to take advantage of during the rut and while you’re hunting. Is that accurate?

01:15:55
Speaker 4: Absolutely, because you’re talking about the law of averages there. And although I’m telling you about every other buck will go on an excursion and when they leave, they’re gone for a short period of time. I mean it’s a day or two, you’re talking about multiple weeks. That the rot can last two weeks. Even in terms of all the craziness of all that randomness, it is small percentages of when those things are occurring. It helps explain some of the head scratchers. But for the most part, if you can be in tune with your property and you can locate where deer are, they like to be during that frenzy, because certainly, and you can build your property that way too. You can manage it so that your property has specific locations where you know deer will hold up where they like to be, you know, it’s got better cover in it, or things like that. That adds a lot of predictability to it. I mean, being within bull range or gun range and actually making the shot count. Well, that comes down to skill and practice and being proficient and being able to perform under pressure. But you can absolutely change the trajectory of your success by practicing QTM and managing the property and letting dear go and watching all those things unfold, and practicing the low patients. I mean, there’s tens of thousands of QTM A members and other QTUM practitioners across the country that have extremely high success rates above the average hunter. And all and all due respects, we’re all for the millions of hunters out there, but guys that are like you two and the listeners that are on this, that are listening to this, you can change your fate by that predictability. So I absolutely agree with that.

01:17:46
Speaker 2: So then here’s the next question. Then, because if we’re if we’re learning trying to learn, these bucks and if we know that, hey, there is some ability to still learn and to some degree pattern and hunt these bucks during the rut, even as we understand the does do control the rut though, right, because everything a buck is doing during the rut during these next couple of weeks is revolved around trying to find that dough that’s ready to breed. So when it comes to hunting the rut, then I think a big portion of, you know, what we’re trying to do here is understanding where those dos are what they’re doing, because that’s where the buck wants to be. So is there anything out there that you’ve learned or that you know? I guess what is a dough doing during the rut? Because we talk a lot about what bucks are doing, but I guess the first thing we need to understand is what are the does doing? So how does dough behavior change during the rut?

01:18:33
Speaker 4: That’s a great question. So a lot of it’s similar, but there’s some key differences. Obviously, It’s just like you know, men are from Mars and all that dose do not have obviously influence of the immensity of what bucks do during the rut. There actually is some evidence like that Booty call example I gave you a few minutes ago, and some other research that actually show dose going out and speaking bucks. I mean that has been documented. It’s again it’s a proportion and it’s a small proportion of the research that I’ve seen, but it’s not like one hundred percent of time the buck is the pursuer. I mean, there is some of that happening, but for the most part, what those are doing is going through that same diet change, the physiological change. The bucks are that we talked to the beginning of the show. They’re getting ready for winter, that they’re they’re bulking up. They need to be ready to survive. They need to make sure that their offspring are in the best condition because they’re good mothers and they’re trying to get to that point. They’re also at the beginning, like right now, really, I mean there’s still the majority of those are not quite ready to breed, so that’s not going on in their you know, what they’re focusing on. They’re still trying to bulk up and eat and stay safe. And probably the number one thing that you can do in terms of tracking does is managing your hunting pressure, because they will key in on hunting pressure at a much finer level than bucks will because bucks are rut crazy, testosterone filled and they’re not paying attention to what they’re doing. Every hunter knows that, and that’s why guys like to hunt, and guys like to hunt the rut because it’s a time when you had the best chance at a buck, because he’s going to make a mistake, he’ll be out in daylight, he’s going to come by you and not be looking up. All of those things are happening, those aren’t under the same influence of testosterone. I mean, clearly, it’s a pretty obvious thing. So the thing you need to really be cautious of is hunting pressure where you don’t too heavily hunt the property. The really fine balance, but where you don’t too heavily hunt the property, where you’re alerting those to hunting pressure, elevating, you know, being on the property, all of those things that might make a dough change her behavior. But at the same time be able to manage all the things that we talk about in QDM, taking the right number dos and balancing the deer herd and the sex ratio and all those things. And there’s some research out there behind it. I mean, for the most part, I can give you some basic numbers, but a lot of the concurrent research out there that and they agree with each other. Things out of Oklahoma and South Carolina and some other places show that it really only takes a few days of heavy pressure to alert a deer herd and they start changing the way they behave. And this includes dozen bucks, but they’ll change when they’re out during day versus night. How they get across the property. They still might do that bed to feed movement, but instead of going in a direct line, their path becomes much more complex. The observations of those animals go down. All of this stuff happened after about really three or plus days of pressure. So that’s where kind of strategy changes how you do that. So I guess what I would recommend to somebody that wants to focus on that side of it is, first figure out how many dos you need to take, because that’s the lowest hole in the bucket. If you have too many deer on the property and not enough food, or some combination of those two things depending on Again, if you’re Dan and you live in Iowa, you know, if you have abundant food, you can hold a lot more deer. But if you’re if you’re limited by food, bacon does is the thing you need to worry about beyond tracking a big deer, because that buck’s only going to be as big as he possibly can be if he’s fed as well as he possibly can be. It’s all antlers take a big gang from nutrition.

01:22:36
Speaker 2: Can you dive into the science of signposting? So rubs and scrapes are something that you know, we hunters associate with the rut, but can you go into both of those and you know, why are bucks making those? What are they doing with them? And when are they doing them? I guess this is what I’m first curious about from you.

01:22:53
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, there’s actually very predictable times when both of those behaviors peak in the woods. Scraping, let’s talk about that one. First, bucks we’ll start making scrapes really after velvet appeal. They’ll start doing a little bit, but by far it ramps up going through early fall. You know, let’s just called the rot. The second week in November, you’ll see scraping activity peak about a week and a half to fourteen days prior to that. That’s when it peaks, and it will maintain that peak up until when breeding starts occurring. So right now, late October is the time when you see scrape more scrapes than any other time of the year. It’ll continue for a couple of weeks and actually in the probably second week in November, when most breeding is occurring, it starts to drop off. There’s usually a little bit of peak after that when you see second rod occurring or things like that, but there should be the most scrapes on your properties right now. Rubbing actually increases and peaks with the peak of breeding, so that usually will peak a little bit later in the fall. About when bucks are and dose are actually starting to breathe.

01:24:13
Speaker 2: And why, what’s the science say about why they’re doing those two things.

01:24:18
Speaker 4: Well, the science behind it is what they’re doing is they’re leaving sign for other deer. I mean, deer are very social animals. They speak to each other through vocalizations. That’s while we buy grunt calls and dough bleats and cans and all those things because we know that, you know, deer are very vocal with each other. They have a lot of scent production. They will leave sent through seven different glands on their body with bucks seven those six they leave scent on scrapes they leave by urinating and or and or rub urinating in that spot. They will leave scent on a rub by once they make the rub their forehead gland, that’s that dark spot between the antlers. All that hair gets really dark because there’s a very oily substance. Basically like you know, if you don’t shower for a couple of days, your hair gets really greasy. Every single hair follicle on our body has a spacious plant. It produces a little bit of oil to it. Deer mammals they have the same thing, but these areas of high glandular activity, like the forehead or the tarsal gland. You know, these areas will actually produce an abundance of those oils, and they’re depositing scent through that. So what they’re doing is they’re basically leaving their calling card. So any deer bond dell back can go to those places, those signpost locations and smell it and pick up the pheromones of other individuals, and it’s basically like going to the deli and leaven your business card to you know, win a free sandwich or free hogi. They’re leaving their their business card. They’re saying I was here again. It kind of blends into that territoriality of your territorial They’re not they’re just they’re just leaving their sign out there. And it also alerts and also cues a little bit to the rut, you know, when those are priming and getting ready to come into estress. There’s some suggestions out there through well known researchers. I haven’t seen research that says it it’s unfounded, but there’s a lot of good research out there that talks about the number of chemical receptors and pheromones in box and immature box versus mature box that that that’s irresputable that mature bucks do leave different sense, different types of sense, different types of compounds and young bucks do you know. So the theory there, and that’s the theory, is that they’re leaving their sign or they’re sent for others to smell as a marking of we’re here or I’m ready and uh. There’s also some suggested evidence that those can be queued quicker into reading or being ready to breed with some of that out there, with more mature bucks and those those right compounds. So it’s very interconnected. There’s a lot we don’t know about deer, but there’s a lot of very interesting things going on, and they certainly are are tied together to each other through communication like that.

01:27:37
Speaker 2: So is there any takeaway for hunters in regards to signposts, because there’s lots of different ideas and theories and it’s it’s changed over the years about hunting over or near rubs or scrapes, But is there any definitive takeaway that we that we have now regards to if it’s worth hunting over those two different types of sign well.

01:27:59
Speaker 4: Scrapes three search shows and I didn’t actually say this and then ago these scrapes have been shown the majority of them do happen at night, and rubs I don’t actually remember what the research says windows occur, but I do know that that’ll increase, you know, the more you have of well balanced bear heard. But just like any hunter that’s listening, you know, I go into a woodlaw and I see a bunch of rubs scraps, I get excited. It looks like there’s a buck using that property. That’s part of the property. Now you can set up over that scrape and hope that you see that deer, but know that he’s probably checking those at night. It’s about eighty five percent of the research says that scrapes are made and checked at night. You could be a fifteen percenter. I have great daytime pictures of bucks using scrapes, you know, and I could have been sitting there in that stand during that time. Again, if you want to play the law of averages and listen to the research, you can say, well, I’ll okay, there’s a scrape line going through this part of the property, and there’s really no true scrape line. A lot of the research has shown and disputed. You might find us several scrapes on a ridge, you could have a completely different set of bucks using. It’s not made by one deer walking in a line. This is just a concentration of activity where bucks are leaving their sign and it’s probably because there’s doze near there, so they’re leaving their sign for dose. You know. So I can go in there with my climber and say, wow, there’s a bunch of scrapes right here. I’m going to set up right here and have the expectation of seeing a buck. I know, as a researcher, you know, and a deer biologist that you know what, these are probably being made at night. Eighty five percent of these are being made at night, and there’s probably a chance I’m not going to see the buck, but I might still set up there saying, you know what, it could be one of those fifteen percent times at a buck coming through. I’ve gotten. I’ve seen a lot of different, you know, responses on our website and social media posts and other things when this research gets put out there in articles or posts or things like that. Is somebody that put a picture of a buck making a scrape, Well, of course, yes, that does. I mean, you can’t say absolutely anything. And that’s one of the things I mentioned about science is what peer reviewed research gives us is a moment in time the researchers collared bucks or they did this or did that on a property in Iowa to Maryland, to Texas to New York, and you can say, well, that’s the case in New York. That the true test of science is repeatability, being able to try it again. And some of his research has been repeated in different parts of the country and they’ve done the same test and they’ve shown the same results. That’s the real true, part of science is learning what the majority of the time things happen. But as a hunter you need to take that and synthesize and say, how do I apply that to my situation? Shoot, Mark and Dan, I’m still going to go out and set up a stand and be near scrapes because that means there’s bucks area. Yeah, I’m not going to think, as you know, as a hunter, that’s what I’m going to do. I know my expectations might be that Bock might not be here during daylight, but I also know that there’s a lot of activity in that area, so it might be a shot. So you have to just kind of balance all that.

01:31:18
Speaker 2: Yeah. So true, it’s the it’s six to one way half does in the other, but finding, you know, taking what you can learn from that, and then you say, okay, well exactly like what you said. The way I think about it is, Okay, I understand that you know eighty percent of this might be happening during dark. But the same time, if you look at that point where there’s a scrape, where I could say, okay, I know that there’s a twenty percent chance he’s touching that he’s coming to this place potentially or I could go to some other random place one hundred yards away where there’s no scrapes at all, and you know, okay, do I have a twenty percent chance of a buck coming here? Maybe it’s even less there because there’s you know, no particular reasons. So it’s one more little piece of the puzzle you can put potentially in your favor if you apply it. But maybe maybe it’s not something to rest your entire strategy on. So yeah, Dan, are you? Are you okay? Over there? You live?

01:32:06
Speaker 5: We’re sucking it in. I’m sponging it up.

01:32:08
Speaker 7: I want to know one thing based off of yeah, just well, I mean there’s literally another episode worth of questions that we could ask you, yeah, and go detail to, you know, to all get out.

01:32:22
Speaker 5: But you know a lot of people.

01:32:25
Speaker 7: Use I guess, hunting information that’s not scientific to learn how to hunt, Like, oh man, when when the rooster crows, you better be in the timber, or you know, when the cows are standing with their whin their back to the east, you better be in the timber. You know, those kind of things or even myths that are even things that are on like the outdoor channel or on the you know, these celebrities are telling you how to do these things. Are there any myths that science has disproven that’s basically just like, hey, that’s that’s you.

01:33:04
Speaker 5: You’re wrong.

01:33:07
Speaker 4: That’s a great question. There’s probably a pile of them, uh, you know, one of the things. And again getting back to the you know what, peer reviewed research says the biggest is probably the moon phase. I mean that that is the one smack dab in the elephant in the room when it comes to the rot as far as I know, you know, I’ve looked at a lot of different projects where they’ve looked at moon phase in comparison to bock activity. Again, you don’t necessarily know when deer are breeding when they have a collar on, but you can just see when they’re on their feet, and that hasn’t shown any evidence of, you know, being correlated. When moon phase changes that it’s going to impact dear’s behavior. It has to do with everything else. I do think the one thing that along those lines is the weather I mentioned earlier. You know, something tells me that weather must impact when deer are moving, but that also has been shown to not be correlated, which that’s a head scratcher for me. So you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if either of those cases, some some researcher finds evidence that, you know, moon phase in a certain situation. Now I’m talking about five six different projects that have looked at that, and in some cases, you know, half a million data points off of hundreds of bucks that are collared haven’t found it. You got to feel like, okay, well, you know there’s got to be some truth to that. It wouldn’t be some surprise if somebody found one project that said, yeah, it does on the flip side. So somebody could do the same with weather and be as a hunter and wants to say I knew it, But I also know there’s half a dozen projects out there that have tied all those data points the weather events, you know, barometric pressure and cold fronts and rain and all those things and haven’t found or anything. So you know, I gotta be a hunter in some cases, and I got to be a researcher in others.

01:35:04
Speaker 7: So as someone like myself who likes to follow the science, I’m going to say something. I’m going to say this out loud just so people hear it. Based Yeah, based on the research that has been done, moon the moon phase does not influence deer movement, has been shown not to influence deer movement.

01:35:27
Speaker 3: Is that an accurate statement?

01:35:28
Speaker 4: Okay, very accurate.

01:35:30
Speaker 5: Based on research.

01:35:33
Speaker 7: Weather patterns do have been shown to not change deer movement or like influence deer movement. That’s another accurate statement.

01:35:45
Speaker 4: Correct, That is also another accurate statement.

01:35:48
Speaker 7: So everything that we have as hunters have you know, thought over the years, science is showing that, ye guess what, it’s really not so so then that just brings up these questions again, what is influencing deer movement?

01:36:09
Speaker 4: Here?

01:36:09
Speaker 2: Here’s something I’d like to add on to that, Dan, because I like mash my brain together trying to figure this out too, because just like what you said, Matt, you said the research that these certain research scenarios have said this, But as a hunter, so many of us have anecdotally seen evidence that maybe there’s something different. I wonder as I try to think through this, could we be comparing apples to oranges here, and that the study is looking at a certain criteria you’re saying, you know, you know, deer movement or dear activity as they are measuring it might be very different from quote unquote dear movement or dear activity that we hunters are looking for. So hypothetically, could this be a scenario where the researcher is studying actual you know, number of feet traveled throughout a twenty four hour period something like that, you know, the actual movement of this year in twenty four hours, and they’re saying, regardless of temperature or moon phase, the amount of actual distance traveled is not any different. While from a hunters standpoint, I might be curious in how much movement in the open is happening during daylight, that kind of thing, you know, that’s the activity that I’m interested in. So could a cold front increase the amount of movement out of their bedding area during daylight?

01:37:28
Speaker 4: Is that?

01:37:28
Speaker 2: You know? Maybe that’s what I’m interested in from a hunter standpoint, and maybe the cold front does trigger increased activity there, but it doesn’t necessarily change the absolute distance of total travel in twenty four hours. That’s my hypothesis. There might be some difference in the actual measurement criteria, Matt, Is there any possible Does that make any sense at all?

01:37:47
Speaker 4: It does? And not every one of those projects has looked in that, but some of them have. They’ve looked at vulnerability to harvest from daylight to night versus and also things like distance from tree stands, having like tree stands GPS on some of these properties and looking at how vulnerable they were within one hundred meters or one hundred yard distance if it was gun season or you know, thirty yard distance from those stands during bow. And again none of that stuff has shown any correlation. Is a lot of stuff, Yeah, a lot of stuff with the moon phase that was initially done looked at conceptions and that was a little based on fetal measurements. They looked at when the bulk of the deer those were being bred and correlated that to moon. No, no correlation. But a lot of this GPS research is also looking at breeding dates, but they’re also looking at movements over a twenty four period and some of them would disagree that Mark is saying, you know, daytime versus night and other things. So and again, you know, I said this before it comes down to the property. I mean it really does. I mean, you can talk about this big umbrella of what research is saying if you want to believe, I mean I will. I’m glad Dan said that that is the take on message. There’s no research to support any of those theories. It doesn’t it doesn’t come out. However, you know, when it comes down to it, don’t don’t throw that away. Don’t throw it in the trash paper basket when you get off listen to this and say that guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or well, I know because I saw this. That’s not good enough because you’re not talking about hundreds of deers with collars, or you know, thousands or ten thousands of data points that are collared. That’s very different. But I would still suggest to the hunter that wants to micro manage the property and understand this. Research might say all this. It might show that these things aren’t correlated. But I can tell you might be the day that you go out there and say, you know what the moon phase is telling me this, or there’s a cold front. And again I’m telling you, as a hunter, I feel like weather must do more than what the researchers said. But it hasn’t shown up. It just has to be something related to it. But again, I’m a deer hunter too. You could be in a stand and have a buck make a decision that changes his fate and you kill him, and you might tie that to one of those multiple things we’re talking about, but that’s still anecdotal. But who cares You still kill that deer he changes behavior, or even at a property level, you might be on a property where things are in a frenzy. It has nothing to do with moon or weather. It’s just because deer is so social. You know, something impacted them. You know a couple of those that went into estras early or a buck just that felt so you know, Randy, he was getting those up and moving them around, and that just triggered other deer to get up and move. I mean, I know you guys have seen this where you’re in a in a stand and you see deer almost playing another deer react to it by playing, or deer running away from beer from a kyle or a hunter or a buck chasing, and other deer do that. I mean, there’s no way to measure that randomness. All you can do as a hunter is know when your best chance of shooting a buck is or your best chance of getting that deer within range, and spend as much time as you possibly can in the stand because it’s going to increase that percentage of Yes, you’re going to get a shot. And I talked about earlier, your proficiency and your ability to pick a good stand location is going to be a big part of that success. So your skill level as a hunter certainly will play a part of it, and luck, of course obviously comes into it too. But if I was a betting man, I would you know, we know that deer are most active at dawn in dusk or around those hours. Deer killed all the time in the middle of the day, but you know, the bulk of the research says their most active at dawn and dusk. There going to be most vulnerable during the rot. You know, those first couple of weeks in November, they’re going to be most vulnerable. Uh. What I feel like is when a weather event is happening. Although the research doesn’t say that, I’m going to spend time in a stand when that stuff is happening, and just the fact that I’m spending time out there is going to increase my chances. Now, I might believe a magic rock will increase my chances, and I might keep it in my pocket and I might kill a buck and I’m gonna say, you know what, that rock made, that that happen. That doesn’t necessarily it’s not a cause and effect thing, but it doesn’t matter because you know, through science, when it’s telling you to spend the most time and just be out there, be present and be one, you know, mentally recording all of this stuff or just physically recording it like through that bear tracker app I mentioned earlier, to you know, allow for a better uh documentation of what’s happening on the property across the country, as well as just being there to be able to make some of those choices and react to them. If you see there’s a lot of activity in one corner of the property, be adapted to move your stand that day, get down, move it, and uh you might be more successful because of it.

01:43:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I uh, this is one of those topics that is it’s.

01:43:21
Speaker 5: Bullet Yeah, it’s just for me.

01:43:23
Speaker 7: It’s one of those things where it’s like, man, you talk to so many people and they and they say, man, I’m telling you what you get in the stand when the moon is right here and there’s high pressure, or when there’s a coal front coming through and you’re gonna kill a buck. And then here’s research, actual factual research that shows that they’re not one hundred percent correct.

01:43:48
Speaker 2: But then to Matt’s point two, nothing is nothing is solid, nothing solid to his point about to your point Matt about weather, I mean, you talk to any serious deer hunter and they’re gonna say, yes, we are seeing different and dear behavior when a weather front comes through, but the research doesn’t support it. So that I mean that that raises similar questions about some other things too. There might be you know, I’m not I find this very interesting. I take it into account, I put it in the tool chest, but I’m not necessarily throwing out some of these other theories too that are intriguing because I you know, because I think here’s one interesting thing that kind of my final thought on this is that you take a guy, hypothetically, let’s say one of these one of these hunters that really strongly believes in the position of the moon and that influencing you know, a little bit of increased to your activity. And that’s something that both you and me, Dan, We’ve been listening to a lot of guys talk about and it’s really interesting and intriguing, and I’ve been trying to pay more attention to it too. But let’s take a guy who’s a diehard believer in it. When that person, let’s hypothetically call him Ben, When Ben goes into the woods with this very strong belief in this theory that when the moon’s overhead or whatever, that he’s gonna have a great chance. When you go into a tree stand with a piece of data like that or a belief like that, you’re believe in it so strongly. I believe your confidence level can be an influencer of the success you have merely because when you are very confident in your standsite and in the conditions on that day and on why you’re hunting there. When your confidence is that high, I believe that you operate at a different level of efficiency and effectiveness as a hunter. So when you’re super confident, you’re paying attention to everything around you, you notice every flicker of movement, You’re super quiet, you’re super detailed, You’re crossing all your t’s and dotting all of your eyes. And I think maybe there’s almost a self fulfilling prophecy happening here, or when you have such a strong belief in something happening, you just hunt better, and because of that, you have more success. I’m curious if maybe there’s something to that.

01:45:44
Speaker 4: I’ll comment, and I think there is and I think not only that mark is that not only they might be more confident, more efficient, but that type of hunter, that type of deer hunter that cares to look deeper and ask questions and try to improve their own ability, is the type of hunter that’s going to improve anyway, you know what I mean, instead of just haphazardly going in the woods or hunting as a as a means of tradition, you know, going to the stand that Grandpapy talked me to, you know, opening day and that’s the only day that he goes out or she goes out. The person that’s saying how can I be better? Some of that is going to be self fulfilling. It has to be because they’re trying to up their bed. I also think that there’s probably as many, if not more people out there that are the hardcore you know, in his example, moon theory believers that are not killing a buck that day and the moon is the cause of it. You know, something happened that was wrong, And again, when it comes down to science is really hard to argue with and there’s always going to be a you know, well that didn’t work for me because our project was from Texas or you know, I live in New York and that research was from Florida. But yeah, of course, I mean, there’s no way you can test at all, but if you can repeat results, you get a better sense of what’s going on. But we’re never going to have all the answers, and that’s the case. So yeah, I do think, yeah, there’s some truth to that, But I think it’s also the type of hunter that you’re talking about. You’re categorizing. Out of the eleven to thirteen million deer hunters out there, I guarantee you not all of them are paying attention to moon phase. The ones that are are trying to make their situation better.

01:47:41
Speaker 2: All right, And that’s a wrap. I hope you’ve enjoyed this two part conversation on all things research in science around the white tail rut. It’s a beautiful time of year, the best stuff is ahead. It’s going to be a great couple of weeks. I wish you all the luck in the world. I hope this helps, and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.