Ep. 42: Elk Biology with Brock McMillan, Part 2

Today on the show, Jason is joined by his buddy Brock for part two of their elk biology conversation. This time, they get deep into every elk hunter's favorite topic -- the rut. They talk on everything from elk estrus cycles to the reasons some elk are call shy and others aren't.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Hey guys, this week's show, we're getting back to our
conversation with Brocking Millon. He's a biologist from VYU, and
we already went over part one, which is episode forty,
So go back and take a listen to that one.
We talked about everything from moon phase, the herd, bulls,
and anything kind of in between that. Let's dive back
in our conversation with Brock and kick off part two
and talk about every elk hunter's favorite topic, the rut. Okay,

(00:39):
so now we're going to jump into the perceived strength
of rut and we just touched on a little bit.
We're going to talk about what affects it. And you
in our conversation last week when we were kind of
just talking about you know, elk in general and you
know unit's doing good versus bad, you mentioned one of
the things that the perceived strength of the rut, which
wouldn't even say perceived at this point, it would be

(00:59):
a real reason why the right is as you say,
some years, you know cows coming to you know, only
fifty percent of the cows will even come into estress. And
if we can touch on that a little bit, which
which I think we have on the on the health
and then you can kind of spin it what we
were just talking about there before we talked about the
weather and some of those, uh the other factors with

(01:20):
the cows and coming into estrus and herd dynamics.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
So sure, So we we've been monitoring pregnancy on a
whole bunch of units since twenty fifteen, so that's only
seven or eight years, but from year to year. So
for example, in twenty twenty one, only sixty one percent
of the elk that we tested in the whole state
were pregnant, whereas in looking at the data right now,

(01:49):
whereas in say twenty fifteen, ninety two percent of the
elk were pregnant that we tested. And so you would
expect that if ninety two percent of the elk are
coming into estrs, the rut is going to be much
more perceptible or much much stronger than if only sixty

(02:11):
percent of the animals were coming into estres. And likewise,
if you look across the state in the same year,
we have some units that are as low as fifty
six percent pregnancy, and in the same year other units
are like ninety percent pregnants. So even unit unit or
year to year there can be a lot of difference

(02:33):
in pregnancy, which I believe is correlated to how many
of the females go into estres.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yes, can we I want to jump into estris itself
a little bit, a little bit more. Let's say a
cow comes into estres. We talk about this a lot,
but what does that? What is estris is it? Is
it something that happens for four hours, twelve hours, twenty
four thirty six? Like, what's the length of it? If
if she doesn't get bread during that, will she stay in?

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Like?

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Can we explain a little bit more about sure?

Speaker 2 (03:06):
So there's four phases of estress. Boy, I'm remembering back
by old biology days. But the main one that we're
concerned about here is ovulation and so and that's when
and an ovulation is when an egg is released from
the ovary of the female. And that's what triggers that

(03:30):
that estress. And so if if an egg's never released,
she will never produce the hormones that the male will
will smell and say, oh, she's going to ovulate and
it's time to breed with this female so that I
can fertilize her egg. And so if they never have

(03:52):
those hormones or fifty percent, and some units never have
a male. The male comes up and smells and does Nope,
she's not going to and so he just leaves her
and goes and looks for another female. It is so
if if she ovulates and then that egg is fertilized,
she produces a hormone to stop the cycle so that

(04:14):
it doesn't For example, in humans in the in a
menstrual cycle, if the egg is not fertilized, then all
of that sloughs out and that's what we call a
menstr cycle. Elk don't have a menstrual cycle, they have
an extra cycle. But the same principle is if that
egg doesn't get fertilized, then it's just expelled and the
and the cycle goes into diapause or diastrous or medestres

(04:38):
medestres for the for the until the next year, and she.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Won't she won't have another egg come through the system.
It's it's one and one chance. So that's where some
of this idea of the second estrous third estris don't
necessarily correlate with the science or the biology of of elk.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
So so we it's probably out there in really low
frequency because on occasion, you'll walk in, you'll run into
a spotted calf that can barely walk in late July,
or the same thing, you'll run into a spotted deer
fond that can barely walk in in late July. But

(05:19):
we've now monitored Jason probably about seven hundred, eight hundred
litters of deer and I'm trying to think about two
hundred with this year, two hundred and forty litters of elk,
and we have zero evidence of a second estress in

(05:40):
either deer or elk.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
So what we're seeing is maybe those unhealthy cows or
unhealthy deer finally becoming healthy enough that they can go
through this process, and it appears to be a second
estros or third ester. So you know, there's a lot
of information or people believing that it's your younger ones
weren't quite ready to come into estrus, your yearlings and
they come in, you know, or it could be an

(06:04):
unhealthy mom that, like you said, raise the cap, she
might not come in until maybe later. That appears to
be a second wave, but it's just animals coming in
later because of health.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
So life scenario that there's it appears to be a
second wave. So with a second wave, you would you
would expect, I wish I could draw on a board.
You would expect a peak and dip down and then
as a smaller peak, right, yep. But we've never seen that.
We've never seen anything other than a single peak. It
may tell off on the end a little more, but

(06:35):
we've never seen a second peak in either deer or elk.
Suggesting that it may happen, but we just don't have
any evidence that it does happen.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Gotcha. And then this one, the egg drops. You know,
in the ovulation, is it all scent based or is
there communication that that cow will have that comes along
with it? Is there any mannerisms or behavior change or
is it strictly a scent that that bowld knows exactly
what's going on in the time.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Well, that's a great question. I don't think anybody knows
the answer to that. The more we learn, the more
we learn, we don't know.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
In mammals that the other thing about estris versus like
a menstro cycle, is it's not as externally visible as
some other modes of reproduction. And so the primary way
to communicate that ovulation has curved, we think, is ol factory.

(07:40):
But absolutely there could be vocal communication that's going on
that we don't understand. It hasn't been studied that I
know of. My guess is there could be some vocal communication,
but we don't know how they communicate vocally. Really.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna this is my our opinion,
and not all Elk colors, so I don't want to.
But there's a lot of Elk collors out there, and
some of what I would consider my calling strategy is
we've all heard it out there. You get some of
what we call like estros buzzing, you know where they're
they're very it's it's almost like an urgency. Or you

(08:17):
get this estrous wine versus like your normal cawmew. You know,
it's a yeah, they'll they'll whine.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Well they're pretty good at that by your mouth. That's
we all use that strategy. We all Yeah, I get
out saying I'm a cow looking for.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
You, yeah, yeah, and then or like you know, Steve Chaplin,
some of these guys have got some great video of
I believe it's a bowl in Arizona or something like
lip uh, what we call an estros buzz It's almost
like you know, you get we we would almost need
to like flutter our lips or our throat to provide
that little bit of vibration. And then bulls show up

(08:53):
and you're like, well, that was obviously different than just
your normal mew that a cow is communicating. Is that
correlating with with that ovulation or that that stage of
the estress? Who knows. We definitely add that into our strategy.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
But so so you would the most parsimonious or best
explanation is that that it has to be or it
wouldn't work.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah. Yeah, but if it is what we think it is,
then why does it only work part of the time still?

Speaker 2 (09:21):
You know?

Speaker 1 (09:22):
And and so there's there's a little beam ei that
doesn't want to say it's for sure what's going on,
because hey, last time I did the same thing, and
I knew that bull could hear it, and he didn't
come running, you know. Yeah. Yeah, So I mean there's
there's enough sign you know, or things at point. All right,
So one more question about the ovulation she comes into estress.

(09:43):
Do we have an idea on the time that that
cow specifically has to be bred before the egg drops
falls out? Whatever happens there, and turns off that hormone,
either she's bread and it turns off, or the time's
up and it turns off. Do we have an idea
on that time.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
That's a great question if I don't know the answer,
But if I were to guess, I would say that
most mammals window of receptivity is a couple of days, okay,
And so you have you have to fertilize that egg

(10:19):
in the upper fillopian tubes so that it can start
to develop and produce the hormone before it gets to
the side of implantation to stop the cycle from continuing
on so that it can implant. And so from so
you may the actual breeding may even happen before ovulation,

(10:41):
so that the sperm has a chance to be on
its way there before the moment that ovulation happens, so
that it's hitting that egg in the upper fillopian tubes,
if that makes sense. But most things that I've read
say that there's a there's a two to three day
window generally in mammals where the egg can be fertilized

(11:02):
and implant.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Gotcha, Okay, we're gonna roll into the herd dynamics. And
if that it's something that I bring up a lot.
You know, you got high bowl the col ratios. A
lot of times the herds get smaller. A bowl can't
maintain that many cows. How does herd dynamics affect affect
the rut we already talked about earlier, like you know,

(11:26):
to a certain point, like the least amount of bulls
on the landscape may be the best for herd health.
How does herd dynamics affect strength of the rut? And
that herd bulls really's got a lot more competition now,
and let's take it even one step further once we
get that answered, How does like the hierarchy of if
you had, you know, certain mature bowls versus a bunch

(11:48):
of raghorns versus you have like a very even mixed
do you feel that that now affects the rut and
what we perceive as the rut?

Speaker 2 (11:57):
So those are all great questions. Maybe we'll tackle one
about say bull the cow ratios first.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
Okay, And.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
It's complex because every hunter wants more bulls on the landscape.
Say I have heard the carrying capacity of a thousand
animals on a unit. I don't know what it is.
Let's just say a thousand simple. If if if I
make that sixty bulls, which is roughly a natural ratio,

(12:33):
if there was no hunting or anything in the population,
that's about what it would be. Even though at birth
they're one to one male to female. Males generally are
are as teenagers. Males are more risky, So just like
in humans, males tend to die as a teenager more

(12:53):
than females, so that skews the sex ratio a little bit.
And the average male lives a shorter lifespan the average females,
so that skews it a little bit. So a natural
herd with no hunting would generally be something like forty
percent males and sixty percent females. If we we often

(13:15):
manipulate that, and we manipulate it both ways. So we
may say, for example, you have a unit that the
state objective is one thousand animals, and you want to
make it a trophy unit, so you let bulls get old,
and you start putting more and more bulls on the landscape.
The only way you can maintain a thousand is you
issue cow tags, and so you go out and you

(13:36):
harvest a bunch of cows, and maybe now it's fifty
to fifty, or it's even sixty percent bulls forty percent
cows because you're mandated by a lot of manage to
a thousand, but you want more old bulls in the population.
Doing that really limits the future production. I wouldn't say

(13:57):
health of the herd, but production of the herd, meaning
that if I've only got forty percent cows out there
and only eighty percent of them were given pregnant, the
productivity of this herd is much lower than if I
have eighty percent cows and eighty percent of them are
getting pregnant. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (14:16):
It does, But I'm gonna I'm not questioning you, I'm
questioning the idea that if if this area can only
carry a thousand elk, regardless, do can we is the
way to optimize that? As a hunter or you know
somebody that's looking at hunting those thousand animals? Does it
make sense to keep that balance at fifty to fifty

(14:36):
or sixty forty bowld a cow because it can only
hold a thousand milk? Anyways, what good does it do
to have us having more cows that then put more
elk on the landscape? And you know, did that make
any sense?

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Like is there. Absolutely, it does so because any surplus
can either be hunted or it's going to die on
its own. And so the more surplus we have, the
more hunting opportunity we have.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Yeah, and so, but we've talked about herd health, which
I think is important. We shouldn't just overlook that. You're
saying the herd would potentially be healthier if we only
had thirty percent bulls and seventy percent cows, But then
we would have to issue more cow tags every year
to keep that herd at a thousand, because we don't
want the herd health to go down. So it would
be you're exchanging bulltags now for cow tag opportunities.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yes, you are, So you're but the potential for opportunity,
so yes, for a trophy bull hunter that is that's
probably not the best strategy, But for the opportunity to
hunt elk, it's the best strategy. If that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
And so there's a there's a I mean, we deal
with this in you to all the time. I'm on
one of the regional advisory councils where we where we
make recommendations to our wildlife boarder, which is similar to
your game commission yep, And this is the constant battle.
Do we hunt big bulls or do we provide opportunity
to hunt elk?

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Uh? Yeah, I'm trying to phrase and put together my
next question. So, without throwing agencies under the bus, if
a unit is under under carrying capacity or in poor health,
what you're telling, what I'm hearing from you, is that
we should not be killing cows because that's the way

(16:24):
to obviously get the numbers up. We could live with
less elk. If if trophy bowl quality wasn't the number
one priority in that unit and we just needed to
get our elk back up to carrying capacity, we would
want to keep cows on the landscape and issue less
cow tags or no cow tags until we met those objectives. Correct.
I mean, seems to make sense from a biology standpoint

(16:47):
that cows produce, and you know bulls can produce multiple
or reproduce with multiple cows. That seems like the strategy
to move forward.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Maybe maybe.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
So the reason I'm saying maybe is how do you
know the population is not at carrying capacity or exceeded
carrying capacity? Because the biologist of a region says, based
on everything I know, we're going to put our population
objective on this unit at fifty seven hundred animals, And

(17:20):
now we assume that that fifty seven hundred animals is
what carrying capacity is, where maybe it doesn't have any
biological basis at all. So the only way to know
carrying capacity is to be monitoring the nutritional condition of
those animals, and very few agencies, and even in agencies

(17:41):
that do, they don't monitor very many populations to know
the nutritional condition of the population. So the only thing
we can really look at to start to hint at
nutritional condition is productivity, how many calves per hundred cows
kind of thing, and what survival is, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
And I have to imagine that carrying capacity for any
individual unit is it's variable right in my mind, knowing
that vegetation changes you mentioned book clips earlier, which maybe
an anomaly, But if these units vegetation state changes from
year to year, or you know, some of these certain
units right now that are going through droughts and we're
just not not getting the vegetation that it's historically had,

(18:29):
these things change, does that carrying capacity obviously moves, And
so it is the only real way to test this
is to like, all right, nobody hunt, nobody mess with
the predator. You know, I don't know what the right
answer is or do you just you would have to
sit back and observe a unit almost untouched, no hunting pressure,
and just see, like, all right, we you know, went

(18:49):
from four thousand to five thousand, the herd started to
get unhealthy. They dropped themselves back down to forty five hundred.
So you know, maybe that's the right answer is I
guess that would be the only way to ever tell.
And then even from that, it would be potentially variable
year to year, if the vegetation changes, or snowpacks different,
or drought hits it. It would be a complex calculation

(19:10):
to figure out what that right number is.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Absolutely, and that's the number that biologists are always chasing,
and that's the number that the public wants to know.
So you just hit the nail, in my opinion, right
on the head. That number is almost impossible to know,
and it changes from year to year. But that's the
number that everybody wants, yep, and so, and I don't

(19:34):
think the answer is don't hunt them, especially like in
a drought. You would expect that in a drought, people say, oh,
we've had such a bad drought, we need to not
hunt them. The population is really hurting. But to me biologically,
if I have a severe drought, I want to remove

(19:56):
some mouse from the landscape so there is plenty of
food for the ones that are left there.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, probably the same conversations people can be having. I
mean in your home state of Utah and the northwest
corner of Wyoming that just got hammered this year with
two hundred percent plus no packs. Is winter different than
drought or would you maybe even have the same recommendation
let's free up some or did the winner do the
damage and it reduced the population? For the mouses are

(20:24):
still on the ground, So.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
I think the winner did the damage, so not the damage.
I think this winner was extreme, and so our extreme
northwest wasn't horrible. We have places in this state that
was not good, that were not good. The backside of
the Los Atch Front was not good.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, your northeast corner.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, well not even the cash unit up there. Yes,
up on the extreme northeast and rich County did not
do well. But the rest of the cash unit was
not as bad as everybody. It wasn't as bad as
Wyoming but even this year, Jason our Elk heard, we've

(21:08):
we've had about eighty nine percent survival on the ones
that we have colored. So, I mean, winter doesn't affect
elk like it affects deer.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yep or or the antelope. It seemed like they had
a rough winner as well.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
So yeah, well antelope for sure, because antelope don't store
fat really yeah, and so they run out early in
the winter and then they start burning muscle, and muscle
does not last as long as fat, and so if
the winter's long and severe, it's decimating the antelope or
prong horn. Elk generally have enough energetic inertia because of

(21:46):
their body size that winter is not that big of
a deal, and elk are long lived, so they they
don't Drought doesn't really affect an individual either. But what
it does do is is it does affect the condition
that animal can get to and the likelihood that it
goes into estrus. And so the productivity of the herd

(22:09):
may go down in a drought condition. But for elk,
survival is still pretty high. I mean, we've been doing
it a lot of years now. I'm just trying to
pull up the data so I can tell you, but
generally adult survival is between ninety two and ninety five
percent every years.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
That's pretty dang good. Yeah, especially in comparison to dear
in antelope, which you know obviously lower.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Right, And I mean, our data are clear. The only
thing that really kills an adult elk is lead or broadheads,
I guess, but they don't kill very many.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
So I'm gonna try to wrap this next question. I'm
looking at what I got here and perceive strength of
the rut, which I think for a lot of hunters
that head out correlates with bugling. So I kind of
had a couple different questions here. One of these came
from my my marketing manager, Dirk. I hunt with a lot.
It was it was kind of a and we touched
on a little bit earlier. But is there any rhyme

(23:21):
or reason the why the bulls bugle so hard one
day and the next day they don't necessarily bugle as much?
You know, even let's say on you know, if we
if we held whether constant we held you know, we're
in the peak of the rut or in that that
general time, is there a reason why would it be?
Those like we talked earlier, just none of those cows

(23:42):
are stuck in that ovulation period or there are other
bulls pestering them, Like, what's the reasons why we seem
to get like somebody flipping light switches off and on
on us out there.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
I have no idea, Jason, that that's that would be
my guess if I was gonna guess, say, for example,
yesterday we had five calves born and we caught all
five of them. Of the animals that we have colored today,
so far, we've had one warning, meaning that so far
one calf has been born today. And my guess is

(24:15):
the same thing is happening during the rut and ovulation
that some days several cows are coming in are ovulating,
and other days you only have a few of the
cows that are ovulating. But I don't know if that's
true or not. I would like to know the answer,
because we have some units where bulls seldom bugle anymore,

(24:37):
and other units where they're going off all the time,
and they've just learned to not bugle as much in
some units, I think, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, No, that was where I was going to roll
into the next one. If there's any data, and it
sounds like we don't necessarily know, like are some bowls
genetically disposed of bugling versus non You know, we find
the same thing in certain areas, elk just won't bugle
even though we see them, we know they're there, they're
running cows, they are pushing them, They're just not as
vocal versus you can go to other areas where you know,

(25:07):
you can't barely get the things to be quiet at
times when when you know things are, things are going
hot and heavy. So we may we might not know
if they're you know, if they're genetically disposed to bugling
more or not, or if it's just the way they
were raised or what they they know.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
So and I don't know the answer, Jason, I'm an
elk hunter just like you, and I don't know the
biological explanation maybeing out in the field. The observation I've
seen is in areas where they get a lot of pressure,
they're not nearly as loud as when are areas that
are hard to get to where they don't get very
much pressure.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, I in my opinion, which is just my opinion.
When they correlate, you know, elk making sounds or elk
like sounds. I'll leave it at that, and they they
correlate that with seeing human presence at the location of
that sound. Getting winded by that sound starts to they're
they're not necessarily dumb creatures. And I don't know what

(26:03):
their memory necessarily is, But do they remember that encounter?
Are they more hesitant to come into something? You know?
And in my opinion, the way that the you know,
bugling and caw calling works, it's it's the bull bugles.
He's obviously louder than a cow you know, cal calling.
It's to announce his presence, and then any cows that

(26:23):
want him to breathe them will come join his herd.
Right and and in the woods we're trying to reverse
out a little bit. And maybe maybe he's not willing
to leave his herd to go find this cow, you
know again, because he's been fooled or he's he's expected danger.
But I also don't I don't know if you know,
like what an elk's memory even isn't.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
I don't know what the memory is. But definitely they're
capable of learning. The The reason I say that that
they're capable of learning, we did a study here where
we looked at distribution of elk on the landscape related
to hunting season, and for that study, on the day

(27:06):
before the opening of the rifle hunt, like sixty two
or sixty three percent of the elk in our study
area we're on public land. And on the day the
very next day, the opening day of the rifle hunt,
thirty one percent of the elk we're on public land.

(27:26):
A full forty percent of the herd had jumped the
fence onto private land in one day.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Just from pressure.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
And so to me, they they understand pressure and they
are very willing to move to avoid pressure.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
Yeah, that that's kind of what I what I was
thinking in an alliance with what I saw out in
the field. Last question on strength of the rut and
how this affects it, And this might be in the
wrong spot, but what's your opinion on predators? You know,
we deal with a lot of wolves up up in
the northern you know States and the lak can you know,

(28:01):
being it seems like wolves in an area can definitely
shut down their vocalizations. Is there any studies on the
rut and how it could be affected by alpha predators?

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Not that I know of, And definitely wolves are affecting
every part of their behavior. I mean, it's clear from
the research that's been done that just the presence of
wolves can influence the stress level of the animal and
can influence the likelihood that an animal ovulates. We don't

(28:35):
have wolves in any of our populations that I study,
but the literature's clear that wolves have an effect.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, I mean, just from my observations. Why I'm out
in the field hunting and a spot that I hunt Idaho,
We're up on a high spot and we can listen
and to about three different drainages, and if the wolves
show up to that same drainage, we hunted throughout the
day and maybe had good success or good bugling, and
kind of nowhere they We can't hardly get those things
to talk in the morning versus they're typically still there.

(29:06):
They won't change these big basins and drainages that they're
comfortable in. They just won't talk. The next day. You
wake up the next morning or that night when you're
eating dinner, the wolves move to a different drainage. You
go back in there. The next day they're back to going.
And once again, is it attributed to some bulls like
the bugle or you know, bugle heavy one day not
the other. Or in this case, it's like they obviously

(29:28):
talked less or not at all because of the presence
of alpha you know, alpha predators in that drainage with them.
And like I said, I don't have any scientific it's
just observation, but it seems to have a very strong
correlation with wolves in area. They do talk less.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
So and I don't know the answer, but biologically the
oldest female in the group is probably the one that's
driving what the group is doing, and she is also
the one that is most susceptible to wolves. So if
you can control wolf populations, I think they have a

(30:03):
positive effect on elk, But if you can't, I think
they are decimating to elk.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, and so so you're just saying that natural predation
is that sometimes those you know, for lack of a
better term, those old dry cows need to be taken
out maybe anyways to reduce some of that. You know,
if you are going to take cows out, she's the
right one, but they maybe overdo it a little bit
and take too many.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Right, and they're generally not dry. What happens is when
elk that that was the idea that was in the
literature is that as an elk gets to be say thirteen,
fourteen or fifteen, she becomes non reproductive and she's just
eating resources that otherwise other elk could have to raise calves.
But it turns out that that elk are reproductive their

(30:49):
entire life. Even if they live to be thirty, they're
still reproductive. But as they get old, they tend to
be they tend to skip years, so they're more likely
to be pregnant every other year as they get old.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Gotcha, Okay, Yeah, like I said, predators, we might not
know exactly how it affects, but that that uh, that's
just what we've we've seen and definitely has an effect.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Right, So if you could remove that old cow, you're
increasing the productivity of the herd because now you have
a greater majority of the herd are young cows that
are breeding every year.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, I'm we could jump into it. I'm gonna touch
on it real quick. Around home, when caw tags are given,
you hear of you know, big groups of people that
have cow tags and their goal is to always you know,
shoot the lead cow because then the herd becomes unable
to protect themselves. Is that is that true? Or is

(31:45):
the second in command, Like, is that pecking order already
figured out and that second cow has followed the lead
cow around for multiple years, it's already got it figured out.
Or is there is there a true disruption to the
herd when that lead cow gets shot for a short
period of time where they've got to like refigure them
themselves out and who's in control and where they're going
for safety.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
I have no idea, and I don't think anybody does. Biologically, however,
in every ungulate I studied bison for part of my PhD.
In every ungulate, the dominance hierarchy is pretty clear. We
know which one's boss, and we know which one's in

(32:24):
second place, and we know which one's in third place,
and the whole herd knows that. Now they may be
used to following the lead animal and she if she leaves,
they don't may not know what to do temporarily. I
don't know the answer to that. I'm fine with people
taking the lead animal because that's generally the oldest one

(32:45):
in the group. It's not the one I want.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay. This kind of rolls in
the perceived strength of the rut. But let's talk a
little bit about the rut during night. And one of
the strategies some people tell me we shouldn't even talk
about is locating elk at night. They're more talkative, they
seem to be going better, temperatures are cooling. Is there

(33:09):
any reason or or what is the reason that the
rut seems to always go stronger through through you know,
the nighttime than it is during the day. Is it temperatures?
Is it is a biological reason? Can you well elaborating them?

Speaker 2 (33:23):
I think it's both. I think that that elk have
evolved to be crepuscular or nocturnal, uh, to avoid predators.
But I do think they're a large bodied animal and
they have a thick coat and heat is really tough
on them. And and I think it's more about temperature

(33:45):
in adult elk, it's more about temperature than it is
avoiding predators.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, that that makes sense. I mean, you there's been
times where we've been in areas hunting all day, heard
a few beagles go back at night and the place
is just on fire with multiple bulls you didn't hear
throughout the day. And it just seems, in my opinion,
you know, those bulls seem to almost get I'm gonna
I'm not claiming to be a biologist here with my statement,
but in the middle of the day, if they're running

(34:12):
hard in the morning, the day heats up, it almost
like they get a little bit sick or a little
bit overheated. You know, they go bed down a lot
of times that bowl will bet has heard down and
then he'll go maybe visit a wallow by himself real
quick once he's got, you know, all this housekeeping done.
It just seems like they shut down in the middle
of the day during that heat and then almost set

(34:32):
your clock to it. As wherever they're betting, when the
sun gets low enough, the shade hits it, they're cool enough,
they pop back up and they're right back to doing
their thing. You know, maybe it's a little bit later,
but they're they're now back to running. Where they take
that midday off which seems to correlate with temperature and
maybe nothing else.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
And the reason I think, again, I haven't read anything
biological on it, but the reason I think what you're
saying makes more sense is because they're there's a lot
of thick cover and they when they go to bed down.
They they generally don't go to thick cover that's on
south facing or exposed slopes. They go to north dark timber,

(35:13):
north facing slopes that are dark timber where it's greatest
likelihood of being cool to bed down and spend the day.
To me, that's more thermal regulation than it is protection.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yep, yep, And yeah, this is just I'm thrown in
a bonus observation. They've also got the uncanny ability wherever
they are going to bed, they've figured out that the
wind swirls there all day long, during through the middle
of the day. I I mean, people can call them
a not very smart animal, but you know meal deer alike,
Like those things will go bed in a situation where

(35:47):
you're like, there's zero ways for me to approach without
blowing them out of here. You know. Yeah, it's cool,
it's you know, but it's like, how the heck did
you guys find this spot where there's no way the
wind ever sits still?

Speaker 2 (35:58):
You can see all the way and direction and you
can smell all the way in the other yep.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Yeah, they watch their backtrack or you know, they they
they're in these little pockets that swirl off the edges,
which is just enough and just like just frustrating as all. Heck,
but well, one of the things we talked last week
Brock when we were kind of getting into it, and
one of them, like one thing that I'm very interested
in is kind of that adjacent units one doing well

(36:25):
versus one doing you know, maybe subpar and struggling a
little bit, but then not even being able to say
that it's similar habitat and it might not be that
you know, it's habitat, it might not be wintering ground,
it might not be predators. We go into a little
bit what we were talking about last week on on you know,
trying to and one of the what I'm assuming is

(36:47):
very very difficult for biologists and people that are trying
to manage these animals to figure out is how you
how biologists look at these units, how you figure out
you know, trends, and then trying to figure out what
the fixes are and how they're different from you know,
unit unit, even if they're adjacent.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Right, So it's complex, and I think this is state
by state specific because each state manages their ELK differently.
In Utah, on our on our trophy area or quality units,
we manage to an age objective, So we want the
average bowl harvested to be seven years old or something

(37:22):
like that. That's very different than average than managing to
a bull the cow ratio, which we do not do,
and a lot of states do do that.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
So I have a dumb question for you, Brock, and
I think I know the answer, but I want to ask. So,
when you're managing to an age objective you got are
you are you just looking what's on the ground? Are
you assuming if like you guys got good data, eighty
percent of the cows were fertile, eighty percent of the
cabs hit the ground, we assume those are forty forty.
We're going to allow x amount of bulls to be

(37:54):
taken over the years. This should get you know, and
so you just limit it by tags knowing that a
certain amount should get to that age, or you guys
doing a little bit of both.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
So with they're doing a little bit of neither. So
what they what they do is in this state, it's
I don't think it's mandatory, but it's becoming mandatory. But
it's recommended that everybody that harvests the bull sends in
a tooth an incisor, and I think we get about
eighty percent return, and we age every one of those animals,

(38:25):
and so we know the age of the animals being harvested.
So when we manage for our age objective, we want
the average age of a bull harvested to be six
years old. If those ages come back on average five
years old, this state cuts tags. They're assuming because until

(38:47):
this year, our rifle hunt has been right on top
of the rut, and so they're assuming that the people
are taking the biggest and this is a misconception oldest
bool because the biggest is not the oldest for sure,
And so they cut tags, saying, well, we need the

(39:08):
average bull on this unit to be older, and then
they reevaluate next year. Sure enough, this year at averages six,
so we're going to keep tags here, and then if
next year it goes up to seven, then they add
more tags. And that's how they do it in this state. Man.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
I don't want to dig into the decision making, but
there's a lot of other factor. I mean, some of
your premium units, I mean they're they're pretty reserved on
their tag numbers, right, And what happened what happened if
you get a bunch of you know, mountain men that
have hunted their whole lives always found success one year,

(39:44):
and then you not saying age always plays and it
you get some out of shape people that don't want
to leave the road, and it's very contrasting but doesn't
really tell the story. But you're saying, there's no other
data that goes into that aside from tooth aging three teeth.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
So that's the primary data that go into those management
making decisions. Having said that, here's the problem. We just
changed the whole system in Utah. We got rid of
the old age class because it turns out the data
are pretty clear. He said, this is kind of off
topic of where you were going, but the data are
pretty clear. The average bull reaches its maximum size of

(40:25):
antler at age seven, and it's about ninety five percent
that size at age six when and this is true
for deer two, not six and seven, but dere it's
four and five. But everybody, I hear people say all
the time, if you just give that animal one more year,
just think what it would be. Generally, that's not true. Generally,

(40:49):
the animal is as big as it's going to be
if it's at least seven years old. And so if say,
for example, a bull had the potential of four hundred inches,
it would be ninety five percent of that. So what
is that that's two hundred That would be three hundred
three eighty bowl at age six. It gets killed at

(41:12):
age six because nobody's going to pass a three eighty bull.
And but the average bull, this may be surprising, the
average bull on the landscape at age seven is three
hundred and nineteen inches. And that's based on measuring about
five thousand bulls. That's the average potential of a bull

(41:37):
three hundred and nineteen inches. And so a three eighty
bowl is an anomaly, or a four hundred inch bull
is an anomaly. And so if you go to one
of these premium limited entry units and you say I'm
holding out for a three eighty, you're shooting probably going
to shoot a five or six year old bull if
you actually do that, and because and you're going to

(42:00):
let the eight, nine, ten year old that's three twenty
that's the average bull survive. And so you're squandering, in
my opinion, you're squandering a lot of mature old bulls
because you can be selective and harvest the younger ones
that have more but greater potential for antler development.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yep, that makes a ton of sense.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
And in fact, we have a unit in Utah, the
Beaver Unit, where they almost doubled the numbers of tags
on the unit and the average age of the harvested
bull dramatically increased.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah, because people were now willing to take those three
eighteen or three nineteen, you know, top potential bulls out
of the herd, because there were more tags on the ground.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
That's right. They were shooting a three twenty that was
eleven years old.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Yeah, and that's I mean, it's just tough to manage, right.
I mean we see the same thing on deer where
everybody wants a four point with deep forks, but you
take that thing two years you know, he's three and
a half or four and a half, and don't let
him get to five or six. And it's like, man,
at some point, and I don't know how you ever
manage it or how you get it through people's heads. Yeah,
it may score better, but can't we shoot the big

(43:08):
you know, one hundred and forty and three point that's
seven years old? Or you know, it's like, I just
we can't And this is where you have to walk
a fine line. Everybody's out there for their own reason, right,
and so you don't want to feel like you're dictating
what's going on there to some extent. But yeah, I
think horn size versus age and the disconnect there is

(43:31):
always going to be like one of the you know, uh,
and I guess I have to use the word trophy
hunter's dilemma is do you want to kill the Nobody
necessarily cares that you killed an eleven year old bowl
because we don't talk about, Hey, my your bowl was seven,
mine was eleven. We talk about your bowl was three eighty,
mine was four hundred.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Right, that's to me, that's the problem. So just like
yel the average gear only gets to the upper one sixties.
That's the average buck, no matter how old they are,
and so everybody's at all You let that get one
more year, it would be a one eighty. Nope, it wouldn't.
It would be a one sixty. I'm not saying that
elk and deer can't explode from one year to an
ax and add thirty inches. Yeah, but on average, for

(44:11):
everyone that adds thirty inches from seven to eight, one
loses thirty inches from seven to eight.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yep. And from what I've seen, the biggest determined is
not their genetic potential. It's whether you maybe you had
a drought one year and they were able to get
some good green the next year and live up to
their potential versus they didn't just put on You know,
if you have great years back to back, they're not
going to necessarily put on twenty more inches.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
So actually this is really cool. And again it's another
topic of elk, but I love this topic because we've
studied a lot, and that is that the current year's
climatic conditions. So this the green up right now that
the elker eating while they're growing, accounts for about ten
percent of their antler development. So in a good year,

(44:54):
I can be a three to sixty bowl, and in
an average or a poor year, I'll be a three
thirty bowl. It's just based on what I'm meeting this year.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
The second factor that has the same exact effect is
how healthy mom was when that bull was in Uterus
seven years ago.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Oh, I've I was made very very aware of this.
Ranella put me in touch with Kevin Monteeth out of
Ye and I couldn't wrap my head around this. And
I've I've finally come around to it because I was,
I was coming up with all sorts of extreme scenarios
if I took these little meal deer we have in
Washington and put them on the pont Sigaunt and trapped

(45:33):
him in a cage with you know, three generations down
the road. And He's like, oh, yeah, they'd be giants.
And I just couldn't wrap my head around it, you know,
based on nutrition and mother's health and whatnot. So yeah,
it's still crazy to me that a lot of their
potential happens why they're you know, in the and you know,
in their mom's belly.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
So yeah, Kevin and I do a lot of similar
research and and he's awesome, and and that's what it is.
Mother's nutrition in deer. An elk, the effect of mother
is not as great and dear as it is an elk.
The effective mother is really significant in elk. And this
is the other reason you don't want populations to get

(46:14):
to a density where it's effelt, where it's affecting condition
of the average animal on the landscape, because if you
let it get to that population density, the average potential
for any bull on the landscape is reduced.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
So I hear people say stuff all the time, like
this unit has gone in the tank. The elk on
this unit are not near as good. The division's killing
too many elk, where the real answer may be they're
actually killing too few, and there's now too many mouths
on the landscape. Moms aren't in as good a condition,
and they're throwing calves that just don't have the potential

(46:53):
that they did ten years ago when there were only
half as many elk on the landscape.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
I'm gonna make a correlation here, which to me is
more apparent is fishing. We've all been to these historic
lakes where people talk about the eight to ten pound
rainbows they caught in some of our lakes here, And
now you go to these lakes and you can't catch
anything bigger than a pound, and they're like, well, guess
what we reduced the limits. We used to be able

(47:32):
to catch ten fish a day out of here. Now
we can catch two fish a day, which now isn't
enough reason to even drive, you know, forty five minutes
up the mountain to go fish it. And it's one
of those things where just the overpopulation has now reduced
the size because there's less food, you know. So it's
like we see this all the time where I live
in these high lakes. Is you know, if we cut
a lot more fish out of here, the fish that

(47:53):
we're here would be a whole lot bigger and healthier.
But yeah, since we can't, now we've got yeah, we've
got a whole fish, but nobody fishes anymore, so no
fish are being taken out, and now we don't have
anything bigger than a you know, a one pound rainbow.
And yeah, it sounds like it's very similar with elk
can I So I kind of pose this question to
Kevin when I talked to him through some emails, so

(48:16):
on hard is this where like because winners can be
very drastic. I'm trying to figure out how to phrase
this question. You can have one winner like you know,
very mild, great green up, you know, or very easy winner,
and then you have winter like this where in some
area is very very tough. Right that that calf that's

(48:38):
one year apart from its sibling, half brother or it
could be full brother, whatever is going to be have
the potential. Let's say their dad the bowl was the
same size. So the genetic potential isn't there, but you
could have a potent, a genetic potential up to twenty
percent different just because one year that same mom had
to get through some rough winter while you were in

(49:00):
the in the belly, the other calf just had a heyday.
Why she was eating whatever she wanted, stayed fat and healthy.
But yet now that those bulls are on the landscape,
you know, yeah, regardless they got a year difference, that
one bull's now going to have fifty inch you know,
talking in horn size, have the potential to be fifty
inches bigger.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
Absolutely, So it's not a genetic potential that's completely nutrition based.
The two bulls are basically the exact same genetics, but
because of the year they were born and the year
they were in utero, the potential antler growth is dramatically different.
Absolutely yep.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
And then, like I said, we we ultimately came around
that they're all these matter and they all have an effect,
but maybe the most dramatic, the most the highest changing variable,
I guess, is that mother's health. Because the nutrition is
going to be fairly stable, you know, genetics are going
to be what they are, you know, so it seemed

(49:55):
like that mother's health maybe had the biggest controlling factor,
is what we were trying to get across, compared to
some of the other things, everything else being equal, of course.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
It probably has the biggest effect, and it's the thing
that we can control the most. Yep, Yeah, absolutely, I
agree with that.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Yeah, it's crazy. And we've even we even got into
like twins and then like how that you know, a
twin is going to be you know, if a bowl
comes out of a set of twins is going to
be at a at a lower potential because they're there
were competing twins in the belly, you know, and versus
a single that drops. And yeah, it's kind of fascinating

(50:33):
when you get into it that that the you know,
at the at the calf level, the unborn calf level,
like the size of you know, a bull's horns are
being determined in some way or another.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Absolutely, So, I mean we've had we haven't had a
set of twins and elk yet, so it'll be interesting
if we ever do.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Can track that a little bit. Yeah, So what are
what are the I mean, I'm just throwing a question.
Is there a percentage like is it very lower singles
or you know, single digit type twins.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
And three hundred litters. Here, we haven't had a single
set of twins that we've found. I mean, I guess
there is possibility that we've had one that we haven't found,
but you know, the average calf is thirty five pounds,
and to raise two of those that that would be tough. Yeah,
So I mean my guess is that there may be

(51:28):
it maybe happens, and the better condition or the better
the habitat is, the more likely it is to happen. Definitely,
that's true with moose. But twins is the is the
optimal with moose, whereas singles are the optimum with elk.
And it's completely nutrition driven whether an elk, whether a
moose has a single or a twin, and twins is

(51:50):
the normal with deer and interesting. Deer have a very
different strategy than elk. Deer or pregnant every year regardless,
they manipulate their energy allocation after birth, whereas elk manipulate
it before birth.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Gotcha, Yeah, Yeah, I'm glad we touched. That was kind
of my segue in we were going to talk about
genetic potential, but we we got there a little sooner,
which is perfect. And then let's let's jump into calling
elk and and see what you have the you know,
if there's anything you can add, maybe I'll just open
it up to an open forum of of you know,

(52:30):
if you've got any research on ELK calling and and
if we can tie that back in, you know, to
to biology, if if you've got any data or any
studies that that relate.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
Uh I, I don't know of any studies on ELK
calling in the in the biological literature. I wish I
was better at it.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
I mean, yeah, there's just so many unknowns. I wish
there was data that supported one or other, just so
I knew I wouldn't necessarily make changes to it because
the way I do it, and I've always told people
when it comes to calling ELK. I even talked about
this in my very last episode. I'm out there for
a very specific reason. Yeah, I can spot in stock ELK,

(53:14):
I can cow call elkin, but dang, I'm out there
for that time when I rip a bugle at him
and he rolls his eyes back in his head and
pushes through a tree, twists his head sideways, and you know,
comes around that corner and rips a beagle in my face,
like I want that experience is why I love calling elk.
But I also recognize that there are very successful elk
hunters that claim to know, or I want to say,

(53:37):
claim they've they've reduced it to a language, a form
of communication, you know, whether, hey, when they when they chuckle,
it means this, and when they lipball it means this,
and when they scream at you, it means this. And
albeit we've even applied these these terms scream and lip
ball to their sounds, so who even knows what those
are necessarily, But and then there's people that claim, you know,

(54:00):
spot in stocks the way to go, versus I call
more on a temperament. I feel like I've always been
able to just read the situation. You we talked about
it earlier. There are bulls with certain personalities. Maybe I'm
out there killing the ones with all the tough guy attitudes,
whatever it may be, but I want to get close.
And I do feel that that that bulls are on

(54:22):
the landscape for really two reasons, right, It's the it's
to survive and then to recreate. And maybe you you've
got some additions there, But I mean as a as
a species, they're they're trying to recreate and then they
just want to live to the next year to try
to recreate again.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
So that that isn't that the function of every animal?

Speaker 1 (54:40):
Yep? I mean they're they're they're literally trying to do
two things. So I'm very confident in boiling it down
to that. And then within that, if he's let's say
you're trying trying to call in a herd bowl, wouldn't
it be one of the ways, like in my head
is is he's got his cow, he's already got his

(55:02):
ability to recreate. If he's able to maintain those cows
through the process of the rut. Right, if as they
start to release you know, these certain hormones and other
you know, every other elk in the drainage is now aware,
can he sustain and hold off you know other bowls.
So in my opinion, we talked about it earlier, we

(55:23):
get very very close because I'm not going to get
that bowl that's got his for sure thing to come
check me out three hundred yards away. Right, I'm trying
to maybe even reverse engineer the way wild wants to work.
And hey, I'll be agle if you're a cow come
see me. I'm trying to get very close. And then
I'm actually why I bugle very you know, maybe more
than a cow call is I want to create this

(55:43):
idea that hey, you might have a cow in estris
Or and he are ready to be bred. But I'm
now right on your herd. You know, you've already pushed
your other satellite bowls off in this direction or that
direction and their bedded you know, exit distance away. But
I'm now right on top of you. You Now, I've
got close enough where your fight or flight has been
triggered and either going to risk the chance of losing

(56:05):
your cows or you know, defeating me the new bullet
showed up and maintaining your cows. Whereas we're like, in
my mind, if we if we bugle our way in,
we've now given that bowl. We haven't triggered that fight
or flight. He will flight, but he's taking his cows
with him, and he's gonna do that way before you
have ever a chance with a bow in your hand.

(56:26):
Right and you know we could we've coined it shock
and awe, but it's I I do feel that if
you call your way in, you're Yeah, there are times
where we need him to pop off so we don't
get the wind wrong or make sure we're approaching right.
But a lot of times, once we locate a bowl,
we don't make another peep until we get next to him.
And it's it's really trying to play on on those

(56:50):
two facts that they're they're trying to recreate this time
of year. They've got one month plus or minus to
do it, and they've got cows on a heard bull.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
So I'm I'm very where I'm not. I'm guarantee I'm
not as good a bull color as you. But once
I've located a bull, I go at him as hard
as I can, as fast as I can, making noise
to even maybe one hundred yards, and then I slow
down because if they're moving you and you tenderfoot around,

(57:20):
you never catch them.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
And once you're close, then you're in there zone and
you can get them to do something yep.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
Yep, and a little bit of the opposite. Let's go
ahead say.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
And I think you're right. Every bull has a different personality,
so you know, so I'm a little a little cal
call and that gets them going and others that doesn't
work and they start moving the herd off and the
last ball I got, I didn't even bugle. He started
moving his herd, but I had three cow calls, and
I started doing them all and breaking branches, and he

(57:54):
turned around and ran right back.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Yep, yep, and and using that same fight or flight.
And you know, the the the want or the you know,
they're genetically disposed to want to recreate. If we're dealing
with a satellite bowl. There are bulls that are on
the landscape that don't have cows, but maybe mature enough
or not even mature enough, but they want to have cows,

(58:17):
and and they're they're mature enough to know the game
and what's going on, and they're smelling all the smells
of September. We typically go at those with a lot
of cow calls because the pecking order has been established.
As you mentioned earlier, I believe the bulls can look
at each other and know, like, well, your four notches
down for me, I'm two notches up from you, like
you know, almost not to that degree, but but in

(58:37):
some sense, like they know that degree. Yeah, who's tougher
than who. Let's not let's not pretend to be, you know,
number one or number two on the list where this
guy's gonna get his butt kicked. He has no reason
to come to us. But let's say if I now
use cow calls on this satellite bowl, let's not use
a bugle, or if we do use a bugle, it
needs to be very, very low threat, like maybe a

(58:58):
spike is his. You know, got a cow or a
raghorn or whatever you want to say, Let's use heavy,
heavy cow calls on this bull and staying within those
confines of my system, I don't feel like I got
to know what every single elk call and sound and
intricacy of it means. Yeah, I can make it all
day long and be fine. But if I just limit

(59:20):
it to that and playoff of their wont to recreate,
I can control and it can dictate a lot of
what I'm doing as far as a call coming out
of my mouth.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
So yeah, and I by no means if I mastered calling.
I wish I was better, But it works, And I think,
in my opinion, like you said, everyone has a different
personality if you can figure out their personality. Sometimes though,
I would say that it may be better to have
the satellite bull, because sometimes the satellite bull can be

(59:52):
bigger than the dominant bull.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
The dominant bull is dominant because of body size, not
because of antler size. And so you could have an
eight nine year old three twenty bowl that is actually
the herd Bowl, and you could have a satellite bull
that's a three sixty that's six years old. And so
if you can't see them, I think sometimes there are
strategies for both.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
Yeah, we see it every year where you know, a
lot of times we get stuck chasing the Herd Bowl
because of what it is. But many times we've ran
into the Satellite Bowl or changed our decision and turned
to the turn to that satellite Bowl just because you know,
of horn size and probably easier to call in most
of the time than that herd bull anyways.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Right, So, but you're right, it's their Their game is
to procreate and that's what that's what they're figuring out,
and you're our game is to is to trick them
into procreating with the cow that we're with or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're trying to imitate that cow. And
it's a little bit of I I feel we're reversing
it because I've seen it many times where a bull beagles.
Maybe a loan cow was on a ridge and you
can kind of, you know, you're glassing across the canyon.
You can see that loan cow. Once that bull beagles,
she'll like b line to him and she'll go join
the herd. You know, he kind of he'll come out
of his herd kind of wrapper push her into the herd.

(01:01:15):
You know, she's now part of the group. Well, it's like,
I think that's how it's supposed to work. We're over
here trying to do the opposite, like get this bowl
and now leave his cows. You know, he's got other
satellite bulls pestering him around his cows like he's he's
got a lot to risk by leaving that group. And
that's why I feel we've just got to get so
close so that that bull feels comfortable only leave in
fifty yards, so he can run right back if he

(01:01:35):
needs to, you know, and not not risk losing those
to come check us out. Who's this new cow on
the landscape or this new bowl on the landscape that's
that's given him, you know, either threatening his herd or
wants to join is heard, So.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
I think I think that's definitely true. I do also
think and I don't know. I'd like to hear your
opinion on this, Jase. I think it can be different
pre rut and post rut because pre rut they're looking.
Post they may be looking. So you may have dominant
bulls that are willing to come to a caw call.
For sure. During the peak they're usually locked with a group.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
Yeah, I should have prefaced that conversation on I would
say more peak rep and maybe not peak rep but
close to that, you know, September fifth to twenty fifth
or thirtieth. But I'm I agree with you completely and
we talk about it a little bit where I'm I'm
a fairly heavy bugler and my strategy revolves around a
lot of biggling early early in the season and late

(01:02:32):
in the season kind of that pre impost I will
go back to cal calls because that dominant bowl is
looking for that last cow on the landscape and he's
willing to to you know, leave you know he we
already talked about earlier. A lot of these bulls are
checking throughout the night, they're checking throughout the day. They
do They're working all the time to find this one
cow that may be coming in or so. Yeah, I

(01:02:55):
strongly agree with that early in the season, late in
the season, go back to cal call because they're not
looking to fight, they're looking to find that last cow.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
And I've even had it, Jason, and I'm sure you
have to where one day I see a great bull
with a group of cows and the next day he's
all by himself and he'll come to a cow call Yep,
that's somebody's kicked him off.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
I mean, we were in New Mexico last year. We
watched it alternate almost daily. There was a very large
five point first day we seen him, he had heard it.
Eight next day we seen him. He was all by
himself in a different ball and then he was able
to pick up three cows and the name was all
by himself. It was like, yeah, it's just it's like
alternating and I don't know, I wish I knew whyre
how come? Like was that big bull rolling through and

(01:03:40):
he was checking on those cows enough? And he did
it at night just to say like, all right, there's
some cows in here that are ready. Thanks for thanks
for being the watchdog. I got this now, you know.
And we've we've seen bulls do that where like right
at the break of day, he'll be with the herd
and then you'll see him just leave and it's like, well,
that bull's old, he's smart, he's big, he's he's smelled

(01:04:02):
and seen what he needed to see and nothing he
doesn't there's no reason for him to stick with them
to the day where they're going to put him at risk.
He's going to go back into his hiding hole until
one of these nights he comes out and some of
these these cows or you know, an estris and then
he'll stay right. You know, they're they're just smart. They
they know, they know what's coming up. And I feel
that we have to play with that a little bit too.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
I completely agree with that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Well, it's been a great conversation, Brock. Do you have
anything else we touched on that you've got like good
data on that could be used for for hunting or
making decisions out there, or just anything unique that people
may not know about Elk that's just the cool facts
about him.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
So I'm looking through data graphs to see if there's
anything I want to add. One thing I would add
maybe is that that there is a cost to reproduction.
So if if a cow raises a calf successfully this year,
she's less likely to be pregnant. If she was pregnant,

(01:05:01):
that has no effect. But if she raised a calf,
she's less likely to be pregnant because there is a
real cost to raising a calf. Trying to think if
there's anything else here, and I guess my take home
messages if another take home would be I would trust
the state biologists. I see in Utah a lot of

(01:05:24):
sportsmen that believe they know how to manage better than
the people that are trying to study and understand the biology.
And I think we should listen because a lot of
them have a lot of experience and they may have
some really good insight. But I don't think the general
idea that I know better than the biologists is right.

(01:05:47):
And I see that a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Yeah, I don't want to make this political at all,
especially coming from Washington. I feel like one of the
big issues we deal with is the biologists truly are
trying to do what's right, but yet we've got this
commission that's been appointed that then will just go against
what they've recommended and cut tags in half or you know,

(01:06:10):
double tags here, double cow tags, and you're like gosh,
dang it, you can read what the biologists recommended, who's
the closest to this unit. But yet a commission, you know,
made up of zoo keepers and whatever it may be,
are are the ones that determine how many tags? And
that's I guess that's where a lot of hunter frustration
comes in. And I feel one of the bad pr

(01:06:32):
things that happens is everything gets lumped together. Right, the
biologists are the commission are the ones making the decisions.
I think it's very hard for people to differentiate. It's
just the the department's doing the wrong thing, which is
what I see a lot here in Washington.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
That's right. And the other thing, I'd say, there is
a vocal minority of public in Utah. Our Wildlife Board
receives a lot of pressure from the vocal sportsman, and
I think it's the vocal minority. Maybe it's not, maybe
it's a vocal majority, but it's a lot of pressure
and and and they often go against the recommendation of

(01:07:10):
the biologists because of the vocal pressure that they've received
from the public. Man, I think we have some of
the best biologists in the world and they're trying their
hardest to do what's right, and I think you should
give them the benefit of the doubt and tell it's
clear that they're not making a good choice.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
Yeah, No, it's it's such a complex intertwingling and then
we got to try to navigate it. It's and I
recognize it. Like there was a time where I killed
the first legal bull that I called in every year
or had a chance to kill. And now that I'm
had more opportunity, I've got a little more experience under

(01:07:52):
my belt, I want to go out there and hunt
for a different reason. I want to go try to
take a mature bowl and old bull off the landscape.
And well, I'm very I want to be very respectful
to what everybody wants. And it's very tough because now
the biologist have you know Hunter X over here that
wants maximum opportunity, Hunter why is now mad? Because or

(01:08:15):
maybe not mad, Hunter why just wants trophy quality? Well,
Hunter Z wants a mix of both and a good
mix of both. Well, now, as a biologist and in
a state agency, how do you provide that to to
three different people? And and trust me, there's and you
know as well as I do, there's there's way more
than those three opinions. Somebody else wants something different. They
want cow opportunities, and you know, the farmer within the

(01:08:36):
unit wants a bunch of depredation tags, you know, and
you try to have to balance all of this. It's
just it's not an easy task. And I think we
need to recognize all of that. And like you said,
I think a lot of it does come back to
the bile just do know what they're doing. They can
listen to a lot of that, but as it's a
very difficult decision to be made, I think that that

(01:08:56):
makes everybody happy.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
Yeah, I have a lot of empathy for him because
I see him get beat up all the time when
they're trying to do it. I mean, we all care
about right, Jason. Every one of us want to do
what's best for the population. And we all have a
little different idea of what is best for the population.
And and we might be right because we have different
values on what we want from the population. Yeah, and

(01:09:20):
it's hard to balance all of those for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Yeah, it's it's tough, but yeah, I appreciate you coming on, Brock,
thanks for kind of you know that that little bit
at the end, you know, trusted biologists. I think they
do have the best interest of the animal and the
unit until I'm gonna say this one more time and
I'm gonna run away from it until politics get sprinkled
in a little bit. But but yeah, it's it's it's

(01:09:45):
been a great conversation. Glad to pick your brain, and
good luck this year. And really appreciate you having you
on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Well I really appreciate it. We have another ten days
of elcaving. If you want to come down and go
out on something.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
Yeah, I'll be We'll be chasing calves around on Monday
and Tuesday.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
I don't know what I'm getting myself into, but I'm
look forward to learning.

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
Oh it's fantastic. I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
So all right, all right, thanks a lot, Brock, take care.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.