October 30, 2024 • 40 mins
- Chester Moore talks with "Mr. Whitetail" Larry Weisuhn about Texas most popular game animal-the whitetail and some little known facts about the species.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the program. It is a great honor and privilege.
You get a man I've known for a long time,
ran into him in a ton of industry events, but
got to know a little better over the last weekend
mister whitetail himself, Larry Wazoom, And this guy has really
had an incredible impact on the whitetail world in terms
(00:22):
of inspiring people to take up the hunting and conservation
of whitetail wild lands and just really helped a lot
of people, including myself, have a better understanding of the
majestic game animals. So welcome to the program, Larry.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Chester, Thank you so very much. I'm not sure I
can live up to that introduction after that, hold me
twenty bucks, you got it? I think I owe you more.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Well, Larry.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Over the weekend we were talking about like whitetail subspecies,
and I think for the most part, most hunters in
America just think of the whitetail just being a whitetail.
But that is a species. But there are many subspecies
of white tail. Can you kind of explain what a
(01:12):
subspecies is?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
The subspecies is essentially the same species that's learned how
to adapt to certain parameters, certain weather conditions, certain climate conditions,
if you will, and different types of habitat. Here in Texas,
we're so very blessed to have a great variety of habitat,
from the piney woods of East Texas to the Real
Grand Plains, to the coastal plains, to the central part
(01:35):
of the state of Texas hill country, even out in
the far western part of the state and the mountain
country and then up in the Panattle in North Texas,
and a lot of those areas are different, and basically
some of those areas do have different subspecies of white
tail deer here in Texas. Of course, there are a
lot of different subspecies. I think. I think someone said
they're like thirty one subspecies of whitetail deer scattered across
(01:58):
in North America, and I think we've got probably about
four or five of those for certain here in Texas.
But it's just simply an animal that in a regional
area adapts to those circumstances that it has to live with.
It creates a subspecies.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, I mean, and that's a great way to explain that,
you know, because it is a white tail. You know,
a whitetail from New York can breed with one in Mexico,
but there are definitely, you know, morphological differences, slight differences
because of diet, habitat and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
And what really got.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Me going down this trail, Larry was just looking at
a map a long time ago, and it had whitetail
subspecies distribution and it had the Carmen Mountains white tail
on it in Texas, and it described it as being
the second smallest subspecies of whitetail, next to the key deer,
which is a little bitty guy that's a federally in
(02:51):
endangered species only lives in the southern half of the
Florida Keys.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
And when I.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Was talking to you, you got to go hunt these
farm in Mountain white t tell us a little bit
about that animal and their habitat.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Basically, there exist in the far western part of Texas
above the elevation of forty five hundred feet. Now, there's
some areas that claim they have Carmen Nins's white tail,
but actually they're the Texas Nins's subspecies. The animal is
relatively small, as you mentioned, I would almost in a
lot of instances kind of argue whether they're the smallest
(03:27):
pretending particularly in certain areas of Texas and New Mexico,
and they exist primarily in that Big Bend area and
then down into Mexico. And they were named after the
Carmen Mountain area down in Mexico's where the subspecies name
came from. Excuse me, They are the ones that I've hunted,
and I was very fortunate the first time I got
a chance to hunt them was back in nineteen seventy
(03:50):
seventy one down in the Kannati Mountains and was able
to take a little buck little in terms of antlers.
He was a pretty good sized for corn. He was
a six year old deer and intact that deer play
might have weighed sixty to sixty five pounds in that
area too. Throughout that western part of the state, they're
(04:10):
also known as fantails, and the reading they're coffee tails
is because their tail is actually bigger than the regular
white tail deer if you will, that we have as
primary the Texas subspecies, And when it puts that tail
up and runs away from me, it really looks like
one of the old time sailing ships of your you know,
(04:33):
huge flag, And so they're really a truly unique animal.
Their antlers tend to of course be smaller because of
the body size being smaller. But again they're found primarily
in those areas above forty five hundred feet of elevation,
and I know that over the years there have been
some people that have claimed there around Del Rio and
some of those areas that those are Carmens's white tail,
(04:55):
but they're not. They're not truly the true true Carmens
species that found in the western part of the state
and down and make.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
That is uh, that's really cool to be able to,
you know, think about that because a lot of people
listening and go, hold on, you got forty five hundred
ft elevation in Texas.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yes, we do. Yes, we actually have higher places than that.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yes, in the Davis Mountains, Guadaloupe's and places like that,
and so that is a that's a really interesting thing
to think about, that little difference in that area that
really a lot of people will never even see because
of the remote nature.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
You know, you're exactly right. And what's interesting about some
of those areas, particularly like down in the Shinnats, which
is a mountain range that's right along the Rio Grande
kind of northwest, probably of the Big Ben National Park.
In that particular area, at the very highest of those hills,
mountains whatever you want to call them, they're actually mountain
because they are well above forty five hundred feet, you'll
(05:55):
find a little carmenencous white tail species there. Then you'll
find the mule deer just down below, and then you
get down in the flats, and also down in the flats,
you'll there you'll find the Texas subspecies. So in some
of those areas of West Texas, we actually have two subspecies,
the white tail deer and the desert mule. Here the
(06:16):
kruk Ie subspecies all found on the same mountain range,
starting at the top of the Carmenensis and you kind
of run into the Texas white tails and a lot
of times the mute there. They're restricted kind of to
the flats and also the foothill those mountains.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Wow, what biodiversity, you know? It is The green world
likes to talk about biodiversity, but I think a lot
of times we hunters are the ones who celebrated the
most by being enamored by my Lord. Is a small
area here with two subspecies of whitetail and mule deer
how cool is that.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It really is where I got familiar or when I
first learned about the Carmen Mountain white tails as many
years ago, back in the probably in the nineteen late
nineteen fifties nineteen six there is an outdoor writer named
Byron Dalrymple who was originally from Michigan. He was a musician,
among other things, and he moved to Texas and every
year he would go out to the area between Alpine
(07:13):
and Marfa and hunt on what was then a huge
ranch called the Cattle Gauge. And of course he would
write about the adventures of that hunt in phases of
outdoor Life, primarily with other places as well too, and
he would talk about the little fantails that existed at
the very tops of those mountains, and then our regular
white tail O Texas subspecies, but also the desert mutlitary
(07:34):
that really has kind of got me interested, what got
me interested in it. And then as a wildypologist, on
that first hunt, I was able to take my first carmenensus.
And again one thing I noticed is their tales were
so much longer. I've heard it said, although I can't
prove it scientifically that they actually have one more vertebrate
(07:56):
in their tail, and that's what causes that extension of
that tale.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Very well, that's true or not.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I don't know. There's been some work done in the past.
I think I made you aware of two monographs that
were done. One was done down in the Big Ben
National Park itself, and then the other one was done
by two professors, Professor Craftsman and doctor Ernie Abels, because
doctor Abels was one of my professors at Texas A
(08:23):
and M while I was there going to school for
wildlife management. And I remember sitting and talking with him
after I saw those stories and asking him about it,
and I think that was one of the things that
kind of created the interest of trying for him to
try to do more work out there.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Oh that's great stuff, and learn more about these great animals.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
That's kind of like other than you know, the Grand
Slam or the finas, you know, the pursuit of the
North American Wild cheap Carmen Mountain to.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Be like way up on my list of fun and.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Stuff now And maybe if you get that, I get
a skull them out and then get the tail mounted
out on its own on a plaque or something.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
You know that'd be very Texas right there.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
But it would be I'll tell you because their tails
of the mentioner huge, their skulls because of their overall
body size. If you put a Carmen Ensa's skull and
I wish I still had mine mine, someone somewhere got
lost in a move or two, particularly back when we
were doing a bunch of stuff with we had Low
(09:25):
s Cotta the doors hunting headquarters there in Paris. All
I had it there for a while. But if you
were taking Carmen Mountain white tail skull and put it
next to a South Texas white tail, and I'm talking
about an animal that will probably field dress one seventy
ar better. The difference in those skulls is it would
probably be about two thirds smaller or a third again larger,
(09:47):
depending on what you know, your perspective, kind of thing,
which one you're looking at. But their sculpts are quite
small compared to even our Texas hill country.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Well, we come back on More Outdoors. We'll talk more
with Larry Wai Zoom. Welcome back to More Outdoors on
News Talk five sixty KLVI. This is Chester Moore continuing
our conversation about whitetail subspecies with Larry Wizooon. Very interesting
stuff and what got me on this trailer talking with
you about smaller whitetail was something that happened to me
(10:17):
when I was a kid, and my uncle, Jackie Moore,
the late Jackie Moore, would tell me several times. I
remember being hunting on my first hill country deer hunt
because I lived and I still live in Orange County,
and I didn't see a deer till I was twelve
and went to the hill country there word of hardly
any deer here locally, and I was with my dad
and my uncle. This one evening, I was hunting my
(10:39):
uncle and kind of walking out on the main road
of the ranch, the Winkle Ranch and Old Daily's Atlanta
out toward the stand. My uncle told me that when
they hunted in San Saba, they he saw this little
buck a couple of times that was like he said,
it was like the size of like a you know,
a labrador dog hype maybe you're a little smaller and
had a full eight point rack. Just really stuck with me. Well,
(11:01):
my uncle passed about thirteen fourteen years ago. At his funeral,
we're talking about hunting and I said, hey, Dad, did
Uncle Jackie ever tell you about that deer on the
San sabage, because oh, I was on the same lease,
and I saw some of those deer too, and I
saw when I told you this story, you kind of
lighting up. And you have an experience from back in
the nineteen seventies of a small deer also in San
(11:23):
Saba County.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
I do years ago I started to at a wildife
a dis ease specialists working under contract with the Texas
Parks and Wilife Department and the Department of in Air Pathology,
and we were out in San Sabin also in Atlantoak County,
collecting deer for a variety of purposes, among other lazies,
nutrition and trying to get general help on some of
those deer and try to get some baseline information as
(11:45):
far as blood and all those other kind of good
things that we were doing at the time. And I
ended up shooting a deer, a buck standing by himself.
I noticed he was kind of small standing there and
shot him. And then when I walked up to him,
that's when I realized that this dear, it was about
the size as you mentioned, like a Collie dog or
a retriever and full body size, he would have not
(12:09):
weighed fifty maybe somewhere between fifty and sixty pounds. Back
then I used to picking up a lot of fifty pounds,
and this one felt no heavier at all than that one.
We ended up taking all kinds of tissues from him,
and it was a regular white tail deer. But he
was just one of those deer that for whatever reason,
(12:31):
maybe a dwarf version of one, or for whatever reason,
greatly reduced size. The one too where he reminded me
very much later when I was able to take or
not that much later, when I took my first carmon
Mountain whitetail in size, they were pretty darn similar.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
That's intriguing, Like I've heard this story in my whole life,
and you know, my dad saw him, my uncle Sam.
And then when I did a little write up on
this for Texas Fishing Games, someone emailed me from Saba
that's been seeing one the last three years and so
in sin Saba County.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So from a.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Biologist perspective, is it possible that it could be some
that have like some kind of a dwarfism or something
that gets passed on in the little pockets.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You know, it certainly could be because you look at
the white tailed are and we're talking about subspecies as
well too. A lot of times it is somewhat of
an isolated area, but sometimes two. You know, strange things
happen in nature, and even like within humans, there is
that opportunity with the right connection of genes coming together,
(13:38):
chromosomes coming together, and all that kind of stuff where
people don't grow to the normal height of others, and
so I suspect it's something very similar to that. I
don't really think it's a subspecies.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
I think just.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Maybe in an area. You know, in breeding can do,
or very intensive line breeding can do all kinds of things.
Going back to looking at looking at some of the
dog the different breeds of dogs, you know there'll be
a three to and you've got a miniature one, and
you've got and if you get the right combinations, you
know you can reproduce those. And same thing like with
(14:15):
with looking at Herford cattle and Angus cattle years ago,
and they were very intensively you know, lane breeding. All
of a sudden they started having dwarf not only dwarf calves,
but that never really grew. So I suspect something along
those lines gonna happen. You know, those populations way back
when we're market hunting for the market quite a bit
(14:37):
and people lived off of venison. I mean that didn't
have anything else. You know, there's take a deer SA
could have reduced that population to a relatively small number.
And because of that, there may have been some very
intensive of inbreeding or line breeding if you will, could
have produced that and could produce that kind of deer.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
No, it's interesting stuff. I just made my day.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
It's like, all of a sudden, like a mystery if
my whole life has been verified. So that's the kind
of thing I live for as a journalist of all
things wildlife, fishing and hunting.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I'm like, oh, cool story.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
But you know, going along with this idea of subspecies,
I live here on the Texas Gulf Coast. I live
in Orange County here and not directly on the coast,
but Sabine Lake, our northernmost bay system, is here, and
I'm only forty minutes from the Gulf itself, and the
subspecies that here is the Avery Island whitetail. And these
guys go up through like maybe up in a Newton
(15:33):
Jasper County down to Matagorda all the way across toward
Avery Island in Louisiana over toward like the a Chapelaya Basin.
And have you ever had any experience hunting whitetail along
that part of the coast.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
I have kind of on the on the lower end
of that. I've taken several deer in that area. And
one of the things that I want to ask you
about when is the when does the breeding season occur
in your area?
Speaker 1 (15:57):
All right, that is a great question because it's early,
so there are deer right along the coastal area and
there's not a lot of deer like done in Jefferson
County on the coast on that little pocket, it's just
so marshy. There's some and those suckers will rut like
in September, the middle of September.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yes, sir, there is an area on the on the
lower end of that Avery Alven whitetail there where we've
seen bucks chasing does at the third week in August. Wow,
you know me. And that's one of the readings I
ask you went there because that particular subspecies generally has
a tendency to rut it's probably the earliest rut that
(16:38):
we have in Texas of our Texas deer. Yeah, interesting
about the reading the ruta. The reading season occurs when
it does is so that two hundred and thirty days
later massa manus. Those funds are born at the most
opportune time as far as nutrition is concerned. So you know,
if you go back probably to eons, go to maybe
(16:59):
as long until we introduced agriculture into that area, those
funds were being born at a certain time. And there
were two parameters that came into play with peak fawning
times in Texas, one of course being the ideal time
for nutrition. The second thing was is because the number
of screwworm flies that we used to have many many
years ago, if those funds, regardless where they were in Texas,
(17:22):
were not born pretty much in about a two week period,
the chances of their survival was extremely low because just
about time that naval cord was about to fall off,
the screw worm fly would lay eggs and that pupas
that developed, would essentially just eat that animal from inside out.
And it wasn't until back in the late nineteen sixties
(17:45):
that they kind of more or less eradicated or I
guess they did eradicate the screw and fly here in Texas,
and so that started making a few different changes. But
again going back to that Avery Allen white tail, they
were born, they had bringing through the occurred, it did,
so they were born at the most opportunity time. But
also I'm sure coming into play was a screwing worm
situation that we had back until about the middle nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Very interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And the reason I said, like around September fifteenth because
I remember the first time I encountered on this about
this early what I was teal hunting, and it was
toward the middle of teal season. I'm looking out there
south of Winnie, Texas, Yes, and like we're in the
blind and there's a buck chasing a dough Like, whoa
hold on, man, PayPal, you're a little bit early, aren't you.
(18:32):
But I looked around I saw that, you know, along
the Texas coast had some of the earliest ruts in America,
which is and that's really interesting about like that prime
time for you know, having the fawns and fawn survival
in that window, so really interesting stuff. And a lot
of these little bucks down here in this region, like
I've seen more in the last couple of years over
(18:53):
on the Louisiana side, and they have real baskety type racks,
like little baskety type thick ant but real baskety type racks.
But they really live in some dense like those shineer areas,
like they're covered that they do have in those areas
is really dense cover, so it makes sense kind of
have a little baskety rack to get through that.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
You're exactly right, and to a great extent, I think
that somewhat can is what you mentioned there. The type
of habitat and type of terrain and type of vegetation
they live in. That's, to me is one of the
great reasons why you do have those type type racks
as opposed to with because if you had a bucket,
you know, on one of those deer there and he's
trying to run through what he has to run through,
(19:35):
and he's got a twenty inch spread, that probably wouldn't
go very well. Yeah, this way, those those antlers are
about here with maybe a little bit outside at the
greatest outside of the ears, so there's always it's like
he's got he's got a measure there that he can
run through kind of thing, you knowing that he's not
going to get hung up.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
So come back on More those will talk more white
Tails with Larry bai Zoom Welcome back to More Outdoors
on News Talk five sixty klv I. Such an honor
and privilege of Larry Wyzoom on the program, one of
the most widely known respected deer experts on the planet,
talking everything from whitetail subspecies that is unusual white tails,
(20:18):
and this part of the conversation was one of my
absolute favorites talking with Larry Wyzoom.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I suspect Mother Nature has selected over the years for
those kind of racks as opposed to anything with any
great amount.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Of whip neat neat animals.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Now we have the course the Texas whitetail, which is
very widely distributed, and if I'm correct, that would dip
down into South Texas and go up through the Edwards
Plateau and all the way up toward North Tech.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Different food conditions, so body sizes are going to be
a little bit different, even coloration is going to be
a little bit different from some instrums. But then you
also go back and you look at the fact that
back in the nineteen fifties sixties, there were a tremendous
number of deer mood sure, oh my gosh, out of
Arandas National Park area, the King Ranch Area and other
(21:09):
parks that were scattered then or reintroduced to different parts
of Texas. So you know, now we probably have a
have a Texas deer that that's kind of a combination
of a bunch of subspecies.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Probably, So I don't know if any of those, like
you know, Ransas deer could survive because of that, because
they know what it's like in the marsh. But if
you took the vice versa and put one of those
Kansas deer down in our marsh in twenty four hours,
they'd be suck dry of blood. They wouldn't They wouldn't
know how to hang down there.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
It's like, uh, you know, you talk about adaptations. You know,
if you took them out of the Arandas refuse, that's
a tough deer that can hang with stuff. Like going
to the hill country is like a break for them.
Thank you, we got out of the marsh, you know, thanks.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
They were finally dry.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Exactly, But you mentioned all but you know, all that
different terrain we mentioned biodiversity with the habitat even with
them like the Edwards Plateau. You take around Lanto and
you got that kind of rolling you know, hills and
the beautiful like limestone streams. Then you go out to
the southwestern tier I love around Barksdale and camp Wood
(22:17):
and you got pretty high you know, hills and peaks,
and there's a lot of difference in that area of
different adaptations on these animals. But on a free range
white tail in the hill coruntry, Larry, what do you
think would be like the average hoof weight of a
buck and a dough.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Oh, my gosh, going back and again, it depends so
much for the so much management going on. I'm done
backer good management in terms of food. But me the
average more or less Texas Hill country deer mike on
the hoof on a on a buck the one thirty
five to you know, probably maybe a little bit more,
(22:55):
a little bit less in some areas. Generally a deer
like that's gonna field dress one hundred to one hundred and
five hundred and ten pounds even figured about thirty pounds,
so maybe a little bit bigger the doze. I would
say probably most of the doze in that area will
probably weigh somewhere between sixty and seventy pounds on the hoof.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
And I tell you what, when you go down into
South Texas, it doesn't take long for some of those
deer to get quite a bit larger.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
You're exactly right. You know, that was around around long time,
going backward when years ago we had the web county
check stations when we were trying to determine what was
going on, and there were times back there that a
lot of those bucks that we weighed, they probably would
have field dressed one twenty five to one thirty one
(23:42):
thirty five. So we're talking about you know, on the
hoof when maybe one fifty to one sixty one seventy
maybe at the most. And yet if you look at
what's happened today since we've reduced the population somewhat, you know,
shot more dose, given some of these bucks too opportunity
to grow a little bit, get some age on them,
(24:03):
it's not uncommon to for us to take an animal
that will field dress buck mature buck that's one seventy
five to one.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Eighty or better.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Wow. What's interesting about all this is there's a natural
rule called Bergman's rule that within any species starting south
and going north, the farther north you go, the larger
the bodies are. And that simply has to do with
being able to get rid of heat or to retain warmth,
you know, as you go farther north. And of course
that's one of the reasons you have the you get
(24:34):
it into Canada, and in some of those areas it's
you know, you shot a buckets weighs less than two
hundred pounds field dressed. You know, they go, oh, you
shot a baby kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah, with Alberta in place like that.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yes, sure, exactly. But again here in Texas, with the
management that we've done, going back and looking at the
deer herd maybe from the nineteen seventies to as a
whole across the state of Texas, we've put a lot
of pounds on the end of visual animals over the
years simply because of the fact of the nutrition available
(25:05):
to them. And a lot of these places now back
well back then, a lot of the we had the
sheep and goat all over the central part of the
state of Texas, and they were competing with the white
tail there and when they did away with the sheep
and woolair, mohair and sentive. A few years ago, a
lot of those folks that were previously sheep and goat
ranchers went back to running cattle, and so all of
(25:25):
a sudden, there was a whole lot more food available.
And so we've really kind of increased the overall size
just in the last several years, just through good management
and making nutrition available on a daily basis throughout the year.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah, and that's a great point, because that lifts that
management that hunters and hunter conservationists and ranchers put on
the ground not only lifts the health of the white tail,
but every other critter out there as well.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
You know, you're exactly right, And that's the point that's
so very often just simply overlooked that I've been involved
with management programs for everything from desert big horn sheep.
I know you're doing a bunch of things with desert
big horns now and with mew deer and whitetails, turkeys, quail,
you know, all the different game species. But one of
the things that I was able to do over the years,
(26:18):
particularly years ago, is when I got called in to
make recommendations, I would do a baseline on what vegetation
was on that property and potentially what animals I could
find there, and then we set up a good management
program that dealt with everything from the ground on up,
including the livestock operation, including the hunting operation, habitat improvements,
and all those kinds of things. And as we try
(26:40):
to improve the habitat to create a healthy herd of
white tailed deer or flock of turkeys or coves of
quail or whatever, one of the things that we found
is that we greatly increase the diversity of the plant
that we're there. And in process of that, oh, guess what,
all of a sudden, now we start having all kinds
of little bu ugs and grasshoppers and more ground more songbirds.
(27:05):
As a lot of times, when we set up these
management programs for quote unquote targeted game species, they'll benefit
a little habitat benefits tremendously and as a result, all
the other wildlife that's there. And that concludes if you
want to include all the little grounds in inks and
linards and snakes and frogs and toads, and you know,
you ground squirrelds, and you name the species or even
(27:28):
you know, some of the almost microscopic things that live
in the soil. Because we've increased it, everything does better.
And so it's one of the main reasons to me
that that hunting is so very important. I made a
statement not too long ago that conservation promotes life. Preservation
kills when you try to preserve something, you're trying to
(27:50):
preserve generally, well, let's preserve the real Grand Prairie. You know,
if we do that, we're going to have a limited
number of species plant and animal. Now, if we conserve,
which means the wise use of you know, we're going
to create some diversity. And when we do that again,
there'll be more different species of plants there and more wildlife.
(28:12):
And that includes everything from insects to merge to reptiles,
to amphibians to fish, you know, the terrestrial of the
wildlife kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
You know a lot of people like we have marsh
fires here are controlled burning in this part of the
world is a marsh fire. Everyone's used to it, but
most people don't know what that's about. You know, someone
who waterfowl hunts, you know, when they when they clear
that underbush and those exotic invasive exotics and things, and
you get this wonderful wintering opportunities for all the wildlife
(28:41):
out there when those waterfowl migrate down here are native
model ducks and things like that. And I was doing
some turkey hunting about five years ago and up in
East Texas and Sabbin National Forests, and they regularly do
control burns to manage for turkeys. The only area, Larry,
I've ever seen red cock heated woodpeckers which are federally
(29:03):
endangered species, or on stands of timber controlled burns for
East Eastern turkeys.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
It's amazing how that works. I've seen the same thing.
I may have seen some of them, but it was
right on the edge of yep. Yeah, I mean they
may not been in the exact burn, but they were
not two hundred yards off the burned area kind of
thing exactly right. Fire. You know, Texas evolved with fire,
and when you get right back down to it, and
(29:31):
a lot of the areas that previously now are covered
with brush and all that kind of thing, and Texas
we're basically grasslands. Well, the indigenous people they if lightning
didn't strike and burn down the old grass that was there,
they found a way to create their own fires, Well,
that only put nutrients back into the soul kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
When we come back, we'll wrap up our conversation with
mister whitetail Larry Wyzoom. Welcome back to More Outdoors on
News Talk five sixty k l v I catched the
podcast of this program at KLVI dot com or on
the iHeartRadio app continding our conversation with Larry Wayzoom.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
But it also then created new fresh growth, and those
buffalo herds and you know and other animal pronghorn, antelope,
whatever with they would come to those areas, and so
they kind of used that fire to kind of, you
look at it in a different kind of way. They
used it to create food plots for the animals that
they needed to survive.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
I just lost you, Yeah, I got you there. Okay.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
So that makes you know, that makes perfect sense, and
it's great. You know that fire is a natural part
of the ecosystem. But that just goes back to, like,
you know, I became someone interested in wildlife conservation because
I was obsessed with wildlife from birth, and I grew
up hunting and fishing, and I have a little stream
(31:01):
by my household, would call it the gully, and there
was a factory that would dump dies into the bayou,
and I was told I remember going fishing there one time,
was a kid, and the water was like you've heard
of black water. No, I mean it was like the
pits of.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Hell, black like, and it was.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Purple one time, and I knew that I couldn't need
a fish that don't ever you can fish down there,
but don't ever bring a fish on to clean from there.
And then I learned, you know, in deer hunting and
things like that. I remember going out to go deer
hunting and my dad teaching me the principles of like, Okay,
at the time, there weren't a lot of deer any sections,
so you weren't harvesting as many doughs, you know. And
(31:41):
then we went to the hill country, it was like, no,
we got dough tags here. Back in they do tagged
the landowner would give you because I need to control it.
So I understood through the hunting and fishing thing that wow,
if we do the right thing and use the space wisely,
wildlife benefits.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
So it was because of hunting and fishing that I
wanted to get into conservation.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
To me, the true conservationists out there are the hunters
and the fishermen. You know, not only in terms of
what they actually do in terms of the physical doing,
but also, as you well know, in terms of the
financing of conservations. Hunters and fishermen pay for conservation primarily
through well, on the hunting side, through the Pittman Robertson Act,
(32:28):
which I think was established in nineteen thirty seven, and
then the Dingle Johnson covers the fish You're right, that
covers the fishing side of thing. I think was just
a few years after that. So that's how conservation is
really paid for. It is through the sale of sporting
equipment and then of course through the licening of hunters
(32:50):
and fishermen.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Absolutely, you have a long standing association with a great
conservation center group hunter conservation group.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
The Dallas Safari Club.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Can you tell them a little bit about some of
the things that the Dallas Safari Club, because I know
they've done things with everything from supporting desert big Horn
conservation in West Texas to anti.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Poaching patrols in Africa.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Can you give me a little bit about maybe some
of the things dallasa Fari Club has done to help conservation.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
DSc was established back in about nineteen eighty two, and
I was very fortunate to have been involved in some
form of fascists in nineteen eighty seven. It is a
conservation organizations whose three legs are conservation, education and hunter advocacy,
and they've been involved in so many different programs, and
of course in recent times we've had the DSc Foundation,
(33:38):
which is kind of the granting arm of DSc. Prior
to that, DSc would provide grants, but once we established
the DSc Foundation, it became more important, if you will,
in some ways of being able to provide moneies to
different projects, not only here in North America, but as
across the entire world world. If you will, dollars that
(34:02):
are issued by d SC and by DSc Foundation, those
projects are extremely vetted to determine to make certain that
those dollars actually go to what they're supposed to do,
rather than in somebody's pockets, as is so often the
case with some of the other if you will, anti
hunting groups and the things that the d s C
(34:23):
has done. In d s C Foundation, we've funded projects
as you mentioned with Desert Big Horn Sheep and help
them provide water in certain areas we've dealt with the
desert with the Mutier Foundation and helping them creating quarters,
even in terms of purchasing land in We've funded numerous
projects as well in Africa dealing with leopards, trying to
(34:45):
determine what the real status of the leopards are. Same
thing with oh my gosh, with elephants, with different species, rhinos,
those kinds of things. We've We've had projects going on
and Europe that dealt with UH UH things such as
road deer, vallader and red stags. There's projects in Asia
(35:07):
that have been supported in terms of UH some of
the work there with the Dark Galley Sheep and UH,
the UH, the IBEX and things like that. But here
in North America too we have done so very much
with like the Rocky Elk Rocky Rocky Mount Elk Foundation
UH with some of the guides and outputters associations that
(35:27):
are involved in in UH OH in different research projects
with species within their own province if you will earn
their own state. And we've provided old dollars for UH
all supporting the education of different groups such as that
we do here in Texas. We provided money to the
(35:48):
Texas Brigades, which is done well here in Texas, So
it's a continually ongoing thing. You know. To me, there's
all kinds of great conservation organizations, but I've had an
opportunity to work with all of them, and to me,
there's none that equals DSc or the DSc Foundation. They
do so many different things for which they never get
(36:09):
credited for. Other organizations will go we did so, so,
we did so and so, and yeah, maybe you showed
up for a hearing, but you weren't the one who
actually got the work done kind of thing. But with DSc,
it's not about the recognition. It's about getting the work
done and making sure that you know there's going to
be wildlife and wilelife opportunities in the future, not just
(36:32):
right now. And I'll also say that it's kyleed Dallas
Safari Club. Well, Safari is nothing more than a Swahili
term for an adventure or walk about. And you do
not have to be a Safari hunter. If you will
somebody that goes to Africa to be a member. A
matter of fact of our membership, I say there's a
(36:53):
relatively small portion of people who actually go on Safari
if you will, they have all kinds going fari quite often.
My next safari is for black bear up in Alberta,
after which my safari will be for stright bashed Texaman
and shortly after that a safari in Northeast Texas for bluegills.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
I love it bluegill safari. I'm down.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I'm leaving after I interview you for a bluegill safari
in Orange County with my fly.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Rod so and that's right, and I'll bring that up.
I love it being being Dallasafari Club members Rick Lambert,
who happens to be the dad of Miranda Lambert and
the entertainer, and Jim Zumbo who people know for many
years from years about or Lafe. Three of us. Every
(37:40):
opportuney we get together, we try to go on on
anything I'm to do with hunting at fishing, and knowing
that mister zumbo favorite species in all the world is
blue gill. I found a very good bluegill pond and uh,
he's rather good at fishing, he's really good at at
but he's also one of these guys who realizes that
(38:02):
we have got to maintain a certain population within a pond,
and so we got to take a lot of fish out,
so he likes to fish those places where we have
to remove with much of fish because his term for
catching release is catching release and hot butter kind of things.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I dig it sometimes looks sometimes like I tell people
when I go crappie fish.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Crappy is my favorite thing to catch.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
And I tell people, look conservation, all the wise use
of a resource. And I'm going to use every legal
size crappie that I catch today to feed my family.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
I'm just letting you know that part.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
So absolutely getting back to DSc. I'm not sure when
when this will ara, but June the twenty second, we
have our I think this will be the fourth annual
DSc Foundation Gala being held at the Sheridan Hotel there
in Dallas. We've got it's basically a fundraiser and an
opportunity to bring people together. We've got some of the
(38:58):
finest hunts from all over the world, finance fishing trips
and those can you don't have to be present a
bed on them. With with the new on hunting online
auction things, you know you can be anywhere in the world.
If you can't attend, we'd love for you to have
a look at what we have available and to be
a bitter there. And you know, if you want to
learn more about what's going on there with the foundation,
(39:20):
they can go to www dot d s C F
dot O r G and learn more about the things
that d s C does both here in North America
and abroad and how d s C truly is important
for the conservation of all widlife species here in North
America across the world. They can go to their website
(39:41):
as well, which is www dot b I G G
A m E dot O r G SO Big Game
dot org.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Thanks for listening to the program. Great interview with Larry Wazoom.
Follow me at Higher Calling dot net or my new
blog at Gulf Great Whites dot com at d chestermorn Instagram,
God bless and have a great outdoors weekend.
Welcome to the program. It is a great honor and privilege.
You get a man I've known for a long time,
ran into him in a ton of industry events, but
got to know a little better over the last weekend
mister whitetail himself, Larry Wazoom, And this guy has really
had an incredible impact on the whitetail world in terms
(00:22):
of inspiring people to take up the hunting and conservation
of whitetail wild lands and just really helped a lot
of people, including myself, have a better understanding of the
majestic game animals. So welcome to the program, Larry.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Chester, Thank you so very much. I'm not sure I
can live up to that introduction after that, hold me
twenty bucks, you got it? I think I owe you more.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Well, Larry.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Over the weekend we were talking about like whitetail subspecies,
and I think for the most part, most hunters in
America just think of the whitetail just being a whitetail.
But that is a species. But there are many subspecies
of white tail. Can you kind of explain what a
(01:12):
subspecies is?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
The subspecies is essentially the same species that's learned how
to adapt to certain parameters, certain weather conditions, certain climate conditions,
if you will, and different types of habitat. Here in Texas,
we're so very blessed to have a great variety of habitat,
from the piney woods of East Texas to the Real
Grand Plains, to the coastal plains, to the central part
(01:35):
of the state of Texas hill country, even out in
the far western part of the state and the mountain
country and then up in the Panattle in North Texas,
and a lot of those areas are different, and basically
some of those areas do have different subspecies of white
tail deer here in Texas. Of course, there are a
lot of different subspecies. I think. I think someone said
they're like thirty one subspecies of whitetail deer scattered across
(01:58):
in North America, and I think we've got probably about
four or five of those for certain here in Texas.
But it's just simply an animal that in a regional
area adapts to those circumstances that it has to live with.
It creates a subspecies.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, I mean, and that's a great way to explain that,
you know, because it is a white tail. You know,
a whitetail from New York can breed with one in Mexico,
but there are definitely, you know, morphological differences, slight differences
because of diet, habitat and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
And what really got.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Me going down this trail, Larry was just looking at
a map a long time ago, and it had whitetail
subspecies distribution and it had the Carmen Mountains white tail
on it in Texas, and it described it as being
the second smallest subspecies of whitetail, next to the key deer,
which is a little bitty guy that's a federally in
(02:51):
endangered species only lives in the southern half of the
Florida Keys.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
And when I.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Was talking to you, you got to go hunt these
farm in Mountain white t tell us a little bit
about that animal and their habitat.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Basically, there exist in the far western part of Texas
above the elevation of forty five hundred feet. Now, there's
some areas that claim they have Carmen Nins's white tail,
but actually they're the Texas Nins's subspecies. The animal is
relatively small, as you mentioned, I would almost in a
lot of instances kind of argue whether they're the smallest
(03:27):
pretending particularly in certain areas of Texas and New Mexico,
and they exist primarily in that Big Bend area and
then down into Mexico. And they were named after the
Carmen Mountain area down in Mexico's where the subspecies name
came from. Excuse me, They are the ones that I've hunted,
and I was very fortunate the first time I got
a chance to hunt them was back in nineteen seventy
(03:50):
seventy one down in the Kannati Mountains and was able
to take a little buck little in terms of antlers.
He was a pretty good sized for corn. He was
a six year old deer and intact that deer play
might have weighed sixty to sixty five pounds in that
area too. Throughout that western part of the state, they're
(04:10):
also known as fantails, and the reading they're coffee tails
is because their tail is actually bigger than the regular
white tail deer if you will, that we have as
primary the Texas subspecies, And when it puts that tail
up and runs away from me, it really looks like
one of the old time sailing ships of your you know,
(04:33):
huge flag, And so they're really a truly unique animal.
Their antlers tend to of course be smaller because of
the body size being smaller. But again they're found primarily
in those areas above forty five hundred feet of elevation,
and I know that over the years there have been
some people that have claimed there around Del Rio and
some of those areas that those are Carmens's white tail,
(04:55):
but they're not. They're not truly the true true Carmens
species that found in the western part of the state
and down and make.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
That is uh, that's really cool to be able to,
you know, think about that because a lot of people
listening and go, hold on, you got forty five hundred
ft elevation in Texas.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yes, we do. Yes, we actually have higher places than that.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yes, in the Davis Mountains, Guadaloupe's and places like that,
and so that is a that's a really interesting thing
to think about, that little difference in that area that
really a lot of people will never even see because
of the remote nature.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
You know, you're exactly right. And what's interesting about some
of those areas, particularly like down in the Shinnats, which
is a mountain range that's right along the Rio Grande
kind of northwest, probably of the Big Ben National Park.
In that particular area, at the very highest of those hills,
mountains whatever you want to call them, they're actually mountain
because they are well above forty five hundred feet, you'll
(05:55):
find a little carmenencous white tail species there. Then you'll
find the mule deer just down below, and then you
get down in the flats, and also down in the flats,
you'll there you'll find the Texas subspecies. So in some
of those areas of West Texas, we actually have two subspecies,
the white tail deer and the desert mule. Here the
(06:16):
kruk Ie subspecies all found on the same mountain range,
starting at the top of the Carmenensis and you kind
of run into the Texas white tails and a lot
of times the mute there. They're restricted kind of to
the flats and also the foothill those mountains.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Wow, what biodiversity, you know? It is The green world
likes to talk about biodiversity, but I think a lot
of times we hunters are the ones who celebrated the
most by being enamored by my Lord. Is a small
area here with two subspecies of whitetail and mule deer
how cool is that.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It really is where I got familiar or when I
first learned about the Carmen Mountain white tails as many
years ago, back in the probably in the nineteen late
nineteen fifties nineteen six there is an outdoor writer named
Byron Dalrymple who was originally from Michigan. He was a musician,
among other things, and he moved to Texas and every
year he would go out to the area between Alpine
(07:13):
and Marfa and hunt on what was then a huge
ranch called the Cattle Gauge. And of course he would
write about the adventures of that hunt in phases of
outdoor Life, primarily with other places as well too, and
he would talk about the little fantails that existed at
the very tops of those mountains, and then our regular
white tail O Texas subspecies, but also the desert mutlitary
(07:34):
that really has kind of got me interested, what got
me interested in it. And then as a wildypologist, on
that first hunt, I was able to take my first carmenensus.
And again one thing I noticed is their tales were
so much longer. I've heard it said, although I can't
prove it scientifically that they actually have one more vertebrate
(07:56):
in their tail, and that's what causes that extension of
that tale.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Very well, that's true or not.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I don't know. There's been some work done in the past.
I think I made you aware of two monographs that
were done. One was done down in the Big Ben
National Park itself, and then the other one was done
by two professors, Professor Craftsman and doctor Ernie Abels, because
doctor Abels was one of my professors at Texas A
(08:23):
and M while I was there going to school for
wildlife management. And I remember sitting and talking with him
after I saw those stories and asking him about it,
and I think that was one of the things that
kind of created the interest of trying for him to
try to do more work out there.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Oh that's great stuff, and learn more about these great animals.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
That's kind of like other than you know, the Grand
Slam or the finas, you know, the pursuit of the
North American Wild cheap Carmen Mountain to.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Be like way up on my list of fun and.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Stuff now And maybe if you get that, I get
a skull them out and then get the tail mounted
out on its own on a plaque or something.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
You know that'd be very Texas right there.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
But it would be I'll tell you because their tails
of the mentioner huge, their skulls because of their overall
body size. If you put a Carmen Ensa's skull and
I wish I still had mine mine, someone somewhere got
lost in a move or two, particularly back when we
were doing a bunch of stuff with we had Low
(09:25):
s Cotta the doors hunting headquarters there in Paris. All
I had it there for a while. But if you
were taking Carmen Mountain white tail skull and put it
next to a South Texas white tail, and I'm talking
about an animal that will probably field dress one seventy
ar better. The difference in those skulls is it would
probably be about two thirds smaller or a third again larger,
(09:47):
depending on what you know, your perspective, kind of thing,
which one you're looking at. But their sculpts are quite
small compared to even our Texas hill country.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Well, we come back on More Outdoors. We'll talk more
with Larry Wai Zoom. Welcome back to More Outdoors on
News Talk five sixty KLVI. This is Chester Moore continuing
our conversation about whitetail subspecies with Larry Wizooon. Very interesting
stuff and what got me on this trailer talking with
you about smaller whitetail was something that happened to me
(10:17):
when I was a kid, and my uncle, Jackie Moore,
the late Jackie Moore, would tell me several times. I
remember being hunting on my first hill country deer hunt
because I lived and I still live in Orange County,
and I didn't see a deer till I was twelve
and went to the hill country there word of hardly
any deer here locally, and I was with my dad
and my uncle. This one evening, I was hunting my
(10:39):
uncle and kind of walking out on the main road
of the ranch, the Winkle Ranch and Old Daily's Atlanta
out toward the stand. My uncle told me that when
they hunted in San Saba, they he saw this little
buck a couple of times that was like he said,
it was like the size of like a you know,
a labrador dog hype maybe you're a little smaller and
had a full eight point rack. Just really stuck with me. Well,
(11:01):
my uncle passed about thirteen fourteen years ago. At his funeral,
we're talking about hunting and I said, hey, Dad, did
Uncle Jackie ever tell you about that deer on the
San sabage, because oh, I was on the same lease,
and I saw some of those deer too, and I
saw when I told you this story, you kind of
lighting up. And you have an experience from back in
the nineteen seventies of a small deer also in San
(11:23):
Saba County.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
I do years ago I started to at a wildife
a dis ease specialists working under contract with the Texas
Parks and Wilife Department and the Department of in Air Pathology,
and we were out in San Sabin also in Atlantoak County,
collecting deer for a variety of purposes, among other lazies,
nutrition and trying to get general help on some of
those deer and try to get some baseline information as
(11:45):
far as blood and all those other kind of good
things that we were doing at the time. And I
ended up shooting a deer, a buck standing by himself.
I noticed he was kind of small standing there and
shot him. And then when I walked up to him,
that's when I realized that this dear, it was about
the size as you mentioned, like a Collie dog or
a retriever and full body size, he would have not
(12:09):
weighed fifty maybe somewhere between fifty and sixty pounds. Back
then I used to picking up a lot of fifty pounds,
and this one felt no heavier at all than that one.
We ended up taking all kinds of tissues from him,
and it was a regular white tail deer. But he
was just one of those deer that for whatever reason,
(12:31):
maybe a dwarf version of one, or for whatever reason,
greatly reduced size. The one too where he reminded me
very much later when I was able to take or
not that much later, when I took my first carmon
Mountain whitetail in size, they were pretty darn similar.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
That's intriguing, Like I've heard this story in my whole life,
and you know, my dad saw him, my uncle Sam.
And then when I did a little write up on
this for Texas Fishing Games, someone emailed me from Saba
that's been seeing one the last three years and so
in sin Saba County.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So from a.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Biologist perspective, is it possible that it could be some
that have like some kind of a dwarfism or something
that gets passed on in the little pockets.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You know, it certainly could be because you look at
the white tailed are and we're talking about subspecies as
well too. A lot of times it is somewhat of
an isolated area, but sometimes two. You know, strange things
happen in nature, and even like within humans, there is
that opportunity with the right connection of genes coming together,
(13:38):
chromosomes coming together, and all that kind of stuff where
people don't grow to the normal height of others, and
so I suspect it's something very similar to that. I
don't really think it's a subspecies.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
I think just.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Maybe in an area. You know, in breeding can do,
or very intensive line breeding can do all kinds of things.
Going back to looking at looking at some of the
dog the different breeds of dogs, you know there'll be
a three to and you've got a miniature one, and
you've got and if you get the right combinations, you
know you can reproduce those. And same thing like with
(14:15):
with looking at Herford cattle and Angus cattle years ago,
and they were very intensively you know, lane breeding. All
of a sudden they started having dwarf not only dwarf calves,
but that never really grew. So I suspect something along
those lines gonna happen. You know, those populations way back
when we're market hunting for the market quite a bit
(14:37):
and people lived off of venison. I mean that didn't
have anything else. You know, there's take a deer SA
could have reduced that population to a relatively small number.
And because of that, there may have been some very
intensive of inbreeding or line breeding if you will, could
have produced that and could produce that kind of deer.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
No, it's interesting stuff. I just made my day.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
It's like, all of a sudden, like a mystery if
my whole life has been verified. So that's the kind
of thing I live for as a journalist of all
things wildlife, fishing and hunting.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I'm like, oh, cool story.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
But you know, going along with this idea of subspecies,
I live here on the Texas Gulf Coast. I live
in Orange County here and not directly on the coast,
but Sabine Lake, our northernmost bay system, is here, and
I'm only forty minutes from the Gulf itself, and the
subspecies that here is the Avery Island whitetail. And these
guys go up through like maybe up in a Newton
(15:33):
Jasper County down to Matagorda all the way across toward
Avery Island in Louisiana over toward like the a Chapelaya Basin.
And have you ever had any experience hunting whitetail along
that part of the coast.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
I have kind of on the on the lower end
of that. I've taken several deer in that area. And
one of the things that I want to ask you
about when is the when does the breeding season occur
in your area?
Speaker 1 (15:57):
All right, that is a great question because it's early,
so there are deer right along the coastal area and
there's not a lot of deer like done in Jefferson
County on the coast on that little pocket, it's just
so marshy. There's some and those suckers will rut like
in September, the middle of September.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yes, sir, there is an area on the on the
lower end of that Avery Alven whitetail there where we've
seen bucks chasing does at the third week in August. Wow,
you know me. And that's one of the readings I
ask you went there because that particular subspecies generally has
a tendency to rut it's probably the earliest rut that
(16:38):
we have in Texas of our Texas deer. Yeah, interesting
about the reading the ruta. The reading season occurs when
it does is so that two hundred and thirty days
later massa manus. Those funds are born at the most
opportune time as far as nutrition is concerned. So you know,
if you go back probably to eons, go to maybe
(16:59):
as long until we introduced agriculture into that area, those
funds were being born at a certain time. And there
were two parameters that came into play with peak fawning
times in Texas, one of course being the ideal time
for nutrition. The second thing was is because the number
of screwworm flies that we used to have many many
years ago, if those funds, regardless where they were in Texas,
(17:22):
were not born pretty much in about a two week period,
the chances of their survival was extremely low because just
about time that naval cord was about to fall off,
the screw worm fly would lay eggs and that pupas
that developed, would essentially just eat that animal from inside out.
And it wasn't until back in the late nineteen sixties
(17:45):
that they kind of more or less eradicated or I
guess they did eradicate the screw and fly here in Texas,
and so that started making a few different changes. But
again going back to that Avery Allen white tail, they
were born, they had bringing through the occurred, it did,
so they were born at the most opportunity time. But
also I'm sure coming into play was a screwing worm
situation that we had back until about the middle nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Very interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And the reason I said, like around September fifteenth because
I remember the first time I encountered on this about
this early what I was teal hunting, and it was
toward the middle of teal season. I'm looking out there
south of Winnie, Texas, Yes, and like we're in the
blind and there's a buck chasing a dough Like, whoa
hold on, man, PayPal, you're a little bit early, aren't you.
(18:32):
But I looked around I saw that, you know, along
the Texas coast had some of the earliest ruts in America,
which is and that's really interesting about like that prime
time for you know, having the fawns and fawn survival
in that window, so really interesting stuff. And a lot
of these little bucks down here in this region, like
I've seen more in the last couple of years over
(18:53):
on the Louisiana side, and they have real baskety type racks,
like little baskety type thick ant but real baskety type racks.
But they really live in some dense like those shineer areas,
like they're covered that they do have in those areas
is really dense cover, so it makes sense kind of
have a little baskety rack to get through that.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
You're exactly right, and to a great extent, I think
that somewhat can is what you mentioned there. The type
of habitat and type of terrain and type of vegetation
they live in. That's, to me is one of the
great reasons why you do have those type type racks
as opposed to with because if you had a bucket,
you know, on one of those deer there and he's
trying to run through what he has to run through,
(19:35):
and he's got a twenty inch spread, that probably wouldn't
go very well. Yeah, this way, those those antlers are
about here with maybe a little bit outside at the
greatest outside of the ears, so there's always it's like
he's got he's got a measure there that he can
run through kind of thing, you knowing that he's not
going to get hung up.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
So come back on More those will talk more white
Tails with Larry bai Zoom Welcome back to More Outdoors
on News Talk five sixty klv I. Such an honor
and privilege of Larry Wyzoom on the program, one of
the most widely known respected deer experts on the planet,
talking everything from whitetail subspecies that is unusual white tails,
(20:18):
and this part of the conversation was one of my
absolute favorites talking with Larry Wyzoom.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I suspect Mother Nature has selected over the years for
those kind of racks as opposed to anything with any
great amount.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Of whip neat neat animals.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Now we have the course the Texas whitetail, which is
very widely distributed, and if I'm correct, that would dip
down into South Texas and go up through the Edwards
Plateau and all the way up toward North Tech.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Different food conditions, so body sizes are going to be
a little bit different, even coloration is going to be
a little bit different from some instrums. But then you
also go back and you look at the fact that
back in the nineteen fifties sixties, there were a tremendous
number of deer mood sure, oh my gosh, out of
Arandas National Park area, the King Ranch Area and other
(21:09):
parks that were scattered then or reintroduced to different parts
of Texas. So you know, now we probably have a
have a Texas deer that that's kind of a combination
of a bunch of subspecies.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Probably, So I don't know if any of those, like
you know, Ransas deer could survive because of that, because
they know what it's like in the marsh. But if
you took the vice versa and put one of those
Kansas deer down in our marsh in twenty four hours,
they'd be suck dry of blood. They wouldn't They wouldn't
know how to hang down there.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
It's like, uh, you know, you talk about adaptations. You know,
if you took them out of the Arandas refuse, that's
a tough deer that can hang with stuff. Like going
to the hill country is like a break for them.
Thank you, we got out of the marsh, you know, thanks.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
They were finally dry.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Exactly, But you mentioned all but you know, all that
different terrain we mentioned biodiversity with the habitat even with
them like the Edwards Plateau. You take around Lanto and
you got that kind of rolling you know, hills and
the beautiful like limestone streams. Then you go out to
the southwestern tier I love around Barksdale and camp Wood
(22:17):
and you got pretty high you know, hills and peaks,
and there's a lot of difference in that area of
different adaptations on these animals. But on a free range
white tail in the hill coruntry, Larry, what do you
think would be like the average hoof weight of a
buck and a dough.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Oh, my gosh, going back and again, it depends so
much for the so much management going on. I'm done
backer good management in terms of food. But me the
average more or less Texas Hill country deer mike on
the hoof on a on a buck the one thirty
five to you know, probably maybe a little bit more,
(22:55):
a little bit less in some areas. Generally a deer
like that's gonna field dress one hundred to one hundred and
five hundred and ten pounds even figured about thirty pounds,
so maybe a little bit bigger the doze. I would
say probably most of the doze in that area will
probably weigh somewhere between sixty and seventy pounds on the hoof.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
And I tell you what, when you go down into
South Texas, it doesn't take long for some of those
deer to get quite a bit larger.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
You're exactly right. You know, that was around around long time,
going backward when years ago we had the web county
check stations when we were trying to determine what was
going on, and there were times back there that a
lot of those bucks that we weighed, they probably would
have field dressed one twenty five to one thirty one
(23:42):
thirty five. So we're talking about you know, on the
hoof when maybe one fifty to one sixty one seventy
maybe at the most. And yet if you look at
what's happened today since we've reduced the population somewhat, you know,
shot more dose, given some of these bucks too opportunity
to grow a little bit, get some age on them,
(24:03):
it's not uncommon to for us to take an animal
that will field dress buck mature buck that's one seventy
five to one.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Eighty or better.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Wow. What's interesting about all this is there's a natural
rule called Bergman's rule that within any species starting south
and going north, the farther north you go, the larger
the bodies are. And that simply has to do with
being able to get rid of heat or to retain warmth,
you know, as you go farther north. And of course
that's one of the reasons you have the you get
(24:34):
it into Canada, and in some of those areas it's
you know, you shot a buckets weighs less than two
hundred pounds field dressed. You know, they go, oh, you
shot a baby kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah, with Alberta in place like that.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yes, sure, exactly. But again here in Texas, with the
management that we've done, going back and looking at the
deer herd maybe from the nineteen seventies to as a
whole across the state of Texas, we've put a lot
of pounds on the end of visual animals over the
years simply because of the fact of the nutrition available
(25:05):
to them. And a lot of these places now back
well back then, a lot of the we had the
sheep and goat all over the central part of the
state of Texas, and they were competing with the white
tail there and when they did away with the sheep
and woolair, mohair and sentive. A few years ago, a
lot of those folks that were previously sheep and goat
ranchers went back to running cattle, and so all of
(25:25):
a sudden, there was a whole lot more food available.
And so we've really kind of increased the overall size
just in the last several years, just through good management
and making nutrition available on a daily basis throughout the year.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah, and that's a great point, because that lifts that
management that hunters and hunter conservationists and ranchers put on
the ground not only lifts the health of the white tail,
but every other critter out there as well.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
You know, you're exactly right, And that's the point that's
so very often just simply overlooked that I've been involved
with management programs for everything from desert big horn sheep.
I know you're doing a bunch of things with desert
big horns now and with mew deer and whitetails, turkeys, quail,
you know, all the different game species. But one of
the things that I was able to do over the years,
(26:18):
particularly years ago, is when I got called in to
make recommendations, I would do a baseline on what vegetation
was on that property and potentially what animals I could
find there, and then we set up a good management
program that dealt with everything from the ground on up,
including the livestock operation, including the hunting operation, habitat improvements,
and all those kinds of things. And as we try
(26:40):
to improve the habitat to create a healthy herd of
white tailed deer or flock of turkeys or coves of
quail or whatever, one of the things that we found
is that we greatly increase the diversity of the plant
that we're there. And in process of that, oh, guess what,
all of a sudden, now we start having all kinds
of little bu ugs and grasshoppers and more ground more songbirds.
(27:05):
As a lot of times, when we set up these
management programs for quote unquote targeted game species, they'll benefit
a little habitat benefits tremendously and as a result, all
the other wildlife that's there. And that concludes if you
want to include all the little grounds in inks and
linards and snakes and frogs and toads, and you know,
you ground squirrelds, and you name the species or even
(27:28):
you know, some of the almost microscopic things that live
in the soil. Because we've increased it, everything does better.
And so it's one of the main reasons to me
that that hunting is so very important. I made a
statement not too long ago that conservation promotes life. Preservation
kills when you try to preserve something, you're trying to
(27:50):
preserve generally, well, let's preserve the real Grand Prairie. You know,
if we do that, we're going to have a limited
number of species plant and animal. Now, if we conserve,
which means the wise use of you know, we're going
to create some diversity. And when we do that again,
there'll be more different species of plants there and more wildlife.
(28:12):
And that includes everything from insects to merge to reptiles,
to amphibians to fish, you know, the terrestrial of the
wildlife kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
You know a lot of people like we have marsh
fires here are controlled burning in this part of the
world is a marsh fire. Everyone's used to it, but
most people don't know what that's about. You know, someone
who waterfowl hunts, you know, when they when they clear
that underbush and those exotic invasive exotics and things, and
you get this wonderful wintering opportunities for all the wildlife
(28:41):
out there when those waterfowl migrate down here are native
model ducks and things like that. And I was doing
some turkey hunting about five years ago and up in
East Texas and Sabbin National Forests, and they regularly do
control burns to manage for turkeys. The only area, Larry,
I've ever seen red cock heated woodpeckers which are federally
(29:03):
endangered species, or on stands of timber controlled burns for
East Eastern turkeys.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
It's amazing how that works. I've seen the same thing.
I may have seen some of them, but it was
right on the edge of yep. Yeah, I mean they
may not been in the exact burn, but they were
not two hundred yards off the burned area kind of
thing exactly right. Fire. You know, Texas evolved with fire,
and when you get right back down to it, and
(29:31):
a lot of the areas that previously now are covered
with brush and all that kind of thing, and Texas
we're basically grasslands. Well, the indigenous people they if lightning
didn't strike and burn down the old grass that was there,
they found a way to create their own fires, Well,
that only put nutrients back into the soul kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
When we come back, we'll wrap up our conversation with
mister whitetail Larry Wyzoom. Welcome back to More Outdoors on
News Talk five sixty k l v I catched the
podcast of this program at KLVI dot com or on
the iHeartRadio app continding our conversation with Larry Wayzoom.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
But it also then created new fresh growth, and those
buffalo herds and you know and other animal pronghorn, antelope,
whatever with they would come to those areas, and so
they kind of used that fire to kind of, you
look at it in a different kind of way. They
used it to create food plots for the animals that
they needed to survive.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
I just lost you, Yeah, I got you there. Okay.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
So that makes you know, that makes perfect sense, and
it's great. You know that fire is a natural part
of the ecosystem. But that just goes back to, like,
you know, I became someone interested in wildlife conservation because
I was obsessed with wildlife from birth, and I grew
up hunting and fishing, and I have a little stream
(31:01):
by my household, would call it the gully, and there
was a factory that would dump dies into the bayou,
and I was told I remember going fishing there one time,
was a kid, and the water was like you've heard
of black water. No, I mean it was like the
pits of.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Hell, black like, and it was.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Purple one time, and I knew that I couldn't need
a fish that don't ever you can fish down there,
but don't ever bring a fish on to clean from there.
And then I learned, you know, in deer hunting and
things like that. I remember going out to go deer
hunting and my dad teaching me the principles of like, Okay,
at the time, there weren't a lot of deer any sections,
so you weren't harvesting as many doughs, you know. And
(31:41):
then we went to the hill country, it was like, no,
we got dough tags here. Back in they do tagged
the landowner would give you because I need to control it.
So I understood through the hunting and fishing thing that wow,
if we do the right thing and use the space wisely,
wildlife benefits.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
So it was because of hunting and fishing that I
wanted to get into conservation.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
To me, the true conservationists out there are the hunters
and the fishermen. You know, not only in terms of
what they actually do in terms of the physical doing,
but also, as you well know, in terms of the
financing of conservations. Hunters and fishermen pay for conservation primarily
through well, on the hunting side, through the Pittman Robertson Act,
(32:28):
which I think was established in nineteen thirty seven, and
then the Dingle Johnson covers the fish You're right, that
covers the fishing side of thing. I think was just
a few years after that. So that's how conservation is
really paid for. It is through the sale of sporting
equipment and then of course through the licening of hunters
(32:50):
and fishermen.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Absolutely, you have a long standing association with a great
conservation center group hunter conservation group.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
The Dallas Safari Club.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Can you tell them a little bit about some of
the things that the Dallas Safari Club, because I know
they've done things with everything from supporting desert big Horn
conservation in West Texas to anti.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Poaching patrols in Africa.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Can you give me a little bit about maybe some
of the things dallasa Fari Club has done to help conservation.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
DSc was established back in about nineteen eighty two, and
I was very fortunate to have been involved in some
form of fascists in nineteen eighty seven. It is a
conservation organizations whose three legs are conservation, education and hunter advocacy,
and they've been involved in so many different programs, and
of course in recent times we've had the DSc Foundation,
(33:38):
which is kind of the granting arm of DSc. Prior
to that, DSc would provide grants, but once we established
the DSc Foundation, it became more important, if you will,
in some ways of being able to provide moneies to
different projects, not only here in North America, but as
across the entire world world. If you will, dollars that
(34:02):
are issued by d SC and by DSc Foundation, those
projects are extremely vetted to determine to make certain that
those dollars actually go to what they're supposed to do,
rather than in somebody's pockets, as is so often the
case with some of the other if you will, anti
hunting groups and the things that the d s C
(34:23):
has done. In d s C Foundation, we've funded projects
as you mentioned with Desert Big Horn Sheep and help
them provide water in certain areas we've dealt with the
desert with the Mutier Foundation and helping them creating quarters,
even in terms of purchasing land in We've funded numerous
projects as well in Africa dealing with leopards, trying to
(34:45):
determine what the real status of the leopards are. Same
thing with oh my gosh, with elephants, with different species, rhinos,
those kinds of things. We've We've had projects going on
and Europe that dealt with UH UH things such as
road deer, vallader and red stags. There's projects in Asia
(35:07):
that have been supported in terms of UH some of
the work there with the Dark Galley Sheep and UH,
the UH, the IBEX and things like that. But here
in North America too we have done so very much
with like the Rocky Elk Rocky Rocky Mount Elk Foundation
UH with some of the guides and outputters associations that
(35:27):
are involved in in UH OH in different research projects
with species within their own province if you will earn
their own state. And we've provided old dollars for UH
all supporting the education of different groups such as that
we do here in Texas. We provided money to the
(35:48):
Texas Brigades, which is done well here in Texas, So
it's a continually ongoing thing. You know. To me, there's
all kinds of great conservation organizations, but I've had an
opportunity to work with all of them, and to me,
there's none that equals DSc or the DSc Foundation. They
do so many different things for which they never get
(36:09):
credited for. Other organizations will go we did so, so,
we did so and so, and yeah, maybe you showed
up for a hearing, but you weren't the one who
actually got the work done kind of thing. But with DSc,
it's not about the recognition. It's about getting the work
done and making sure that you know there's going to
be wildlife and wilelife opportunities in the future, not just
(36:32):
right now. And I'll also say that it's kyleed Dallas
Safari Club. Well, Safari is nothing more than a Swahili
term for an adventure or walk about. And you do
not have to be a Safari hunter. If you will
somebody that goes to Africa to be a member. A
matter of fact of our membership, I say there's a
(36:53):
relatively small portion of people who actually go on Safari
if you will, they have all kinds going fari quite often.
My next safari is for black bear up in Alberta,
after which my safari will be for stright bashed Texaman
and shortly after that a safari in Northeast Texas for bluegills.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
I love it bluegill safari. I'm down.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I'm leaving after I interview you for a bluegill safari
in Orange County with my fly.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Rod so and that's right, and I'll bring that up.
I love it being being Dallasafari Club members Rick Lambert,
who happens to be the dad of Miranda Lambert and
the entertainer, and Jim Zumbo who people know for many
years from years about or Lafe. Three of us. Every
(37:40):
opportuney we get together, we try to go on on
anything I'm to do with hunting at fishing, and knowing
that mister zumbo favorite species in all the world is
blue gill. I found a very good bluegill pond and uh,
he's rather good at fishing, he's really good at at
but he's also one of these guys who realizes that
(38:02):
we have got to maintain a certain population within a pond,
and so we got to take a lot of fish out,
so he likes to fish those places where we have
to remove with much of fish because his term for
catching release is catching release and hot butter kind of things.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I dig it sometimes looks sometimes like I tell people
when I go crappie fish.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Crappy is my favorite thing to catch.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
And I tell people, look conservation, all the wise use
of a resource. And I'm going to use every legal
size crappie that I catch today to feed my family.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
I'm just letting you know that part.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
So absolutely getting back to DSc. I'm not sure when
when this will ara, but June the twenty second, we
have our I think this will be the fourth annual
DSc Foundation Gala being held at the Sheridan Hotel there
in Dallas. We've got it's basically a fundraiser and an
opportunity to bring people together. We've got some of the
(38:58):
finest hunts from all over the world, finance fishing trips
and those can you don't have to be present a
bed on them. With with the new on hunting online
auction things, you know you can be anywhere in the world.
If you can't attend, we'd love for you to have
a look at what we have available and to be
a bitter there. And you know, if you want to
learn more about what's going on there with the foundation,
(39:20):
they can go to www dot d s C F
dot O r G and learn more about the things
that d s C does both here in North America
and abroad and how d s C truly is important
for the conservation of all widlife species here in North
America across the world. They can go to their website
(39:41):
as well, which is www dot b I G G
A m E dot O r G SO Big Game
dot org.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Thanks for listening to the program. Great interview with Larry Wazoom.
Follow me at Higher Calling dot net or my new
blog at Gulf Great Whites dot com at d chestermorn Instagram,
God bless and have a great outdoors weekend.
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