Ep. 42: Elk Biology with Brock McMillan, Part 2
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Let's dive back into our conversation with Brock and kick off part two and talk about every elk hunter's favorite topic, the rut. Okay, so now we're going to jump into the perceived strength of rut, and we just touched on it a little bit. We're going to talk about what affects it. In our conversation last week when we were kind of just talking about elk in general and units doing good versus bad, you mentioned one of the things that the perceived strength of the rut, which I wouldn't even say perceived at this point, it would be

a real reason why the rut isn't, as you say, some years, you know, cows come into, you know, only 50% of the cows will even come into estrus. Um, 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, uh, what we were just talking about there before we talked about the weather and some of those, uh,

the other factors with the cows and coming into estrus and herd dynamics? So sure. So we've been monitoring pregnancy on a whole bunch of units since 2015. So that's only seven or eight years. But from year to year, so for example, in 2021, only 61% of the elk that we tested in the whole state were pregnant.

Whereas in, I'm looking at the data right now, whereas in say 2015, 92% of the elk were pregnant that we tested. And so you would expect that if 92% of the elk are coming into estrus, the rut is going to be much more perceptible or much, much stronger than if only 60% of the animals were coming into estrus.

Likewise, if you look across the state in the same year, we have some units that are as low as 56% pregnancy. And in the same year, other units are like 90% pregnancy. So even unit to unit or year to year, there can be a lot of difference in pregnancy, which I believe is correlated to how many of the females go into estrus.

Can we, I want to jump into estrus itself a little bit, a little bit more. Let's say a cow comes into estrus. We talk about this a lot, but what does that, what is estrus? Is it, is it something that happens for four hours, 12 hours, 24, 36? Like what's the length of it? If, if she doesn't get bred during that, will she stay in? Like, can we explain a little bit more about. Sure. So there there's four phases of estrus.

boy, I'm remembering back to my old biology days, but, but the main one that we're concerned about here is ovulation. And so, um, and that's when an, an ovulation is when an egg is released from the ovary of the female. And, and that's what triggers that, that estrus. And so if, if

an egg's never released, she will never produce the hormones that the male 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 those hormones, 40% or 50% and some units,

never have a male. The male comes up and smells and goes, oh, nope, she's not going to. And so he just leaves her and goes and looks for another female that is. So if she ovulates and then that egg is fertilized, she produces a hormone to stop the cycle so that it doesn't

For example, in humans in a menstrual cycle, if the egg is not fertilized, then all of that sloughs out. And that's what we call a menstrual cycle. Elk don't have a menstrual cycle. They have an estrous cycle. But the same principle is if that egg doesn't get fertilized, then it's just expelled and the cycle goes into diapause or diastrous or metastrous, metastrous until the next year.

So she won't have another egg come through the system. That's correct. It's one chance. So that's where some of this idea of the second estrus, third estrus don't necessarily correlate with the science or the biology of elk. 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 fawn that can barely walk in late July. But we've now monitored, Jason, probably about 700, 800 litters of deer per

And I'm trying to think about 200 with this year, 240 litters of elk. And we have zero evidence of a second estrus in either deer or elk.

So, so what we're seeing is maybe those unhealthy cows or unhealthy deer finally becoming healthy enough that they can go through this, this process. And it appears to be a second estrus or third estrus. You know, there's a lot of information or people believing that it's your, your younger ones weren't quite ready to come into estrus, your yearlings, and they come in, you know, or it could be a, an unhealthy mom that, like you said, raised the calf. She might not come in until maybe later that appears to be healthy.

a second wave, but it's just animals coming in later because of health. So I like what you said. There's a, 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 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.

Gotcha. Um, and then this, when the, the egg drops, um, 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 changes or is it, is it strictly a scent that that bull knows exactly what's, what's going on in the time? 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, uh, in mammals, uh,

The other thing about estrus versus like a menstrual cycle is it's not as externally visible as some other modes of reproduction. And so the primary way to communicate that ovulation has occurred, we think, is olfactory. 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. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to,

This is our opinion and not all elk callers, but there's a lot of elk callers 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 estrous buzzing, you know, where they're very, it's almost like an urgency or you get this estrous whine versus like your normal cow mew, you know, it's a mew. They'll whine, mew.

You're pretty good at that by your mouth. That's, I mean, we all use that strategy. We all get out saying I'm a cow looking for you. Yeah. Yeah. And then, or like, you know, Steve chapel and some of these guys have got some great video of, I believe it's a bull in Arizona or something like lip. Well,

what we call an estrus buzz it's almost like you know you you get we we would almost need to like flutter our lips um or our throat to provide that little bit of vibration and then bulls show up and you're like well that was obviously different than just your normal mu that a cow is communicating is that correlating with with that ovulation or that that stage of the estrus uh who knows so we definitely add that into our strategy but so so you would the most

parsimonious or best explanation is that it has to be or it wouldn't work.

Yeah. Yeah. But if it is what we think it is, then why does it only work part of the time still, you know? And, and so there's, there's a little bit of me 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 that point. All right. So one more question about the ovulation. She comes into estrus. Do you,

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 bred and it turns off or the time's up and it turns off. Do we have an idea on that time? That's a great question. 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 to fertilize that egg in the upper fallopian tubes so that it can start to develop and produce the hormone before it gets to the site of implantation to stop the cycle from continuing on so that it can implant. And so the actual breeding may even happen before ovulation.

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 fallopian tubes, if that makes sense. But most things that I've read say that there's a two to three day window generally in mammals where the egg can be fertilized and implanted. Gotcha. Okay.

Um, we're going to roll into, to herd dynamics. And if that it's something that I bring up a lot, um, you know, you got high bull to cow ratios. A lot of times the herds get smaller, a bull can't maintain that many cows. How does herd dynamics, um, affect, affect the route we already talked about earlier? Like, you know, to a certain point, like the least amount of bulls on, on the landscape may be the best for herd health.

how does herd dynamics affect strength of the rut and that herd bulls really has got a lot more competition now. And, and let's take it even one step further. Once we get that answered, how does like the, the hierarchy of if you had, you know, certain mature bulls versus a bunch of raghorns versus you have like a very even mix, do you feel that that now affects the rut and what we perceive as the rut? So, yeah,

those are all great questions maybe we'll tackle one about say bull to cow ratios first okay and um it's complex because every hunter wants more bulls on the landscape um say say i have a herd that uh carrying capacity of a thousand animals on a unit i don't know what it is let's just say a thousand for simple if if

If I make that 60% cows and 40% bulls, which is roughly a natural ratio, 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, uh, males tend to die as a teenager more than females. So that skews the sex ratio a little bit. And the average male lives a shorter lifespan than the average female. So that skews it a little bit. So a natural herd with no hunting would generally be something like 40% males and 60% females. Um,

We often manipulate that and we manipulate it both ways. So we may say, for example, you have a unit that the state objective is a 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 harvest a bunch of cows and maybe now it's 50-50 or it's even 60% bulls, 40% cows because you're mandated by law to manage to a thousand, but you want more old bulls in the population. Doing that really limits the future production. I wouldn't say health of the herd, but production of the herd, meaning that if I've only got 40% cows out there and only 80% of them are getting pregnant,

the productivity of this herd is much lower than if I have 80% cows and 80% of them are getting pregnant. Does that make sense? It does, but I'm going to, 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 is a hunter or, you know, somebody that that's looking at hunting those thousand animals, uh,

Does it make sense to keep that balance that 50, 50 or 60, 40 bull to cow? Because it can only hold a thousand elk anyways. What good does it do to have us having more cows that then put more elk on the landscape? And, you know, does that make any sense? 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.

Yeah. And so, but, 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 30% bulls and 70% 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 bull tags now for cow tag opportunities.

Yes, you are. So you're, but, 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. Yep. And so there's a, there's a,

I mean, we deal with this in Utah all the time. I'm on one of the regional advisory councils where we make recommendations to our wildlife board, which is similar to your game commission. And this is the constant battle. Do we hunt big bulls or do we provide opportunity to hunt elk? 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, uh,

What you're telling, what I'm hearing from you is that we should not be killing cows because that's the way to obviously get the numbers up. We could live with less elk. If trophy bull 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, seriously.

seems to make sense from, from a biology standpoint that cows produce and, you know, bulls can produce multiple or re you reproduce with multiple cows. That seems like the strategy to move forward. Sure. Maybe, maybe. 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, uh,

Based on everything I know, we're going to put our population objective on this unit at 5,700 animals. And now we assume that that 5,700 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 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.

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 cliffs earlier, which may be 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 these things change. Does that carrying capacity obviously moves. And so, um,

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 you, you just, you would have to sit back and observe a unit almost untouched, no hunting pressure and, and just see like, all right, we, you know, went from 4,000 to 5,000, the herd started to get unhealthy. They dropped themselves back down to 4,500. So, you know, maybe that's the right answer is I,

I guess that would be the only way to ever tell. And then even from then, it would be potentially variable year to year if the vegetation changes or snow packs different or drought hits it. It would be a complex calculation to figure out what that right number is. 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. And so, and I don't think the answer is don't hunt them, especially like in a drought. You would expect that in a drought, yeah.

People say, oh, we've had such a bad drought. We need to not hunt them. The population's really hurting. But to me, biologically, if I have a severe drought, I want to remove some mouths from the landscape. So there is plenty of food for the ones that are left there. Yeah.

Probably the same conversations people can be having, I mean, in your home state of Utah and that Northwest corner of Wyoming that just got hammered this year with 200% plus snow packs. Is winter different than drought or would you maybe even have the same recommendation? Let's free up some, or did the winter do the damage and it reduced the population for the mouths that are still on the ground? So I think,

The winter did the damage. So not the damage. I think this winter was extreme. And so our extreme Northwest wasn't horrible. We have places in this state that were not good. The backside of the Wasatch Front was not good. Yeah, your northeast corner. Yeah, well, not even the cash unit up there. Yes, up on the extreme northeast in 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 um but even this year jason our elk herd we've had about 89 survival on the ones that we have collared so i mean winter doesn't affect elk like it affects deer yep or or the the antelope it seemed like they had a rough winter as well so well antelope for sure because antelope

don't store fat really. 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 to antelope or pronghorn. Elk generally have enough energetic inertia because of 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 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 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 92% and 95% every year. That's pretty dang good. Yeah, especially in comparison to deer and antelope, which are obviously lower. Right. 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. Yeah.

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This is Brent Reeves from This Country Life. What makes South Dakota the greatest for pheasant hunting? With over 1.2 million pheasants harvested last year, South Dakota boasts the highest population of pheasants in the nation. In fact, you'd have to add up the total harvest from neighboring states just to get that many birds.

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It's about taking the greatest shots and watching your dog work the greatest fields in the greatest lands, carrying on the greatest heritage and making the greatest memories. So what are you waiting for? From the rush of the flush to the stories at the end of the day, experience a thrill like no other. Learn how at huntthegreatest.com. So I'm going to try to wrap this next question. I'm looking at what I got here and perceived strength of the rut, which is,

I think for a lot of hunters that head out correlates with bugling. Um, so I, I kind of had a couple of different questions here. One of these came from my, my marketing manager, Dirk, I hunt with a lot. Um, it was, it was kind of a, and we touched on it a little bit earlier, but is there any rhyme or reason to why the bulls bugle so hard one day and the next day they don't necessarily bugle as much? Um, you know, even

Even let's say on, you know, if we, if we held weather 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 are stuck in that ovulation period or there ain't 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? Yeah.

I have no idea, Jason. That would be my guess. If I was going to 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

calf has been born today. And my guess is the same thing is happening during the rut and ovulation, that some days several cows are coming in or 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 and other units where they're going off all the time.

Yeah. And and they've just learned to not bugle as much in some units, I think. I don't know.

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 bulls genetically disposed to 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're pushing them. They're just not as vocal versus you can go to other areas where, you know, you can't barely get the things to be quiet at times when, you know, things are going hot and heavy. So 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. So, and I don't know the answer, Jason, I I'm an elk hunter, just like you. And I don't know the biological explanation, me being out in the field that the observation I've seen is in areas where they get a lot of pressure. They're not nearly as loud as when area in areas that are hard to get to where they don't get very much pressure. Yeah. I,

In my opinion, which is just my opinion, when they correlate elk making sounds or elk-like sounds, I'll leave it at that, and they correlate that with seeing human presence at the location of that sound, getting winded by that sound. They're not necessarily dumb creatures, and I don't know what their memory necessarily is, but do they remember that encounter? Are they more hesitant to come into something? And in my opinion...

the way that the, you know, bugling and cow calling works, it's, it's the bull bugles. He's obviously louder than a cow, you know, a cow calling it's to announce his presence. And then any cows that want him to, to breed them will come join his herd. Right. And, and in the woods, we're trying to reverse that a little bit and maybe, um, maybe he's not willing to, to leave his herd, to go find this cow. Um,

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 is yeah 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 uh related to hunting season

And for that study on the day before the opening of the rifle hunt, like 62 or 63% of the elk in our study area were on public land. And on the day, the very next day, the opening day of the rifle, rifle hunt, uh, 31% of the elk were on public land. A full 40% of the herd had jumped the fence onto private land in one day. Just from pressure. And so to me, uh,

They, they understand pressure and they are very willing to move to avoid pressure. Yeah. That, that's kind of what I, what I was thinking and in aligns with what I've saw out in the field. Um, 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 in the northern states and the elk and, you know, 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?

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 have wolves in any of our populations that I study.

but the literature is clear that wolves have an effect. Yeah. I mean, just from my observations, why I'm out in the field hunting, um, and, and a spot that I hunt Idaho, we're up on a high spot and we can listen into about three different drainages. And if the wolves show up to that same drainage we hunted throughout the day, um, 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. Um,

versus they're typically still there. 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 moved to a different drainage. You go back in there the next day, they're back to going. And, and once again, it 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 talked less or not at all because of the presence of, of alpha, you know, alpha predators in that drainage with them. And, uh,

Like I say, I don't have any scientific, it's just observation, but it seems to have a very strong correlation with wolves in the area. They do talk less. 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 positive effect on elk.

But if you can't, I think they are decimating the elk. Yeah. And so, 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. Right. And they're generally not dry. What happens is when, when elk that's that,

That was the idea that was in the literature is that as an elk gets to be, say, 13, 14, or 15, she becomes non-reproductive and she's just eating resources that otherwise other elk could have to raise calves. But it turns out that elk are reproductive their entire life. Even if they live to be 30, they're still reproductive. But as they get old, they tend to skip years. So they're more likely to be pregnant every other year as they get old.

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Like I say, 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. Um, 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. Yep. Um, I'm, I'm, we could jump into it. I'm going to touch on it real quick. Um, around home, um,

When cow tags are given, you hear of 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 the second 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 themselves out and who's in control and where they're going for safety? Yeah.

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 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 they

She, if she leaves, they don't may not know what to do temporarily. I don't know the answer to that. Um, I'm fine with people taking the lead animal because that's generally the oldest one in the group. It's not the one I want. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um,

So this kind of rolls into 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 any reason 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 it a biological reason? Yeah.

Can you elaborate on that at all? Well, I think it's both. I think that elk have evolved to be crepuscular or nocturnal 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 I think it's more about temperature. In adult elk, it's more about temperature than it is avoiding predators.

Yeah, that, that makes sense. I mean, you can, 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 not claiming to be a biologist here with my statement, but in the middle of the day, if they're running hard in the morning, the day heats up. It's almost like they get a little bit sick or a little bit overheated. They go bed down. A lot of times that bull will bed his herd down and then he'll go maybe visit a wallow by himself real quick once he's got all of his housekeeping done. It just seems like they shut down in the middle of the day during that heat and then

um almost set 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 um they they're they're now back to rutting where they they take that midday off which seems to correlate with temperature and and maybe nothing else and 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 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 facing.

dark timber, 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. Yep. Yep. And yeah, this is just, I'm throwing in a bonus observation. They've also got the uncanny ability wherever they are going to bed, they figured out that the wind swirls there all day long during through the middle of the day. I mean, people can call

call them a not very smart animal but you know mule deer alike like those things will go bad in a situation where you're like there's zero ways for me to approach without blowing them out of here um 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 you can see all the way in one direction and you can smell all the way in the other yep yep they watch their backtrack or you know 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, um,

well one of the things we talked last week brock when we were kind of getting into it and and one of like one thing i'm very interested in is kind of that adjacent units one doing well versus one doing you know maybe subpar and 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

Um, can 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 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 to unit, even if they're adjacent. Yeah.

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 trophy area, our quality units, we manage to an age objective. So we want the average bull harvested to be seven years old or something like that. That's very different than managing to a bull to cow ratio, which we do not do. And a lot of states do do that.

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, um,

You got, are you, are you just looking what's on the ground? Are you assuming if like you guys got good data, 80% of the cows were fertile, 80% of the calves hit the ground. We assume those are 40, 40. We're going to allow X amount of bulls to be taken over the years. This should, you know, and so you just limit it by tags, knowing that a certain amount should get to that age. Are you guys doing a little bit of both? So with they're doing a little bit of neither.

So what they do is in this state, I don't think it's mandatory, but it's becoming mandatory, but it's recommended that everybody that harvests a bull sends in a tooth, an incisor. And I think we get about 80% return. And we age every one of those animals. 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. It's that simple. They're assuming because until 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 bull because the biggest is not the oldest. For sure. Yeah.

And so they cut tags saying, well, we need the average bull on this unit to be older. And then they reevaluate next year. Sure enough, this year it 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, I, I'm, I don't want to dig into the decision-making, but there's a lot of other factors. I mean, I,

Some of your premium units, I mean, they're pretty reserved on their tag numbers, right? And what happened if you get a bunch of mountain men that have hunted their whole lives, always found success one year, and then you, not saying age always plays in 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 aging through teeth? Yes.

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. Jason, this is kind of off topic where you were going, but the data are pretty clear. The average bull reaches its maximum size of antler at age seven.

And it's about 95% that size at age six. And this is true for deer too, not six and seven. With deer, 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, the animal is as big as it's going to be if it's at least seven years old.

And so if, if say, for example, a bull had the potential of reaching 400 inches, it would be 95% of that. So what is, what is that? That's 200. That would be 300, 380 bull at age six. It gets killed at age six because nobody's going to pass a 380 bull. Yep. And, and,

But the average bull, this may be surprising, the average bull on the landscape at age seven is 319 inches. And that's based on measuring about 5,000 bulls. That's the average potential of a bull, 319 inches. And so a 380 bull is an anomaly or a 400 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 380, you're shooting, probably going to shoot a five or a six year old bull if you would actually do that. And you're going to let the eight, nine, 10 year old that's 320, that's the average bull survive. And so you're squandering money.

in my opinion, you're squandering a lot of mature old bulls because you can be selective and harvest the younger ones that have greater potential for antler development. Yep. That makes a ton of sense. 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. Yeah, because people were now willing to take those 318 or 319 top potential bulls out of the herd because there were more tags on the ground. That's right. They were shooting a 320 that was 11 years old. 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, when he's three and a half or four and a half and don't let him to 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, you know, 140 inch three point that 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. You,

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, to some extent. But yeah, I think horn size versus age and, and the disconnect there is always going to be like one of the, you know, uh,

And I guess I have to use the word trophy hunters dilemma is do you want to kill the, nobody necessarily cares that you killed an 11 year old bull. Cause we don't talk about, Hey, my, your bull was seven. Mine was 11. We talk about your bull was three 80. Mine was 400. Right. That's to me, that's the problem. So the, just like elk, the average deer only gets to the upper one sixties. That's the average buck, no matter how old they are.

And so everybody says, oh, if you let that get one more year, it would be a 180. Nope, it wouldn't. It would be a 160. I'm not saying that elk and deer can't explode from one year to the next and add 30 inches. But on average, for everyone that adds 30 inches from seven to eight, one loses 30 inches from seven to eight.

Yeah. And from what I've seen, the biggest determinant is not their genetic potential. It's whether you maybe 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 20 more inches. So actually, this is really cool. And again, it's another topic of elk, but I love this topic because we've studied it a lot. And that is that the current year's

climatic conditions. So this, the green up right now that the elk are eating while they're growing accounts for about 10% of their antler development. So in a good year, I can be a 360 bull and in an average or a poor year, I'll be a 330 bull just based on what I'm eating this year. The second factor that has the same exact effect is how healthy mom was when that bull was in uterus seven years ago.

Oh, yeah. I was made very aware of this. Rinella put me in touch with Kevin Monteith out of Wyoming. Yeah.

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 mule deer we have in Washington and put them on the Ponce of Gaunt and trapped them 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. Um,

you know, based on nutrition and mother's health and whatnot. So yeah, I've, it's still crazy to me that a lot of their potential happens while they're, you know, in, in the, and, you know, in their mom's belly. 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 and deer and elk.

The effect of mother is not as great in deer as it is in elk. The effect of mother is really significant in elk. And this is the other reason you don't want populations to get to a density 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.

So I hear people say stuff all the time like, this unit has gone into 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. 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 that they did 10 years ago when there were only half as many elk on the landscape.

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I'm going to 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 8 to 10 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 to catch 10 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, 45 minutes up the mountain to go fish it. And,

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 were 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 lot of 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 talk to him through some emails. So on hard, is this where like,

Because winters can be very drastic. I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this question. You can have one winter, like, you know, very mild, great green up, you know, or very easy winter. And then you have a winter like this where in some areas, very, very tough. Right. That, that calf that's 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 their dad the the bull was the same size so the genetic potential isn't there but

You could have a genetic potential up to 20% different just because one year that same mom had to get through some rough winter while you were in the belly. The other calf just had a heyday while she was eating whatever she wanted, stayed fat and healthy. But yet now that those bulls are on the landscape, regardless, they got a year difference. That one bull is now going to have 50-inch growth.

you know, talking in horn size, have the potential to be 50 inches bigger. 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. And then, like I said, we ultimately came around that all these matter, right?

And they all have an effect, but maybe the most dramatic, the most, uh, the, the, the, 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. Um, you know, so it seemed like that mother's health maybe had the biggest controlling factor is what we were trying to get across, um, compared to some of the other things, everything else being equal. Of course, it probably has the biggest effect and it's the thing that we can control the most.

Yep. Yep. Absolutely. I agree with that. 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, um, you know, if a bull comes out of a set of twins is going to be at a, at a,

at a lower potential because there, there were competing twins in the belly, you know, and versus a single that drops. And yeah, it's kind of fascinating 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. Absolutely. So, I mean, we've had, we haven't had a set of twins and elk yet. So, yeah,

It'll be interesting if we ever do. Contract 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 low or singles or, you know, single digit type twins? In 300 letters here, we haven't had a single set of twins that we've found. I mean, I guess there is a possibility that, that we've had one.

that we haven't found but you know the average calf is 35 pounds and to have to raise two of those that that would be tough yeah so i mean my guess is that there may be 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 the normal with deer. And interesting, deer have a very different strategy than elk. Deer are pregnant every year, regardless. They manipulate their energy allocation after birth, whereas elk manipulate it before birth. Gotcha. Yeah.

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 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, 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.

I don't know of any studies on elk calling in the biological literature. I wish I was better at it. I mean, I... There's just so many unknowns. I wish there was data that supported one way 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...

Yeah, I can spot and stalk elk. I can cow call elk. But dang it, 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 comes around that corner and rips a bugle in my face. I want that experience. This is why I love calling elk. But I also recognize that there are very successful elk hunters that claim to know elk.

Or I want to say 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 lip ball, it means this. And when they scream at you, it means this. And, and albeit we've even applied these, these terms scream and lip ball to their sound. So who even knows what those are necessarily. But, um, and then there's people that claim, you know, spot and stocks, the way to go versus, um,

I call more on a temperament. I feel like I've always been able to just read the situation. 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 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 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 so isn't that that isn't that the function of every animal in the world yep i mean they're they're literally trying to do two things so i'm very confident in boiling it down to that um

And then within that, if he's, let's say you're trying, trying to call in a herd bull, wouldn't it be one of the ways like in my head is, is,

he's got his cows he's already got his 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 the 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 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 300 yards away. Right. I'm trying to,

maybe even reverse engineer the way wild wants to work and hey i'll beagle 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 i cow calls i want to create this idea that hey you might have a cow in estrus or in heat or ready to be bred but i'm now right on your herd you know you've already pushed your other satellite bulls off in this direction or that direction and they're bedded

you know, X 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 your cows or, um, you know, defeating me, the new bull that showed up and, and maintaining your cows. Um, whereas we're like, in my mind, if we, if we bugle our way in, we've now given that bull,

We haven't triggered that fight or flight. He will flight, but he's taking his cows with him and he's going to do that way before you ever have a chance with a bow in your hand. Right. And you know, we could, we've coined it shock and awe, but it's, I do feel that if you call your way in your, 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 bull, we don't make another peep until we get next to him. And it's,

It's really trying to play on, on those 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 herd bull. So I I'm, I'm very similar. I'm not, I'm, I'm guarantee I'm not as good a bull caller as you, but once I've located a bull, uh, I go at them as hard as I can, as fast as I can making noise to even maybe a hundred yards.

And then I slow down because if they're moving and you, and you tenderfoot around, you never catch them. Once you're close, then you're in their zone and you can get them to do something. Yep. Yep. And the little bit of the opposite. Let's, Oh, go ahead. Sorry. And I think you're right. Every bull has a different personality. So, you know, some, a little, a little cow call and that gets them going and others, uh,

That doesn't work. And they start moving their herd off. And the last bull 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 turned around and ran right back. Yep. Yep. And,

And using that same fight or flight and the, 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 bull, 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 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 wildfire.

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, you're four notches down from me. I'm two notches up from you. Like, you know, almost not to that degree, but, but in 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 going to 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 bull, let's not use a bugle. Or if we do use a bugle, it needs to be very, very low threat. Like maybe a spike is his,

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 it to that and play off of their, their want to recreate, I can control and it can dictate a lot of what I'm, I'm doing as far as a call coming out of my mouth. So, yeah. And, and I, by no means have I mastered calling, I wish I was better, but, 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 bigger than the dominant bull. The dominant bull is dominant because of body size, not because of antler size. And so you could have an eight, nine-year-old 320 bull that is actually the herd bull. And you could have a satellite bull that's a 360 that's six years old. And so if you can't see them, I think sometimes there's strategies for both.

Yeah. We, 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, um, turn to the turn to that satellite bowl just because, um,

um you know of horn size and probably easier to call in most of the time than that herd bull anyways right so um but you're right it's their their game is to procreate and that's that's what they're figuring out and your our game is to is to trick them into procreating with the cow that we're with or whatever yeah yeah yeah we're trying to imitate that cow and it's a little bit of i i

I feel we're reversing it because I've seen it many times where a bull beagles, maybe a lone cow was on a ridge and you can kind of, you know, you're glassing across the Canyon. You can see that lone cow. Once that bull beagles, she'll like beeline to him and she'll go join the herd. You know, he kind of, he'll come out of his herd, kind of rapper, push her into the herd. 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 bull to now leave his cows and

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 leaving 50 yards. So he can run right back if he 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 bull on the landscape. That's,

that's given him, you know, either threatening his herd or wants to join his herd. So 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, Jason. I think it can be different pre-rut and post-rut because pre-rut they're looking post-rut, they may be looking. So you may have dominant bulls that are willing to come to a cow call. For sure. But during the peak, they're usually locked with a group.

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 5th, the 25th or 30th. But I, I'm a, 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 bugling early, early in the season and late.

in the season, kind of that pre and post, I will go back to cow calls because that dominant bull 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 it earlier. I, a lot of these bulls are checking throughout the night. They're checking throughout the day. They do, uh,

They're working all the time to find this one cow that may be coming in. So yeah, I strongly agree with that. Early in the season, late in the season, go back to cow calls because they're not looking to fight. They're looking to find that last cow. I've even had it, Jason, and I'm sure you have too, 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. Somebody's kicked him off.

I mean, we were in New Mexico last year. We watched the alternate almost daily. There was a very large five point, um,

First day we seen him, he had a herd of eight. Next day we seen him, he was all by himself in a different bull head. And then he was able to pick up three cows and then he was all by himself. It was like, yeah, it's just, it's like alternating. And I don't know, I wish I knew why or how come like, was that big bull rolling through and 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 being the watchdog. I got this now. You know, and 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 smelled and seen what he needed to see. And 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 cows are in estrus and then he'll stay. They're just smart. They know what's coming up. And I feel that we have to play with that a little bit too. Yeah, I completely agree with that.

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 them. So I'm looking through data and 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 a cow raises a calf successfully this year, she's less likely to be pregnant. If she was pregnant, 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. I think if there's anything else here. And I guess my take home message is if.

Another take home would be I would trust the state biologists. I see in Utah a lot of 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 biologist is right. And I see that a lot. 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, double tags here, double cow tags. And you're like, gosh, dang it. You can read what the biologist recommended. Who's the closest to this unit, but yet a commission, um, you know, made up of zookeepers 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, I feel one of the bad PR things that happens is, um,

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. That's right. And the other thing I'd say, there is a vocal minority of public in Utah. Our wildlife board is 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,

But it's a lot of pressure, and they often go against the recommendation of 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 until it's clear that they're not making a good choice. Yeah. No, I...

It's, it's, it's such a complex inner twangling. 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, um,

I've got a little more experience under my belt. I want to go out there and hunt for a different reason. I want to go try to take a mature bull, an old bull off landscape. And so I'm very, I want to be very respectful to what everybody wants. And it's very tough because now the biologists have, you know, hunter experts.

100 X over here that wants maximum opportunity. Hunter Y is now mad because, or maybe not mad. Hunter Y just wants trophy quality. Well, Hunter Z wants a mix of both and a good mix of both. Well, now as a biologist and a state agency, how do you provide that to the 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, uh, you know, the farmer within the 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 biologists do know what they're doing. They can listen to a lot of that, but as a, it's a very difficult decision to be made. I think that, that

uh, makes everybody happy. Yeah. I, I have, I have a lot of empathy for him cause 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. Cause we have different values on what we want from the population. Yeah. And it's hard to balance all of those. For sure. Yeah. It's,

It's tough. But yeah, I appreciate you coming on, Brock. Thanks for kind of, you know, 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 going to say this one more time and I'm going to run away from it until politics gets sprinkled in a little bit. But, but yeah, it's, it's it's been a great conversation. I'm glad to pick your brain and good luck this year and really appreciate having you on the podcast. Well, I really appreciate it. We have another 10 days of elk calving. If you want to come down and go out on some. I'll be, I'll be chasing calves around on Monday and Tuesday here. I don't know what I'm getting myself into, but I look forward to learning.

Oh, it's fantastic. I love it. All right. Thanks a lot, Brock. Take care. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Hey, we're going to take a little break here and talk about interstate batteries. Now, if you're like me, enjoying the great outdoors, you need gear that is as reliable as it gets. That's why I power my adventures with interstate batteries. I use interstate batteries in my boats. I use interstate batteries in my camper. Great for your truck, too. From Alaska to Montana, they're outrageously dependable.

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