Trail K: All right, folks, ⁓ welcome back to the Big Hunt Guys podcast. ⁓ I should say it's the bit the Big Hunt guy this week because it's only me. Brady is on the road. He's actually traveling back east to visit some family, and Lorenzo is in Idaho on doing some vacation, summer vacation. So ⁓ any listeners, you guys are stuck with me this week, but I'm gonna carry the torch. But I have ⁓ a couple of guests today. ⁓ this kind of topic kind of stemmed from ⁓ some wildfires that are kind of raging across the West. And we had a couple of big ones that just have really covered a bunch of country. I think it's probably probably the biggest fire. That Cottonwood fire is is probably one of the biggest that I can remember in my lifetime. The only other one that would might kind of, you know, rival it would be that Milford flat fire, which It was probably what, early two thousands, I wanna say, which I think that one was about a hundred thousand acres plus. But ⁓ this cottonwood fire I think is probably gonna touch a hundred thousand. But I just been getting a bunch of questions recently about wildfire and li wildlife. ⁓ like my two guests, I I would almost guarantee you guys have probably been through social media and seen a bunch of comments and tons of people worried about the impact on wildlife and the impact on hunting in general as we move into the fall. So I thought it'd be really good to to jump on and talk wildfire and wildlife. And so I have the ⁓ Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, the big game coordinator, Mike Wardle. And I've got ⁓ Mikita Hansen, who is the I want to say you're the coordinator for migration, right? Migration corridor. Makeda Hanson: Yeah, wildlife migration initiative. Trail K: Yeah, well I butchered that one. My bad. I got your name right though. So that's something, right? Yeah. So I appreciate you guys jumping on. I know this was short notice. ⁓ you know, I I talked to Dax Mangus, who's the Southern Region manager, and ⁓ he was nice enough to kind of line me out with you guys. But I appreciate you jumping on. we've all kind of worked together. It's been we were just talking before we jumped on ⁓ the mics. ⁓ it's been about 15 years ago, I guess, since I worked for the division, but you guys have you've been there for probably at least that long, right? Mike Wardle: About about that time for me. D do people do your listeners know that you used to work for the Dark Side Trail? Like do they know about your path? Okay. Trail K: Yeah, yeah. They for sure. Yeah. They do. I I get comments, you know, like, ⁓ Trell's too much of an advocate for the DWR, needs to throw some shade your guys' way, but I f I've I figure you guys get plenty of that. And then besides that, like I've seen it from both sides, you know. Like I I know a lot of people that work there and I know what it's like to work for a state agency. And ⁓ you know, I'm always I'm always an advocate for ⁓ state game and fish because I think you guys work really hard and I think you have a genuine care and concern for wildlife. And I know that most of you that work there are hunters. so I I'm always a an advocate and and kind of working for the division. So give me your your titles if you would, Mike. Mike Wardle: Appreciate that. I say I'm the big game coordinator. ⁓ I'm pretty newly minted in this new position. I used to be the district biologist that covered the Beaver, Pavant and Oak Creek units. ⁓ but I took this big game coordinator job back in March. That was when I started. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Were you were you just like a glutton for punishment? Is that what you're Mike Wardle: Yeah. Yeah, I was just feeling too much happiness in life, like not enough stress. Too much joy. Well, I I was at a point in my career where I I really enjoyed being the biologist. ⁓ I got to be outside every day and I I really loved that. But I was getting to this point where I wanted new challenges. and and and there are times where like as a district biologist you feel frustrated with different things happening and I'm like, well I could Trail K: Ha ha ha. Mike Wardle: sit and complain about it or I can jump into the arena and and move work my way up and try to have more impact. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I make I make that joke tongue tongue in cheek. I know that ⁓ you know being being a biologist is a it's a fun job, but it also comes with its own challenges and then moving up to being, you know, the big game coordinator is ⁓ is similar, I would say. It just maybe the challenges are even wider because now you're kind of looking at at a statewide level, right? Mike Wardle: Yeah. Yeah, similar challenges, just a just a bigger pool of challenges to pick from. Trail K: Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ Makita, how long you've been with the division? Makeda Hanson: I've been with the division for about 15 years now. I've been in my position as the Wildlife Migration Initiative Coordinator for about two years, two and a half. ⁓ and before that I spent most of my career in the southeastern region of the state. ⁓ so Carbon Emory, Graham, San Juan counties, ⁓ in the habitat section. So I have a lot of background in habitat management and impact analysis, which is kind of looking at development on the land and how that impacts wildlife. So Trail K: Okay. Makeda Hanson: Yeah, I this this migration initiative's kind of like I think for me the best of both worlds where you're kind of looking at the the landscape and the response of wildlife simultaneously. So it's a pretty awesome role to be in. Trail K: Is that is it a relatively new role or have you had that for a while? Makeda Hanson: Yeah, the migration initiative started in two thousand seventeen. So we're actually coming up on ten years of the migration initiative. And yeah, we're gonna focus a little bit the next year or so, kind of talking about all the lessons we've learned from all the collar information that we have across the state. So we've learned a lot of really cool stuff, like the data we have available now, which is helping us understand what's happening with these fires ⁓ right now is super beneficial and valuable. Trail K: Yeah. Right. I say I say relatively recent and I think ten years for me is relatively recent still. So Yeah, t ten years is still still a hot minute. ⁓ do you do you get into like ⁓ a lot of the overpass and fencing issues as well? Makeda Hanson: Yeah, yeah. So the migration initiative really focuses on wildlife movement and connectivity. And so yeah, highways are a major barrier. Fences can be a major barrier, maybe if not even for like direct mortalities with fences, but just increased energy expenditures. Animals are trying to figure out how to navigate those across the landscape. So yeah, barriers and habitat preservation. So like conservation easements in critical areas, and then also just like habitat restoration and trying to Make sure we have the best forage on the landscape so animals can access that. Trail K: Do you spend a lot of time looking at caller data? Every day? Is that like a mor morning check for you? You get up and kinda kinda check on them? It's probably overwhelming because I you yeah we have a lot of callers out, right? Do you know how many callers we've we've got? Makeda Hanson: Every day. Every day, yep. ⁓ yeah, I think right now we have about two thousand deer alone that are active across the state. And so yeah, for me, like I'm looking at stuff at a statewide level, but I I'm almost jealous sometimes of the regional staff or some of our research partners because they're really focusing in on specific questions or looking at specific animals. So they sometimes notice way cooler stuff than I notice just because I'm looking at it so broadly. But yeah, we have a lot, a lot of active callers right now, and we're planning to do Trail K: Mm-hmm. Makeda Hanson: think eight hundred more deer this winter. ⁓ like a total of thirteen hundred more collars across big game species. So a lot of collar information. ⁓ most collars collect points like every two hours. So we have over eighty million location points in our database now. So Trail K: That's cool. Wow. Yeah, that's crazy. ⁓ yeah, opportunity maybe this winter. Then if you guys are gonna do a bunch of more collaring to to come out and maybe help out, just to even just to just to watch it and see it, you know. I know back in the day I used to be the guy that would roll in and maybe give a, you know, a shot a shot here and there or, you know, do a a fat measurement. I'd just do whatever ⁓ Randy Larson or Brock told me to do usually. ⁓ Makeda Hanson: Yeah. I need to get a talk on fecal samples. I don't know what that's about, but Trail K: That's funny. so I would assume you guys are probably getting you're probably getting hammered with questions about wildfire given given the fire that ⁓ has kind of kicked off. And you know, the cottonwood's the big one, but we've got fires burning across the the West and then, you know, across Utah as well. But maybe Mike, if you gotta maybe just just talk about, you know the status of wildfire right now in the state of Utah, if you have an idea of like how many are burning and how many total acres we're looking at and, you know, how big, what kind of country they're burning through. Mike Wardle: Sure. Yeah. ⁓ so the cottonwood, I'll start there 'cause that's the one I'm most familiar with where I used to cover the beaver. ⁓ it's just under a hundred thousand acres. ⁓ from what I've been told and what I've understand, it's getting fairly boxed in now. They don't anticipate a ton more growth, but I mean things could change today with that. A lot of the country that that has burned ⁓ is actually good long term for wildlife. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: it it's obviously been really destructive for people's cabins and private property, which is terrible. It's it's really sad to see that. ⁓ but ⁓ as far as like long term for wildlife, a lot of that country was pretty dense, conifers, ⁓ old growth forests that, you know, now is going to be converted to forbs and grasses and ⁓ really good feed for wildlife. So a lot of the high elevation stuff Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: ⁓ long term good, short term, yeah, there's definitely some challenges and sad things happening. ⁓ the biggest fire currently actually now is the Babylon fire. That's down in the San Juan. ⁓ it surpassed the cottonwood this past week. I think Makita, is it over a hundred thousand, do you know now? Trail K: Really. Makeda Hanson: Yeah, I think it's about a hundred and three thousand as of yesterday when I was looking at it. So pretty big. Trail K: What what kind of country is it burning through? Is it ⁓ more pinion juniper type stuff, or is it also alpine, mixed conifer, aspen? Makeda Hanson: That one primarily is burning through Ponderosa forest. A little bit of like gamble oak mountain mahogany communities and then some of that mixed conifer as well. But it's it's also high elevation and similar to what Mike was saying before, the summer range stuff that should hopefully hopefully get a good understory following the fire and ⁓ produce some some really good forage for wildlife in the next couple years. Trail K: Yes. Gotcha. Is it burning hot enough and is there enough of an understory that it's carrying up into the crown and you're losing a lot of that big, you know, standing pine pine, ponderosa? Makeda Hanson: Now our staff haven't been able to go out just because it's an active fire, but they have been at the at the regional level on the habitat section's been coordinating with ⁓ fire responders down there. And there has been some habitat treatment work in the past, and in those areas where they've done some prescribed burning in the fat past, the the fire is coming down to the ground. ⁓ but there has been a few canopy burning events. ⁓ when you look at satellite imagery. You really see there's like a lot of patchiness to the fires. So you hear a hundred thousand acres and it seems super big and a little bit scary, but when you start looking at satellite imagery and we start evaluating those fires after we can get in there, it's it's pretty patchy and there's quite a few mosaics and we'll see varying levels of intensity, depending on conditions, even at the daily level. Trail K: Yeah. Is that Mike, is that kind of your same understanding on the the cottonwood fire on the beaver? Is it burning patchiness or are we just like hitting massive swaths of country? Or do you have any idea? Mike Wardle: No, I I think I think e even when it burned really fast, I'm sure there are patches that were left. I've been looking at all the daily updates and ⁓ their mapping is getting more specific and you're able to see more patches that were left. ⁓ yeah, I mean there's definitely the second and third day of the fire when it was cranking up through like the beaver watershed, yeah, I think it ⁓ it probably burned a lot. ⁓ without as much mosaic burn. But this last week this last week a lot of the stuff that I've seen it looks like it's burning slowly and in more of a mosaic pattern, which is good. Trail K: Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of the the thing about wildfire, at least, you know, a lot of the units in southern Utah have burned. I mean, if you look at the Penguish Lake, that one was seventy thousand acres, maybe six or seven years ago, I want to say. I can't remember the the Dutton, obviously, which is one of my favorite units. That one burned back when I was a kid. That was eighty thousand acres. The Monroe last year, I think that one was, you know, pushing seventy thousand acres. And when you do, when you look at the perimeter on the map, ⁓ you know, if we're following the news or whatever, we just see this like blob and it's like the hole mountain. The whole mountain is burned, right? But then, you know, you get back up there, ⁓ you know, post burn, maybe the next year, you you really start to see that it's it it did kind of mosaic out where you've got some standing patches of live pine or timber that remained, and then you've got these patches of burns and where it went on runs. In reality, like that's that's probably the best thing that you could do for for wildlife, right? You get those those patchy burns where you've still got some bedding and cover and some areas where they can, you know, get away from ⁓ the weather and they can thermoregulate, but then you've also got that great flush of feed that comes in on the back end. So, ⁓ it it it seems all doom and gloom. And I'm with you, Mike. I mean, you know, the cabins and all the loss of structure really stinks, but I keep telling people, you know, the long term, look what it's gonna do for for that mountain and and for wildlife. ⁓ I did have a question I was I was kinda interested in. It feels like these fires, a lot of them have kicked off like earlier in the year. I mean normally I think we would see these in like July and August. Is is the timing of these burns of concern as it relates to fawning and calving for elk and deer? Mike Wardle: Yeah, I I can take that. ⁓ I think I do think we lose some fawns and calves in these fires. We don't have great data on it. ⁓ we've never had like we we do neonate studies throughout the state, right, where we go and collar one, two day old fawns and we we monitor their survival from zero months to six months old. ⁓ we haven't had it line up to where we had neonate collars out and a fire on top of it to really know what like have good scientific data on what the impact is. ⁓ when we do our deer classification routes in November and December, ⁓ after these some of these bigger fires, we have noticed a small dip in our fondo ratios. ⁓ but it hasn't been like huge catastrophic, you know, differences between years. Like ⁓ the Monroe is looking at that. ⁓ this past year, Vance's when Vance went and did his classification in areas where These deer had summered in the burn. ⁓ they were around fifty f 50 fawns per hundred dose, which isn't a terrible number. It's not great, but it's not terrible. ⁓ and then other parts of the mountain, he was up in the mid sixties. So I think there is some definitely that's where the loss is, I think, ⁓ for for mule deer especially, because those fawns, the majority of the fawns are going to be born, you know, in the month of June. And for the really the first Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: Couple months of their life, their their main defense mechanism is to hide. So when mom runs, they dive under a bush. And so I definitely think we do lose some. But I I've been honestly I've been really surprised at how well the adults do. ⁓ we we've got we've had callers on the Monroe last year. We've got a bunch on the Babylon fire right now on the San Juan. And we have a handful on the beaver. And and they do surprisingly really well. I think they find those. Trail K: Mm. Mike Wardle: either like a riparian area or just one of these patches that doesn't get burned and they they get out of it or they they run away a few miles and then they come back after the fire's passed through. ⁓ yeah, it's it it's kind of interesting to watch. Trail K: Do you do you have any kind of indication on like what is the percentage loss in mortality for for deer deer and elk on on on a wildfire? Maybe ⁓ an active wildfire that gets that big, you know, fifty, sixty thousand acres plus. Has there been any kind of studies or do you guys have ⁓ information from your collar data on what the the mortality is like in terms of percentage? Makeda Hanson: ⁓ yeah, I can maybe take a stab at that, Mike, and then you can come in. ⁓ we had, I think, like over 50 mule deer collars on the Monroe fire last year, and we didn't lose any of our collared adults as a result of fire. ⁓ I know there was some like observation of some mortalities. I think the assumption there that there was maybe some smoke inhalation issues. ⁓ but in terms of our collared animals, we didn't have. And die, and then following the fire. ⁓ from what I understand, when we're looking at body condition this year, their body condition was a little lower in the winter, but since we had a mild winter following that fire, ⁓ they were able to get through it okay. ⁓ so I think there's like variables that come into play. And then on the Babylon fire right now, we have about 24 deer callers that have been within the fire perimeter. ⁓ all of those. ⁓ s appear to be alive. There's there's one that's we don't really know what's happening with it. It's kind of an older collar. It was on an older deer. We don't really have a confirmed mortality, but it it stops sending locations. So we're really not sure what's happening there. ⁓ but that's only one of about twenty four that we're just kind of uncertain about at this point in time. ⁓ but yeah everything else is alive. Did you have anything to add there, Mike? Mike Wardle: ⁓ I'd yeah, I'd just add that, you know, that one might have died from the fire, we don't know for sure. But ⁓ I I definitely do think there are scenarios where deer are gonna get caught in a fire, adults and ⁓ elk, you know, that happens. I don't but I don't think it's happening at a level that's really impacting the population. ⁓ at least as far as the adults. Trail K: Right. Yeah. I looked at some information. ⁓ I remember the the big Yellowstone fire that burned like back in the eighties when I was a kid and I I'd looked at some studies. I think what I'd read that it suggested that maybe mortality for ⁓ deer and elk and that was a huge fire, was like maybe one to three percent, they figured. ⁓ and I don't know because I'm sure they didn't have the the collar data that we've got now. ⁓ but i all the papers that I've looked at have kind of suggested maybe that like one to three percent, which is not not I mean it's it's that's a pretty small, you know, percentage given the amount of country that some of those fires are covering. it is interesting that you had fifty collars out on the Monroe fire and didn't lose any of ⁓ Yeah, pr pr pretty neat. How are Mike Wardle: And there's you know, there's other side effects like that we don't understand fully. Like people have asked the question, do predation rates increase ⁓ where deer don't have as much cover? if they're if a deer's trying to run from coyotes and instead of jumping brush and all these other things the they're just running on a on the moonscape. ⁓ that may have an impact. We're we're looking at the Monroe right now. We don't have great data yet, but there has been an uptick in like coyote mortalities on fawns. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: so far this year. and those are those are collared fawns. And so when I say fawns, that's a six month old to a year and a half old. That's that monitoring period. So yeah, maybe maybe something there, but not like we're not seeing giant diets from these fires. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. How are they like how are they avoiding it? What big what kind of behavior have you noticed? Are they completely moving out of the area? Are they like clearing country and they're going to entirely different, you know, sections of the unit? Or are they just kind of dancing around within the fire and just moving from like live patch to live patch and then waiting for it to pass? I was just curious, is is there any information that you can glean from the callers that you've had on these these other fires? Makeda Hanson: Yeah, just observationally, ⁓ with all the collars we had on the Monroe, they moved around and their movement seemed to increase a little bit during the fire, but in terms of like their summer home range size, they really didn't leave their typical summer range. ⁓ similar thing happening on the Babylon fire. ⁓ from a migration standpoint, what has been interesting, it's been a very limited number, but one deer on the Monroe and two deer on the Babylon. left the fire. ⁓ they they went out about 10 to 15 miles, but they followed their migration pathway to do that. And so they're using the areas, it seems like, that they know how to escape from. However, in both of those situations, those animals returned to the black. So where the fire had burned within 10 days of them leaving. So even though they're maybe leaving for Trail K: ⁓ Mm-hmm. Makeda Hanson: A minute, they're coming right back. So yeah, for the most part, they're kind of just staying around in their summer range and the few that leave come back pretty quickly. Trail K: Yeah, interesting. So they're following they're following their migration route that they know inside and out, avoiding the fire and then and then coming right back. Yeah, interesting. And the way I understand it, so I mean, deer have like much higher sight fidelity, right? They they have a summer range and they they can hold like a much tighter home range and they have like fidelity to that range. Whereas I think elk, at least just you know, the way I understand hunting elk and scouting for elk, it seems like they can roam a lot wider. ⁓ feels like they can eat a lot different a a bigger variety of species. And so it feels like, you know, and they're a bigger animal, they can just cover more ground. So they they might move. But are elk doing the same thing? Are they moving kind of out and then coming right back to that that burned area, their summer range? Are they just kind of moving? Makeda Hanson: Yeah, for the most part, ⁓ with the Monroe Fire we had quite a few elk. I think we had like thirty to fifty elk colored on the Monroe. And yeah, their their movements aren't as distinct as deer. They're not like quite like you mentioned, as tied to their summer ranges, but we still found that they primarily stayed within the area that was burning ⁓ and they returned to the same areas this summer. We had one colored elk on the Babylon this year and that one left the fire. perimeter. ⁓ but yeah, for the most part, like I said, they really kind of just stick with where they've been. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Have you have you looked at any collar data to see are they how far out ahead of the burn are they? I was curious as to d do you think that they have any kind of indication that it's coming? Are you are you seeing any movement before the fire actually like gets there? Or how do they how do they know that? Makeda Hanson: ⁓ it's really hard to tell. I think we get daily updates on fire perimeter, ⁓ and we can see, you know, their movement behaviors. For the most part, it seems like they may like increase their movements a little bit, but not a ton. I don't think we've looked at it that fine scale yet. So it's kind of just observing animals ⁓ in the process. But there's been nothing that's stood out to me in any way where I would think, wow, they're Trail K: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Makeda Hanson: behaving differently than I would expect. Trail K: I mean, I just hold them up there on this pedestal and I think that they're like this mystical animal that knows what's coming, you know. They're reading that barometric pressure or whatever it is, and they're like, We're out of here three or four days in advance. Where I don't think that's probably the case, but I like to I like to create it in my mind a little bit, you know. Kind kind of fun. ⁓ Go ahead, Mike. Mike Wardle: It I was just gonna add one thing. ⁓ you know, your your talk about like the difference in how deer are habitual and elk are more responsive to what's going on around them. I I think I think hunters should know that that applies after the fire too. ⁓ we usually see deer don't like deer aren't changing and all of a sudden going to a different mountain six miles away because the place burned. Elk might do that. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: And and that's usually they're coming from an unburned place to the burn scar. ⁓ you'll see you'll see elk that make huge changes in the area that they use based on these burns. They'll come in for that that post fire flush of nutrition. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they might ⁓ spend some time on the south end of the beaver and then when the Penguish Lake burns, they might run over there and eat it the next year or or or vice versa. yeah. Yeah, that is a good tip. I've I've ⁓ I've always kind of over the years just built that up with with mule deer, especially like I feel like a more mature mule deer, you know, a buck that I'm hunting, like if I find that buck, I feel like that's the animal that is like the tightest to his home range. And Mike Wardle: ⁓ Yeah. Yep. Trail K: You know, I think he might get bumped, he might feel some pressure, but I think he just uses that landscape more wisely. I think he knows exactly where he can stay hidden and still stay in his same in a little pocket. And to me I've always as I've thought it through, I'm like, it makes sense 'cause if you increase your home range, if you move more, you're opening yourself up to more predation. So, you know, a a lion's gonna need a eat a mule deer lot easier than he will an elk, right? So I feel like ⁓ you know, mule deer's a lot more ⁓ susceptible to predation. And I think if he can hold a tight home range and he knows where his food and water is, it just makes sense to me that he's going to stay put. And I mean in relation to fire, that same thing would make sense. I mean, if you gotta go, you gotta go. But I think it makes sense to them to to go right back to to what they know. ⁓ I am curious though, and this is going to be my follow-up question, ⁓ it sounds like you're saying that a lot of these, you know, deer will move back into that burn. Like right after it's kind of burned out, they'll move right back into it. What are they eating? Like what are they doing? Mike Wardle: ⁓ it I'll I'll say it depends on the fire. Makeda Hanson: ⁓ okay. Yeah, go ahead, Mike. Mike Wardle: You'll yeah, ⁓ it depends on the fire for sure. Like if it's low elevation, ⁓ that stuff takes a while to get good feed coming back. But like these high elevation burns, if it's burning in like oak, you'll s you'll see oak coming back up sometimes within weeks, you know, especially if we get some rain. That stuff can come up quick. ⁓ same with aspen stands. ⁓ the the root system is still alive and so they start to pop up suckers and there's it's I think people would actually be surprised at how quickly the mountain heels and there's forage there to eat. Trail K: Right. Yeah. I'm hoping we get these monsoons they keep talking about, right? Mike Wardle: be nice, we could sure use it. But I mean after a fire though that also creates issues. It caused a lot of floods. But ⁓ yeah. It the flooding is the bad side, but yeah the we need the water for sure. Makeda Hanson: Nice for Trail K: Yeah. Yeah. Makeda Hanson: Yeah, I think that was a great distinction that you made, Mike, though, is that yeah, we're talking a little bit about response to these high elevation fires because that's where we've had some collar information and that's what's kind of active right now. But yeah, when it comes to those winter range fires where it's taking sagebrush out that they rely on for the winter and that's not a plant that resprouts after a fire, ⁓ that that can change behavior a little bit. So yeah, like right now summer range is my focus because that's what we're looking at. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Makeda Hanson: But yeah, it's a good point, Mike. Like when when when a range is lost, it's a lot bigger, bigger impact. Mike Wardle: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, not all not all fires good. Trail K: Yeah. Yeah. I mean Yeah. Speak speak to that actually, 'cause I think that's where you're headed and and that was gonna be my follow up question. But like speak to what's a what's a good fire and what's a bad fire. Mike Wardle: think a good example is the Oak Creek unit, if anybody knows that unit. ⁓ you know there was a giant fire in 2012, I think Clay Springs fire. Burned a lot of high elevation stuff that was great for Mule Deer. ⁓ really really created the success and the big bucks that have been killed on the Oak Creek over the last ten years. ⁓ but it also burned a ton of winter range and that was incredibly detrimental for Mule Deer. It burned up all the cliff rows, bitter brush, sagebrush And and there was cheat grass present in that system and after a fire that cheat grass just takes over and you have other ⁓ invasive grasses and what you end up with is an area that used to be full of really good wintertime browse for deer, now is just grass and and it doesn't hold much nutritional value during the winter time. And so in the case of the Oak Creek, ⁓ these deer they have phenomenal summer range. ⁓ It it's a really narrow band of summer range, but that area has good forage. But during the winter they don't have anything and so instead you can go to Oak City and count seven hundred deer in alfalfa fields during the winter because there's nothing else for ⁓ to eat and they're surviving on alfalfa. Trail K: Mm. Yeah, that makes a fun problem for you guys, I'm sure. Peop people Ran ran ranchers love deer and they're they're alpha alpha, right? I've heard that. Mike Wardle: It does, yeah. They do, yeah. But yeah, these the low elevation fires sometimes are they're really hard. Those shrubs that they they get burned up, ⁓ they're really an old lived they're old lived plants, they can live twenty, thirty, forty years. It takes a long time for ⁓ to get to maturity. And the competition with grasses after that fire is really hard. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I spoke a little bit earlier about the Dutton. you know, that fire burned when I was, you know, living I was still in high school at the time, I think, when that one burned, which was ⁓ about eighty thousand acres. And for my entire lifetime pretty much, ⁓ you know, I've been up there looking around and it's it's a a bunch of big open country where it was. It was a lot of a lot of grasses after that burn. You know, there was like these big open slopes, a lot of that burned off the east side. But it has been interesting to me. And I was with my brother ⁓ last year. We were poking around down there chasing elk. So much of that now is really starting to transition over to sage. Like a lot of that burn is becoming sagebrush. Like the the browse has really finally come back in. And that's been, it feels like, you know, twenty years, twenty five years or something, right? So it it took all that time, but it is finally happening. It just takes forever, way longer than that. That upper elevation summer range stuff does to come back. I was gonna ask, ⁓ what is so good burn, bad burn. I think it sounds to me at least like some of these burns that are that are going on right now are for the most part like good burns, right? They're burning up in in summer elevation. They're they're burning at higher elevations, which is a good thing. ⁓ I was gonna ask you. What has been the response, like the Monroe or the Penguinch Lake? ⁓ what has been the response to mule ear populations or elk populations on those unit after those burns? Have w has it done good things for the population? Mike Wardle: Yeah, I think I think in the long term it does. ⁓ we don't have like we don't see like a huge spike in in body fat and I it's not like there's this obvious, you know, increase in the data. ⁓ but anecdotally we hear of way more big bucks being killed. ⁓ we do see oftentimes a bump in like our fondo ratios and production rates. ⁓ Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: So I I think long term for mule deer it's a good thing. Mule deer thrive on disturbance. They need they need those early successional plants rather than like just stands of timber. You know, they they need fewer bedrooms and more kitchens, right? ⁓ so I think long term long term is good. And with elk with elk for sure, I think we see like I said, we will see elk. Trail K: Hmm. Don't we all? Mike Wardle: if you look at the Twitchell fire on the beaver, ⁓ that burned the north end of the beaver in two thousand ten, was a big fire. We saw a huge hu this movement of elk coming from like South Creek and the southern part of the unit to where they were all piling it into the north end. And I think that that has an effect on the atr nutrition that's available to ⁓ and and everything that we've learned from collar studies shows that nutrition is is the driver. That's kind of the key. ⁓ you know, fat fat dolls and cows throw fat babies and fat babies live longer, they survive better, ⁓ they make bigger antlers. ⁓ so nutrition really is the driver. So, yeah, long term it's a good thing at these high el elevations, some of the lower elevations maybe not so much. It it really depends on if the fire is increasing nutrition or Trail K: Right. What's ⁓ go ahead. Makeda Hanson: I think we have a really unique opportunity right now, too. Both the Monroe and the San Juan are long-term survival units. So we've had colored animals on those units for over 10 years at this point, and they will continue to be units that we will call our animals on for the foreseeable future. And so we are working with university partners right now who have graduate students already on the Monroe and we'll probably start. To really start looking at the pre and post condition of these super long term data sets. We have like literally one of the best data sets in the country in terms of the movement information in collars and then the survival and body fat condition. So we're at a really unique opportunity right now to start answering some of those questions and I'm really excited to see where it goes. Trail K: Mm-hmm. One of the one of the comments I see a lot on social media is like, man, I really I hope that they're up there reseeding. I hope that they're getting seed in the ground. I hope and hope I hope what we're we're taking you know steps to to reestablish vegetation on the mountain. ⁓ is it needed? And and if so, ⁓ do you guys know is there plans to do any kind of reseeding, and if so, what kind and and where? Makeda Hanson: Yeah, so we in in Utah we have the Watershed Restoration Initiative, which is a super amazing multi-agency organization partnership. ⁓ and our restoration biologists often participate in the burned area emergency response team. So they're called the bear teams. And so once these fires are out, they will go out with Peels and Fire people and look at the conditions and look at the burn severity. So on high elevation fires, like we mentioned before, those respond. pretty well, but there may be areas where it burned really hot or where the soils may be unstable for you know several years after the fire. And then we start having issues with ⁓ soils ⁓ running off, maybe it maybe impact some of our other species like fish. ⁓ and so we will kind of work with our partners to identify those areas that are most at risk and we will oftentimes reseed those areas. lower elevation fires we definitely partner on reseeding. They they typically don't recover quite as well. And unfortunately reseeding efforts aren't quite as effective there either because it relies so much on precipitation and condition and competition with other species. But one unique thing about Utah too is ⁓ our research branch in Utah is is our Great Basin Research Center, which really is focusing on on plant research. And so I know they've been preparing with fire season and ordered a lot more seed in preparation for wildlife rehab efforts and so yeah our s our staff and is working with partners to to do that and we'll kind of evaluate that once fires are out. Trail K: Gotcha. ⁓ Mike, you brought up ⁓ my favorite topic, big antlers. do you do do you really do you think that there is something tied to, you know, post burn and these areas recovering and then, you know, a buck or a bull's ability to put on more growth? Mike Wardle: Yeah, I think so. ⁓ there's a cool there's some cool research out of BYU ⁓ done by a guy named Eric Freeman and ⁓ it looked at th they had a data set ⁓ where they knew the age of the animal and they knew Boon and Crockett score of the animal. And it was from across the West. And they were able to determine the year the animal was born and essentially look back and estimate the condition that that their mother would have been in. And the year that they were harvested and what precip levels were like in that area. And ⁓ the the result of that was they showed that antler growth, this was for deer and elk, ⁓ is influenced. I can't remember the percentages, but there's there's a certain percentage ⁓ that's influenced by the current year precipitation. And then there's also an influence, what we call the maternal effect. And so looking back into history at that buck. or that bull's mom, the condition that she was in while ⁓ that that buck bucker bull was in utero, that can impact his antler size later on as an adult. So I think immediately post fire you're gonna see a flush of nutrition on some of these high elevation burns. That can have an impact because it's going to influence the amount of nutrition that's available to them during the spring and summer months when antlers are growing. even further down the road you'll might see even more of an impact where you'll have a doe that has been living in this flush of nutrition after a fire. ⁓ she's in good health. She throws a fawn. That's a big fawn and because she was in good health, he has higher chances of survival. He now is summering in that same area and has good nutrition available to him. By the time he's four and five years old he's maybe a giant. ⁓ so I Trail K: Right. Mike Wardle: Yeah, and and that doesn't always apply, right? But I think there are scenarios where some of these good fires can have a big amp impact on antler growth from urine elk. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love love that Mike Wardle: I mean honestly the beaver's a good example of it. The beaver's had high elevation fires the last three or four years and there's been a lot of big bulls harvested there and I I do think those fires impacted that. Trail K: Yeah. Yeah, you know, you know what's interesting about the beaver. So I I used to love to hunt the beaver unit. It was my my favorite unit to to hunt. I lived in Circleville for, you know, a number of years going to high school and I got to know that unit really well. And then over the years I kind of migrated around and started to hunt some different units and get to know some different countries. So it it had been a really long time since I had hunted the beaver. And then last year, my youngest boy had a beaver deer tag. He drew a tag. And we went out During the hunt last week of ⁓ October. And, you know, I everything that I'd heard from people that were still hunting the beaver was like, hey, you know, you'll see some bugs. There's not really anything big. Age class seems young. You probably see a lot of people. Seems like they issue a fair number of permits. So my expectations weren't that high. But ⁓ we hunted a burn, a a burn that had happened not all that long ago. So I don't want to give it completely away, but ⁓ He killed a buck, a great four point buck. He's probably 170. ⁓ we saw a better buck that morning, and I think we saw like 13 bucks that morning. And ⁓ yeah, I was like, man, you know, maybe, maybe the beaver's back. Maybe I need to look into the beaver a little bit because that was just one day, you know, out hunting with my 12 year old. ⁓ but yeah, to me, it was just like anecdotally like one day on a landscape where I was like, ⁓ yeah, I'm gonna kind of chase these fires and and kind of see what can happen. ⁓ I was curious, is there do you guys think that there's like an ideal time frame for a burn where it can be beneficial? And if so, what is that window? Mike Wardle: Yeah, ⁓ that's that's a good question. That's a question I think about a lot actually. ⁓ it seem like I said, I think there's there's possibilities that antler growth is influenced really quickly because because if a buck has I'm I think of it this way, like so antlers are a secondary growth characteristic, right? Which means a buck doesn't put a ton of effort and nutrition into growing antlers until everything else is good, right? Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: It's his bodily function, that's that's all gotta be going well. He's gotta have fat on him in order to be a giant. And so so these things so antlers are secondary. And so he's gotta have that means he's gotta be eating at the buffet every day in order to be like a two hundred plus inch buck. And and within a year or two of a of a good high elevation burn, I think that they can be in a buffet pretty quick. So you might see it within a year or two. I I think a lot of big bucks get harvested shortly after a burn simply because they're more ⁓ they're easier to observe and find, just because there's not as much cover. And and so that happens too. There were bucks there already and now they got this flush of nutrition and you can find them easier. So sometimes you see bigger bucks get killed afterwards. ⁓ but as far as how how long that benefit lasts, that's the question that I don't I don't have a great number on. ⁓ I I used to hunt that north end of the beaver a lot and and now it seems like in that twitchel fire you can barely walk through the dang thing because of all the deadfall. Some of that stuff on the buttons the same way and and and you see fewer animals using it because it is so difficult to access it. But if you do have an animal that is in there, like you talked about and is willing to stay in that tight home range with good nutrition, maybe maybe you make a giant. ⁓ Trail K: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, all that jet that Yeah, that jack's jack straw makes it hard. Once that standing dead starts to come down, it does it does seem that ⁓ it gets harder for those animals to to navigate through and use. ⁓ I've always kind of thought maybe it's like ten years, fifteen years, but then again it's just anecdotal. I don't really know. ⁓ Mike Wardle: Yeah. It it's highly dependent on the which fire too. Makeda Hanson: Yeah, I think from a vegetation standpoint, like that it's it's good up to that like fifteen, twenty year mark when things still are really young and succulent. Like I don't know, so we have a we have a monitoring program for our ranges across Utah. And so it seems like that's really kind of the sweet spot and where it starts to taper off. Still benefits beyond that, but that's kinda like those first twenty years are the the best of the best. Trail K: Mm-hmm. If if somebody has a permit. So I was I was curious what what is the plan for these units where you've got a big fire for people that have drawn permits? Say somebody's drawn a limited entry elk tag or they've they've got a deer tag. ⁓ it are they stuck with those tags? Is there I I mean, I'm sure you guys have I guarantee you you've had phone calls. What's what's what's the ⁓ the direction? Mike Wardle: Yeah. Every day. ⁓ so I can take that. Last last year during the Monroe, we held an emergency board meeting to discuss this. ⁓ because and and it wasn't necessarily based on like the acreage that had burned and the burn itself, it was more actually a conversation about access because the Forest Service closed access to the forest. ⁓ and so we ended up having an emergency board meeting. At that point we We offered hunters the ability to either return their permit and and get their points reinstated, or they could roll over their permit to the following year. That kind of set a precedent, I think, moving forward. And and we actually took a rule change through ⁓ that allows the director to make that decision now. And so we don't have to go to the wildlife board and have an emergency wildlife board meeting. And and that's been good for us because these decisions are hard because you're looking at a Like the beaver, for example, just last week the entire forest district was closed. And then this week they opened up the north end, which there's a lot of great habitat on the north end, a lot of elk and a lot of deer. And so it's like, y'all, if we make the decision too soon, you have hunters that turn their permit back, and then by the time their hunt rolls around, all of a sudden they could have they could have accessed the unit and hunted. So we've we've been trying to kind of Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: push that decision back as far as we can in order to make sure we're making the best decision. ⁓ but I think folks will see stuff coming out this following week where we're we're gonna offer some relief to hunters, ⁓ specifically on the beaver and the San Juan. ⁓ and and it's especially for like our limited entry hunters, I I I want people to know like we're we're cognizant of it. It takes a lot of time to draw these tags. E even if, you know, say you're one of the random draw people and you you draw a archery elk tag on the beaver with four points. ⁓ if your only option is to either hunt the BLM ground during your hunt or turn your tag back, it kind of sucks because you don't want to turn your tag back. I mean, because you're never going to draw it again. Like you that luck only happened once. So we're we're trying to we're in those discussions right now of what that relief looks like and and hunters will be contacted pretty soon about that. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Gotcha. ⁓ what would you do? I'm curious. And it's I don't even know if that's an appropriate question to ask you given your position, but I'm gonna I'm gonna ask it anyway. If you if you had ac if you had access, like if the forest was open and you could access it by let's say you have an early rifle tag into September, ⁓ what would you do? Mike Wardle: I think ⁓ I'd keep it. Absolutely. If if there was a chance of access opening back up, then I'd absolutely keep it. Even if even if it wasn't road access, you know, and r and maybe that's an even better scenario. Like if the forest keeps roads closed but they allow foot access into areas and I had an early rifle tag or a muzzleotrelk tag, I'd be all for that. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I've had people ask, and that's been my advice as well. Is is I would I would keep it. as long as you've got access and if you have the option to keep it, ⁓ I would take it and run with it. And maybe a follow up to that question, ⁓ would you haunt different areas or would you go right back into that burn? Mike Wardle: I'd probably go right back into the burn. I mean if I like I said, I think that there's it's an easier hunt. It's a lot easier to glass a burn ⁓ than than thick, nasty crap. And it's all open up right now. So yeah, I think you'd find animals easier. But it really is gonna depend on that access. And so that that's the tough decision hunters have to make. Like there's a risk. There's a risk they take by not turning the tag back. ⁓ Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: And but me personally, I'd think I'd roll the dice. Trail K: Yeah. Yeah. It is it's tough, tough decision to make. 'Cause I think I mean I I've been fortunate and then I've I've gotten to hunt a lot of places across the West and my my opinion of of hunting has changed over the years because it used to be I had this mindset that like when I draw as a resident in Utah, as I draw my elk tag, like that's my elk tag, you know, like my one chance to shoot a bull and ⁓ you know as I've kind of gone along, I've thought, ⁓ you know, it's a chance and it's an awesome chance, but there's chances in, you know, Colorado or Idaho or Montana, like I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna go get a chance to hunt elk other places as well. So my My paradigms kind of shift in that regard. But I think for a lot of people when they think about drawing a limited entry elk tag in Utah, especially residents, they think of like, This is it, you know, this is my one chance. And if you've drawn on this year and you drive up onto that landscape and you look at it and it looks like a moonscape with a lot of burn, it's it's probably not the the exact hunt they envisioned, even if those animals are still there. So it's tough, tough spot. Mike Wardle: Yeah, our our director made a comment the other day that I thought was really insightful too. He said he's like, you know, one of the main things that I love so much about hunting is the scouting and it's the time beforehand, getting to know the country and and so I can see for a hunter, like if I if you have max points on a limited entry archery elk tag, I could totally see turning it back in because you don't get that experience of getting to know the country and getting to know individual animals and Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: ⁓ it the the value of the hunt is different for each person, right? And if scouting and that kind of stuff is more important to you, maybe it makes sense to turn it back too. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, tough, tough decision to make. Dang. Yeah. Yeah, if somebody has one of those tags and they just want to donate it to me, that'd be great. I'm on a waiting period, but I I can't ever wait. I'm a guy that's like I start looking at drawds and I'm like, ⁓ I've never hunted that unit, but I've got a points to draw it. Maybe I'll go do that instead, you know, of waiting on on the beaver. Mike Wardle: Yeah. Yeah. I wish I had a tag and had to make that decision. I'd be okay with it. I'll make the decision. Trail K: I just I hate waiting, but ⁓ are you guys aware? So are you are are there are you actively working on other you you talked about the the w the restoration initiative. I I used to keep on up on that a little bit better. ⁓ I was on on a unit the other day kind of looking at it and I saw a bunch of country that has recently been treated that I I didn't even know. It was I hiked out to a point that I hadn't been to in a really long time. I looked down below me and I was like, ⁓ when did that happen? Like these big open expanses that have been kind of been worked over and cleared. But maybe give me an update if you can, on kind of the status of the restoration initiative and what are the priorities? Are we still working a lot of winter range? Are we looking at summer range or what has there been a shift? 'Cause I know when I worked there it was a a lot of winter range focused. Makeda Hanson: Yeah, as we've looked through some of our body condition information, ⁓ the priorities may have shifted a little bit in terms of summer seems to really drive survival. And so really good summer range is where animals are putting on fat. ⁓ and winter range, they're just kind of maintaining as best as they can to get through the winter. So it's really important to come into those winter ranges fat from summer range. So we do have a lot of emphasis on summer range projects now. You know, trying to get aspen restoration, ⁓ removing mixed conifer to try and encourage your aspen regeneration, and then those like Forbes and understory vegetation that's really important for lactating animals to maintain fat and build fat. ⁓ but that doesn't mean that winter range isn't important. And we are trying to continue to work on winter range, whether that's making sure that sagebrush is as healthy as can be, or other browse species like bitter brush, ⁓ even. And some of that higher elevation winter range, and then reducing canopy in piny juniper because once it gets so thick, there really isn't much understory at all. So it's really important to maintain that pinny juniper for cover, especially in the winter and cold temperatures. So, like mentioned before, Mike mentioned bedroom and kitchen is really important. ⁓ so we're we're looking at that. And then in addition to winter range and summer range projects, we're we're also working on Riparian areas, which can be super critical. ⁓ They tend to have vegetation that's green longer. And so animals can build fat longer in riparian areas. And then also, like since we're talking about fire today, like a lot of our projects that we work on internally are to increase forage for wildlife. ⁓ But those projects can also change fire behavior or create areas where firefighters can have a buffer to build from. And so there are often multi benefits to the project work that we do. And that's why it's so successful in Utah with the Watershed Restoration Initiative, because we really are partnering across agencies that have different expertise. And so our goal is always wildlife, but we work with Fuels people who can help, you know, manage those projects to create other other uses and across the landscape. So there's a lot, a lot going on always. ⁓ I think Mike mentioned this the other day, but in our mule management plan, we're targeting a hundred thousand acres a year to try and get restoration on the landscape. So it's really, really effective program. And we get a lot of support ⁓ from sportsmen through our external conservation permit program that really helps us be successful. So pretty critical. for even our sportsman's involvement and that kind of stuff. Trail K: Yeah. Still getting a hundred thousand acres a year though. Still still getting it. That's awesome. Makeda Hanson: I mean we got two hundred thousand acres in Burton this year, so that's that's exciting. Trail K: Yeah, yeah, got a got a bunch of that just right off the top. Mike, are we worried about drought right now? Mike Wardle: Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely on our minds. ⁓ you know, this winter was one of the higher survival years for us on our collard mule deer in Utah because it was such a light winter. ⁓ especially the northern half of the state, that's a big deal. but yeah, long term effects of drought are scary. They're hard. ⁓ you know, when we have a big winter, we we see like I say, especially in northern Utah, we'll see Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: really low survival rates of deer sometimes, but there's a quick response after that. You know, because of that precip in the soil, the plants respond, there's nutrition available, and we see mule deer rebound really fast. You look at like the Wasatch East right now, ⁓ we had that big winter in 22 and 23. the Wasatch East is cranking, cranking out deer. A lot of those northern units are be we're seeing pyphon dose. ratios, high fawn survival rates, high adult surdult survival, ⁓ because deer just naturally respond really well. Drought, there's not as quick of a response. In fact, it's more there there's more long term damage. There's more long term damage to the habitat. Takes longer for deer to recover. So especially the southern half of the state, ⁓ yeah, droughts droughts no bueno. But ⁓ it's also it's also really dependent on what happens this fall. ⁓ if we get good monsoons and we see like a big green up throughout the state over the next two months, that can have a huge impact for deer. ⁓ when you're when you're looking at deer putting on fat, that fall time frame is actually really critical. ⁓ that's the time where bucks are done growing their antlers. ⁓ dough aren't their their lactation demands aren't as high, like fawns are eating more on their own. And so that's really their time. pack on fat. Like those months of August, September, October, that's really when they start to pack it on. And so if we get good monsoons, we might be okay. If we stay dry and we have a heavy winter, then yeah, we're gonna see some loss. If we have a light winter again, maybe we're okay. It's all kind of a guessing game at this point. Trail K: Yeah. We can we can probably have a light winter, a lighter winter, I should say. Maybe next year, but you gotta think like you get prolonged. You get two, three years of those put together, then then we might be in a world of hurt. I don't I don't worry too much. I mean, in just in the past, like I don't worry too much about a light winter, but when you have three or four years of light winters and y you're not getting really any monsoon moisture, that's when I I I start to see, you know. Mike Wardle: Yeah. Yep. Trail K: the landscape really start to deteriorate and it feels like I'm just seeing less less animals. Mike Wardle: Yeah. Yeah if you think back to like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen in southern Utah, ⁓ driving across the landscape, you'd see juniper trees browning out because of drought, you know? It's like this incredibly drought tolerant tree species that's dying because it was so dry. And if we get more of those prolonged back to back years, yeah, it it has an impact on deer for sure. Trail K: Yeah. Gotcha. How ⁓ how you feeling about Deer Deer and Elk statewide since you're the the big game coordinator now? And I'm sure I'll ask the question Are are you issuing too many tags, Mike? Mike Wardle: I don't think so. ⁓ you know what it's it's a fun conversation to talk about because we focus so much on the number of buck permits that we issue, but that really has such a small impact on the overall number of deer on a unit. ⁓ when you're looking at population changes as far as overall number of deer, buck permits are like the very bottom of the scale on what's gonna impact that, right? Like It's really the does and fawns are what really matters. It's it's the survival of your adult does and and the survival of their offspring. That's what's gonna change your deer population. The number of bucks we hunt really they're they're excess. ⁓ that's why we can hunt bucks year after year and not just totally put deer down to zero. And so when it comes to the number of buck permits we issue, really it comes down to a social preference and In Utah, we've tried to provide a range of on that spectrum, you know, where you can have a unit like the Ponciagant with fifty bucks per hundred O's and you can wait your whole life and hunt one time. Or you have units or like our general season units where we manage for fifteen to seventeen bucks per hundred O's and you can draw those more often and go hunt more often. And so really that ⁓ it comes down a lot to social preference and we we try to set those objectives in our statewide plan and and get hunter input. ⁓ you were part of that process trail and you can probably attest it's it's pretty brutal. Like you have a ton of opinionated people and all their opinions are not aligned. So it it can be tough. Trail K: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was on that committee. yeah, and and people's opinions vary. You have some people that ⁓ are completely okay with maybe hunting a general season unit every eight to ten years. They want an opportunity though to maybe see a hundred and sixty, hundred and seventy inch buck off the road and get a crack at it. ⁓ and then you've got people that want to put a permit in their pocket much more often and you know, they might wanna hunt a little harder and you know, have have ⁓ have that opportunity to scout maybe hunt a bigger buck if they put the work in and and you got people in between. ⁓ I'm I'm always an advocate and it's interesting. So I I go up to my local archery range in the morning to shoot my bow and inevitably, you know, we get in conversations and there's a lot of people it just feels like it gets into the ⁓ you know the main vein of what people are saying like, ⁓ there's too many tags, too many tags, too many tags. And ⁓ I understand their sentiment. I understand what they're saying. You know, they're saying they want a chance to see bigger bucks on the landscape. They may not necessarily understand on the flip side of that that they only get a chance to archery hunt every three or four years. I I usually hear ⁓ out and I let ⁓ go. And then, you know, eventually I kind of say, Well, you know, I'm kind of a do do you hate hunting? Like, do you not like hunting? I love hunting. Like I wanna hunt every year. Do you know what I mean? And ⁓ Mike Wardle: Yeah. Yeah. Trail K: It's like if you've if you've got bucks and we've never we've and I make this argument to them, like we've never had more data than we have right now. You know, we we have more data available to us now. We've got better better modeling. you know, we have a better idea of what's on the landscape and it's never going to be foolproof, but you've got more information than we've ever had. And if you've got the animals on the landscape to support a certain number of permits, I'm of the opinion that you should issue them and go hunt bucks. So they don't always love to hear it, but that's kind of where I'm at on it. I wanna permit, I wanna I wanna get a chance to go hunting. So, Mike Wardle: Well and the reality is like almost every general season unit in the state of Utah, if you if you look at the bucks that are harvested each year, almost every unit is producing like a one ninety plus buck. At least one and and maybe more. ⁓ the biggest buck I killed was on Stansberries and it's managed for fifteen to seventeen bucks per hundred dose and I I worked my guts out, but yeah, I found a killed a really nice mature mule deer and I would rather Makeda Hanson: Yeah. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: I I'm of the same opinion that I would rather have that opportunity to hunt rather than just talk about how many points I have and maybe someday I get to hunt the Poncygon or something. Trail K: Mm. Yeah, I'm I'm of the same opinion. I do understand people that say, you know, they have a differing opinion that they're okay with hunting every, you know, eight to ten years and maybe get a chance at you know, a bigger buck easier or just an an opportunity to see buck. It's just right now, it's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make. I wanna I wanna go hunting. So And and and you guys have a hard job. You you tr you try to find middle ground, right? You're trying to find a buck to doug ratio and a number of permits that gives opportunity, but also still has some age class on the landscape for people that are willing to hunt pretty hard and and or have some luck, because I think there's a lot of that involved as well. yeah, I I recently I went through a fun exercise. You might find this interesting. You you might do this too, Mike, but ⁓ or Mikita, you might do this too. ⁓ I went through and I made a list, I built a spreadsheet of ⁓ all the bucks I'd ever harvested. And I dropped a pin on a map and I went through and I pulled out the elevations, ⁓ the slope, the aspect, all the information I could think of, the vegetation type of like where I killed that buck, and I just built myself like a big chart. And that's been massively helpful to me this year, like going into scouting. I'm like, okay, maybe you know, I can glean some information from this. ⁓ one of the interesting things that is I found is I've killed a lot of really nice deer, not all that far from a road. Which, but they're not they're not in places that are just like right off a road. It's not like the pullout that somebody can get to and they're just gonna look up on the hill and be like, ⁓ there's a big buck. ⁓ you got to get a little bit creative to it, but I I will echo and say I've I've killed a lot of really nice deer not that far from He's gotta be willing to work for it. Mike Wardle: That's like some extreme nerd level stuff, Trail. Trail K: Well, I got the I got the glasses now. So my my eyesight's tank. So I got the glasses. I can be officially a giant nerd at this point. Mike Wardle: I I wish I could do that, but my sample size of big bucks I've killed would be a lot lower than yours. So I don't know that it would be as good of an analysis. Yeah, yeah. Trail K: You've probably looked at a lot, I bet. I bet you've looked at a I bet you've I bet you've looked at a few. ⁓ do people ever ask you for collar data? Mike Wardle: Yeah. All the time. Makeda Hanson: Yeah, okay. Trail K: What's the what's the process? Is is that available and how do you navigate that? Makeda Hanson: Yeah, so our collar data, our location information is protected. ⁓ so we don't share location-specific information with the general public. ⁓ obviously, collar data is a huge resource for long-term management of species. And so we do have partnerships with like our land management partners where they can view heat maps of the information, so not the actual location information. And then that's something we take very seriously internally. ⁓ I manage our wildlife tracker database, and so I can set restrictions, I can monitor use of what everyone's doing on the website, and so it's something we we monitor really closely. we hold ourselves to a very high standard internally as well. But ⁓ yeah, that's not something we share outside of research projects that we're partnering on or other habitat projects we're working Trail K: Mm. Yeah. And I'm I'm in support of that. I just figured ⁓ you you've inevitably you have people asking, I'm sure. Mike Wardle: We get say no a lot. Even internally, like there are times where it's tough. You draw a tag. I for example, a few years ago my father in law drew an Oak Creek sheep tag and I was the biologist on the Oak Creek. I put these collars out. I was trying to monitor those sheep to make sure they weren't leaving the unit. And he draws the tag and so I called my boss and I'm like, Hey, I'm not looking at wildlife tracker. Like somebody somebody else is gonna have to monitor the sheep because even though it's not my tag Trail K: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: I wanna hunt with him and I don't want anybody to think that he cheated and that we use tracker 'cause his son in law is a biologist and and I think internally we see a lot of people taking those extra steps to make sure that the data is never put into jeopardy. Trail K: Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The r the right thing to do. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. ⁓ well very good. I've had you guys for an hour and hour and six minutes. ⁓ anything that I missed? Anything that you guys had on your your list that you were like, ⁓ I really hope he asked me this or I really wanted to talk about this. Mike Wardle: I don't. ⁓ I'd I'd I'll add we mentioned the captures earlier. For any listeners that are in Utah or hunt Utah a lot, that wanna get involved, like please come please come work with us for a day or two. You know, folks that are really critical of the agency, come work with us and see what we do. Get in the truck with a biologist. I think that we we can't do too much of that and I I really Trail K: Mm-hmm. Mike Wardle: I hope that people know that's an open door invitation to come work with us. Trail K: Yeah. I I would agree. Yeah. I mean, people that are overly critical of any state agency, yeah, I always encourage them, go spend a day, go talk to those people, go spend time with them and see where their hearts really at, what kind of people they are. Cause a lot of the things that I read on online, ⁓ you know, your your bias will be quickly dispelled because there's a lot of really good people trying to do the right thing for the right reasons, in my opinion. So I I appreciate what you guys do. ⁓ I I appreciate you just jumping on and talking about wildfire. I I wanted to do it today because I think there has been so much and understandably I mean it's it's going to change that landscape, those landscapes for our lifetimes. It won't look the same in our lifetimes and I get that. ⁓ we get tied to, you know, the beautiful beautiful scenery of a mountain and, you know, the pines and and we we have this expectation of what it's supposed to look like. ⁓ but just because it doesn't look that way doesn't mean that it can't be ⁓ moving in the right direction and it doesn't mean that it's a b a bad thing for wildlife. It can be a really, really good thing for wildlife in the long ⁓ Makeda Hanson: ⁓ thing if I can put a plug in trail, because I do this from a habitat standpoint all the time for migration initiatives development. ⁓ our sportsmen are so actively engaged in our public process and it's incredible to get feedback. And I always like to put in a plug for sportsmen who are interested in managing big game to really get involved in some of your land management agency processes to support the on-the-ground work that really leads to the habitat that builds deer herds. ⁓ Trail K: Please. Makeda Hanson: I think that's sometimes a missed opportunity that our sportsmen aren't as actively engaged in. So that's just like always my plug anymore. Like we we need everyone out there, when it comes to to managing these species. So Trail K: Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I appreciate that. Yeah, go to your go to your AC meetings, but then even more so get involved with your your Forest Service decision making or BLM, you know, if you feel passionately. I mean, I I hate politics, but I follow it pretty, you know, quite a bit. And I found myself in this role getting much more involved and just like aware of like what's going on at the federal level on public lands and It's probably in part because I'm getting older and my kids are getting a little bit older, but I start to think like, are these opportunities going to exist forever? And, you know, I've I've gotten a lot more involved ⁓ in my my forties than I ever wanted to be. But it's a good thing. ⁓ well yeah, I I appreciate you guys jumping on and be willing to do this. ⁓ I appreciate the update and ⁓ I hope you have a good rest of your day. Mike Wardle: Okay. Thanks, Joe. Makeda Hanson: Yeah, yeah.