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MSU Deer Lab - Podcast/Information

at1010

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http://msudeerlab.com/

If you are interested in deer management. If you are interested in truly getting questions answered about the how, what, why, you need to checkout MSU deer lab. I have been listening to their podcasts and WOW! They fantastic, science based, etc.

Just as a quick example of one of the podcasts I found interesting:
They did a 10 year study on the various "deer" in Mississippi
Mississippi Delta is known for producing great bucks, heavy AG area of MS, average is like 130inch (3.5 year old)
Mississippi SE is very much heavy pine plantations and the average buck harvested is 116inchs (3.5 year old)
It was commonly thought the deer had "bad genetics" in the SE part of state.
Biologist didnt buy this so they gathered does, that had been bred in their local areas into an enclosure situation
Now once these deer where in the situation they allowed them to have all the food/natural forbes they could eat
This is when the monitoring began.
So the first generation fawns - 3.5 years old from the SE beat the average score by roughly 7inchs and a weight of a few lbs. - fairly underwhelming overall stats
The deer from the Delta area saw similar results - nothing that was overwhelming.
Now they allowed the deer to have offspring - this is when it got interesting.
When the offspring of these deer reached 3.5 years old they blew up! They started to reach full potential - simply by being exposed to better habitat and nutrition.
The costal deer on average increased body size by 26lbs and antler size by 28+inchs (something like that I dont recall the exacts)

This really makes me wonder about states around Ohio like WV, MI, etc. In recent years as management has increased in popularity, I have personally been very impressed with deer coming out of a lot of areas that are not "known big buck areas" - as the study says, it isnt an overnight fix but at least 2 generations to see the impacts of habitat program making a difference on a deer and/or deer herd.

The next time someone talks to you about CULL deer or changing genetics, think about the above. There are guys out there running science experiments to PROVE a hypothesis. My suggestion is when you hear about how good/bad something is - ask yourself why/how. I use this in all aspects of my life.

Hope you all enjoy and find this interesting!