Oregon's Massive Mule Deer Changes with Josh Smith

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Welcome to another episode of the Hunt West Podcast. I'm really excited to bring you this show today. Today I've got Josh Smith on with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and we're going to talk about mule deer and mule deer management in my original home state of Oregon. This is the type of hunting that I grew up doing and in the place I grew up doing it. So I'm really excited to get him on today to share some new information about how they're making big changes in the Beaver State. Josh, thank you for hopping on man. I really appreciate it.

Again thanks. Thanks for inviting me here. Appreciate it.

Yeah, no problem. So just 10,000 foot view, what's your background, how'd you end up doing what you're doing and what's your title and rolling all this.

So currently right now I'm the mule deer coordinator for Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife here based out of LeGrand so in kind of the northeast portion of the state. Those familiar with the area. I originally grew up in East Tennessee so if you hear some twang that that might be just resorting to my my old roots, go balls. Got my, my three year old daughter already singing Rocky Top so that's, that's always fun even from out here. So. But no, grew up in East Tennessee. Did my master's and PhD work at South Dakota State University. Some of that work was looking at mountain lions and effects of predation on mule deer populations and some disease dynamics out there in The Black Hills of South Dakota. Did a couple years post docking and at University of Georgia working on a variety of projects around the state. Came to Oregon in I think 2017. Spent four years as a research bio working on some of the Starkey experimental forest research out there looking at deer and elk and some, some things related to hunters. And then a little over three years ago, ODFW put in a job rotation for a mule deer coordinator. First time this position was, was available. Applied and been here for the last little over three plus years.

Nice man. That's awesome. You mentioned that South Dakota study. Did you do that with Kevin Monteith?

Kevin helped out on some of our stuff. I actually was doing my master's while Kevin was there. We went to school together for a master's at South Dakota State. We were both Jonathan Jinx students out there, so. But then yeah, had had Kevin Monteith out. He come out and did a lot of our body scoring stuff for our bighorn sheep and stuff on, on our study out there in the Black Hills. Yeah.

Oh, that's awesome. We just were, we just did a podcast not with Kevin, but a friend of ours who we discussed a lot of the, the mule deer research he's been doing in Wyoming. And I think it's kind of cool. Like there's a lot of this stuff that was kind of happening at the same time which we're going to talk about today, but regarding like the m. Research in, in Oregon too. So. Yeah, it's funny how all of that kind of seems to, you know, branch off from the same trunk. It seems like it's, it, it gets.

To be a small world in the wildlife community. You, you all get to know each other pretty well sometimes and, and especially people doing similar research and that sort of thing. Obviously we, we, we interact on papers and at conferences and stuff like that. So yeah, it's gets to be a small world.

That's awesome, man. Well, and I know you know, your busy season is probably in the middle of hunting season, but do you do any hunting yourself?

I do. You know, like probably like a lot of folks that got into this profession, I kind of grew up hunting and fishing in, in East Tennessee a lot. Yeah, I mean I'm, I'm definitely more of the numbers guy than a hunter. I mean I, I, I, I get out there and try, but usually, usually it's more trying than success. But that's, that's okay too. I, I enjoy being out there and yeah, I just, just bought my sports pack yesterday and took my daughter up fishing for the first time. A little over three years old and excited to see her getting into, into the swing of things. So it's, it was Monday.

That's excellent and offline. Maybe we can talk about some turkey spots or something if you need any. I got some empty holes that are not getting hunted anymore. So I'd be happy to share.

I, I could use them.

That's great. So, okay, today we're going to talk mule deer because there's some big changes and just to give folks a little bit of background. 20, sorry. In 2024 the Department of Fish and Wildlife adopted a new meal deer management plan. Can you kind of give us the, the background on why Oregon did a new meal deer management plan and like kind of the history there just to give some context for people.

Yeah, so I believe our first mule deer management plan was in 1990 and they revised that again and 2003. So that plan was you know, you know we, again we Revised that in 2024 so that plan was over 20 years old. And you know, certainly as you think about the changes and you know you're talking about Monty's research on some of the migration stuff, we've had similar data coming in here in Oregon and stuff like that. But I mean really just the entire landscape has changed for mule deer. I mean when we talk about the research, the knowledge that we've gained, the management changes and even you know, kind of some of the, the human dynamics, the landscape has changed a lot for mule deer in the last 20, some 20 plus years. So from, from that perspective it was really, it was really time to take another look at this and, and really start evaluating how we are managing and, and you know, what kind of information was out there and, and, and sure we can dive into this a lot more detail in depth here in a minute. But yeah, there's, there's a lot of pretty big changes as you alluded to there in this management plan. And it was really time to kind of get that on paper and start getting a more forward thinking look. Hey, let's. What does all this mean and how's this going to look as we, we change up our management strategies for meal during the state?

Yeah, that one of the, there's like a lot of pieces to this meal deer management plan and I've tried to read it as much as in depth as I could and one of the things that might be like kind of interesting to talk about before we dive into the migration part is like there was an increase in some units buck to do ratios can you kind of speak on the thought process behind that? You know, at least if you were part of those conversations. I've seen some, some states are actually going the other direction. Like Utah lowered their buck to do ratios and so I just was kind of interesting just, just a position of states messing with those objectives as far as the numbers of bucks per does in their units.

Yeah. So I guess there's kind of two aspects of that. You know, you know we've changed the scale up, right. So we, we're, we're switching up from wildlife management units, these deer hunt areas and herd range management sort of thing. And again maybe we can dive into that a little bit more. But when we tried to reassess those and set those from, from that socio political boundaries, the wildlife management units to the herd range, these more biological boundaries, we really tried to maintain kind of sort of the existing structure in most areas. And you know again some of these herd ranges incorporated multiple wildlife management units. So that means overall they may have raised or increased. So we didn't try to change much on that front. What I guess, I think maybe what you're alluding to though is the removal of the 12 buck mo. And pretty much our lowest buck mo now is, is 15. So we kind of got rid of that 12. And there was you know, just a couple things on that. You know, some of that was just looking at the data that we had now that we had some new monitoring and modeling techniques. We were pretty much hitting the 15 buck ratio anyway in most of our areas. But you know, from a, from a biological perspective we need to be about 7, 8 bucks per hundred does. And really that showing not much difference in you know, pregnancy rates, birth synchrony and that sort of thing. But we just kind of felt like we were, the 12 was essentially 15 is. So we just kind of raised that. Again it's a little bit more conservative on that end but just it just, it was where we were at anyway. So we just kind of maintained that. But again like all the, most of the research, you know, there's a couple papers out of Colorado showing you know, super high buck ratios and I think there's going to be some, some research here published pretty soon out of Utah and probably one of the reasons they're, they're changing theirs but you know, once you start getting a really high buck ratios you can actually start seeing population performance decrease on your adult female side of things, which is ultimately the driver of your populations. So we just tried to maintain that and I get that Freeman at all paper that came out here a few years ago, they compared again pregnancy rates, birth synchrony and that sort of thing and found really no difference between 14 bucks per hundred and 26 bucks per 100. So again we're kind of at that lower end where they were seeing that there's no changes there. And but we do have a few areas that are maintained a little bit higher for, for a variety of reasons to provide a little bit more of that older age class, you know, animals to be available for hunters to, to use and you know, potentially, potentially get out.

Okay, no, that makes total sense and like you said, it's it just looking at the. So I like this part about ODF and W. There's a big game statistics like part of the website and I look at it probably more than often I should and you got like a five year, you know, trend of buck ratios and different units etc and it shows the management objectives in there and there's only know there's really not a whole bunch of those 12s and like you're saying basically the idea was to you're already kind of managing over that 12 anyway. So I think a lot of folks just you know, on the forums or online were like oh good, they're gonna like make more bucks. And it's kind of like well maybe what I'm hearing from you is maybe more like we're just going to, you know, not try to manage for that low. We're not going to increase tags to push it down there if it's already staying at 15. We're just gonna kind of go status quo. Is that kind of the summary of that change?

I mean? Yeah, sort of. I mean it was if. Yeah. Without getting into too much internally, you know, the, the fights we have sometimes with buck ratios.

Yeah.

More or less where we're at. I mean and you know, you know we, we hear this argument a lot. You know, as far as like emo's, we'll just increase the mos and that makes more deer. Well if that was that easy we would, we would gladly just increase our population mos and buck ratios, whatever. But it doesn't work that way unfortunately. There's a lot of tough work that needs to be done and stuff. And I guess the old saying is bucks don't have babies. They're not really the ones that ultimately affect population performance. As long as you're getting females bred and pregnancy rates are maintaining relatively stable, you know, your populations are going to do fine. If you have a high survival on your female side of Things and they're giving birth and that sort of thing.

Oh, that. That makes sense.

Yeah.

Okay. So, you know, we keep talking about this new migration data, and I don't have the numbers off the top of my head memorized, but there was like thousands of deer that were collared and studied from like 2012 to 20 to 2020 or something like that. Right. What was the. What was the study that went down with the migration?

So essentially, we started actually in 2005 looking at. Yeah, this started in 2005, initially looking at some of the South Central stuff. And there's. There's been a recognition. I mean, there's. We. We've got. I. I think we presented some of this data at some of our webinars and stuff with the mule deer management plan. But they put ear tags in some animals and they were harvested in different wildlife management units in the 60s. So there's a recog. Animals that they were counting on winter range or that's when they collared these things or put ear tags on them. This is even pre, you know, VHF collars or GPS collars, for sure. But there's been a recognition for a long time that some of these animals weren't in the same place when we count them as when we harvest them. That that ultimately was the driver of that. So really, in 2005, they started looking at this in the South Central. And if you look at some of our hard range technical report where we put all this together and look at some of those arrows, you can see that the southwest is like, man, there's just deer going kind of everywhere across these wildlife management unit boundaries down there. So really, it started down there. And then, you know, after we got through that, it's like, well, where else is this occurring? And so we started rotating those collars. So it was kind of two phases. There was the 2005 to about 2011 was mostly at South Central, but then we started rotating collars around eastern Oregon and that took place. And we just kind of wrapped that up. Yeah, about 2020 somewhere in there. 2020, 2021 somewhere in there. We wrapped up that. That study and started looking at it. And that's, you know, that's basically the data that is driving a lot of these changes we're talking about here today. And a lot of the big changes in the management plan and shifting from the wildlife management unit structure. So, yeah, I think the total was a little over 1400 total animals. Some of those were available over multiple years, though. So we have. We had quite a bit of Quite a few data points there to look at when we, when we started looking at, you know, drawing up these herd range boundaries and stuff.

Oh, that's excellent. And it's funny because you don't think of Oregon as this big migratory herd state necessarily, but once you dig into that east side, man, we've got, you know, the same high country to low country and then everything in between where there's big snowpack, low snowpack, no snowpack. I think it's pretty cool that Oregon was able to throw some callers on deer and figure out where they're going. Just to illustrate that point, like, I was looking at some of these units that you're talking, you know, that you're talking, like maybe had some, some deer getting harvested in the, in the rifle season that were not there in the, in the fall count or the winter count. And it's like Ochako, you know, it's got three different herd ranges now. Fossil, it's got three different herd ranges. Babies, Butte, Sylvies all have three different herd ranges that were actually within these old, these old boundaries that we were looking at. What do you think is kind of the goal? I mean, especially on the back of like, we're only hunting bucks for the most part in, in Oregon. What's kind of the goal looking forward, like, are we going to be looking at different, you know, especially on the buck side, different management or different tag numbers to meet management objectives or what's, what was the goal of like, restructuring these units?

Well, so a couple things. You know, the, the biggest thing is we, we've also in, in, in the process of changing and looking at all this data and switching. You know, we've, we've tried to model populations to wildlife management unit scale since going back to the 50s. Right now, now all these things are getting kind of mismatched and, and washed together and lumped and combined and molded into certain things. But we've switched up our modeling approach. You know, we collect a lot of data every year. You know, we got comp data, we've got collars out in some areas. We got buck ratios, we got all the harvest data, the mandatory reporting that hunters, the hunters provide us. So we got a lot of data there and we really wanted to integrate all those different sources as best we could. And now we've got some new integrated population models. We're going through a really, well, some, some, some really smart, smart folks. They've been really great to bounce ideas off of and have some, you know, have, have the nerds in your corner. It's always good to get in with them. But you know, at the base of these models, it is a harvest based model and aligning those hunt units to match. Because you just mentioned the Ochako for instance, where you've got three different hunt areas or three different herd ranges coming together there. And how do you allocate that harvest back to which new herd range? You know, so really that forms the basis of why we're wanting to redesign and shift away from these sociopolitical boundaries, the wildlife management units, to these. So that was more of it and kind of help align these models and ensure that we're getting accurate data as far as population performance, population metrics, buck ratios, model buck ratios and all that sort of thing too. So that's really the big driver of why we're doing this. We recognize that hunting males is probably not going to impact the population as much, but at least now we have some accurate data and can look at things that maybe are more successful and, and look at populations that are trending in the right direction and look at those habitat improvement conditions or management actions that we, we provide to see how populations are responding to those. So.

Oh, that makes total sense. So I had a biologist friend of mine in Wyoming once tell me like you could do worse than modeling a population based on harvest success. Is that, is that kind of what you're also getting at is like the, the harvest success is part of the population modeling?

Oh, it's definitely a big part of that. And you know, like, you know, just things like, hey, have you kept tags the same? I mean, has your five year harvest success gone up or down? And you know, we can combine those with things like, you know, our doe fawn ratios and stuff that were these other data points that we're collecting. And you can kind of get a pretty good idea of what's going on in those populations. So yeah, it is, it is at the heart of a lot of our modeling approach here in Oregon and most states. So it's a really, it's a huge piece of the pie. Again, even though it's buck ratio, it does tell you a lot about populations and how they're performing.

That makes sense. And I'm not putting words in your mouth, this is Jaden speaking, but I oftentimes find hunters forget that hunting bucks is like what we call compensatory. Like it is, it is not removing from the overall population necessarily. It's actually, you know, hunt, hunt success. And like we're talking about the number of the impact that the hunters has is driven by what's happening with the deer herd, not causing what's happening with the deer herd. Right?

Yeah man, I, I heard a good, I heard a good quote on this one time. It was, you know, like buck hunting doesn't drive your population, but your population drives your buck hunts. I mean, you know, you've got a good population, you can, you can harvest and hunt more animals. But you know, again to a certain biological threshold, hunting bucks doesn't really drive population performance. So, and that I may have mangled that quote, but I, maybe it gets the point across that I was trying to anyway.

Oh certainly. So one of the things, you know, I, I, I was, you know, trying to think of this from the perspective of someone who's trying to hunt in Oregon and honestly I've got, so I grew up hunting it every year but I, I've got eight or nine points now and I'm looking forward to getting those things burnt here before too long. And of course, you know, like I've had this relative stability. Oregon, Oregon doesn't really fluctuate tag numbers too awful much. There's not as many major winter kill events and et cetera like that cause those things to fluctuate as bad as maybe some other states. But you know, I'm looking at it now realizing that there's going to be some uncertainty here as we kind of shake out these tag numbers in the, in the new kind of units, hunt areas as you're calling them. What, what do you think a hunter could, could think about or is it more complicated than this is? Would a hunter expect to see more opportunity, less opportunity, same opportunity with like the new season structure?

Yeah, I'm gonna probably disappoint a little bit here. We're, we're looking at that. You know, we literally just finished up some of our final data collection here a couple weeks ago. I was down helping out. We just flew one of our last, we call them Cider Rat. Their citability combination citability quadrat sampling. But it's basically what we do in, in each herd range right now where we kind of on a three year rotation for each of those. So we just finished up those flights a few weeks ago. Still kind of starting the modeling process and looking at how those, you know, how different pack structures might look and those will probably be available in July but we really, really haven't got there to even, we haven't even set those internally yet. So I, it'd be challenging for me to say. I think, I think you're right though. And I would anticipate some changes in, in, in the tag structure from historically what we've seen. Again, we'll, we'll see. I think there's some areas that we might see some increase, some areas we might see some decrease. So that, you know, that, that brings a little bit of uncertainty I guess to your point about, you know, preference points and, and how best folks should use those. I, you know, I'm, I'm going to punt on this one too and say that this is going to be a really a personal choice for folks. I think you got to look at what, you know, what you've been saving those for and the area you want to hunt. We do have the hunt areas up on online so folks can take a look at those and see some of those have gotten larger and have you served multiple several different wildlife management units, historical wildlife management unit boundaries. But I want to be clear and excellent time to bring this up. We're not taking any area away. Right. So if you were saving points up for the trout creeks or the stings, you know, those areas won't even really be affected at all. You know, some areas like Warner though North and South Warner have gotten, you know, combined into one. We recognize that's one population. We didn't want to have separate mos and different hunting regimes for those, you know, for, for basically the same population. That just didn't seem to make make sense. So what, what is going to change though? Again, all those areas will be available, but what is going to change is the uncertainty. Right? You mentioned it like the tax structure is going to change a little bit. And what we're going to lack probably in 26, 27 and maybe, maybe even into 28 or might be two to three years is that ability to predict. I can't go on Oregon Big Game tags and say, oh, if I want to hunt the Keating unit, I need five points and I'm 100 guaranteed. With a lot of these new hunt areas, we're going to lose that predictability I guess for a couple years and then once that happens, I think we're going to get into a place like okay, I can predict kind of with a relative degree of certainty. I could draw X unit or you know, ex hunt area or something sort of thing. So you know, if, if, if a guys can, can wait that out and, and, and, and, and wait two or three years and wants to hey, maybe, maybe you want to do that and see how things shake out. If, if not, if you, if you're like man, I'm, you know, I'm. I may not feel like hunting this area in five or six years. Maybe you want to start thinking about looking and cashing those in in 2025. So, again, it's a very personal choice I think hunters are going to have to make. We are just trying to provide as much information. If you go on the website, you can look at some of those interactive maps and see how things are going to overlay with the traditional wildlife management unit structure and that sort of thing. And then hopefully, folks can make the most informed decision with the data we can provide.

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You keep talking about, like, how it's a personal decision and. Yeah, it's one of those things where, you know, someone in, like, my position, handful of points, and I don't have, like, this area I've gone back to year after year after year. You know, it's going to make things tougher, but it seems like if someone, you know, my. My brother lives in John Day.

Right.

And so if he's hunting his backyard unit every chance he can get, that's really not going to change a whole lot.

Right. Yeah, he's probably going to put in for somewhere pretty close or. Yeah, yeah. Burgers Creek unit or whatever there. So north side. Yeah. Yeah.

What. What parts of the state do you think might see the. The biggest changes? I know we talked about Ochco. That's kind of an interesting. Kind of interesting use case. Like, do you think that there's. There's some core areas that people, big groups of people have normally hunted that are going to look totally different, or should people just take a look at the. The Map online and just take a look.

I definitely recommend folks go to the website. We've again we've got an interactive map up there where, where you can take a look and see again how those, those new hunt areas overlay with traditional wildlife management unit structures. You know, obviously the ones you know and you mentioned them kind of the Och cos got carved up into, into three different herd ranges that Juniper, Sylvie's Country, Beatty's Butte, a lesser extent I guess. I mean we still have the trout creeks and that sort of thing. Even though it wasn't a wildlife management unit, it's still in there. What Fossil grizzly was another one. Those are kind of going to be the big. But I, I will say this and this may be a little bit less something that's gotten a little bit less attention. But you know, one thing that we are looking to do and think, think we put some of this information up on the website and some of the things we've been handing out is you know, looking to change up some of the bag limits for whitetail deer versus mule deer in these areas where we've got a little bit higher whitetail deer population. I'm thinking specifically about northeast Oregon. That northeast herd range up especially like Wallowa county and that sort of thing where we do, you know, you see places like Sled Chestnut where the harvest has been about 40% 5 year average whitetail deer. And it, you know, get back to the modeling approach and having a harvest based model when you kind of lump those two species, it does make modeling a little bit more uncertainty. It adds a little bit more uncertainty to those. So we are planning on breaking out some bag limits to have like a mule deer tag versus a whitetail deer tag. So I think that's pretty exciting. We'll see how the tag structure goes out. But you know, those aren't concurrent season I think folks, you know, even though some of these areas might get bigger, we might actually see fewer people out there at least during the mule deer hunt for instance because you know they're not going to have all those whitetail deer hunters out there. But I think also, you know, we do have a potential to, to utilize this whitetail resource a little bit more too and maybe offset some, some tag reductions on our mule deer side as mule deer populations decline in some areas and, and utilize that resource a little bit more. So there's from, from, from that perspective the Northeast might actually see some of the bigger changes as far as like tag structure and hunting structure, but provide some pretty exciting opportunities. I just Again, this might be the time where you got to make that personal choice about preference points and see how the tag structure looks and what, what gets proposed here and see what happens come July. I know that's after the deadline for May 15, but.

No, that's good, though. I mean, it's, it's. This is the kind of information, though, that I think is really helpful as you start thinking. Because, for instance, you know, my, My family's place is up there in that northeast herd unit. And I know just even since I was a kid, it's like, really a lot more common to find whitetails on national forest and other accessible ground than it ever was when I was, when I was growing up. And it's, It's a lot like, for people who don't know, it's a lot more like the panhandle of Idaho and kind of western Montana than it necessarily is, you know, like the southeast corner where it's really dry. So, yeah, there's. That's really great to know. I mean, there's going to be some opportunities there, hopefully for people to, to do something a little different. And, you know, I started archery hunting because we couldn't get our mule deer buck tag every year. But maybe for some of them locals, like, you'll have an arch or a whitetail buck tag you can pick up every year with a rifle. So that's really good. That's encouraging to hear. Like, you know, more opportunity on a critter that definitely is doing well. So I like hearing that.

Well, again, we'll. We'll see how it all shakes out. And, and again, right now I think that we're. We're primarily up in this northeast corner, but we, we may be taking a look at this in some other areas where there's a higher proportion of whitetail deer. So we'll, we'll see how the changes may be coming too, in the future here.

Oh, that makes total sense. So how is this going to look like? You know, I just want to educate people as far as what they should look forward to in 2026. Obviously, we're a long ways from that, but it'll be, you know, basically this is the, the last song and dance for the traditional. Like, I'm gonna apply for unit 77. You know, what's it going to look like? Is there a new numbering system, lettering system? What's. What's that all about?

Yeah, so there's going to be a new. That's when that's probably going to be the biggest thing other than. Other than all the yellow for new hunts. Yeah, in that 20, 26 reg, we've, we've kind of gone away and, and part of that was just a realization that we didn't want to confuse people. You know, we've got a 100 series, so we only have X number of numbers that we can use. So some of those are going to have to get recycled. And we just didn't want people that have traditionally applied for unit 52 or unit 57 to go back in and see, oh, I'm just going to apply for unit 57. So we've taken a little bit of a different approach. Again, what these hunt areas are based on is trying to align the new hunt areas within a herd range. And again, the herd range is just essentially the year round needs of a mule deer population. So it includes the winter range and summer range. And Grant, these are not 100% closed. I mean if we, we have 100% closure, we just have one hunt area, one herd range in all of eastern Oregon. I mean at some level there is some, there is some back and forth, but to you know, a pretty small degree we've, we've, we've minimized that as much as possible with this new herd range analysis. But yeah, so each herd range has a name and you know, we set management objectives, got buck mos, population mos and, and stuff for, for the herd range. And then, so then within each herd range there's a two digit alphanumeric number. So you know, for mid Columbia it's MC or whatever. And then the hunt areas in there will be like dash 01 or 02 or whatever. So that first, that first little bit of information will provide the herd range and then that'll tell you which hunt area you're hunting in within that, that specific herd range.

Okay, now that's super helpful. Yeah. Cause it's going to be one of those things. I just, I had a friend of mine burn 14 or 15 elk points on a spike tag in the northeast corner last year. And I just, I'm like, I can't let one, I think about this for other people, but myself included, like I, I would suck to just accidentally put down the wrong number and I end up in, you know, I end up in the Sylvies unit instead of being in the Steens on accident, you know, when I'm trying to burn points. So that's really helpful. So it'll basically look, you know, a place that everyone I think who knows Oregon deer hunting has heard of is like the Fort Rock unit. That's unit 77 in the old system that's going to be, you know, the crescent herd right cross and it's going to be 03 in the new system. Like whatever the, the third unit in this, in this encompassing is that does that pretty much, you know, the, the example of, of something that might people need to be looking at.

Yeah, that's it exactly. I, I, I hadn't pulled up my, my map here yet this morning, but those, that, that, that's exactly what's going to happen there. And I think, you know, from the, the number of hunt areas within a herd range, I think the, the biggest one would be northeast. I think we have six units up there, but rest of them I think there might be four or five in Crescent and stuff too. But yeah, that's going to be the, the basic premise is that that alphanumeric number will tell you the herd range and then that'll be a subsection of that. And hopefully, you know, as we start transitioning to this approach, we do have one more year of, of data collection and stuff that we're probably going to present at the wildlife management unit scale. But we are looking to change up. You know, you mentioned you like to go online and look at some of the big game stats. You know, we're going to be changing that up and providing more of that data at the herd range scale as we move forward and stuff and get away from that kind of that individual hunt area. So there'll be some data we provide at the hunt area, probably things like hunter success and those sort of things. But again, we know that within a herd range, you know, these animals are moving and where we're counting them is, is different than, you know, where they're getting harvested. So we'll be probably providing some of that information. It's going to be at the herd range like buck ratios and, and survival and population estimates. But then we'll provide some statistics at the hunt area level too, so folks that want to geek out can hopefully be able to geek out here before too awful long and really start digging into some, some really cool numbers and data and, and find those pockets and gems that maybe they want to, maybe they want to look at to, to get out there and get after a nice mule.

Oh, that's awesome, man. You know, something I always think about and sometimes like a herd area will get skipped in one year or another in the big game statistics is that because like y' all are flying every unit or every, you know, rough area or have your transects that you fly Every year and then some years you don't fly certain areas or, or is it all ground classifications?

Right now it's a mix. I mean as far as our, so we do some things, we, we collect some things every year. I mean obviously we're getting mandatory reporting so we get the harvest stuff. We know how many tags we set for those areas and you know, you, you all the hunters that, that call in and provide that information to us, it's, it's really just hey, a valuable source of information for us and really, really appreciate folks that takes time to do that. We also do herd comp every year and, and, and that sort of thing. But right now we're on a three year rotation for our abundance flight. So we do those every three years and kind of a, you know, we've got a kind of a spreadsheet there that shows the timing and again I think right now we got, I think it's a 8, 6, 5. I don't have that schedule here right in front of me, but that's kind of the way we're flying. So. Yeah, again, you know I just mentioned we just finished up the north side a couple of weeks ago. That was, that was on the rotation this year as of the scheduling right now we're, we're also revamping some things that we're doing internally on that and we may, may look to, to alter some schedules here moving forward into the future. But right now those are on three year rotation. So you know, in between those years, what we've done historically even at the wildlife management unit scale was kind of model those out, you know, with, with POP two or some sort of some other strategies. But really what we're, we're moving to overall in this is, is we want to start using and we want to start using the ipm, the integrated population model that we developed with the Speedgoat vendor. We want that to be the primary data source that we present every year. And that way we've got a consistent reporting mechanism every year. And instead of like reporting that site. Right. That abundance flight that we do every three years and then having a modeling approach in between, we want to use that abundance estimate as an input into the model that then drives and helps align that model. But at least we're then now being consistent every year. You know where that estimate is coming from and you don't see some of these bumps and ebbs and flows because we did a, an abundance flight in one year and not the other two or something.

Yeah, I think every agency across the west has this kind of a struggle, matching models to abundance surveys, et cetera, and is trying to find consistency, especially for us hunters who are looking at that data and are trying to, you know, maybe find opportunities where there's extra bucks or extra deer on the landscape than others. Yeah, I mean, it just in, you know, I guess this might get me booed, but in defense of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, this is a problem that I think every state and I've seen it happen in Wyoming where they are trying to match the models to what's actually on the ground. And you know, and like in. Even in Wyoming, we'll see them match a model and sometimes it throws the number like, oh wait, we got more deer out here than we thought. Or sometimes it throws it way down and it's like, shoot, we have a half the deer that we thought, which also throws your objectives and everything for a loop. So I think it's really cool. I mean, oftentimes people complain that the agencies aren't doing enough, and sometimes it's like, let's take a step back and make sure we have good data to make decisions, not just, you know, be. Be throwing stuff at the wall, seeing what sticks. So I applaud you guys for trying to do things with the best science available, man. It's pretty awesome. And I, as far as a mule deer nerd is concerned, I, I geek out about it. I think it's cool.

Well, I do too. I'm fellow mule deer nerd, I guess. But you know, I guess the, you know, just the biggest thing there. We, we, we really, we just try to be consistent. Right. It's like we won't want to have consistency. And like, hey, this number is coming from the, the ipm. Yeah, we did an abundance flight this year. We didn't do it the last two. And that's why you don't see a 2000 jump or a 1500, you know, whatever. So yeah, just hopefully providing that consistency will, will alleviate some of that angst within, within the populace there. Hunter. Hunter hunting community.

Yeah, for sure. And I know it's, it's so frustrating. Like, you'll see someone, look, man, we only got 9 bucks per 100. Does like they need to shut the season down or whatever this year and then the next year you've got 30 and you're. It's like, well, I think maybe we just flew a different pocket that next year or something. There's just pieces of this equation that unfortunately we've got humans at the helm of collecting the data. And that's the fault of just being just limited resources and having limited staff and timing. So it's just the way the world.

Works and you get rained out for a week and you just can't get up. I mean, yeah, it's all those things that combine and again providing that consistency with like you say model buck ratio as opposed to observe. We, we've had, I've had this happen so many times where you know, guys will come in and man, kind of glad we're using the model ratio. He's like, you know my fall comp, my buck ratio was, was. I think I was way too low. We were seeing a bunch more bucks out there, you know, and doing our abundance flights or something. We missed some, several pockets. Well yeah, that's why we're kind of changing up our approach here and we, we recognize there's some just like you know, sample variation that comes into that that can, that can drive some of those changes that we observe. And trying to maintain that consistency again will just help help smooth some of those out and get rid of some of the noise that really isn't there, I guess. Right? Yeah, right.

Well, I don't want to take up all your time today and I've really appreciated it. But I do have one final question that maybe is self serving. Do you guys in this new plan or just in within the department, are you, are you looking at expanding more weapon types outside of or more, more season? You kind of alluded to it with a whitetail deal but you know like a couple units have some muzzleloader opportunity. A couple units have you know like a late archery opportunity. Is there any conversation around expanding those kind of unique, those unique hunts?

Yeah, again I watch see kind of how things shake out. You know, you, that, that is, that does get to be an issue though. You know, you start thinking about expanding those like okay, if we don't want to have whitetail deer seasons concurrent with mule. Well we got elk seasons coming up and we got muzzleloader seasons coming up. So we, we start to get a pre packed fall time there. You know. So there, there, there is some trade offs that we're going to have to be looking at. And, and, and as we think about some of these changes like how best to, to utilize some of those existing structures and, and and frameworks with the honestly just the, the amount of time we. So those are going to be some conversations that you know, our district staff are having right now as they think about navigating this new system. I've been involved in Some of them, but not, not all of them. But we'll, we'll see what, what happens when we start seeing proposals and, and, and those start come to light. But again, it, it is, it is a challenge just giving the limited time we have to fit all these in and, and trying to appease everyone. It does get to be a challenge. So we'll be weighing those out and, and see how things, see how things ultimately work themselves out, I guess.

Oh, that makes sense. It's, it's dang complicated once you start working in all the other animal seasons there are, you know, and I was just talking to a fall bear hunter, for instance, and if all of a sudden there's a bunch of fall hunts year long and he doesn't have the big game tag or the ungulate tag for that area, he can't be hunting fall beer. So yeah, there's a lot of, you know, chain reactions that happen when you make changes. So I'm glad I don't have your job. Let's just say that it's a fun.

Time to be here right now. But yeah, it is, it is, it is challenging to, to work all this stuff in sometimes.

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so for anybody who really wants to get involved in Oregon's, you know, mule deer management or wildlife management, let's say they just really want to stay informed. Like what's the best way for them to either get engaged or just stay informed with all this stuff?

Yeah, I'd say right now just keep checking our website. We just put up a new MYODFW page. It's a little bit more mobile friendly as well. Again, we got some things on there, some frequently asked questions, we got the new map, the interactive map there and stuff like that. We'll be posting information up there, you know, as, as changes come about. And then obviously, you know, we'll have our, kind of, our big game regs come out in July and then we'll have some, some Internet. But then a lot of local districts still are doing the in person meeting. So if people, people want to get engaged, come out, attend those, provide your feedback on those, you know, this is, and I guess, you know, just, I will point out, I guess that these changes are proposed, they are not finalized until the commission approves them in, in, in September. So we're still trying to ensure that we're getting the information out and folks have again, the most information they can to be as prepared and make the most informed decision both in 2025 and 2026. And I guess I I should say this and for sure that, hey, these changes are occurring in 2026. Folks looking for May 20th or May 15th deadline for their 2025 tags. Those regs are out. We're hunting under the existing wildlife management unit structure. Nothing, nothing is changing this year. But we do want people to be informed that changes are coming. So again, they can make the most informed decision they can this year and, and moving forward.

I'm really glad you re emphasized that because, yeah, it is one of those things. As someone with some points, I also am always looking at future years just because it changes how I do things in the current year, you know, but for the most part, man, I think it is kind of exciting with tags across the west kind of being tougher to draw. I know I've, I've talked a lot more about hunting in Oregon, even for non residents. And anytime there's big change, I think it breeds opportunity. So as far as the hunting perspective is concerned, I'm actually really excited. I think it could be kind of fun to get into some, a new system and see things shaken up. So thank you. Thank you for working on all this stuff and trying to do what's right for our mule deer and, and kind of maybe provide some better data and maybe make some different management decisions for the betterment of the mule deer population too. I mean, I think that's kind of at the basis of all these changes, right?

That. That is correct. I mean, we, you know, we truly do value the resource and want to ensure that this thing is available for us and future generations. That is our goal. And I think aligning these, all these different data streams and aligning our harvest with our modeling approach and our sample and survey designs that can only breed good things to come for mule deer.

No, that's great. Well, thank you again. I appreciate you taking the time this morning. This has been super informational.

So hey, appreciate you having me on. It's great. Thanks.

Yep, you bet. That's the podcast.

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