Show Notes
It's an action packed show this week on the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast! John starts things off with a bold prediction for this year's deer season you are going to want to hear. After that, Oklahoma State University Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management Assistant Professor Colter Chitwood joins the show to talk about a few research projects he is involved with around the state of Oklahoma and beyond. The first topic the guys discuss is a research project following pronghorn in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Colter and his team have been collaring and tracking pronghorn to learn more about their home ranges, fawn recruitment, and most importantly, whether or not the population is declining or not.
After a nice long chat about pronghorn, Colter talks about another similar research project on wild turkeys. It is no secret that numbers appear to be declining across much of the country and especially in the southeastern United States, and Colter sheds some light on a few reasons why a decline may be taking place, and some practical things hunters and conservationists can do to have a positive impact on those populations.
And just because why the heck not, John and Colter finish the episode off with some good old wolf talk. Colter is fortunate enough to work on a grey wolf population study on Prince of Wales Island off the coast of Alaska. John talks a little bit about his experience with wolves in the north west while in college, and the guys talk about how sometimes the biggest obstacle in managing a species is just how cute they are.
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Show Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey guys and gals, welcome to the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast, brought to you by Arrowhead Land Company. Here you'll be educated, entertained, and equipped to get more out of your outdoor experience. So hold on tight because here we go.
What's up folks? Welcome to the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast. I am your host, John Hudspeth, and we have a jam packed show for you guys this week. And so I don't wanna waste too much time here at the beginning, but all I'm gonna say is we have. A lot of stuff to cover here in the intro. And then we have a nice long interview that I'm very excited about.
I had a great time recording it and so we're just gonna dive right in. And the first order of business that I need to take care of is that it was brought to my attention that I might have [00:01:00] misled you guys a little bit. I think it was two weeks ago when I did my. My season overview, all the states I was gonna be hunting and dates and stuff like that.
And I'll be honest I did that entire episode without actually like pulling up the regulations and looking at the dates. And so I come to find out I was basically a week off on a lot of things because just the way the calendar fell this year. A lot of the seasons have kinda been pushed back a little bit, and so I just wanna go through here and clarify any mistakes that I might've gotten out there.
And so we're gonna go over the season dates real quick just to make sure everybody's on the same page. Dear Archery has not changed October 1st, January 15th. Youth Gun is a little bit later than normal, at least I felt so it is October 20th to the 22nd. And then the one that really caught me off guard was Dear Muzzle Loader.
I think I might've said that the October, the weekend of October 28th was the last weekend. [00:02:00] Come to find out this year, that is actually the opening weekend of Muzzle Loader. And so this year, muzzle loader goes from October 28th to November 5th. And we're gonna talk about that a little bit more here in just a second.
You got deer Gun from November 18th to December 3rd. And then for the places where it applies, you got the holiday antler list. Holiday antlerless deer gun from December 18th to December 31st. And like I said, the one that kind of threw me was that muzzle loader season. I'm just used to it always being that last week.
And so again, without checking the regulations, I just thought it was falling a little early. And I think I even complained about on that episode about it being a little earlier. But knowing what I know now if you guys follow me on Instagram, I think I don't know when it was last week, I said that I'd be making a bold prediction.
I've been listening to a co a lot of college Foot football podcast, and they're all about the bold predictions before the season starts. So I have a bold prediction for this year, [00:03:00] and I think there is a very good chance that the state record muzzle loader buck gets broken this year. I'm not even sure what the muzzle loader record is.
All I know is that with the spring reigns we had this year, I am seeing just some really good antler growth. Like I've never seen before. I have a few bucks that I recognized from previous years and they have packed on the inches. I got two or three, like three to four year old bucks that are extremely tempting because it is, it's just been a really good antler year.
Like I said, we haven't had a ton of rain. I think we're still actually behind on annual precipitation, but just when those rains came just like I said, just the timing of 'em, the spacing between them, it's just been a really good antler year. So you take that and then you take the muzzle loaders a little later this year, starting October 28th.
I love, which normally the last weekend falls right around Halloween, and that's one of my favorite [00:04:00] weekends to hunt. So you take the fact that it starts on the 28th and then goes through the first five days of November. That's just a perfect combination and so great antler growth, timing of the season.
I think there's a very good chance that this is going to be a record setting year for muzzle loader season. That being said, how that kind of affects my plan is, my plan was to hunt that that weekend of the 28th with my muzzle loader, and then that next weekend, leave like Friday. I think Friday would've been the third, something like that.
November 3rd, I was gonna head to Iowa and be in Iowa for that first full week of November. Ah, man, like I want to give Iowa the precedence. I know I need to, I've been putting in for this tag for a long time, but man, being able to hunt with a muzzle loader those first couple days of November, extremely tempting.
And I just I don't think I could, if I'm gonna be gone that whole [00:05:00] first week from work in Iowa and away from my family, I don't think I could also take off, like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday leading up to it. And more than likely, my plan is not going to change.
I'm probably still gonna go hunt. What is now the opening weekend of muzzle loader season? That weekend of the 28th, go back to work that week, which is just gonna kill me. And then that Friday or Saturday, whatever, head to Iowa. And so again, I just wanted to clarify that in case you guys were like me and didn't check the regs, which you should always do.
I'm sure eventually I would've checked it, but like I said, a listener brought it up to my attention and so I wanted to make sure that I. Had clarified that and then also give you guys that bold prediction of, I think it's going to be a very good muzzle loader year. On top of that, what else?
This weekend I'll be headed to the One Nation Expo on Saturday, which means I'll have already been there by the time y'all listen to this. I am considering maybe driving down to the Texas Trophy Hunters Association show in Fort Worth [00:06:00] on Sunday. Not sure, just not sure. I wanna be away from the family that much and be gone the entire weekend.
But thinking about hitting that show up on Sunday, I feel like I'm missing one more announcement that I was gonna get out. I talked about the muzzle loader, I made the season correction. Like I said, guys, some really good antler growth. I got a few more cameras out over the weekend. It's, I'm looking for the 2% buck.
I set up another protein feeder in his fall range because I just haven't been getting him where I usually get him during the summer. So still looking for that buck. And I guess that's all I have. I'm sure I'll think of it and maybe throw it at the end if I forgot anything. So yeah, like I said, we have a really good episode for you guys this week.
We are talking to Coulter Chitwood and he's a professor at Oklahoma State University, and we talk about, yes, he's a professor, but some of his main duties and goals are actually doing research. And so when I reached out to him I gave him the option. I was like, Hey do you have [00:07:00] anything that you're passionate about that you would prefer to get out to the public?
And he sent me a huge list. He's been involved with a lot of different projects and so I picked a few of my favorites. Favorites, excuse me. And that's basically what we cover this week. And so we start off talking about pronghorns fairly specific to Oklahoma, but it goes outside the state borders just a little bit.
I learned to a lot about pronghorn. And again, I won't ruin it. I'll let him explain it 'cause he'll do it better than I did. We also talked about wild turkeys. We talked about population decline, what it might take to get those Turkey numbers back to back up to where they used to be.
And then to put a bow on the episode, we just decided to talk about wolves. And so he has worked specifically with Alaskan Wolves from my time in Idaho. I know a little bit more about the stuff going on in the lower 48, the greater eco gosh, I cannot talk right now, the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.
And so we covered that and we just have a grand old [00:08:00] time. And so it's a little bit of a random episode, but very educational and also very entertaining. And yeah, I wanna thank culture for coming back on. It sounds like we'll probably have to do this again sometime because we had so much more that we could have talked about that we had to cut it off a little bit.
And so yeah, that's what we have going on this week. I hope you guys are excited. Hopefully I'll see some of you guys at the One Nation Expo this weekend. And that is all I got for you. So we're gonna hear a quick word from our partners and then we'll jump right into the episode right after this.
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The mission of Bravado Wireless is to keep you connected no matter where you are. Visit bravado wireless.com or check them out at one of their retail locations. Bravado Wireless, the Power [00:09:00] of connection. Hey everybody, welcome to today's show, and today we got a great guest. We have Mr. Coulter Chitwood.
How you doing Coulter? Good, John. Good. I appreciate you joining us today, and we got a lot of awesome fun topics to cover today. But before we get to that stuff, why don't you tell everybody just a little bit about yourself. Yeah, sure. I'm still fairly new to Oklahoma. Been here about three years now, but I'm a faculty member in the Natural Resource Ecology and Management department at O S U.
So I'm based outta Stillwater. I teach a couple classes for our department senior level courses specifically in game species management and and wildlife techniques. And then the bulk of my job though, was focused on graduate training and research. And as soon as I got here, I started working really closely with our state agency, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.
So you'll hear me say O D W C a lot. I know a lot of your listeners are familiar with that acronym. [00:10:00] But we work on, what I like to think are a lot of projects that ultimately benefit their. If their management plans and hopefully the hunters and anglers of Oklahoma and beyond.
So that's the short version. Awesome. Awesome. And yeah, we were talking a little bit beforehand and you said, while you are a professor, that's what a lot of people think of, but really a big part of what you do is just research. And when I reached out to you, I was, I was interested in what you would like to talk about.
I just feel like you have your hands in a lot of different baskets and so you sent me a big long list. And so I picked a couple of my favorites and what I think people would be interested in. And so yeah, that's what we have lined up for people today. And again I'm very excited about it and I'm gonna let you do most of the talking.
That's one of the good things about this this podcast is a lot of times I just get things rolling and let people go. And so yeah if it's okay with you, I think I'd like to start with Pronghorns. And so you said you've done a bunch of research on that, and so was it was it Oklahoma centered or was it across the range?
Just tell us a little bit about [00:11:00] your research. Yeah so this, that project is Oklahoma centered in a way. But I'll elaborate I'll elaborate on that in just a second. This is one of the projects that is funded by O D W City. Just happened to come about right as I was starting in my role here in in en interim at O S U.
And basically it stemmed from. Anecdotal evidence that O D W C was collecting out in the panhandle that suggested the population might be in decline. And so for folks who don't know the primary range of pronghorn in Oklahoma is all of Cimarron counties. That's the Westernmost County in the panhandle, and then the western half of Texas County.
So that's the next county. If you're coming back this way, west to east. So basically the city of Guymon all the way west toward New Mexico. Now there are historical accounts and even today there are still sporadic. Groups of pronghorn farther east even into the downstate area, [00:12:00] east of the panhandle.
But by and large, the bulk of the range, and certainly anybody who's put in for for pronghorn tags in Oklahoma knows that you're basically looking at everything from the town of Guyman West. And that area, O D W C, obviously they've got their tag allocations, they're monitoring their harvest, they're doing flights at different times a year to estimate population size.
Or at least get a minimum count. And also use those flights and ground observations to hopefully get a picture of what recruitment looks like, and recruitment just being the fancy term for how many phones are we making relative to the number of those we got on the landscape.
Because you gotta have some of those phones become adults in order to replace ultimately the mortality that's occurring at the adult stage. That's the longer story. Without getting into, really boring details, essentially, O D W C was recognizing signs that it's, that it appeared that population might be declining. Now to your other point, is this Oklahoma centric, why [00:13:00] you don't have to be a geographer to look at a map of Oklahoma and recognize that the panhandle is pretty dang unique in its relative size.
And the fact that area I just described is immediately touching or close to Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. So in our case right now, yes, the answer is this is an Oklahoma centric project. We only capture adult pronghorn within the boundary of the Oklahoma panhandle that I described.
However, we have agreement, cooperative agreements, if you will, with all of those states that I just listed, because obviously our collared pronghorn don't necessarily stop when they see the state line. And so those other states we have good communication with all of them. Matter of fact, we have official partners on this project from Texas but in Kansas and Colorado and New Mexico we're in constant communication during the peak times of our field effort with those states.
[00:14:00] And they're vested honestly, in the work that O D W C is funded here through O S U because they don't have data on pronghorn in their respective areas. Southwest, Kansas, Southeast Colorado, northeast New Mexico, all of that area from the perspective of a pronghorn that's all.
Possible range, right? But we have these kind of these political boundaries, right? That we have to operate within. And so that's why, your question's a good one, and I want your listeners to understand that it's a positive thing that Oklahoma is in and of itself looking into, pronghorn ecology and population dynamics in the panhandle.
But it has an immediate impact on Kansas and Colorado and New Mexico and Texas, because we're trading animals for sure. There's no, there's nothing stopping them from going across the border. And since I've been talking for a while, if you wanna a, a quick little anecdote. One of the things we were [00:15:00] interested in when this project started was actually how much movement we were seeing in pronghorn across the state boundary.
Now obviously that depends a little bit on where you catch 'em, right? So if you catch one. In close to Guymon. It's gotta move, say 15 miles south to cross into Texas. But we didn't know, even O D W C wasn't sure if they had some populations that might be, at least migrating in a short distance.
And using seasonal ranges that cross boundaries. But right now, I'm gonna call this tentative results because we've got a couple of years of data now. We're not seeing a lot of big movements like that. Most of the time the pronghorn are staying pretty close to where we catch 'em. So we catch 'em in the winter, say January, February with a helicopter, put a g p s collar on 'em.
Obviously we do a lot of work during fawning season in the summer for collecting other data, but those g p s points are being collected year round, and right now they're fairly much homebodies. There's been a few exceptions. We do have, a dough [00:16:00] or two that have spent time in Texas, but they were caught right down near the Texas line.
We've got a handful I wanna say, Between three and five dos that would be caught fairly close to the New Mexico line that do pop into New Mexico. We had at least a couple in the first year run pretty deep into New Mexico for fawning. And unfortunately we were able to ascertain that they.
They dropped their phones in New Mexico donated the FS to the new Mexican coyotes and then and then walked back to Oklahoma. And so the doze actually ended up by midsummer back in Oklahoma, right near where we had caught 'em. Again, that's all very anecdotal right now 'cause obviously there's no analysis that goes with that.
But for your listeners who are just into that kind of thing it's pretty neat seeing those dots on the map and trying to figure out, okay, how and why are they using the space that they're using? That, that is one of our big questions. What what does that underlying landscape, that the ag, the range land the extractive energy, the wind energy, the [00:17:00] fencing, the roads, all those affect the movement corridors of pronghorn?
And that's one of the, ultimately that's some of the stuff that we'll be analyzing as we wrap up this project. That's interesting. I just, when you look at the landscape that pronghorn, ho, pronghorns, occupy, usually it's very flat, very open, not a lot of brush or cover or anything like that.
And I don't have a ton of pronghorn experience, but I did I went with a high school buddy and we hunted him in New Mexico one time at his grandparents' place. And I just remember We had always heard how good their eyesight is and that's what you have to kinda watch out for. And we were watching this little group and it's so wide open that you can count you, you know how far away they are.
'cause you can basically count the section lines. And we had this group that was probably a mile and a half away and we decided we were gonna try to get a little closer, take a closer look. And we came over this little rise and I kid you not, we look up and those things were running away from us.
Like they spotted us, almost a mile and a half away and they just ran and ran. So I guess what I'm trying to say is I [00:18:00] would've pictured them as roers and not necessarily homebodies with a smaller core area. Yeah. And that's fair. We didn't know what to expect.
The one thing we have here, the southern latitude, if you think about it or if you get curious, folks can go on the old Google and look at the range of pronghorn we're. Oklahoma, the panhandle was very much on the, not only the eastern edge, but we're pretty far south.
So we didn't, environmentally, I don't think any of us on our project team would've predicted massive migration. Because they don't need to move elevational or to avoid snow depth. 'cause you, and you make a great point also, if you're already in a flat landscape where you feel safe, provided you can get all the resources you need, why would you wanna move?
So we figured they weren't gonna be crazy migratory. But I think so far I would just admit that I was a little surprised that we haven't seen more, even if it was random movement. I just, I'm a little surprised. I joked with a colleague, matter [00:19:00] of fact, I'll use this example.
Some of our pronghorn home ranges, if I just took the dots, so this G P Ss data, is coming to us in the form of. An XY coordinate, right? So think about dropping a pin on OnX maps. The difference is we've got a pin on that pronghorn at least every five hours. You collect those over a whole year.
You've essentially got the data you need to look at. What's their home range size? What resources are they selecting? My colleague was back east and we were joking and he was asking, he said, man, are y'all's pronghorn moving anywhere? I said, no, honestly, if I pick those dots up off a map, took 'em to Central North Carolina and put 'em back down on a landscape in Central North Carolina, I could probably trick my Eastern colleagues into thinking it was white Tail deer home ranges.
They've been that local for the most part to where they were captured. But again, I. We're also part of these long running projects. This project's a five year project in total with four years of capture. And so we're halfway through. We've done two years of winter capture on the adults [00:20:00] and two spring and summer fawning seasons, but we got two more to go.
And the hope in there is that you also get some variation in range conditions and agricultural conditions and precipitation and weather. And thankfully in the first two years we've already seen a pretty big swing. We were in a big time drought out there the first year, which would've been capture year 2022.
Whereas this past spring man, some of Cimarron County and Texas County has just gotten pounded with rain. Certainly relative to what happened the year before. So I guess I'm saying that so that folks understand that everything's preliminary when you're collecting this much data because.
That could change. We could end up with some individuals that do end up making big movements. But so far we're just not seeing that signature. And I wanted to add John, while we're, since you told that story I love the story about their vision because I feel like, you're from Southeast Oklahoma.
I didn't say this at the beginning, but for folks who don't know me, I'm originally from Northwest Georgia, so I grew up, [00:21:00] I'm a southern Appalachian hillbilly. I like to joke, so I'm used to closed canopy hardwood ridges, cold water streams, much more like the extreme kind of southeast of Oklahoma, or think Missouri Ozarks or Arkansas, Ozarks those systems all look pretty similar.
I spent the better part of my childhood trying to figure out how to beat the nose of a white tail. And then years later I. Through my professional training. Ended up in North Carolina, worked on Whitetails and coyotes, even did a little Turkey work there. And then ended up working on elk in Missouri and then ended up in Montana.
And we could circle back to some of those other projects later. But when I finally got to hunt pronghorn, it was interesting. 'cause I knew their vision was good, but I think everybody, at some point, I. Has made that the mistake that you essentially admitted to making.
Yeah. You gotta have that aha moment yes. Yeah. It really is that good. Yeah. It's not oh, they can see me at a hundred yards if I scratch my nose. It's [00:22:00] no, when you skyline yourself from a mile away, that might be enough. That said, they're also really curious, and you don't have to ask too many pro, I have never personally done this, but I've done it on our research project to demonstrate to students that, you can peek up over Rise and know there's a group.
In this case, we just needed to see the group and know which those were in this group that had collars on. And I think one of them had seen us already, but, I had one of the students take off their hat and just wave it above, above the brush, and here the whole group starts slow walking toward us and they closed from, I dunno, they were probably 150 yards when we first peaked it up.
And they got. They got inside 70 yards, before they really then figured out oh, okay, they, we probably shouldn't do this. I just think stuff like, that's really fascinating and I hope that if any of your listeners have never gotten to go pursue pronghorn or go see pronghorn that they remember those stories, the first chance that they get to go out there, but yeah.
Anyway, and it's so deceiving [00:23:00] because if drive out to New Mexico or Eastern Colorado or wherever, they'll stand like 30 yards from the side of the highway, just like a white tail would. But you get out and they sense that danger. They're gone. Yeah. They're gone. Yeah. And they're bad to not stop running for a mile.
Even if they're not running all out. Most folks know they're the fastest land mammal in North America. But even when they're not just sprinting kinda like you indicated when those, when that group spotted you years ago they'll put space between them in danger with ease.
Yeah. And that's because that's their strength, right? Yeah. Is you can't catch 'em and they can see really it doesn't mean they can't wind you, but it's much more rare. That's how a hunter gets busted. Far more likely that they get spotted. Yeah. You you mentioned, coyotes, eating fawns and I hadn't really considered that, but what what about predators?
Up in the panhandle, maybe they get the occasional bear. I don't even know if they get that. Do they really have does an adult pronghorn in the Oklahoma panhandle have any real predators? So this is a great [00:24:00] question and I'll Yes. So I'm going to try to answer all that and give you as much nuance as I can too.
We, so from just what would be the Predator suite, we would look for Coyotes and bobcats. Both are present. Certainly are both capable of taking fawns. And at least with respect to coyotes we would expect that they they could take an adult. There are black bears in the extreme kind of western, northwestern tip of the panhandle, and though I'm not affiliated with that project, there is an ongoing, or I guess it's just wrapped up, its second year of field work, so it's in the latter stages, but it's also funded by O D W C expressly because there had been increased sightings and reports of bears near the Black Mesa area.
And without, again, I don't wanna derail you from your question here, but just so I have colleagues that are working on that project and it was a, they used Bates and lures to put out hair snares. [00:25:00] So the bear comes into the lure and has to cross barbed wire and it snags hairs.
And then those hairs can be collected under certain protocol, under certain amounts of time. All this, by the way, being monitored by trail cameras. And then they can get d n a off of the hairs. So they were using, this kind of d n a focused and camera focused project to assess the expansive bears out in the western part of the panhandle.
So all that said, we would not predict that, that black bears are, though they're large animals and capable of, obviously overpowering a pronghorn, they're not high on the list of an expected adult predator. I'm sure they would take a phone if they happened to cross one. There's, and same thing for elk, like back east black bears in Western North Carolina.
Initially when North Carolina had reintroduced elk we're a huge problem for elk calves because it just so happened that there was a really high density of black bears. Those same black bears were not chasing down [00:26:00] 500 pound cows and killing 'em. Yeah. But if they happen to cross a 40 pound calf, then they can obviously overpower power that calf, particularly when it's young and it's just trying to hide.
So let me know if you wanna follow up on any of that, but to get back to your main pronghorn related question what we're seeing so far, and again, I wanna stress this is preliminary because we're also collecting d n A from kill sites by swabbing the remains. So imagine for a moment that you come across an adult that's dead and there's no, it's not hunting season.
It's not by a road. There's no obvious sign of trauma. What do you think? Could it be old age? Could it be disease? Could it be predation? Because maybe there's not even a lot of sign that it's been fed on. If we can find something that looks like a killing bite wound, we can actually swab that wound and subsequently send that swab to think like a slightly fancier Q-tip.
You send that to a lab to, to identify from [00:27:00] predator, saliva what predator was present. And I've done this on whitetail projects and elk projects in other states. That's a secondary objective here in Oklahoma. But that's why I said everything's preliminary because right now, almost all of what I'm telling you today is based on field evidence alone.
And we are, we have detected coyote and Bobcat, predation of fas, and we have. Fairly confidently detected at least a handful of coyote predations on adults. I think in all cases they were female. I'd have to check that. I don't know that we've documented it on a buck, but we do have a handful of females that we have high degree of certainty were killed by a coyote.
Now that doesn't mean that the coyote didn't have an advantage. What if she got clipped by a car the day before, and she's limping around now, she's now she's unable to outrun that coyote. The reason I'm telling everybody, the reason I'm saying that and suggesting we have some nuance around discussions of predators is predators [00:28:00] have to eat too.
So none of this is the blame game that like, oh my gosh, predators are killing all the pronghorn. No, that's not it. We're just trying to understand the different causes of mortality. Which rates are high, which rates are low? Is it average? And since it's early yet, We're still sorting that out because some of our information, like I said, is based on only the field observation.
And what we hope to do in the coming years is get some of that genetic information to provide more certainty. Okay. We thought this was the coyote kill and then we also managed to get coyote saliva off of the carcass. Yeah, that seems pretty likely. It was a coyote kill. Yeah. But if we send in swabs and we don't, it's maybe we can't be as confident.
Do you? Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So I think that answered your question. Like I said, a little bit of nuance there, but for us for Oklahoma and even the surrounding areas that we've already discussed, coyotes and bobcats are gonna be the big ones. It's gonna be mostly on that neonatal stage when they're.
When they're young and vulnerable the small fawns.[00:29:00] And then beyond that you've got, yeah, your occasional possible bear. And I didn't mention this, but I will now, mountain lions are certainly capable of taking pronghorn. And I, a project that I'm affiliated with, that's actually over in New Mexico, so this has nothing to do with the Oklahoma Pronghorn project, but it's about predation by collared lions.
And I know that they've documented several pronghorn kills by collared lions over in that project. So far more likely lions are after things like mule deer and elk, where they co-occur. 'cause they're a little easier to catch than a pronghorn. But it does happen. And if and when lions moved through that area it, it technically means they could be on the list of possible predators.
We just, we don't expect that to be high. Of course, yeah. So does that answer everything? It does, yeah. Yeah. I got one more quick one. And Okay. I don't, I, you may have covered this at the beginning, I don't think, but basically the whole point of this research project was because you said it was hinted at that [00:30:00] populations are declining.
And I know that the project isn't done yet from your findings. Are you allowed to tell us if you think they are or are not? Yeah. Yeah, I will. And I, and here's how I'm gonna tell you that. I'm gonna say, first of all, this hasn't been plugged into a model. It's just based on my now 10 years of experience doing this type of work on a lot of different large game species, whitetailed, deer and elk.
Primarily the recruitment, right? That's that term I mentioned before. The Fawn Sur survival parameter is a bit lower than I think some of us expected. So what I might Predict right now, based on two years of data, is that it could indicate a very slow growing or at best, stable or even declining population based on that FA metric alone.
But like I said at the beginning, we also expect variation and swings in things like weather and precipitation. That can [00:31:00] affect body condition, that can affect the weight of fss which could potentially affect their survivability. So we don't wanna put too fine a point on that yet.
But I would say at this point we've been at least a little bit surprised at the relative low survival of fas and on occasion, even the fact that some of our females. At it is not constant, but at certain times we've speculated that maybe even the female mortality rate is a little greater than we thought.
Those two things combined, honestly. Yeah. That could point toward population decline. We don't wanna, that's not to cause a panic, I'm just being honest with you. That's very preliminary. That's not in a model that's basically in, in the model that's in my brain, if you will. And and O d WC is very much aware of this.
That's why they're funding it, because at the end of the day, they need to match up their hunting opportunity as well as how they respond to landowners who might have locally high [00:32:00] populations and need assistance with additional harvest, but that might be balanced against areas in the panhandle that have low population densities.
Where the population has declined. So if that, so if you're listener, what I'm saying is it doesn't mean that. All across the range, the same thing is happening. So one landowner could see so many pronghorn. He's complaining every other day 'cause they're in his ag field. Another landowner could be commenting that I used to see more 10 years ago and now I don't.
And so what our research is trying to do is what are the spatial and temporal variables that help explain that and what can O D DW O D W C do to respond from a harvest perspective? So hopefully that, like I said, a lot of nuance there. I'm not trying to straddle the fence and not give you a good answer.
I'm just trying to acknowledge that we're halfway through and there's a lot more data to be collected yet. I I would definitely love it if you could keep me updated as the project goes along, because that's really interesting stuff. Yeah. I like a lot of people in the state have been putting in for that very coveted draw tag up [00:33:00] there in the panhandle, have yet to draw it just like most people, yep. Yep. Yeah I definitely want them to be sticking around, so That's right. And that's what everybody wants. We should put a, yeah, we should say that's what everybody wants. The hunters that we talk to the landowners, like I said you get variations of responses to what, whether people are super pro pronghorn or have a little bit of.
Anger against them. And that probably just depends on where you live, but by and large, that's where we're trying to land. And certainly that's what o d WC wants. At the bare minimum we wanna make sure this population, is sustainable. And and so I hope that our project here in another two to three years when it wraps up, is a big part of that.
Yeah. Okay. Awesome. I wanna shift gears here a little bit. One of the other topics you had listed that I really wanna touch on is wild turkeys. And, about two years ago, I feel like you kinda started hearing some people giving some warnings. Hey, like we're seeing some lower numbers.
And I, I think some people believed that some people didn't. And then I [00:34:00] think last year came around and I don't know anybody who was like, man, we are overrun Turkey. Everybody was talking about how they saw a decline seeing less birds than they had. But then fortunately, I think this spring, I've heard a lot of good news.
It seems like a lot of people are seeing an above average amount of pulses and everything like that. And so I would just love to hear any and all thoughts you had on wild turkeys, what's happening with them, what the future holds. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And the comments that you just made about year to year variation, what people are seeing, that's, this is great learning experience for those that aren't, constantly in the, into the sciencey stuff that I do every day.
Because you're speaking to the challenge right there. Yeah. Just because you don't see a lot of polls one year doesn't mean that the next year there's not a whole bunch more polls. And so by and large, over a five and 10 year timescale in your neck of the woods, you could be seeing really stable, even increasing populations [00:35:00] where this has gotten interesting.
Is the fact that over large areas, especially across the southeastern us starting in the in, I don't know, it depends on where you cut it, but let's say, maybe as early as 2005, maybe you say 2010 the number of places starting to see what they viewed as con concerning recruitment numbers.
So there's that word again, right? A lot of your Turkey hunters are gonna have heard of pulses per hen, right? That's a metric that gets thrown around a lot on Instagram and Facebook and agencies are using that as a metric of are we reproducing, are we making enough baby turkeys to replace the inevitable deaths that occur at the adult stage?
That number started dipping in a lot of places during that timeframe I just mentioned, including Oklahoma in the last. Say 10, [00:36:00] 10 years. 10, 10, 12, 15 years, depending on how you look at it. And so again, that does not mean that the sky has fallen everywhere because there's obviously gonna be spatial and temporal variation.
We're talking about an area. Imagine just painting with a broad brush from Oklahoma, south to Texas, and then all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Just start listing those states. North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas. If you go farther, just a shade farther north, you got, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia.
That's a big, huge area. But what got people's attention is the fact that across such a big, huge area, it seemed odd that some of these metrics started declining and. And so that's what, I think, that's what your question's really about, right? Is this idea that in the last, especially in the last two to five years, those conversations really started getting louder.
They really started [00:37:00] combining. You saw agencies starting to take action to reduce bag limits or change season dates. We've even done that here in Oklahoma for those that know, hell I said, I've just been here, what, three years? And I've gone from, a three bird statewide limit, which would've been Spring of 21, now down to the one, okay?
O D W C did that in cons, in consult with hunters who supported and actually asked for that regulation change to happen. But that goes to, to show the importance of your point, which is. It's become a really big topic and much like the pronghorn story that we just went over, that's basically why we're doing Turkey research in Oklahoma.
Same exact matter of fact, that project is on the same timeline as the pronghorn project. They started at the same time, they will wrap up at the same time. And the impetus was about exactly the same. O D W C had evidence of [00:38:00] certain metrics that appeared to indicate population decline. Both in eastern birds, i e the southeast part of the state.
We're gonna focus, that's where our study areas there and in Rios and I, and on that part of the project, we'll be focused in southwest Oklahoma. So I think that probably answers your question. But yeah, redirect me if I missed anything. No, that's great. And you mentioned the year to year.
Differences. One year could be bad. One year it could be good. Let's say that, all these accounts are correct and we do have this bumper crop of pulses this year. And, I know there's a lot to be said about survival rate. I've heard it said somewhere that as soon as a Turkey is born, it's looking for a way to die.
Yeah. But is it, could it be as simple as maybe just one or two good years of good hatches? And we're back to the old glory days. Is there a whole lot more to it to that, and then also what are some practical ways that people could help? Are there certain habitat projects people could [00:39:00] do to help the turkeys along, or is it a little bit more complicated than that and gonna take more of a state or even a, southeastern region?
Just people getting together and working on a big scale. Yeah. Okay. So two, there's kind of two questions there, and let me pick 'em apart. And you are correct that they are both very complicated. And so disappointingly, I don't personally think, my opinion is, there's not gonna be a simple answer to either one.
But your first question, could two great years take us back to the glory days? I don't think so in most places. And the only reason is because if an area has been tracking decline for a decade or maybe even 15 years, that hole is likely deeper. It's like it, it happens slowly. So it might've taken 10 years for anybody to notice, but once it's done, One, one or two good years in a row is probably not enough.
That doesn't mean you can't turn it around. So I don't wanna, I don't want [00:40:00] to burst everybody's bubble here and pretend that we should throw our hands up and give up. I don't think that's the case. And certainly nobody, no agency is doing that. But I am burst in the bubble that the idea that at large scale, we're not just gonna miraculously have one great year of pulse and Oklahoma's back to normal.
Or the southeast region of Oklahoma or half of Arkansas. When you start bringing together those big areas like that, it is gonna take more. Okay. Now to your second point which I think was more about what can we do? The, I think, so there's been a lot of Turkey research for, 50 years.
Of good information, technology is getting better and better. So the types of questions we can ask from a research standpoint are better and better. But there are a few things that we might, that we have pretty good information that we can at least point to as important. And one of the things that's coming up right now a lot across the southeastern US is brooding cover.
Early successional, vegetation [00:41:00] structure, grasses and Forbes. Forbes being those, flowering plants that, that you might think of as a weeded, like ragweed. But those flowers, especially in spring and summer, are attracted insects and those tiny little poles when they hatch out.
That's what they need to gorge on. And so there's a pretty big push now you're hearing it for folks that follow along. Certainly they should check out the Wild Turkey Science Podcast. That's co-hosted by Dr. Marcus Lashley at the University of Florida. Good friend of mine, we did our PhDs together.
We still work together. And Dr. Will Goldsby, who's at Auburn, it's funded by Turkeys for tomorrow. They have guests on there all the time. I've been a guest on there, matter of fact. But they have guests on there all the time talking about what can you do as a hunter or a manager, whether you've got, 5, 10, 20 acres.
There may only be so much but some folks maybe they own a couple hundred, maybe they lease a thousand maybe you're [00:42:00] friends with a bunch of neighbors and combined you've got 800, a thousand acres you can start to make an impact. And one of the thing I mentioned here is this idea of brooding cover becoming.
Potentially becoming limiting on the landscape. Okay. So that would be one thing. Obviously there's other things that you can do as a hunter, and I'm not gonna, I'm not making fun of or decrying regulations, but if I was in Oklahoma, which I am, I would not shoot a beard at hand just because it was legal.
We've actually recently done some modeling that demonstrates pretty clearly that hens are important. They're the most important, adult hens, survival is the most important thing, but most places there's not much a manager can do to fix that. In other words, there's always gonna be some mortality.
But if you're choosing to shoot a hen just because you wanna punch a tag on the last day of the season, I, my personal opinion is that's a mistake, [00:43:00] especially if you're in an area where you think populations are declining. So again, I'm not, I'm riding on anybody's parade. I'm not telling people how to hunt and what to shoot.
By all means, if it is legal and you wanna do it, knock yourself out. But if you knock on my door and tell me that for the last two years you couldn't find a gobbler, so you killed a bearded hen and you're worried that the population is going south, I'm gonna tell you to quit shooting the hen. You know what I mean?
Yeah. And that, by the way, that is not a true story. Nobody has told me that. But I just want to use a little hyperbole so people understand where I'm coming from. 'cause I'm fully supportive of people hunting in the way that they want to hunt. But those habitat pieces are usually the pieces that we focus on.
And I also wanna say this, John, 'cause I've been rambling now, but just because you do one thing, we're trying to figure out what's the lowest hole in the bucket. In some places right now, there may be many holes in the bucket. So we're working on plugging each of those leaks, right?
And if you have done absolutely [00:44:00] everything you can do for habitat, the next question is what about predators? And again, just like I said before, I'm not on here as a predator hater. They, we're talking a lot of times about native species that have co-evolved and been on these landscapes with turkeys forever.
But we do know landscapes have changed in some places. Predator densities especially nest predator densities have changed that, that may be an important factor in some places, in other places it may not matter at all. I've heard Dwayne Elmore he's here at O S U, he works with us on the Turkey project.
Craig Harper, university of Tennessee. Dr. Goldsby, Dr. Lashley, we were just talking about we, we don't want to just shift focus and say if predators are taking this, we should just punish the predators and it'll all be fine. Not if you don't have good cover for, yeah, you might save a couple nests, but if the puls hatch out and they can't get the appropriate thermal [00:45:00] cover that they need and they can't get the appropriate access to insects that they need, they're gonna die anyway.
So that's all I'm saying is for folks out there that care about turkeys, listen at, listen to all those options, right? And then consider what you need in your area. And you may know that best. I don't, for example, John, you and I, we've never met face-to-face until today. So I don't know what your, the properties you hunt on look like.
I don't know how many acres you got access to. So you might have done such a great job with Habitat that if I came down there, I might say dang, John, you're right. Maybe you do wanna try predator trapping, because anecdotally, there have been stories indicating that it can work.
But predator trapping is no joke. It's not something you do one time. And then hang up the traps. Yeah. Research has shown time and time again, whether we're looking at white-tailed deer fawns, or ground nesting birds or whatever. If you're not hitting them every year at the right time at an intensity that makes an impact, [00:46:00] it just doesn't matter.
And again, is it legal to pull over on the side of the road and shoot a coyote? Sure. Or where it is legal. If you wanna do that, go for it. But shooting one coyote is not managing your turkeys. It's not managing your deer. And so that's all I'm asking is that people soak up this information that's coming out because the reason we're all talking about it the professors, the graduate students the state managers, the directors of state agencies, are talking about all this stuff because we're trying to figure out the right way to plug the holes in the bucket.
Yeah. And in some places we're still trying to figure out which, what's the lowest hole, right? Because if I did everything perfect for habitat and my population was still going down, Then you gotta look somewhere else. And right now, one of the obvious places people look at that point is predation.
Yeah. So I don't mean to rant. I hope that was, I hope that answers your questions but yeah, that was great. That was one of the best rants I've ever heard. That's exactly what I was looking for. You have the right to the best wireless service. [00:47:00] Bravado Wireless provides the best mobile, wireless, high speed internet, latest devices and customer service at prices.
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Bravado, wireless, the power of connection. Man I'd love to keep going, but I do have one more topic that I'd like to cover and I don't wanna keep you too off along. Okay. One of the things you threw out there was Alaskan wolves and Oh, yes. I mentioned to you before we got started that wolves have always been a a little.
Have a little place in my heart because I went to school at the University of Idaho. I got there in 2008, which was just a few years after wolves had been reintroduced to Montana and Idaho and I fell right into the heart of [00:48:00] the, the pro reintroduced people, the anti the farmers and ranchers the whole shoot shovel shut up thing.
And then of course, everybody was blaming these Canadian super wolves that they brought in and yeah. Wolves are just a whole big can of worms. And I don't know how much of the lower 48 you've done, I know you, you mentioned Alaska, but I just feel like wolves are, they're very.
Everybody has an opinion, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Everybody knows what they are, they're very recognizable. They used to cover, just about the entire United States. Now they're in these little pockets and so That's right. Yeah. Yeah, just anything you wanna talk about I think would be interesting.
Okay. Yeah. Very charismatic. Also fun fact, and you mentioned Idaho. My wife's from Boise originally. Oh, there you go. Yeah, and we met when I was in Missoula at the University of Montana where she was, we were both there, yeah. For wildlife. She als she's now here, faculty in our department.
Nice. Yeah, I honestly, actually, you know what, before I go on Wolfs, I do wanna say I'll be happy to keep talking. If you get [00:49:00] feedback on the Turkey stuff we obviously can circle back to that, if you ever wanna take a deeper dive. I don't wanna cut short, but I do that we've got several projects to talk about.
Yeah. So the Wolf thing is fascinating to me. I was I was 10 ish, no, 12, I think about the time they started reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone. And my name Coulter actually comes from John Coulter, who was the first, kind of mountain man or otherwise white explorer that was given credit for discovering the area that became Yellowstone National Park.
And I've been traveling out there since I was a kid. 'cause my dad likes that area of the west, my family. And we'd fly fish and all. And of course, native peoples were already in those areas. So making that clear that the, that John Coulter was one of the white explorers that whose name appears on various things.
Right? There's a Colter peak, there's a wildflower that's got his name on it. So point is, it's a place that's near and dear to my heart. And I actually though I was young, remember, recognizing [00:50:00] the gravity of this reintroduction process that I believe was 95 and 96 in Yellowstone country.
And You are absolutely right. After that, you just have to step back and say, okay, everybody's entitled to, to have an opinion. We do like to base those opinion, in fact. But people have different, they come at it differently, right? You've got producers that are ranchers that are worried about livestock loss.
You've got guide services that are worried about, frankly, I'm gonna just call it what it's competing with elk. In other words, they want their hunters to shoot elk. They e every bull that happens to get taken down by a wolf is one less bull that a client could shoot. Okay? And then you've got, then you've got folks that just love animals for the sake of animals, whether they be elk or wolves.
They're charismatic. And like you said, they used to range widely over North America, and here humans have come in and constrained that, even persecuted wolves. I'm not here to tell people how to think. What I am here to do is tell you and [00:51:00] others like. I've always been fascinated that I would've, at the age of 8, 10, 12, 15, if you'd asked me my favorite animal, I would've said a gray wolf.
I was always fascinated with 'em, even though as a hunter, I understood that they had to eat the very game species that I also wanted to pursue, mule deer, al cam, moose, whatever. And when I got to move to Montana, and to get back on the point, I guess I too got to experience some of what you experienced in Idaho where you hear you, you get a bigger sense for the people who are dealing with wolves in their backyard, right?
And so though I haven't worked on wolves in Montana and Idaho, many of my colleagues and some of my closest friends have, some of 'em did their actual master's degree or PhD expressly on, wolf studies that were funded by Fish, wildlife and Parks in Montana, or Idaho Fish and Game.
So where I come, came into this is I ended up having some luck following my lap up in [00:52:00] Missoula. And one of my last postdocs before I came to Oklahoma State on faculty was working on a project on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. And you wanna talk about an interesting system. These wolves are trapped and hunted legally, under a regulation structure.
But at the same time, at least three times, and I think now there might be a fourth, they've been petitioned for listing under the Endangered Species Act. And it's in part, I don't wanna, I'm still, always trying to wrap my head around the legal technicalities. But it's because in some respects, they could be sick, considered a subspecies. In other respects it has to do with lack of range and protection of critical habitat. Without getting into the legal reasons, the reason I think that's a fun thought experiment is most people when they think of an endangered species, they think of something that's [00:53:00] really rare, but we don't usually hunt something that's being protected under the e s a.
And that's what makes this Prince of Wales system so interesting is they're still actually being harvested in the best way. Alaska Fish and Game thinks they can be harvested i e sustainably, but at the same time, there are these other pressures, some of them political, some of them socioeconomic, that.
Folks are concerned that the population may be unsustainably low. So I'm not here to pass judgment on the legal part, as I indicated a minute ago. But where I came in was trying to do a better job of counting them. So one of the things that we do in my lab and in labs that in my research lab, and in labs that I've worked with at the University of Montana, is use things like trail cameras to try to better estimate population size.
And so I was a part of a team that put together a a camera [00:54:00] trapping survey following a new methodology that incidentally my now wife actually created during her master's. She create, she created the model working on elk in Idaho. But it's now been used in many systems to, to estimate densities of cougars.
I think there was a sheep species in Hawaii. Somebody used it on, we're using it here in Oklahoma to look at white-tailed deer and wild Turkey. And so long story short, I was a part of this team as the postdoc on the project postdoctoral researcher on the project that put together the ongoing project up there.
Unlike the Turkey and pronghorn, where my lab here is one of the labs leading that research. In other words, I have graduate students that are actually out on those projects. The one in Alaska is actually being led by a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a co, a close colleague at Alaska Fish and Game.
That's their state agency. So my [00:55:00] role was essentially to like craft the plan and then the Alaska Fish and Game funded Dr. Sean Crimmins. At Alaska Fairbanks, and he has a student there. I serve on that student's committee. And that project is ongoing. Matter of fact, every time we have a meeting about it, we joke, I threaten about how and when I can get up to Alaska because I've actually never been on Prince of Wells Island.
And yet I've looked at a lot of maps. I've looked at a lot of collar data. I've thrown down camera grids. I've talked about protocols for how to better, better measure the things that need to be measured. And I really want to get up there to see the system because it's pretty fascinating.
Yeah. So is that kind of what you wanted to hear? Are Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah, like you said, it's so interesting and one. There's a hundred different interesting aspects to this whole wolf thing. Like you were just talking about how you, on that, that one population, they're thinking about listing on the endangered species.
Whereas here in the lower [00:56:00] 48, there's areas where we're trying as hard as we can to get 'em delisted. Some places have been successful, some places haven't. And so it's just interesting how, just the difference, the variation in different places, absolutely. This population's doing great.
This one might be struggling. And how do you manage all of them? Exactly. And that, and obviously wolves on Prince Wales Island, they have no physical connection to, Alberta, Montana, Idaho. So it's understandable that they'd be managed distinctly. But there, you're talking about hundreds, whereas, The state of Idaho, the state of Montana, the state of Wyoming, there are now thousands of wolves.
And so you're absolutely right. What it comes down to, and again, I'm not trying to weigh in politically, but ultimately that's where it always heads, because you end up with, biologists that are meeting these benchmarks and they might say hey, by our benchmarks this whole area, this Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, let's just make that up.
This whole area is [00:57:00] hitting the benchmarks. But then all of a sudden you see an immediate response by a state agency to liberalize harvest. Yeah. So what happens? Then some group that has a vested interest in wolves sues and says US Fish and Wildlife Service says that the population was recovered.
But then, and I'm making this up by the way, Johnson's scenario, but then Wyoming immediately said we're gonna kill this many wolves per year. So somebody sues them and now it's hung up in the courts. And then they gotta go to battle. And the feds or the state agencies have to present data on how do we, can we count wolves?
Do we really have a good sense of how many are there? Can we show that they're stable or that they're increasing? And then meanwhile, the other folks are saying, yeah, but then if you kill 'em at this rate, what would that do? Honestly, it's exhausting. It's the toughest part of the stuff that we do.
And again, I don't do that here. My job is usually to do the research component. But that doesn't mean that research that we do can't end up in a court case. Yeah. Because I just told you that part of my [00:58:00] role in this project is to try to get a better estimate of wolf numbers on Prince of Wales.
If somebody ends up suing somebody over that they. The state agency is gonna wanna stand behind a number and a method that they feel is rigorous and scientific and defensible, and after that, it's up to judges and lawyers, honestly. And and so it's messy and it can be frustrating and we could as you could do 14 episodes in a row on nothing but the politics around wolf management in the west. Yeah. But hopefully what your readers get out of the, or listeners get outta the this right now is just that I'm constantly amazed at the stuff that, that we get to be involved in. And by we, on the academic side, yeah. I teach some classes, but most of my job I spent 75% of my appointment is focused on research. And so that's direct interface with. [00:59:00] State agencies and sometimes federal agencies to answer these hard questions because if we can't figure out how to get good answers, we dang sure can't figure out how to get something like wolves listed or delisted, depending on which way it needs to go.
Yeah. Yeah. And oh, and then back to the first two things. Same thing with turkeys and pronghorn. We can't solve the problem if we don't have the right information required to solve it. And so yeah, so I can't complain. I do a lot of emails. I do a lot of paperwork, but when I get to go out to the panhandle and stand under a helicopter and, watch the grad students spinning blood samples and stashing tissue samples and fecal material, and we know that we got, 60 more collars put out that's a pretty good day in office.
Yeah. And sometimes those pretty species are the hardest ones to manage. 'cause those are the ones that usually have the most interest. So absolutely. A lot of people at the table we use the term charismatic for a reason because that's it. When they're charismatic, it means that everybody notices you go talking about some sort of [01:00:00] weird spider nobody's heard of and they don't care.
Yeah. And that's not really fair to spiders, by the way, but but it's a perfect example. Snakes and spiders sometimes creep people out, so they're not engaged, but boy, you put a baby polar bear on postcard and you got their attention, yeah. And that's good because it, in the end for conservation, I think to be holistic.
It can't always be about single species. Yeah. And so some people, maybe we need to engage them over a postcard with polar bears, because that might be the first time in their life they've ever thought about conservation. So anyway, I don't wanna, I don't wanna give you another rant, but I'm really passionate about this stuff.
I think it's really interesting and I'm glad to chat with you about it. Yeah. Yeah, man, I appreciate you coming on. Believe it or not, we've already been rolling for an hour, and oh yeah. So yeah, time flies. But before I let you go, I wanna be sure that people know where to find you. If somebody, so if somebody's listening to this and it sounds really interesting to 'em, and they wanna look up maybe one of these studies or your research, where should people go?
Yeah. That's a great question. With professors [01:01:00] anyway, you Google searching My name will likely land you on any number of Oklahoma State pages where you can get, you can see faculty information. I also have a webpage that, that we maintain periodically.
There's not a lot of research results on there, but information about some of the ongoing projects. And that's actually through WordPress. So again, if you Google my name and even throw WordPress in there, you'll find the Chitwood Lab website. And then I guess most recently, as far as social media stuff goes I'm at Big Game Doc on Instagram.
We've alluded to this before, but a lot of, with a lot of these podcasts and stuff going on, there's a lot of relationships among labs and we share each other's content. That is a place where once when we, once we start having results, I anticipate being able to share some things that way.
We've already been sharing capture related information on our pronghorn project and our Turkey project. So certainly folks could give us a follow on there and and get periodic updates on what we got going on outta my lab. [01:02:00] Awesome. Great. Culture one, I just appreciate you doing all this research and workforce.
We really appreciate it and also we just appreciate you coming on the podcast and talking to us about it and hopefully some people will look you up and learn a few things, so Yeah, sounds great. Happy to do it. Absolutely. I appreciate you coming on and we'll have to have you again sometime.
Okay. Happy to. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. And there we go, folks, another great episode in the books. Thank you culture for coming on and sharing all your research with us. A lot of interesting cool stuff. Really fun to listen to. And we have, speaking of listening to, we have a lot of really good content coming up guys.
I got I think two more episodes dropping before I head to Nebraska, and then obviously we'll probably do an episode on that. And before long, we're gonna be diving headfirst into all of Oklahoma's hunting seasons. And so a lot of good stuff coming up. Like I said, be ready for it. Hit me up on Instagram or [01:03:00] email, Facebook, whatever.
If you got some episode ideas, maybe you had a really cool or fun hunt that you wanna share with everybody, hit me up. We'll see if we can get you on. And that is going to do it for this week. So thank you guys once again for all your support. I love all you guys and until next week, I will see y'all right back here on.
The Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast.
