Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks

They're going to go to grad school or even if they don't go to grad school, you know, they're going to stay in the field.

They'll go work for Fish and Wildlife Service or Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.

and the many, many, many other, you know, wildlife, natural resource-focused organizations and companies.

But one thing I think that maybe even surprised me a little bit at the beginning was we have a lot of people that come in to do an undergrad with us, and they're going to go off and do something completely different.

He ended up, he was going to be a conservation officer and he ended up getting into the academy, which was the first check mark.

Then he ended up getting the job.

And so now he's actually with Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.

as a conservation officer.

We're gonna have William McKinley on.

He is the deer program coordinator for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks and he's been with them almost 25 years.

He's one of the most respected coordinators in the country and I've got the chance to talk to him a few times and he's j- he's just a good old boy from Mississippi that honestly knows a ton about this topic.

So we're gonna have William on here.

We see them or get them on camera beginning of the season, early, early deer season, and then they disappear.

And so that was basically hunters and hunting clubs reaching out to MDWF and P and wanting answers.

And then MDWF and P collaborating with Mississippi State, the MSU Deer Lab, and that led to this project.

And what type of questions could we answer? What type of behaviors could we, could we quantify to maybe help, you know, figure out some of these questions that hunters a- and managers have? And I always like to start, too, with what are our expectations? And, you know, generally, I hear a lot, now whether people mean this literally, whether they really think this and mean it, or whether it's just something people say, but I hear kinda these all-encompassing explanations like, "The deer didn't move today," or, "The deer are totally nocturnal." You know, it's all of these, uh, one way or the other entirely.

And it's, it's a population effect, and within that population there are individuals, and there can be a lot of individual variation.

I think we had a game scheduled.

They got postponed, but we ended up Mississippi state, maybe against South Carolina.

I don't remember who we were playing, but we were the first televised sporting event after nine 11.

Cause they shut everything down.

That's just how it works.

And then he has other pockets of money, too.

I'm sure Cohen and Mississippi State, Calicut, they probably have the same.

But We don't have a lot of influence on how many get banded.

[clears throat]And that, I mean, that's, that's what happens when people have too many deer for too long

And we, to help people out, the, the Deer Lab, years ago we developed in, in cooperation with MDWF and P because we wanted to get feedback from biologists that work in different regions.

And I can't remember if it was 10 plants per region, but we went through and developed a list and with really good photos of those, uh, and we called them indicator plants.

So these are quote deer plants because it's overwhelming.