In this episode of NDO Podcast we visit with Ben Matykiewicz, Department big game biologist, about the habitat needs of deer throughout their life cycle and what might be currently lacking on the North Dakota landscape.
(Intro music)
Cayla: Welcome to episode 80 of the NDO podcast. On this episode, we've got one of our big game biologists on to talk about kind of the current state of our deer populations in North Dakota and what it takes for a deer's life cycle, what they need in different parts of their life. And, um, what it's looking like out there now on the landscape. So, yeah, thanks for being on Ben Matykiewicz. I think I said it right. Yeah.
Casey: We're going to have a competition at the next staff meeting and see who can spell Ben's last name.
Ben: Oh, that'll be awesome.
Casey: Without you, you can't play.
Ben: I can sit up there and judge people, right?
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: I don't think I can spell it. I could just say it correctly. Well, yeah. Thanks for being on Ben. Um, yeah. I just want to tell us your background, Been with us a year and a half, I think? Yeah. Okay.
Ben: Yeah. No, thanks for having me on. Uh, yep. So, Ben Matykiewicz, uh, I'm the big game management biologist out of Bismarck here. Um, primary responsibility is, uh, whitetail deer management in the state. And. Yeah, originally from Minnesota, about half hour, 40 minutes north of the Twin Cities. You know, not too far from where you grew up.
Casey: Did you guys know each other?
Cayla: No, I didn't even know people at my own school. Oh, it's too big.
Ben: And north. Twin cities, South twin cities, they don't get along. Yeah.
Casey: Okay. Didn't know there was a rift over there.
Cayla: Oh, yeah.
Ben: Yeah. But yeah. No, I went to college in northern Minnesota, bounced around a bit doing tech work, got my masters down at K state and bounced around a little more and ended up here.
Casey: Nice. Well glad to have you. So Ben took a lot of people who are listening, maybe know Bill Jensen, who was our big game biologist for a while. That or quite a while. Yeah, Bill was here a long time, and Ben took over for him when Bill retired. And so. Yeah, it's good to have you. So we've gone from a high deer population. I mean, 140,000 deer licenses, people getting multiple tags. Um, and that was back in like that, 04 to 09 period where the deer population was pretty strong. And then all the way up to the winter of22-23. Um, I don't know, you know, how much background you've done into looking into that stuff, but like, give us a give us a picture of you coming from the outside, kind of looking at that, that whole system and, and kind of what happened.
Cayla: I do think, I didn't put it on here. But it's also worth noting there was a time when there was fewer deer than we have now too, like you hear, you were just talking about someone that's like, I saw..
Casey: 5000 deer tags we used to give out.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: So way back.
Cayla: Mhm.
Ben: Yeah. So I guess from the outside looking at that as you know similar to other states. So that big boom we had you know in the mid 2000’s where we were seeing, you know over 100,000 deer tags and people getting multiple deer and multiple deer tags in a year. Um, that was actually a common trend throughout the Midwest. So Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Iowa, they all saw that big peak in those big CRP years where there was just that big abundance of habitat on the landscape and had similar issues with that massive deer abundance. And then coming off the tail end of that, you know, the decrease in CRP, you know, the loss of interest in it. And then, of course, you know, followed by several harsh winters. Following that loss of habitat, everyone else saw that steep decline in deer numbers. Um, depending on the state, that may not have hit it as hard. Um, obviously out here, it hit us a little bit harder than everyone else.
Casey: So our winters are a little worse than Kansas.
Ben: A little worse than Kansas. Yeah.
Casey: Yeah. And so it it was interesting. And, and right shortly before that, like you said, 2007, I was working in our private lands section and we kept talking about this big like the CRP declines coming like 2007 was kind of the peak. And we started to see, um, acreage caps be put on nationwide, which is why it affected those other states as well. And just just the general downturn of sometimes available acreage, sometimes available program to the landowners. And like there was a lot of landowners that would have re enrolled their CRP in some way, shape or form. Um, but they really didn't have that option. And so now they have to now they have to figure out what they're going to do, how they're going to pay taxes or whatever else that might be on that property. And so, yeah, it was just kind of it was one of those things where we saw it coming. I don't know that we anticipated it going this low. Um, and obviously had some hope that it wouldn't.
Ben: Yeah.
Casey: At some level. But, um.
Cayla: And when you were in PLI at that time, I guess I've heard you mention that was maybe too many deer from a…
Casey: Well, yeah, it was. I mean, it's it's always interesting because even the winter of 22-23, like, I remember talking to Bill Jensen before that winter started, I was the wildlife division chief and he said, we have too many deer on the landscape for the available habitat. And like you always break this carrying capacity, you know, when times are good. And then if habitat's decreasing, you're always like above the carrying capacity of the landscape as habitat goes down and the correction factor starts to happen. Um, and he, he was like, yeah, if we get winter, it's going to be a bad depredation winter. He predicted it in about September. Yep. Because he was like, we've got way too many deer on the landscape. And so like, people don't realize that sometimes, um, that we kind of push this artificial number for whatever reason, easy winters in a row. And then all of a sudden, you're above carrying capacity and that bad winter hits or an aide hits like we had and it just the bottom falls out at some level. Yeah. And the correction factor. Mother nature does it, you know. Um but yeah that was back in that 90. Well, 96, 97, even those bad winters, the deer population was pretty high and still increasing. And then we had the winters of 09, 10, 11. Yeah. Those were those were some bad depredation years for people on the landscape trying to keep deer out of livestock, feed sources and things like that. And the department over the years has dumped a considerable amount of money into trying to get landowners in a position where they can at least deal with some of that, um, with protection ideas and and infrastructure. Oh, yeah. But.
Cayla: Yeah. And I feel like we talk about the in North Dakota, the 3 million acres of CRP to 1 million acres of CRP in that time frame. But, um, that's only it's just one of the easier sort of things to measure. Uh, but obviously there was other there's has been other habitat loss in that time frame too. That's kind of on top of that. Mhm.
Ben: Yeah. It doesn't necessarily account for loss of wetlands or wetland edges or pasture land that may have been converted over to, you know, some other type of production.
Casey: Yeah. That's one thing that's interesting too, is like I think to set the stage habitat in its simplest form. Food, water, space, shelter.
Ben: Yep
Casey: So a deer, a pheasant, whatever it is. At at some level on the landscape needs every one of those things. And I think sometimes we forget about like even, even a wetland loss, not only the edge of the wetland, but the physical water itself. How that changes where where wildlife have to be or how hard they have to work to do something, burn up energy. And it's all those little things that start adding up that really make it hard to get a population to come back up, rebound, whatever you want to call it.
Ben: Yep.
Cayla: Yeah. And that too, we talked about like you have that bad winter of 22-23 where probably a lot of that year's fawns didn't make it. And then you have those in poor condition heading into that spring. Like you're just almost behind two if not like everyone's like, why aren't the deer back? We had a great winter, but it takes a long time to…
Ben: Yeah, those does need at least a year to really recover. And you're probably not going to see a decent fawn crop until at least two years later just for them to actually, like, recover or grow their bodies back, you know, get some of those fat reserves back, you know, into prime condition and then actually be ready to start having, you know, healthy fawns again.
Casey: Well, and even to rebreed cattle producers will know this, that cattle in poor condition won't breed back as easy. Mhm. Um, and so actually after that bad winter, it got pretty dry and we had a pretty rough drought right before we came into the next winter. Yeah. And so those, it just makes it hard. And you're talking replacing a doe has to at least raise one fawn to replace herself. Mhm. But now you're talking about increasing the population. Now you need some twins or things like that on the landscape to really do it fast. And that's hard for deer.
Cayla: And of course if you're chasing antlers you need those. They need to grow up.
Casey: You need 50% of those to make more bucks and. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's not a snap of the finger. Some of our upland game have the ability to bounce back pretty fast.
Ben: Oh yeah, if they lose their brood or first brood, they can just turn around and have a second one if it's not too late.
Casey: And if conditions are perfect, they can have pretty big broods. And so that makes a big difference.
Cayla: So we just need doe broods.
Casey: Doe broods. We need brooding deer.
Ben: That'd be awesome.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Brooding deer. Yeah, yeah.
Casey: So maybe Ben go into like the life cycle or or what? What is required for each kind of life cycle of a deer?
Ben: Yeah. So, I mean, from the 30,000 foot view, it's obviously, you know, habitat needs, you know, food, water cover space. But getting down beyond that is, you know, resources on the landscape. So, you know, so many water sources per, you know, amount of area you have. Um, our general metric is about two and a half acres per 350 acres of actual land in order to adequately, uh, you know, provide enough water for a doe to actually get through summer, or raise a fawn and be successful in reproducing and recruiting fawns. You know with that is, you know, high quality forage. So throughout spring and summer, deer are really heavily feeding on forbs. So herbaceous, leafy flowering vegetation, those are particularly high in digestible protein. So anywhere from 15 to 20% digestible protein per, you know, within a forb. And that really helps build up not only the Doe's body, but any excess amount of that goes directly to the fawns. Likewise with bucks, any excess amount goes to antlers, since from a biological standpoint, growing a fawn and growing antlers are both sort of secondary bodily growth. So whenever those deer are in poor nutritional condition, those secondary bodily growth metrics really suffer.
Casey: Mhm. Yeah. And water I think is one of the things that a lot of times we think oh North Dakota, it freezes up in the winter. How much water do they need? But the lactation period is where they really need the amounts of water.
Ben: Yep. That's for a doe. That's the most nutritionally stressful time of her life is actually lactation and growing those fawns once they're actually on the ground. So it's about six times more nutrients are needed during that period for that Doe to actually successfully lactate and grow her fawns.
Cayla: When do they wean? So it would be like June, July, August…
Ben: Yep. So it'll be June, July, August. And they'll start weaning towards the end of September.
Cayla: Okay. Yeah. It's not just raising the fawn or like making the fawn inside or giving birth, but then obviously, yeah, the whole summer of fawn rearing.
Ben: Oh yeah.
Casey: Maybe go into a little bit of, uh, of, like, habitat. So like, want to turn this into people that are interested and want to do something for habitat. Obviously, habitat in North Dakota is in short supply like we talked about, but like see, they're deer fanatics. What? What are what are they looking for? For one, you're looking for. You know, obviously funding habitat and fun rearing habitat.
Ben: Yep.
Casey: Which is a lot of times I think people don't think about because they only think about where they're harvesting their deer.
Ben: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Casey: Um, so maybe go into some of those needs.
Ben: Yeah, so fawn rearing habitat, you know, from some of the studies we conduct in state fawns really select for areas of grasslands, wetlands and shrublands to have all those three components within sort of their core home range or just their fawn home range, which is roughly 100 acres, maybe a little less than 100 acres. And it's roughly, you know, half shrubs, maybe a third grass, and, you know, a little bit of wetlands mixed in there, and then even some developed spaces, which in our terms we were talking about developed spaces within the fawns’ home range are either abandoned or inactive farmsteads. So those farmsteads really have all three of those key components in them. So some tree and shrub cover, some grass, some water, and really all that accumulates into sort of these diverse, densely vegetated habitats where the fawns can successfully hide and actually have some protection from the elements, you know, so they're not subject to hypothermia, you know, in case there's a cold spell or really rainy spring.
Cayla: And hundred acres is like, not that much. Obviously they their home range’s spread out. But yeah, you think about how many of those pods exist and then like out there and that's how many fawns could, could theoretically be supported if they're there.
Casey: So so when we say a hundred acres, that's for how long like that fawn to get to what point?
Ben: That's for about the first month, month and a half until they start becoming mobile and following around their mother. And once that happens, their, their, their home range increases until the point it meets their mothers. So at about two months of age, when they're really following their mother around, is when their home range really becomes their mom's home range.
Casey: Which is about what?
Ben: Uh, roughly one and a half to four square miles depending on the season. So during the summer a does home range averages about 1.5mi² in North Dakota. Come winter, that increases to about four square miles.
Casey: That's not very big.
Cayla: I know that's what I was saying. Like to have shrublands, grass…
Ben: It's actually slightly bigger than, um, most other states.
Cayla: Well, when I think about, I don't know, it's just like the landscape here, when I think about Minnesota, it's like you would see trees, grass crop within a smaller space just because like land ownership’s sort of tighter. But here when we have like larger land ownership parcels, then it's like, yeah, I don't think you see all those elements as often crammed in.
Ben: Yep. And those home range metrics definitely fluctuate in terms of, um, habitat quality and ones of habitats on the landscape. So in areas where you have, you know, higher amount of wetlands and forests on the landscape, those home ranges will actually shrink up. Whereas in areas where you actually have more crop on the landscape, you'll see those home ranges actually expand.
Casey: So maybe talk a little bit about the nexus with crop. So like we hear a lot like the game and fish department is giving out too many tags. There's corn everywhere. There should be deer everywhere.
Ben: Yeah. So I guess from a deer standpoint, crops in of themselves are really a single resource. They're not a complete habitat. They don't actually provide everything a deer needs within its full yearly life cycle. You know, it's an available resource from, you know, maybe late July until harvest, and it'll provide some cover from late July until harvest. And then later in the season, once crops start to mature, it'll become a food source or, depending on the crop, maybe a food source in late July, like soybeans, sunflowers and whatnot. But after harvest, it's a barren field and there might be some spent grain, you know, some, you know, thatch left in the field that could provide something for deer, but for the most part. There's not really cover, not much for food. And so the deer have to go elsewhere to find those resources. They're now missing from that landscape.
Casey: And so they really they're really of no benefit during the fawn rearing period.
Ben: Um, most crop fields are not tall enough at that point to be attractive for fawns or to adequately conceal a fawn.
Casey: Um, and then, of course, the the doe is probably looking for a more diverse diet at that point as well.
Ben: Yep. She's looking for more of that. You know, you know, more of the forby stuff. The higher stuff that's in the higher digestible protein to just build energy.
Cayla: But also, like, not only does there need to be all those things within those acreage, but the connectivity of like, you can't have the cover or the farmstead or the digestible protein over here, and then it's separated by a road or a just a barren crop field. Um, they need to be able to travel those corridors and get to those places.
Ben: Also equates to, um, fawn survival. So patches where you have at least 80% of your habitats connected within a 400 yard radius. You're going to see in, you know, improved fawn survival. And once that starts to drop, below 70% of your patches are connected within that 400 yard radius, you're actually going to see start to see decrease in the fawn survival. Yep, and then with that having it's obviously going to be within the Doe's home range. So the Doe really selects the general area where she drops the fawn, but the fawn will actually select the spot where it beds down and hides. And we'll actually occasionally get up and move throughout the day according to, you know, ambient temperatures and weather conditions and whatnot. But the fawns really select for areas of just really dense, tall vegetation. So we alluded to it earlier, but they look for generally at least 16in in vegetation height and then really dense horizontal cover. So it's a measure of how far you can see through the grass. So generally the less far you can see through the grass the better it is for fawns themselves. Um, yeah. If you want to get cute about it, you can make a little board or a Robel pole, which is just graded out every ten centimeters with either black and white or red and white paint, and have your kid or your buddy go lay down on the ground about the height of a coyote, and start holding that Robel pole far out and get closer and closer and closer and see how close you can get before you start to see, you know, the bottom 3 or 4 sections of that Robel pole. That can give you a rough indicator of, you know, how good of a horizontal cover you have in that area.
Casey: There you go. Yeah, field trips.
Ben: Yeah.
Cayla: And if you see a fawn by itself.
Casey: Leave it alone.
Cayla: Leave it alone.
Casey: Mom's probably watching you mess with it.
Ben: Oh, yeah. She's never far away.
Casey: Yeah. So maybe as we get into an adult. Adult deer, like, just to get adult deer through the year. What do we mean? Maybe talk a little bit about what we're looking at there.
Ben: Yeah. So to get to to get adult deer through the year. You know similarly you know you really that high quality forage through spring and summer and leading into fall to help, you know, get them past the hump of winter, you know, get them restoring their bodily reserves and rebuilding what they lost throughout that, you know, tail end of winter, you know, especially if winter was really rough on them that year. You know, getting does through fawning season, getting through the lactation period. And then especially for does in the fall and later in the fall, they need to once weaning is done, they need to really build back up their bodies and build up a good layer of fat to help get them through the winter. So need, you know, some good fall forage. You know, forbs aren't as abundant. Everything's starting to senesce um, crops can be especially good that time of year. That does represent a higher, you know, nutritional forage for them, you know, higher digestible energy. But other things like hard mass like acorns, especially, you know, when we have a good, really good acorn crop, you can see some really fat deer that have, you know, good patches of oak trees within their home range. Then, of course.
Casey: Sheyenne grasslands. That's about the only place we got good patches of oaks.
Ben: Oh, I know a few around here. Yeah. And then, of course, going through winter, you need really good winter cover. So areas of trees, you know, good, you know, solid canopy cover and then even brushy areas. So really thick plum patches, anything that can get them out of the wind, out of deeper snow where they don't have to expend as much energy to help keep their bodies warm. And then with that, having sources of some winter nutrition nearby. So that way they're not traveling too far to actually access some sorts of nutrition in the winter. So, Woody, browse, uh, food plots, cover crops, you know...
Cayla: A+ food plots.
Casey: A+Plus food plots.I had to ask her what that meant. She had on the sheet here. Food 10A+. I was like, what in the world is that?
Cayla: Greater than ten acres.
Casey: Greater than ten acres? Yeah.
Cayla: He thought he was gonna stump me on my own notes. I know what that means.
Casey: See what she comes up with when we get to it I guess. But so. So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about that. Like, we talk about tree plantings a little bit. And like a lot of people, you know, they talk about the shelterbelts being taken out, which are probably more important for a travel corridor between habitats than they are actually habitat themselves.
Ben: Yeah, they’re great for connectivity, but in terms of cover, they're relatively poor, um, both from a fan standpoint and an adult standpoint in the winter. So those shelterbelts, they're fairly narrow. So if we don't get a ton of snow, you get some wind mixing with that snow. They can fill in with snow pretty quick. And at that point, once the snow becomes, you know, 15, 20 plus inches deep within those shelter belts, they become fairly useless for deer. And so we need really wider block plantings of 8 to 16 or more trees in width. So that way you have 1 or 2 edges to really catch snow. And then the rest of it is more or less snow free for the deer or to make it available for deer.
Casey: You see, I mean, you do see a few what people will call shelterbelts in crop fields that are 4 or 5 rows, and they do pretty well for most of the winter.
Ben: Yeah.
Casey: Um, it's just when we get those really bad winters that they, they kind of get chock full of snow, but, um, but yeah, we have if anybody's interested in doing a block planning, we have, I think you can find designs of block plantings on our web page. Um, you can also talk to, uh, one of our private lands biologists, and they can either help you find a program if it's not one of our programs, or at least a way to design it to maximize its benefits for for all wildlife out there.
Ben: Yeah.
Cayla: This just came across when I was researching for this, but like. Yeah, how he had mentioned it. Bill Jensen had mentioned like, trees and shrubs for antler rubs. But I was like, how necessary is that? Do they really like, need to go seek out somewhere to rub? If there isn't.
Casey: They find mine.
Cayla: Yeah. I mean obviously, they, I'm just mean like if it I don't know I never thought about that as a limiting factor I guess. Like I need to rub these.
Ben: Yeah. So it can serve as some limiting factor. Um, I've seen instances of deer actually using wooden fence posts when there's a lack of trees.
Cayla: Okay.
Ben: Oh, I'm sure you've seen it on your ranch, too, Casey. But, yeah. Really, what those are. Is there a signpost during the rut for communication between deer and really serves as a way for the deer to communicate their presence on the landscape? And so bucks actually have a cluster of, uh, skin glands on their forehead, you know, particularly whitetail bucks. And they actually use those to rub or deposit those pheromones onto that rub to signify their presence there and communicate to other deer. You know how many deer may be in the area. You know who's available during the rut and so on.
Casey: I'm bigger than you, kinda thing.
Ben: Yep. Yep. Mhm.
Cayla: It's like deer tinder.
Casey: Tinder for deer.
(Laughter)
Casey: Tinder.
Cayla: You know, keeping all this in mind. Um, you know, if you're again if you're really interested in deer, you don't necessarily have to have it all in your land. You can kind of look and see what's limiting in your area. Um, or what your neighbor has going and what might be limiting in this life cycle that could benefit the region.
Casey: Yeah, it might be if you're a smaller landowners maybe that, you know, start talking to the neighbors. Let's make an area that's got all this stuff, um, that'll help us produce more deer.
Ben: Mhm.
Casey: I don't know, Ben. Anything else that, uh, people should know about, especially our whitetail deer. Maybe here in the north country or in North Dakota itself.
Ben: Yeah. So as far as whitetail deer, I mean, you know, going back to, winter needs. You know, I mentioned they build up fat throughout winter. So one of the main strategies deer have here to actually survive winter is to build up those big fat reserves. And so generally from a biologist's standpoint, you measure that in terms of a rump fat. So the amount of fat they actually, you know, deposit on their hind quarters. And that can actually be a determining factor in whether or not an animal can survive an average winter. More harsh winter, no winter at all. It shouldn't be as much of an issue. But yeah, having those fat reserves are really a replacement for high quality nutrition within the winter. And they supplement it with, you know, that really low nutrient, high fiber browse left on the landscape. And so offering that higher nutrition in the fall to really build up those fat reserves in the winters, you know, really vital for carrying adult deer over through to the spring.
Casey: Yeah. And it's interesting, I don't know, I can't remember the there's kind of some general dates, but like a deer can, a deer can add fat. And then almost at a certain point they, they can't add fat almost no matter how good the nutrition is in an average winter, they have to live off their body supplies.
Ben: Yep.
Cayla: And you mentioned connectivity before. Um, but even if it was like a nice corridor to get to the food, still, when we start getting snow and wind, obviously the further they have to travel to, they're just burning energy to get to food. So.
Ben: Yep, especially if that snow starts to reach, you know, that 15-16 inch depth, um, deer will have to start bounding through it in order to access food. And of course, that bounding causes them to burn up more energy at a time than just simply walking. And so once you start seeing deer bounding through winter, it's like, well, the probability of survival for the deer herd is starting to go down.
Casey: So just to think about it, when you're out on the landscape, you know all the things we've talked about. Ask yourself if if you can see that in your landscape right now, um, wherever you are in North Dakota, or maybe the deer unit you hunt in or or things like that. But, um, I think you'll start to recognize that it's in a little bit short supply. And, and, uh, anybody that's interested in, in improving their habitat on the landscape for deer definitely get ahold of us and we can help you one way or the other. Even if our program as a game and fish department doesn't fit you, we can help you find other programs that you might be able to, um, get some cost share, or at least get you some quality habitat designs that you can use to improve your odds doing it.
Cayla: But you can probably bring back Bill Jensen to draw you a handwritten little map of you need to do.
Casey: Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Cayla: No. And even from I mean, yeah, I think it's clear that some of this is lacking in places out there now, but even from a hunter's scouting perspective, it's interesting to note too. Like, where do you feel like these things do exist? Um.
Casey: The other thing too, is as habitat decreases, the ability of deer or wildlife or anything to handle other stressors on the landscape, whether that's drought, whether that's disease, whether that and all these things become additive over time. If habitat quality suffers, just makes it exponentially harder for for deer to bounce back or or even maintain.
Ben: Yep. You're essentially just, you know, taking away that carrying capacity and really lowering the bar in terms of, you know, what they can recover to and then really throttling back on how fast they can recover.
Casey: Right.
Cayla: Alright. Well, thanks for being on Ben.
Ben: Yeah.
Cayla: We'll get into the Department Droppings. So speaking of deer, the youth deer season opens on September 19th.
Casey: Yeah, and we also have youth waterfowl season opening the day after on the 20th. You need the E-stamp if you're a youth waterfowl hunter. The state e-stamp.
Cayla: And then the following weekend is the waterfowl opener. So September 27th. Again, as we said, you'll need the new waterfowl habitat restoration E-stamp as well.
Casey: Yeah. And just because you're waterfowl hunting and and not fishing ANS rules still apply. Clean drain dry your boats out. If you're using boats, make sure your waders are clean and dried, decoys, dogs, etc. before you go into the the next water body you may be hunting for the day. Alright, now that we've dropped the droppings, you can get off the pot and get outdoors.
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