[playful music]
- WARREN [on radio]: Are you in contact with the helicopter?
- JACOB: Yeah.
- WARREN [on radio]: All right, well, we're hearing 660 still.
I don't know where the chopper is.
They should be able to spot us I think.
- NARRATOR: From the back of a pickup truck...
to the seat of a helicopter...
these Texans are on the hunt.
But they aren't after trophies or meat.
They're hunting for knowledge.
[playful music]
- We're up in the Panhandle of Texas
and we're studying mule deer movements and survival,
and particularly how those are influenced by agriculture.
[helicopter whirs]
- This is the first study of its kind that we've
ever done in the state of Texas.
[mule deer breathing]
Because of the many partnerships
that we have established in this project,
we were able to really finally get it going.
- HANDLER: One, two, three.
- SHAWN: We're going to get some outstanding information
to make the best management decisions that we can
for mule deer in the state of Texas.
[playful music]
- Mule deer are a very interesting species.
People think about them in the Western U.S., but we do have
them here in fairly healthy populations in Texas.
- They're not found throughout the state like
white-tailed deer are, so they are pretty much restricted
to the Panhandle or the Trans-Pesos area.
- SHAWN: They need less brush.
They need lots of lots of open expanse habitats
compared to a white-tailed deer.
- But just like white-tail, mule deer are an animal
people love to see.
- Yeah, I can see one right on the horizon.
That's a big bodied deer too.
- Mm-hmm.
- DANA: Landowners depend on them as a source of income
for leasing their property for hunting.
So they are important to this area...
[windmill rattles]
...and yet we know very little about them.
Very little research has been done on them
here in the Panhandle.
[water sprays]
[playful music]
- NARRATOR: From row-crop farming,
to pastures for livestock production,
to plenty of wide open, wild spaces,
[cows moo]
the Panhandle of Texas is the epitome of rural.
And mule deer can be found just about anywhere.
Just ask a local.
- It's not unusual to nearly be able to walk
plumb up on a mule deer.
[Rodney laughs]
Or drive up on one.
If they're out in the field next to the highway,
you can stop and take pictures of them.
[camera clicks]
- NARRATOR: In the fall and winter, large groups of
mule deer can be found grazing in wheat fields.
- It's not uncommon for us to see 150, 200 a day
this time of the year.
[camera clicks]
- One of the big questions of this project
is dealing with agriculture land versus the rangeland
like you see behind me.
Is there a difference in the nutritional value of the plants?
Or is it the deer are picking it just because it's out here
and they have a buffet.
- NARRATOR: To help answer this question, researchers are
looking at mule deer location data to determine
what they like to eat.
- Here is a doe.
This is a cotton field and it also grows wheat during
the winter, so she was using the crops in the area
very frequently over the course of the year.
- NARRATOR: They are also collecting native plants...
And poop samples.
- JACOB: We are basically identifying the plant DNA found
in the fecal material and we did observe the deer eating
sand shinnery oak and sand sage so that gives us an idea of
what we should be finding in the sample.
- NARRATOR: Another question is,
"How far are mule deer willing to travel for a bite to eat?"
- There's thoughts both from the agency standpoint
and also from landowner standpoint that these mule deer
may be showing large movements relative to different
agricultural crops, 10 or 20 miles maybe.
- SHAWN: That can impact the way we survey the deer.
That can impact the way we issue antler-less mule deer permits.
If we're issuing permits in a certain area,
are we impacting neighbors far away that we had no idea
that we would be impacting?
- NARRATOR: To answer these questions, the research team
is tracking the mule deer using radio collars.
- DAVID: We've actually got two different kinds of collars.
On the fawns we've got a collar that emits a radio signal.
Those enable us to tell where the deer is and if the deer
is alive or not.
- Write that it was under a barbed wire fence.
That's an indication that it broke off.
The stitching will expand on its own.
As the fawn grows, sometimes it gets hung up in other things
and come off before the fawn is full grown.
- DAVID: The other kind of collars that we are putting on
the adult deer have a GPS unit built into them.
So those collars are taking locations every hour for a year.
So we'll get thousands of locations on those deer
day and night, every day of the year.
- NARRATOR: The tricky part is getting the radio collars
on the mule deer.
[playful swing music]
- THOMAS: We have deer that are radio collared that we
captured back in 2015.
The radio collars all transmit a signal.
[playful swing music]
Those radio collars are allowing the helicopter crew to use
radio telemetry and locate them.
- Normally it takes them a little while to get the feel
for the country and how the animals are reacting
and how they react to the helicopter
before they bring us an animal.
- THOMAS: They are going to fly to that animal,
get it in an open area, fire a net around it
and that net's going to hobble them up.
They'll have a gentleman get out and secure them
with straps and bands...
[deer bleats]
and hook it up to a line underneath the helicopter.
[helicopter whirs]
And the helicopter will long-line it in,
then gently lower it to the ground for us to work on.
[helicopter whirs]
- NARRATOR: The team works quickly to download
the collar data...
And take a bunch of other measurements.
- SHAWN: We've got a huge gamut of things that we're collecting
on the deer while we have them in hand.
We don't normally have deer in hand.
[clippers buzz]
- We're getting body weights, we're getting body condition
meaning how much fat they have on them.
Fat for humans isn't necessarily a good thing but for wildlife,
having some extra fat on them is a really good thing.
So body condition three and five millimeters of fat.
It helps them survive the hard times and the females will be
able to reproduce better if they have more fat.
So that's a really good measure of kind of habitat quality
for these animals.
- While it is amazing to be close to such
magnificent animals, at the same time you have to be calm
because these animals can pick up on any emotion like that.
- There's a high interest in this research project
not only from the department and our partners
but from private landowners as well.
[helicopter whirs]
- It's not every day you get to see two mule deer
swinging out from underneath a helicopter.
[helicopter roars]
- Been real interesting.
It's a lot better than digging post holes or fixing fence.
They got that one off my dad's place.
It's not a typical thing that we get to see
and it's a pretty amazing project.
[water squirts]
- DANA: We were able to capture a lot of deer today.
- DAVID: See, he was a yearling last year.
He's going to look really nice to people out in the field.
Look at that body on him.
For a two-year-old, looks like a hoss.
- Really excited to see the changes that have occurred
in the deer from one year to the next.
- Do you have his weight on there?
I'm just curious.
- DANA: 112 last year, what did he weigh?
- MAN: 165.
- DANA: Wow! - MAN: He's gained some weight.
- WARREN: Yeah, that's awesome.
- Yeah, over 50 pounds.
- WARREN: That's fantastic.
- THOMAS: One...
two...
three.
[playful swing music]
- The deer seem to be doing really good in this area
and we're excited to find out more about where they've
been all year and what they've been doing.
- NARRATOR: For now, researchers will continue to monitor
the deer and their various food sources.
- Tails up.
I think we got poop!
- NARRATOR: Each day brings more insight.
- LAURA: If we look at her GPS tracks, you can see that she
went back and forth between the two areas quite frequently.
- If this agriculture is a good nutritional resource
for the deer,
we would expect those deer that are using agricultural fields
to have more fat, be heavier, larger body sizes,
may have larger antler sizes.
- SHAWN: There's a lot of things in there of how we do business
that this information is really going to fine tune
and make mule deer management better for the state
and the Texas Panhandle.
[playful swing music]
- NARRATOR: This project was funded in part by a grant
from the Wildlife Restoration Fund.