Most prospective wildlife managers would never believe how much of my time is spent convincing landowner clients about what is really out there in the woods instead of growing bigger, older deer. In many situations, those older deer already exist. Now my management recommendations may help grow/attract more of them, or make them a little bigger per age-class, but in most parts of the Southeast, hunters have become selective enough about what they kill over the last 15 years that older bucks already exist. The trick is getting hunters to see and kill them.

The human mind works in interesting ways. We are a very visually oriented creature, and this is especially true of the males of our species. Much of what we believe to be "true or false" is based on what we personally see and experience. If we see it, it exists. If we look for it but don't see it, it doesn't exist. A shocking percentage of my job involves first, finding out what really is true, and then the most difficult part, getting landowners/hunters to understand what is true instead of what they believe to be true. Those two factors can be amazingly different.

The second biggest part of my job is finding and breaking the bad habits of life-long deer hunters. THAT is extraordinarily hard to accomplish! I will be the first to tell anyone who will listen that I am NOT a great deer hunter. I wouldn't put myself anywhere near the list of the best hunters I know. But I've spent a huge part of my career studying what makes hunters successful or unsuccessful. What factors contribute to hunters successfully seeing and killing older bucks? Through that research I've found a few basic "mistakes" that many hunters make, and much of that has to do with stand placement and hunting behavior. Simply altering these two factors can pay huge dividends in what hunters see and kill. Although "simply" would be the wrong word to use when it comes to convincing life-long deer hunters that they are "hunting wrong!" But this is all part of what Matt said about successful biologists being "great communicators" and having "people skills." You really don't need a degree in biology to manage deer hunters, but you DO need people skills to find friendly, positive, constructive ways to nudge hunters towards more productive hunting habits.

I've got a few clients who think I'm an absolute management genius. But all I really did was help them see and kill what already existed.