Cotton Specialists Corner
Extension Cotton Specialists and others from across the U.S. weigh in on a variety of topics that impact cotton producers, consultants, and the industry as a whole.
Cotton Specialists Corner
Deer vs. Cotton
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Deer don’t have to destroy every acre to break a farm’s budget. When a herd gets concentrated along a field edge, a few nights of feeding can wipe out cotton terminals, strip leaves during bloom, and turn a “normal” stand into a financial loss you can’t spray your way out of. We sit down with Clemson Extension wildlife specialist Cory Heaton to talk plainly about what white-tailed deer are doing to agricultural commodities across the Southeast and why the problem has escalated over the last 30 to 40 years.
We get into the hard parts: shrinking habitat from development, hunter harvest trends that leave too many does on the landscape, and the reality that public opinion changes fast when deer become a safety and disease issue. Cory shares what exclusion cage studies show about true yield potential and why conservative measurements still add up to massive statewide losses. We also talk deer density targets, why 15 to 30 deer per square mile is a reasonable goal, and what happens when real-world numbers run five to ten times higher.
Then we go practical. We break down deer depredation permits, when removal would be most efficient, and what “IPM for deer” looks like in real grower fields. We also dig into deer repellent programs: when to start, how to decide re-spray timing, what weather and temperature do to performance, why rotation matters, and why tank mixing with herbicides can create unexpected problems. If deer are a constant threat where you farm, this conversation helps you choose strategies that protect yield without guessing.
Subscribe for more field-tested cotton management, share this with a grower or hunter who needs to hear it, and leave a review with your biggest deer challenge so we can tackle it next.
Cold Open And Theme Music
SPEAKER_04Well I finally made the money. It's the cotton picking cotton grooving blue.
Why Deer Are A Cotton Pest
SPEAKER_01Welcome to this episode of the Cotton Specialist Corner Podcast. My name is Camp Han, uh, Extension Cotton Specialist at the University of Georgia based out of Tifton. And uh today we're we're doing an episode on something that I've been getting a lot of calls about and something we started piddling with here at Georgia a couple years ago. And and those of you that have heard me talk about it, whether it's at Bellwhite or Grower Meetings or even on this podcast in the past, know that for us in the Southeast, whitetailed deer are a major problem. And I know that that's the case in other parts of the cotton belt as well, whether it's the the mid-south. I know for certain my folks live over in Mississippi, and I know it's an issue over there. Um, and it may not be as much of a problem, especially once you get into the high plains of Texas. But uh, you know, it's certainly something that people need to know about and need to know how to deal with because it's a little different than a lot of the other pests that we're used to dealing with. And so with me today is no stranger to white-tailed deer and somebody who's been working on a lot of this stuff for the last, I don't know, Corey, 10 years or more.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think Jeremy Green dragged me into this 10, 15 years ago now.
SPEAKER_01So with us today is Corey Heaton, he's an extension wildlife specialist with Clemson University. And where are you based out of, Corey?
SPEAKER_02Uh I work at the Sand Hills Research Facility, which is in the middle of South Carolina and Columbia. Okay. It's aptly named the Sand Hills, forming beach sand.
SPEAKER_01That's right. So uh Corey's been working on deer repellents and white-tailed deer losses to whitetailed deer in uh row crop agriculture for a long time. But Corey, you know, you your background is in wildlife and wildlife management. So so you mentioned uh Dr. Jeremy Green, the entomologist there at Clemson, so and how he kind of roped you into this. And so give us a little bit of background into how you kind of got roped into working so much with growers, not just in South Carolina. I know people in Georgia call you and Alabama and places like that, North Carolina, but um, how did you get so involved in row crop agriculture from uh coming from that wildlife background?
Cory Heaton’s Path Into Row Crops
SPEAKER_02Well, first and foremost, you can't care as much about wildlife as I care about wildlife and not recognize how important agriculture is. You you take agriculture out of the equation and everything I care about no longer has a home, right? So from that side of it, you know, agriculture is extremely important to everything I do. Uh but you know, I've I've been with Clemson for, I don't know, since I was 18 years old. So 26 years now I've been working with Clemson in research farms and extension, and you name it. But I worked about 10 or 12 years as a road crop agent. I had parts responsibility for being a road crop agent for three or four, five or six, or ever how many counties got dumped on me at any given time. Um, but when you work in road crops and you're seeing what's happening, you realize there's problems, and and then when you take that over to managing the deer side of it, the problems I'm facing on trying to grow trophy bucks is the same problem that that farmer's facing trying to grow, you know, 1,500 pounds of cotton. When you got too many mouths, it don't work. And um so one thing led to another. And we've been for a long time now trying to find some solutions to this and some management strategies so that farmers can grow a crop. Yeah, and again, I'll say this again, I know it don't sit well with everybody, but the strategies I use for farmers are the exact same strategies for managing a deer herd that I manage for the best plantations to deer hunt in the state of South Carolina. It's all about herd management and getting those numbers down. It's the same philosophy on both sides. Right philosophy on both sides.
SPEAKER_01Right. And so this is a complicated issue, right? Because you got you got farmers who don't want nothing to do with them, nine times out of ten, right? Whenever it's a problem, these guys don't want nothing to do with them. The the hunters want these big bucks, right? And that's nine times out of ten what a hunter's gonna do. You and I are not like that. We're we're meat hunters, you know, but there's a lot of hunters out there that are just interested in shooting trophy bucks. And then you've got, so you've got the public opinion side of this thing too, where you know, going out and spraying a cotton field for stink bugs or plant bugs or or cotton jazzed or whatever it might be, you know, that's all fine and dandy, but you start messing with deer, then that uh oh, that that's a warm and fuzzy feeling on the inside whenever you got a deer with white spots on it, you know. So um it is a complicated issue because you're balancing a lot of a lot of revenue that these guys are bringing in. I mean, you start talking about the tax dollars associated with ammunition and hunting licenses and things like that versus the losses that a lot of these growers are facing. And so it is a very complicated issue.
Hunting Reality And The Freezer Dilemma
SPEAKER_01But before we get into it, uh we kind of talked a little bit before the podcast. I did want to ask if you deer hunt for fun anymore, or is it or is it just work for you?
SPEAKER_02Well, you know the answer to that. If you're not a buck hunter and you've been doing this as long as I have, and you've killed as many deer as I have, I know a lot of people pat their self on the back about that. I'm not one of them. But when you do it for a long time and you kill a lot of them, it takes a lot of the fun out of it. And so for me, if I want to have fun deer hunting, I have to grab somebody's young and get my gun to go and let them experience it. Right and see what used to happen to me happen to somebody else. Right. But as far as as far as me enjoying deer hunting, I I love to fish. I love deer hunting something out there because I have to do it. That's right. I don't have a choice there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I I still have fun deer hunting. I I try to go a good bit. We're our limit in Georgia is 12 deer, two bucks, and 10 does. Uh it's my, you know, and I I really challenge myself because I, you know, I want to do my part out there in the deer woods and and help with herd management, but also I can't stand in front of a bunch of growers at a grower meeting and say, hey, I'm doing my part, I'm I'm researching this stuff, we're doing whatever, and then tell them, oh yeah, well, I don't sit on a deer stand, right? I mean, my goal is to shoot 12 deer every year in the state of Georgia. And so that that's what kind of gets me out in the woods. But um, you know, we were talking beforehand. We're we're the kind of folks that if a doe walks out and comes in range, I'm gonna put a shot on her. And then we do all the processing. And uh, so it gets to be a little bit of a grind, no pun intended, you know, if you grind all your meat or whatever, but it uh it does start to wear on your little dilemma.
SPEAKER_02I call it the freezer dilemma. That's right. That's right. I have three chest free, well, two stand-up freezers and a chest freezer in the shop for nothing but deer. You can only put so many deer in there. Then what do you do with the rest of it?
SPEAKER_01That's right. That's right. And so, I mean, good. I just left lunch out at the out at the gin here in Tifton and we cook for our crew a good bit, and we use deer meat that I've you know processed at home. I mean, I shot nine deer last year. There's no way that me and my wife and my three-year-old and my one-year-old could eat nine deer before the next season started. So I'm very thankful that we cook as much as we do around here and use it. You know, it goes to good use. And so uh we're we're doing everything we can to try to help out in the in the area and then try to try to uh make sure that it goes to good use and all that good stuff. We we cook smash burgers right regular and all that fun stuff. So it's uh you know, it's still fun for us, but I did just in the last week start going on permit during the summertime. And I tell you that that's not fun. I do not like that. And uh getting eat up by mosquitoes sitting there at night in the dark, you know, just scanning the field to see if there's deer out there and uh putting shots on the does and trying to pick out the little dink bucks and stuff like that and leave them alone. Um, you know, you can kind of understand why these guys get so ill about deer whenever you do something like that. And uh, you know, shoot shooting them in the summertime is not fun, but um, you know, kind of going back to everybody's got an opinion on this, and you know, anytime you talk about it, somebody come up to you with an idea of why it's a problem or what we should do or anything
Why Deer Pressure Got Worse
SPEAKER_01like that. And so I do kind of want to get your opinion. You know, people talk about how deer were not a problem in cotton back, you know, before the 90s, right? And in the 90s, something changed. And uh inevitably people attribute that to transgenic cotton coming on the scene, right? These new transgenic traits, oh man, they've they've changed the palatability of the cotton. Like something changed, and the deer like it better now than they used to. Of course, Roundup is formulated as a salt, you spray it over cotton, and people are like, man, that makes it taste good. You know, so uh what's kind of your thoughts on why, you know, deer have just all the sudden, not not really all of a sudden, but over the last 30, 40 years uh become such an issue for cotton producers across the across the southeast and the mid-south.
SPEAKER_02So I'm a I'm a South Carolina guy, first and foremost. If I never have to leave this state again, I'm okay with that. Yeah. So I I get my knowledge base once I leave this state's very limited. So I don't want to be over speaking of what's happening in Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi or any of those. But I talked to a lot of those growers, so I got an idea, right? But if I just look at South Carolina, man, in the past 10 years, we've added one million residents, not people, actual buildings. So if each one of those was just an acre, that's a million acres gone, but it hadn't been just an acre. We've lost a tremendous amount of land. So one thing that's going on is whether you believe the deer population's increasing or decreasing doesn't matter to me. The reality is the habitat is decreasing. We're shrinking these deer into smaller and smaller areas, and we're shrinking them in where I live at to fewer and fewer farms, right? There's still just as many fields across South Carolina, but how many of them still got soy beans of cotton growing in? Right. You know, it's got jungle gyms and playgrounds and and and solar panels, everything's changed, right? So a lot of the let's call it natural habitat, if you want to, is is not there at the level that it used to be. It's not there at the quality that it used to be. Um so a lot of the natural uh uh forage that was available is essentially depleted. It's not there. Um and then you know, growing up, and and I know biologists that think I'm nuts and I don't know what I'm talking about, and that's fine, I don't. But growing up in the 80s and 90s, early 90s, it was amazing to see a deer out of the deer standard. Yeah, if you saw two deer, you had an amazing hunt. Yeah. Two deer. You know how disappointed it would be for somebody to go hunting today and say they only saw two deer.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's like I get ill if I don't see one.
SPEAKER_02Right. Right. But you know, they want to see 15, 16, 20, 30, 40 deer every time they sit, and and that's very possible to do in most of South Carolina at this point, not all of it, but most of it. That's a lot of mouths to feed. Yeah. A lot of mouths that used to be distributed over a bigger area that are now crunched into a small area. So these these fields are taking a beat. Yeah. And uh doesn't seem to matter what crop we grow, can't like I got damage in corn, I got damage in peanuts, I got damage in beans, I got damage in cotton. God forbid I try to go grow okra. Y'all better be glad we're not commercially growing okra because it ain't got a chance in growing tickets. Yeah. So I think for me, I don't have a hard time believing that our deer population is a whole lot higher in South Carolina today than it was in the early 80s and early 90s. We went through a huge population increase. Right. Late 90s, early 2000s, which was supposedly the highest number of deer we ever had in this state. And I I'd say that's probably true. Um then it was speculated that our population essentially crashed after that, if you look at it. And I don't see that in the places I worked. Now, let me back this up a bit. If I go to some of the counties that didn't have row crop agriculture, they don't have deer now like they had in the 2000s because they planted everything in pine trees. Yeah. In the early 2000s, they were young pine trees and there was forage everywhere. It was perfect deer habitat. Yeah. Now it's pine needles and poles, you know. Maybe there's a whole lot out there for them. So yeah, their numbers aren't as high. Um, but man, it's it's a touchy subject. You know, I get I get just as many people who hate my guts as I do as many that appreciate what I'm doing. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm trying to help both of them out.
SPEAKER_01Well, and that's the that's the hard part for me, is I've had discussions with people where where we do some of this yield loss work and we try to do population surveys where we do some of this stuff.
Deer Counts And What Damage Looks Like
SPEAKER_01And I'm not a wildlife biologist, so I'm probably not doing it the approved way, but we're trying to cover a lot of ground, you know. And so we'll put out a camera and monitor, you know, count pictures and stuff like that. And I mean, some of the locations that are really bad come back with over 300 deer per square mile, which is just absolutely nuts. I mean, that is a huge population of deer. But on the other side, you can see a similar amount of damage with 50 deer per square mile, right? And they're just staying right there because they don't have to go nowhere else, right? So it's uh it I I personally, after reintroduction, I think it's clear that the deer population went up. And I mean, that's just that's campaign's opinion, you know, looking back at data and stuff like that. And I mean, we, you know, it's hard to track the deer population. It's nearly impossible. And a lot of people around here uh with our DNR group look at trends in population. Is it going up? Is it going down? Um, that's kind of what they're looking at. But I think it's a fairly easy argument that since the 90s, the deer population has gone up. And and around here, I think one of the big things is that there's less people in the woods going after them. And I mean, it's it's difficult to get out there and hunt. It's kind of become a rich man's game to be a deer hunter. And but I mean, you got less licenses being purchased, you got less less deer being reported, harvested. And really, here in Georgia, the national, I think it was the National Whitetail Institute or somebody, National Quality Deer Association or whatever it is, reported that 84% of deer hunters in the state of Georgia reported harvest in one or less dose. And our limit is 10. Uh, I mean, it's just so you got less people out in the woods, you got more deer. And then another thing that happened in the 90s for us was the bull weevil got eradicated. And so we shifted from soybeans, which I believe that deer prefer, right?
SPEAKER_02I mean, that's probably one of their same field, right now.
SPEAKER_01That's right. And so soybeans are the preferred food source if you had to put the crops side by side. But whenever you replace half a million acres of soybeans with cotton, they gotta eat something. You know, and so if they're hungry, they're gonna eat and they're gonna learn to eat cotton whether they like it or not.
SPEAKER_02Sure. And and you know, I don't know in the grand scheme of things, we're talking about a ruminant who is designed to not have optimal conditions and still thrive.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So he doesn't have to like cotton to consume cotton. And he and and you know, he he can go in there and eat what he needs, and and by being a ruminant, he's gonna be able to pull out a bit. Go pull forward samples on cotton and show me a white-tailed deer buck at optimal antler growing's only 16% crude protein. Yeah, go sample your cotton and let me know where you're at. Yeah, I promise you, you're gonna be in that range or higher. You know, so even though it might not be the the optimal plant for them to eat, it's got everything they need, and the deer's got enough sense to know I can run out there and I can feed for 30 minutes and then I can go hide in the woods and digest this food and be safe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So the the risk outweighs the or the reward outweighs the risk of going out into that field, so they go. Uh, and that's been catastrophic um for for cotton around here. We didn't have that problem when I was growing up ever. We never sold the tree cotton. Now it's I can go ahead and tell you some fields riding down the road. If they're dumb enough to plant cotton or soybeans right there, I can tell you what's gonna happen to you. Yeah, it it knows if it was, you know. Yeah, um your heart goes out to them because they're trying to make a living. That's right. It's not gonna happen in that field. Yeah, it's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I got we picked up a little seven-acre field here in Tifton, and I mean, I knew going into it that it was gonna be a problem. We planted it April 7th, and the stuff is shorter than knee high, because I mean they are just wearing it out, and that's the field. I I started going on permit out there, and I mean I I've laid down four doughs, but of course, I've seen just as many bucks as I've seen does, and you can't shoot them on permit, and I know that there's more out there. So, I mean, it's just they're they're just doing what they do, you know, and a lot of a lot of times, you know, you've got peak nutrient demand right now for doughs and stuff like that. And I hear a lot of conversations about phosphorus demand and and stuff like that and wildlife. And I mean, we're putting a lot of this stuff out there and for the plant to use to make what it's gonna make. And sure, and I mean you're you're supplementing that that diet that they have right now, right?
SPEAKER_02You're you're a big food plot. And in the reality, you know, I go back and forth with this with guys all the time. Our native plant community that's out there has everything that that deer needs to make it and to thrive and to expand if the quantity is available, you know. So it are they managing that landscape well enough to supply the needs. But here's the part where I get lost. Let's go down into plantation country, let's go to the lower part of the state where we're doing regular prescribed fire. We're planting, God only knows, we're planting as many acres of high quality food plots as we are row crops. That is not a just South Carolina, has well over 200,000 acres of food plots. Go look at our other crop acreages. So food plots are a major crop runs. Then go look at the row crop fields in the same general area and look how devastating it is. So, in an area that has an abundance of high quality forage available all the time, they're still going to these road crop fields. That's quite the conundrum. I don't know how to explain that. You know, once upon a time you'd hear people say, well, if you did a better job of managing the habitat, they wouldn't be in there. Yeah, I don't buy that. Because I can take you to where you couldn't do any better job of managing the habitat, and they're still leaving that and going and feeding the road crop fields. So I don't know on that end. I don't know on that. Um, but you know, I wanted to jump back too to something you said a minute ago that when you were talking about the number of does harvested, and that's a big thing, right? Bucks eat a lot too, don't get me wrong, it's based on body weight. So bucks are consuming, you know, probably as much or more than how many you had. But in South Carolina, in all the years, we've been keeping records on the harvest. We've never had a season where we harvested more does than bucks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We always kill more bucks than does, and so that becomes the problem. And the comment I've made that gets me in trouble a lot, I don't like depredation shooting. I don't like it. Yeah. I'm not saying we don't need it. I'm not saying you shouldn't be doing it. I'm saying I don't like it. And I say this if we were able to do our jobs during the regular hunt season, there would be no need for depredation shooting. Yeah. But you can't make that happen. And you and I probably Know who try to do our part. We try to do our part. I kill every doe that the law lives. There comes a limit to how many of those you can do. And quite frankly, there are not enough me and you out there to take care of this situation. So, you know, I I get a lot of flack about depredation shooting, but the reality is until something changes with the way we sport hunt, it's going to be a necessity. Right. It's going to have to happen.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. And, you know, it's a it's a thing I I mentioned, we process our own deer. So right, it it becomes a chore to shoot that many. And if look, I'll be honest with you, if I was gonna go shoot 10 does in the state of Georgia and then pay a processor to do it, why not just go to the grocery store? You know, I mean, that's just you're not doing yourself any favors. Whereas whenever I process all the deer that I shot last year by myself, I'm in 50 bucks, maybe, you know, and I can eat for a whole year. I ain't gotta buy a pack of hamburger. I try to use uh the back straps and tenaloins and all that stuff. So really the only time that I go buy a piece of beef at a grocery store is if I want a really good steak, right? And so, you know, I really try to do my part with all that kind of stuff. But, you know, Corey, I know that you do a lot of work around uh the state of South Carolina in terms of quantifying every year like what we're losing to deer, right?
Measuring Yield Loss With Exclusion Cages
SPEAKER_01And so talk us through some of what you've seen in that, and and you can talk about all crops. This is a cotton podcast, but we can talk about all of them and maybe even try to relate, hey, where is it worse and where's it better kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02Well, it varies everywhere you go in the state, obviously. And and our our crop overage is is minuscule compared to what you're doing in Georgia or what they're doing in Mississippi. And you know, without knowing exactly what's going on with the deer herds in those two states, it's hard for me to predict, you know, where y'all are at. Right. But I know for us, we just adopted the same techniques that I've used in food plots to keep the guys employed on plantations for years. You know, the boss comes by and there's nothing in the food plot. Well, you're getting fired because you had food. We put exclusion cages up in these food plots to keep boys on their jobs, you know. We did grow it. This is what the deer ate.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We took that technology, if you want to call it technology, and put it out in cotton, we put it in peanuts, we put it in soybeans, we scattered it all over the state, we put it in all the big production areas. It's overwhelming. But on the small acreage we have in South Carolina, just those three crops, deer are walking off of $115 million every year, just walking off of deer. And that doesn't count how much we spent replanting, that don't count what we spent on repellents, that don't count what we spent on fences, that don't count all them nights shooting on depredation tax. That's just the yield that walked off. Right. Uh even with all those things happening, we still are losing that much. So it's a it's a big, big deal for us. But you know, like soybeans, 25% of our yield is leaving every year to white to do. 25% of our yield walks off of deer every year. Uh cotton's pretty close to that. I know at one point, uh, one of the years we did the study, it came out that we were losing a little over 700 pounds per acre if you averaged all the cotton acres together. Good grief. 700 pounds acre walking off of deer. Um, you know, and in 60 and 70 cent cotton, and you losing that kind. Even at 80, 90, and a dollar cotton, where we struggle to make it. Yeah. Um imagine 700 pounds of that walking off every year. I mean, to be honest, can't it it's the difference between staying in business and not staying in business. That's right. That 700 pounds of cotton makes the difference on whether that guy can farm next year or not.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 100%. 100%. Oh, yeah. And it's, you know, I've had a lot of conversations with people that say, you know, oh, well, it's, you know, not that big a deal or whatever, but it's like, man, even if it's only $150, right? That's a that's a rent payment, you know. That that's the difference right there. And I mean, as as razor thin as some of these margins are, it a hundred dollars means something.
SPEAKER_02$100 is the difference between making it to the 2027 drilling season this year.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_02$100 an acre is gonna be for a lot of guys, $100 is gonna be the difference between making it into 2027.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so we we did some similar stuff. We I think our exclusion cages were a little bit different. We used T-Post and something called critter fence, and we went in grower fields and um put up cages. I had a graduate student uh who graduated with us, Lance Wortman. He he really led the effort. But I mean, we had three different categories of of damage where it where it was low and we didn't see a yield impact there, and and of course the deer population was not as high in those areas versus a moderate type damage, which was about a 10% yield loss, which I think is pretty fair, versus a severe situation, which was a third of our crop in average across all these locations. But you could see, and I mean, I I talk about these kind of pictures that I would see all the time, but there was one location in in Barrion County, which is just on the uh east side of Tifton, and inside the cage, the cotton dry land made 700 pounds to the acre, which is okay okay cotton, you know. Outside the cage, it made 15 pounds to the acre, you know. So, I mean, you're you're talking a 99% yield loss in situations like that. And that's not uncommon to see.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I was average, 700.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's right. That's what was on the table for them, you know. And so you look at I went on a troubleshoot last week in uh Mitchell County, Georgia, which is a big ag county for us. And and I mean, it's a farm that's rented, so they don't have hunting rights during hunting season, but they've gotten the rights to to shoot during the summertime. And I mean, it's 120 acres that is basically gonna get zeroed out. I mean, it it's just it they had a perfect stand, and then the deer go in and they just wear it out. And I mean, it's just uh it's a bad situation. It just is. And and kind of like you said, we did a survey a few years ago looking at the the cost of deer, you know, compared to some other pests, and and just on cotton in the state of Georgia, it's $150 million. And that that does include uh if folks are doing repellents or shooting or whatever it is, because we asked them to estimate how much they were spending on deer management and then how much they were losing uh in their cotton and stuff, and how many acres were affected, and we just took that out to you know however many million acres we planted that year. So it's uh, I mean, it is, it's a serious problem.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you know, and when we were working on this back in the day, um Kendall Kirk and I talked about it a good bit before we started putting these cages out in these fields, but we wanted to have a very conservative number to take our legislators and the Department of Natural Resources and the Farm Bureau and all the parties. Every state we wanted conservative numbers, so we didn't go out there and put cages up in the damage areas and walk away. Nah. We we backed off the edge of the field a minimum of 30 rows in every field. So we wasn't right there in the worst of it. And we put four cages in each field. Uh we'd put two in what we called the high pressure zone, which was those 30, 30 to 40 rows in, you know, off that wood edge. We'd have one on each end or, you know, roughly you know, a few hundred foot past into that field on those rows. And then we'd go to the furthest edge from the woods, and we'd put two cages there, and we're essentially averaging, you know, the results from those. So very conservative numbers. I mean, it realistically, I feel very comfortable with what we presented. We we have $115 million worth of damage every year in those sweet crops. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and we did something similar. We asked for county agents to find fields that historically were moderate, you know, and knowing that in some cases, hey, it's gonna hit, and in some cases it's not. And and I mean, we averaged all that data together, and it was about a 10% loss in cotton across the state, and that's in 30 different locations two years, right? Or 20 different locations two years in a row, and that's a 10, 11 percent loss. But of course, you break it out by those damage areas, and where you saw high damage, you lose more versus where you didn't have any damage, right? And so, I mean, you you find a moderate field like that, you'll get a better picture of what's going on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think that's the fair way to go about it, you know.
SPEAKER_01Um because you could find some fields and just put these cages up in it and say, Oh, it's a hundred percent yield loss every time, you know. But that's not that's not real, you know.
SPEAKER_02Well, the reality is I'm not here to help a farmer. I ain't sweating to death out in this field for any personal game of my own. I work for Clemson. I assure you we go broke going to work every day. You get it. But going out and looking at that field ain't gonna help a farmer because the man that was playing that field ain't farming nobody. That's right. He knows what's gonna happen. That's right. But the guys who are really making an effort and doing what they can do, that's the guys I'm out there to help. And these are the fields they're farming. So that's where we need the answers from.
SPEAKER_01Right. Right. So, you know, we've talked a little bit about how big of a problem it is in our two states. I mean, of course, there's other states that have documented problems as well, but uh, you know, we we've mentioned some depredation type shooting and and different things like that.
Depredation Shooting And Better Timing
SPEAKER_01And, you know, I I kind of want to get your opinion on that. I know neither one of us really like that. And of course, if there wasn't the need for it, we would prefer that it not happened, but there is a need because people are not uh lethally removing deer during hunting season to help us out to do their herd management uh duty. So do you think that doing depredation shooting during the summertime is helping us much? Or what do you think about that?
SPEAKER_02You know, I know what happens if you don't do it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah, I know that. But you know, I I I'm more of a proactive versus reactive. You know, and I think, in all honesty, and I know seasons and dates change, and South Carolina's extremely liberal. Most of our farm country has from August 15th to January 1st to shoot deer. We got dang near half the youth. But depredation, in my opinion, would be a lot more effective for us since our season goes out in January. January and February are the most limiting food resource times for a deer in the state of South Carolina, and they would be the ideal time for us to remove those deer that didn't get harvested during the hunting season. And the and the other thing about being proactive, if we did it during January and February, the deer are easier to see, they're all congregating in what's left in these fields. Be real easy to work on. The majority of your bucks still have antlers. It'd be real easy to separate bucks from does and not make mistakes that way. Very few, if any, of your does are going to have dependent phones in January and February. So you're not morphing in a lot of phones. There's a lot of reasons that we should be proactively depredation shooting versus reactively depredation shooting. But in South Carolina, you can't start shooting until you're actually into the crop, right? Right. So that kind of throws that out the window. Yeah, throws it out the window. But at the end of the day, the land can support X number of miles. That's gonna vary depending on which piece of land you're on. Yeah. But you got to find what X is and you got to maintain that level.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02And so whether you're doing it with a rifle during deer season or where you're doing a rifle on top of the truck in June. Either way has got to happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, like even some of these fields, you know, the one that I was in last week, man, you could drive around the edge of that field and you could just see a browse line, you know, in the woods, right? And so, of course, they're gonna come out in the field, right? So that's an a pretty obvious situation where, hey, the the population's out of hand, you know. Uh, do you have an ideal population number that you try to maintain on some of these plantations that that works well for
What Deer Density Should Be
SPEAKER_01you? Or what what what kind of do you think is the ideal deer population for some of these areas?
SPEAKER_02I think the deer hunters have the number right. I think go do a quick Google search and look and see what the National Deer Association says, or one of these outfits.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02They'll tell you in the southeastern United States the optimal deer density is between 15 and 30 deer per square mile. I do not disagree with them. I agree with them wholeheartedly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Now go look in South Carolina and you show me where we have 15 to 30 deer per square mile. You're not going to find it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02You're not going to find it. And if you do find it, it's going to be in an area that has zero agriculture hat.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right? Yeah. And even then, you get into some of these new developments that have happened, and we've got these, uh I call it the urban interface. It used to be dairy farm, and now it's uh 600 homes and two shopping centers and a grocery store and all this stuff, and there's 350 deer per square mile walking around in it.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02Um, you know, so it it's a complicated scenario, but the reality is I don't disagree with what the deer hunters say. 15 to 30 deer per square mile. Yeah. Where we fall apart is failing to acknowledge that we are three, four, five, six, seven times higher population densities than that.
SPEAKER_01Seven times might be generous in some places. 10, 10, 15 times in some situations, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and I have argued that to the point that I'm blue in the face and I haven't gotten anywhere with it. But the reality is if we were at 15 to 30 deer per square mile, I can't do deer repellent research because I don't get enough damage in those fields to say this is working or not working.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02If we had the herd there, we wouldn't be having this podcast right now. And I wouldn't have had the four phone calls I had before we started this. Yeah. And it's not just here. I mean, I'm working with growers in Colorado who are trying to grow flowers. Yeah, you can't even grow flowers because of the deer. I'm working with growers in Michigan, Jersey, Delaware, everywhere. Everywhere the white-tailed deer exists, it seems like this is happening.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, they they really have a tendency to find themselves in situations they don't necessarily need to be in, or maybe we put them in that situation, right? Like you're talking about. I mean, we build houses everywhere and shopping centers and apartment complexes and whatever, and you're taking out deer habitat, right? So they're gonna go somewhere.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, a perfect example you and I both can relate to. If I go to the North Georgia Mountains, yeah, where I go to the mountains in South Carolina, yeah. Historically, you never saw deer there. Their deer dances were 10 or less deer per square mile. Yeah. Big hardwood forests don't support white-tailed deer in the southeast, not in large numbers. Well, what'd they do? They went in and built gated communities. Uh-huh. That gated community has got two golf courses and it's got landscaping throughout. And now we're having to depredation shoot deer out of these neighborhoods in the mountains that never had deer before. So if you build it, they will come.
SPEAKER_01That's right. They we had a long conversation about uh Blue Ridge. I was on a committee with our DNR to develop recommendations for the deer management plan. And one of our first tasks was to uh make recommendations on the trend of the deer population. And in almost every place, we said the deer population needs to come down, except for Blue Ridge, right? And that's kind of an anomaly because on the WMA, the deer population is so low it's really hard to hunt there. But like at the line of the WMA as a neighborhood, and they get worn out by deer. I mean, it is absolutely crazy. And it and again, like you say, it's not used to supporting that. They've got all the landscape that these deer like to eat, all these pretty flowers and stuff like that. And they they thrive in that neighborhood, but they do not in the in the public public managed area where people are supposed to hunt, right?
SPEAKER_02You know, and I and I always and I shouldn't say this on your podcast, but I sit here and think about the people who complain the most about deer getting shot on depredation tags, are typically talk to people who might live in that community.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, no, they don't want to lost that connection to the land and that understanding that's going on there. But I also know that those same people in that same community, when they get alpha gal syndrome, are the first ones that want you to come up there and reduce the deer population so they don't have as many tick diseases to learn about.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Or their 15-year-old daughters coming home in the evening and it hits a 10-point buck and running 60 miles an hour, and you know, then maybe we need to do something about deer life-threatening at this point.
SPEAKER_01Even then, though, you know, you start talking about who do the deer belong to, right? And there's always this argument that the the deer belong to the people of the state that you reside in, whatever. Well, somebody, somebody told me, said, well, we need to call the state every time we get in a get in a car accident, right? And this I've hit a deer before, it's not any fun. You know, I made my car kept driving, and that deer, I don't know what happened to it, but I mean it messed up my old truck pretty bad. And so I I've seen it on both ends for sure. I've seen cotton fields leveled, I've seen my truck wore out from one. I mean, it's when the deer population gets out of hand or gets displaced, uh, I mean, it can just cause a lot of different problems, right?
Human Health And Wildlife Impacts
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you know, we we didn't touch on uh, you know, the disease aspect. Yeah. If you go look around the country at where these deer populations are getting abnormally high like this, go look at the occurrence of Lyme disease, go look at the occurrence of alpha gal, go look at the potential other diseases. I almost lost my wife a few years ago to Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which tick-related disease. They have high deer densities. Um, they are a legitimate health concern, not just from from the interactions in those wrecks, but people die every year from white-tailed deer-related disease. Oh, yeah. That's a real thing.
SPEAKER_01Well, and then you start looking at what's going on in Texas with New World Screwworm, right? I mean, that this is gonna get pretty serious, right? So um, you know, that it's not just the the crop thing that's becoming an that is an issue here, but I mean, there's a lot of stuff that could happen as a result of the deer population being too high, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And you know, realistically, I I've always said this when I teach these classes the number I'm shooting for is the number that's recommended by the deer association. Right. So that's the number that's best for the deer. And based on my experience with bringing populations down to that level, it's the number that's best for the deer hunter. You're gonna see more bat buck activity than you've ever seen in what you and I know is deer hunting. When you reduce that doe population, you watch and see what your rut changes into, right? Yeah. So it's the number that's best for the deer, it's the number that's best for the deer hunter, and it's the number that's best for the farmer, and it's the number that's best for the other species of wildlife. Because we don't talk about that. What's happening to all these other species of wildlife who no longer have the habitat they need because deer ote all of them?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_02You you mentioned that browse line you saw before. Yeah. Prior to that browse line, there would have been vegetation growing along the ground floor of that that would have supported Bob White quail using the edge of that field and that edge of that woodline. When the deer come in and do that, your quail are gone. It's over. How many species have to suffer like that before we realize deer are causing part of this problem?
SPEAKER_01That's right. That's right. So,
Repellents As A Tool Not Magic
SPEAKER_01you know, we we mentioned a little bit about permits shooting during the summertime, but man, the the thing that growers want, and it's just because it's easy, and I think that maybe it's because we've gotten so accustomed to managing pests this way, is they want something that they can put in a sprayer and spray over this cotton or over soybeans or whatever it is, and uh and it just hey, silver bullet, right? I want to be able to spray something and not think about it. And I know that that's the thing that really you've been working on so hard in the last 10 years, right? And I kind of jumped in last year, maybe even a little bit the year before. But um, you know, a repellent sounds like the the easy button, right? That's what growers want. They would prefer to put something in the sprayer because they're already making the trip. And so tell us a little bit about what you've seen in repellent work, maybe when you would pull the trigger on some stuff. And and you know, I I'll preface the conversation with I've seen them work. I I've done soy work in soybeans just as a as a demonstration, right? And it'll be 16 rows of soybeans right next to 20 acres of cotton. And that pressure in that situation is artificially high. Okay. But it's really just to see, hey, will this repellent keep deer out? And I can make soybeans look like a deer was never there. I mean, but at what point does it become uneconomical to do that? And And I was spraying repellents once a week for three weeks. So you're in, let's just say, $30 an acre already. And that's just to get a stand. But the second you stop spraying in that high pressure situation, they eat them soybeans down to the ground. And you're not going to make nothing out of them.
SPEAKER_02So, Camp, I tell people that all the time. If you're not going to commit to a deer repellent program, don't waste your money on deer repellents. Yeah. Because you can do exactly what you just described and run out there and make three applications that first month and get a stand established. And then you think you got them, you walk away from it, and you come back and you got stems. Don't make that big of an investment and then walk away from it. You got to stay with it. And I think from a farmer's perspective, we're used to dealing with weeds and insects. You know, we're going to make two or three applications for weed control on that crop, and that's what we're going to put into it. We're going to make one application for insects and that's what we're putting into it. That's typically how it works here. Deer don't work that way. Deer don't work that way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So for me, what I've seen over the years, some years, like this year right now, I've got trials going right now in a spot where I've been doing research for 10 years. This is the first year I've ever made it this far into the drilling season. I've only applied one time. Out of every product I'm testing, I've only made one application so far this year. Normally by now, I'm at my third or fourth application. Right? But typically, what I I recommend to folks is it's not based on time. It's not based on when you were planning on spraying something else. It's based on what the deer are doing. So I don't like to spray until I have leaves out there. I don't believe in spraying dirt. If you don't get the products on the leaves, they don't work as well. I'm sorry. I've tested as I won't say all of them, but dang near all of them. They gotta go on the leaves. When that crop comes out of the ground and I got even germination, I'm gonna spray it. I'm gonna watch that field. And when I start seeing deer get back into that field, take any spot you want to. If I'm seeing 10% of those plants missing a leaf or they've been bit on, we're spraying. And I'm gonna continue to do that throughout the whole growing season. Now that sounds like I'm gonna be out there every week. Traditionally, what I see two applications, maybe three applications a week to two weeks apart, and then my damage stops, and I might get the rest of the growing season without spraying anything else. Or I might have to come in 40 days after that last application or 50 days after that last application just to carry me through the rest of the season. But you gotta get them out of there early and you gotta stay with it and keep them out of there. Now the bad news is what you're doing is training them to go feed at your neighbor. I mean, that's essentially what you're doing. You're teaching those deer that this isn't the field you want to be in, you're gonna have to pick up and move somewhere else. Yeah. And and when they try to come back in the front door, you're gonna go spray that field again and kick them out of that front door. You know, so stay with it. Don't quit. Um you got to make it work, pencil it in before you ever plant that crop. If you know that field has deer pressure, and if it don't make sense, don't plant it there.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_02That's right. I don't know how how to do it any other way with a repellent.
SPEAKER_01You know, that's one thing that I think keeps coming up to me with the with the deer thing, and in some of my conversations with with my colleagues on the wildlife side is behavior modification, is what you're doing, right? I mean, of course, you want to do your job in in population management and stuff like that, but at a certain point, one person going and shooting on permit is not going to get the deer population down to where it needs to be. And so you've got to change their behavior. And using permits is part of that, using repellents is part of that, right? And so it's a it's a it's a multifaceted approach uh that you got to take. And it's no, again, it is no different than dealing with pigweed or dealing with stink bugs or plant bugs or whatever it is. You've got to use multiple things to change the behavior of that pest and say, hey, you're not welcome here.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah, and you know, we wouldn't be extensive people if we didn't call it IPM because that's what it is. You're gonna have to integrate multiple methods to reduce this problem. Yeah, and that's just the reality of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, you know, you mentioned using those repellents, kind of sticking to it. You know, I I'm kind of curious. There's some fields like, and we've talked about this, where you just know that the deer are just gonna wear it out. This little seven-acre field of mine, I knew before we planted a cotton. I put a deer study out there because I knew I was gonna get the pressure, right? But like in that little seven-acre field, do you think it would even be worth trying to start a repellent program if I was gonna have to spend $150 an acre, right? Is it gonna help you that much?
SPEAKER_02Well, do you have any and see this is where we get at. Do you really know what your yield potential is in that field?
SPEAKER_01And that's the other, that's the other piece. Is I I don't know. It's the first time I've gotten this field, but I do have cages up in this field, so I can know what the potential of that field is.
SPEAKER_02Right. So if we have those cages and we can get a good idea of what the yield potential is, it lets us make the decision on whether or not we can afford to do that again.
SPEAKER_03Right.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02But without that, we're just throwing darts at the dart board or $100 bills at the field, however you want to look at it. Um, what I do know is that at uh at $10 soybeans, most of these products are gonna run somewhere between $10 and $25 per application. So you're looking for the most part at every time I spray, it's gotta make one bushel to two and a half bushels to pay for itself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yep. If you stay with the program, I have yet to study it in a field that you stayed with it for the whole season, that it wasn't doing way more than making that one to two and a half bushels every time you applied them. Right. But it's gotta have a yield potential in that field to pay for it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, because
When To Stop Spraying And Crop Stage Risk
SPEAKER_01like I said, I mean, we're we're doing a study right now looking at, you know, termination timing is what I would call it. Where where can you stop applying repellents in some of these situations? And I mean, we just pulled some cages off of some cotton that was at first bloom. And we pulled the cages on Tuesday and on Thursday, all the terminals were gone from those plants, you know. So I mean, at first, I don't think that first bloom is going to be their termination time, right? So uh we got to keep going with something like that and and you know, maybe push it closer to the end of the season. But like you say, I mean, they I've seen where we stopped or spraying repellents, and it may be first bloom or the third week of bloom or something like that, and you come back and every leaf on a cotton plant is gone, you know. So I mean, whenever they're hungry, they're just gonna eat. And and people want to use repellents because they think it's it's easy or it's you know, it might be a little bit better than sitting up all night and and trying to keep them out with depredation permits and stuff like that. But but it's not just, hey, I'm gonna spray it with my weed control early in the season, then I'm gonna be done.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and with cotton, so cotton and soybeans are similar in some aspects, but they are there are differences. And one I would point out to you, like when we were doing economics work on cotton, and and I got the cages out in these fields, one of the fields we went to, I'm like, man, this is just catastrophic. Like when we cracked ground before we put true leaves on, we still in the cotyle eating stage. I lost over half of the plants in that stand. My population was cut in half. At the end of the year, that cut a higher weight of cotton than inside the cages where we didn't lose anything. Yeah. So in that situation, cutting that population in half helped me, it didn't hurt me. But now, if we were at first bloom and I went in there and I reduced half of that, I'm gonna have some gigantic yield differences. That's right. So soybeans are a little bit different than that, but the same thing kind of holds true there too. We can tolerate reducing that original stand some. I don't want to lose a whole lot of it. I feel more comfortable losing 30% in cotton than I would in a soybean field. Yeah. But if I come in and do 10% damage to seedling soybeans or seedling cotton, you may or may not be able to measure that in yield loss at the end of the year. Right. If I come in and do over 10% damage during those reproductive stages in either crop, you're gonna measure those differences. So we want to train them to get them out of there before they cause the problem. Right? Yep. You let it go during during that reproductive stage and you walk away from it, you're you're setting yourself up for disaster.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02If they move back in there, you will feel that in the pocketbook.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, 100%. So, you know, looking at some some these repellents, and I mean, really the the big take-home there is that if you decide to go down that road, you got to hang with it till the till the end, right? And
Which Repellents Work Best
SPEAKER_01so, I mean, have you seen certain products that do better than any others? I know you said that this year it seems like everything's holding pretty good. Uh you know, do you have any preference on products or mix of products or anything like that?
SPEAKER_02So let me preface by saying this. I have never tested uh a commercially available repellent that didn't, at least in some capacity like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I'm not gonna tell you they're all as good as the others, but I've never tested one that didn't work to some extent. Um and and then I want to say this too. I have seen a tremendous difference in the location and how that product performs. Yeah. And and last year we did a big study uh, and you know about it, and we're doing it again this year, and we got it in a couple states, but we looked at um trico, which is a hell of a product, it's uh emulsified sheep fat. We looked at uh MPED, which is an insecticidal soap made from beef tallow. Uh we looked at um termtail, which is a blend of essential plant oils. Uh, and we looked at X Fence, which is a blend of plant oils, right? All those products performed very well. Uh and and at the end of the year, statistically, in multiple locations, multiple fields, statistically, there was no difference among them. Right. They all performed well. Um and we managed to save our yield in all those cases. So we had cages in the same fields where we're comparing them back and forth. Um, you know, we were within like, I think we managed to save 95% of that field yield potential or higher. And last year in the trials in South Carolina, that took me three applications of MPED and five applications of the other products. But I saved 95 plus percent of that field yield potential. And in South Carolina, we actually saw a yield increase with MP' in the field versus the cage, and we saw that with turntail in the field versus the cage. Now, I don't throw that to anything. That could have happened, you know, in any anyway. Yeah, by chance, right. Correct. Yeah, I'm not telling you these products are gonna make you feel yield potential go up, but if your yield potential is suffering from deer damage, I do think they'll make your yield potential go up if you stay with it. Um I think it's important from what I've seen that we consider rotating. Uh, I don't want you to use the same product in the same fields over and over and over because I don't want to lose effectiveness of products.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that's true for herbicides. Uh, pigweed's a perfect example for us. What happens when you use the same dang thing over and over and over. Um, I believe in rotating, and I've seen that to some extent with deer repellents as well. Um, and and I've worked with several of the companies, and and if we're not going to rotate, I want y'all to modify these chemistries every year. Yeah, let's change this chemistry up so it's not exactly like last year, trying to prevent that resistance or tolerance from happening. Right. Um, but overall, what I would tell you is watch your weather. Um, the oil products, I'm not a big fan of oil products in the afternoon sprays when it's 95 plus degrees. I've seen more failures when we were hot and applied that product. So if you're gonna use the oils, wait till closer to dark when the temperature drops down. That way it's fresher when the deer are walking out there anyway. Yeah, right. Yeah. Soap products, uh, I hadn't got to test impede in this condition as of yet, but I'm going to test it. That's that's my next thing. Uh, like I told you, I'm gonna run the irrigation over next week, look at it, see what happens. Yeah. Um, but with DesX, when we first started playing with it, I felt like I was losing effectiveness if it went out within an hour or two hours of a rain event. So if we sprayed it and rain's coming right in, it's almost like it washed it off the plant. Right. Right. So, you know, if I'm looking at my forecast and I got rain coming in, I'm probably gonna go with one of the oils. Yeah, if I'm looking at my forecast and it's gonna be 98 degrees by 10 o'clock in the morning every day this week, yeah, I might go with one of the soap products.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, but that's kind of how I weigh it out in my head. But effectiveness-wise, we got dang good products on the market that work. Yeah, and and I know there's a lot of naysayers out there who don't like them. Oh, that never worked. Go try it and stay with it. Every time you see damage, you go spray again. Every time you see damage, you spray again, and then tell me it don't work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I mean, I I get asked to test a lot of stuff every year, and and people call them what they want to. But, you know, I I inevitably get asked by growers about deer repellents, and they they say, Man, is that just a snake ore or what? And I'm like, man, I've seen it work. I've seen it work. And it's just people don't believe you. But if you would go out, like you say, and spray a little bit and hang with it, then I mean, it it does work. And and I'm with you. I think mixing it up is a good thing. The the two things that I think may be some hiccup, I mean, one of them is gonna be availability. I don't know how many people carry a lot of this stuff just because they don't think it's gonna move uh and it's gonna be inventory that you have to sit on and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, I I know that there's people around that sell uh these kind of products and and it is generating a lot more interest and a lot more availability is out there. I had a conversation with the with the gown folks last year and told them said, hey, look, I I think the stuff works if y'all want to stock up or whatever. But I mean, they've they've tried it in a lot of places. And I and I tell these guys like, hey, it's probably an easier sell in the specialty crop market. Vegetable, we got a lot of vegetables around me. I'm like, man, them guys are making trips over the field every day, or not every day, every week. Yeah, yeah. Every week they're going over the field with something, and it's like, hey, what's uh what's an insecticidal soap? You know, just throw one in there and and surely it'll help. Now, the the thing about rain, you know, we we got in a habit here in Tifton of spraying our deer repellents on Fridays. And and inevitably on Friday, we would spray that morning, that afternoon it would rain, you know, and people always ask, they're like, Well, you know, as soon as it washes off, is it doing any good? Well, I'd see it hold another week until we got to our next application and we'd spray again on Friday, right? And so, I mean, I think even with a little bit of rain, whether it was Trico or MPED or whatever it was, it was holding at least a week, right? So I I think you can get a week out of a product, even if it rains, you know, four, five, six hours later, but you need to be back in there a little sooner than you would be on the on the other end, right? If it rained earlier, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02You just need to do your job scouting. Do your job scouting and let the deer tell you when to put it out there. Um, I was telling you the other, it might have been earlier today when we were talking about it, but I got I got a field right now that I don't, well, I didn't have a repellent study in, so I'm using repellents to satisfy some curiosities I have. And we we irrigate with traveling gun irrigation. There is no other method of irrigation we use that can even compare to what that's doing to your deer repellent. Yeah. This isn't like a pivot that's sprinkling nicely on there like an artificial rain. This is like a high capacity pressure washer. Yeah, yeah. Uh the worst possible scenario for repellent. Right. Today's day 13, and I still don't have a single deer track in there after spraying it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I run traveling gun over it, and we're now 13 days after running the traveling gun, and they're still not back in that feed. So that product's still there. That product's still working.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I think it's interesting how that that pans out. But you know, that atmospheric conditions play into what happens with these chemicals and other products that you're putting out play in this. And you know, I'm not a chemist, but I do know when you go mixing chemicals in the tank, the chemicals you mix in the tank are not necessarily the same chemicals coming out, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, we we we have transfers and transformations and everything else going on with those chemistries. Yeah. Depending on what we're putting out. We may be souping up our weed program or we may be killing our our deer repellent program. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know,
Tank Mix Risks With Herbicides
SPEAKER_01I was gonna mention that too. I I initiated some tank mix work this year because it just to try to reduce the the cost of the application, right? So that that way you're not going out just with the repellent in the tank. Hey, it makes it a little more palatable for a grower to say, hey, I'm gonna go out there and spray my first herbicide program with a repellent in there. But I mean, man, it it can. I mean, it it seemed like to me it can soup up some of your herbicides pretty bad. I mean, these things we just talked about them, they're fats and oils and stuff like that. And so surfactants. Yes, yes, they're surfactants, and you're adding these things to some things that already have surfactants in them. So you're making them hotter, right? And so we just need to be very cautious. There's a lot of um work yet to be done on some of this stuff that you know we're we're working on in different aspects and stuff like that. But we put out two different studies with Kyle, right? And looking at uh some of these tank mixtures and seeing what the impacts are gonna be on cotton and um trying to make sure that nobody's getting in a bad situation with some of this stuff. Because it is. I mean, it's basically a surfactant you're putting in a tank.
SPEAKER_02So Mike Marshall did a lot of work with us a couple years. I don't know if you know Mike is a weed scientist over at Clemson. Great guy, done tremendous job for me on the stuff I've asked him to work on. But he did some greenhouse work for me on cotton and soybeans, looking at all the common herbicide programs and the repellents that I had in tank mixed together. And you know, that was back when DesX was number one. That's the best thing I had at the time. Um go ahead and put some Des Ex in with that Dicamba and let me know how that works out for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we some of those treatments we had in those bottles, it'd be seven products with a deer repellent. You know, it'd be you know, Roundup or and Roundup and Liberty or Dicamba, and then a group 15 herbicide dual, dual warrant outlook, whatever it is, orthane for a thrip spray, let's just say, and then you know, if you're spraying Dicamba, you got your VRA, DRA stuff in there, plus the deer repellent, right? I mean, it's you just because you can put that many things in the tank doesn't mean you should, right? Just cross your fingers and hook the tank then turn into gel over there. Oh, well, and that's the other thing is that some of these products, man, like some of them don't necessarily agree with each other, right? And then there's some of them that have very specific mixing directions. And if you don't f even if you do follow them, sometimes you can find yourself in a bad situation.
SPEAKER_02And some of them and I I don't want to name product names, but some of these products need a dedicated spray rig for that one. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02There's one in particular that I don't I know I know which one you're talking about. Well, let's just say if you believe what I believe, we're gonna stand before the Lord one day and go through judgment. If that happens, y'all are gonna have to listen to a lot of cuss words I said over one particular product. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I put it in a bottle one time and it fizzes up and carries on. I mean, there's just some of them that inherently create problems. But then even some of the other ones, like we've talked about, like desix or impede or whatever, it doesn't necessarily agree with Roundup in the tank, right? And it it'll separate out. And so there's there's some different stuff you gotta do whenever you're putting some of those things in the tank.
SPEAKER_02But you know, the reality is we can't afford that's right extra trips. That's right. We've got to figure out what. To make it work. So what y'all are doing is critically important. And those answers are going to tell us what we need to know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And if that gets your first one out, then hey, maybe you can hit your second one in that two-week type time frame when you're going back with your second week control pass. And hopefully by that time, the deer kind of get the idea, you know, that hey, we're going to go somewhere else.
SPEAKER_02And that may play into what I'm talking about with rotation. Yeah. That that herbicide program is going to shift a little bit as we go through the year. This product may not work with it, but this one will. Well, the next time we're not running that herbicide, so we can run this product because we're rotating within the season. And I think that might be a good option for us in some of this stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. So it's, you know, there's a lot of work to be done in this area still.
Breeding Less Palatable Varieties
SPEAKER_01And I mean, they we're doing as much as we can. I know some other folks are screening different varieties and and stuff like that, trying to see if there's a way to breed in. I guess it would be tolerance or resistance, whatever deer don't like. A variety that's less palatable to deer. So uh, I mean, what do you think about do you think something like that's possible?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, from a cotton standpoint, I don't I don't know as much about cotton, but from a soybean standpoint, they're well on their way to getting there. You know, it's not fine-tuned yet, but they're on their way to getting there. Uh what we do know is deer aren't crazy about high tannin foods. Yeah, right. Uh, and a simple acorn test to prove that for you. Go lay out a handful of white oak acorns and a handful of red oak acorns and let me know which ones they consume first. And it's all about tannins. Uh so there's work being done there. There's some the best thing I the best news I have for farmers, and then this topic brings us into it. I've been with Clinton for 26 years. We have more scientists in the United States right now working on this deer problem than there has ever been in the history of this country.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Great people throughout the South working on this. There are people up north working on it, there are people in the Midwest, in the West, everywhere. Yep. More people we have working on it, the more we're gonna learn. Yeah, that's what it's gonna take. Yeah. In the beginning, when I started doing this stuff, how many people in this country were actually doing research with deer repellents 15 years ago? There wasn't any. Nobody. And I was a young, dumb scientist that didn't know how to do anything. So thank God for Jeremy Green walking me down the road and getting me going in the right path. Yeah. Um, because it could have gone a whole lot different direction.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Well, and I mean, too, you know, what the thing that that uh floors me is that it's like I did not get into this job thinking I was gonna start researching deer. You know, I'm trained in plant sciences, okay. Generally, plants don't get up and move. Okay. So learning how to do research on something that is mobile and is not gonna go where you think they're gonna go and isn't gonna eat where you think they're gonna eat. They're gonna go all the way across the field and eat somewhere else, right? Or doesn't come out of the woods exactly where they have in the last few years, right? I mean, it's uh it has been a learning experience for me. I know it has for for other people that I work with too, but uh it's really good to have good wildlife people to talk to about it.
SPEAKER_02And you know, we got a lot of good wildlife people too. The the problem, I think, for the most part, is the disconnect.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Once upon a time, all you wildlife people came from farming backgrounds. Right. Very few of them come from farming backgrounds anymore. You know, so uh, and I'm not saying that to discredit any of them, but there are things that go on in the farming community that you have to be a part of to truly understand and appreciate you know, and and we've lost some of that connection there.
SPEAKER_01Well, and if you don't understand what's being lost, right? I that's the big thing to me is you got to get out there and you gotta see it. And if you if you hadn't seen it, then you don't know. You don't know how bad it can get. And I mean, I had some folks from Cotton Incorporated down the first year that we did our little cage study, and I carried them to one of the worst locations we had, deer per square mile, 350. And I mean, the cotton was eat off at the ground. And we we lost 25% in this particular field. And it turned out not being the worst location we had because the cotton compensated, but man, they they took all kinds of pictures. They they couldn't believe how bad it was, right? And so I mean, like showing people the the hey, this is a problem, you know, I I think that really helps get their attention and getting out there and walking and meeting the grower and saying, hey, this is exactly what it cost on my place, right?
SPEAKER_02The first time I I pitched to the soybean board about doing some work to look at deer, the very first slide I had up there was over a deer problem that was going on up north. And and it basically the gist of this slide was if those people don't truly understand the problem, you're never gonna get help.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_02Because every one of them has a vote and every one of them has a say. So it is very important that you make sure these people understand it. But but I will tell you, if you really want to knock the smile off my face, I think one of my biggest pet peeves at this point in life is when one of those biologists looks at me and says, Well, that's what they got crop insurance for. Yeah. That's the disconnect I'm talking about. Like there's literally in their mind, well, they have crop insurance, it's gonna take care of that. That's not gonna be a problem.
SPEAKER_01Right, right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that call me on that second claim whenever you got problems getting it.
SPEAKER_02So show me that insurance payment that took care of what I was like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and totally just solved all my problems. Everything's gravy now. We're good.
SPEAKER_02And you would be amazed how often I hear that. Yeah, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it's because our ball just have lost that connection to the farm in many cases. They understand why life is good or better than they ever have. Yeah. But that connection, there's something about it that's important, and and from their perspective, well, they got homeowners' insurance, and and and and when the tree fell in their house, it fixed everything. Yeah. And they pay that car insurance, and when they wrecked their car, the insurance fixed everything. Yeah, yeah. It's like that for us, right?
SPEAKER_01No, that's right. That's right. Well, you know, uh, I I have thoroughly enjoyed our discussion.
Bridging The Wildlife And Farm Disconnect
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, we've talked about a lot of things, but one thing I do kind of want to make clear before we wrap this thing up is we do not hate deer. We do not wish that they were gone. Like we, you know, all that kind of stuff. I love deer hunting. I hope to, I hope that my boys will like it whenever they grow up, you know, and and that they'll they'll have the opportunity to do that. But we just want to find ways for them to not be problems in in agriculture. I mean, that's it, that's really in my mind where where I'm coming from on this issue is that, you know, we the the feral hog situation we have in Georgia is a totally different animal than what we've got with deer, right? Feral hogs are an invasive species. They probably need to be done gotten rid of, right? They do a lot of displacing of their own and cause a lot of damage to habitat and things like that. But that that's an invasive that needs to be eradicated. The whitetailed deer is a a native species, right? We we do want those around, but we want the herd to be properly managed for the health of the deer and for uh the good of all these communities we've talked about and for the good of agriculture. Right.
SPEAKER_02What's the I can't think of a single farmer who doesn't share the same sentiment we have. Now I know on any given day that may change that day. But overall, you know, the sentiment's the same. But I go back to this. When we do have a disease issue in deer, what's the first thing we do? We go in and reduce the population.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_02Maintain herd health. Uh, you know, and and if we didn't care about deer, I don't think we'd be having this conversation either. Um I I think I'd be meeting in the back room with folks to teach him the right way to do it if I didn't care about deer. Right. It's not like we don't know how to fix this problem. That's right. I I tell farmers every day if it wasn't for laws and a conscience, I could fix your problem overnight.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_02Uh, but we're not going that route because I actually do care about deer. That's right. And at the end of the day, I wouldn't be here to help you if I didn't care about deer. That's what led me down this path and got me here. That's right. You don't go to school to be a wildlife biologist for 15 years if you don't care about wildlife.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's the truth. You know, and and two, talking about reducing the herd and the freezer problem that a lot of people have, man.
Donation Programs That Move More Does
SPEAKER_01There there are some programs in in most states that I know of, the Hunters for the Hungry program. In Georgia, they've made a lot of headway on this program. And uh there's been some state dollars dedicated to that. And uh, man, they have done a lot of good increasing the availability of that type of program across the state. I know a lot of deer processors that take donations outside of the Hunters for the Hungry program. So, man, if you are listening to this and you are a deer hunter in any way, shape, or form, man, get in touch with a processor close to you. If you do not want to deal with a deer, but you want to do good for the population and for agriculture, man, call them and see if they'll take a donation. I I called a processor last year. I shot a shot the biggest buck I've ever killed last year, Corey, but it was uh probably four and a half years old. And I didn't want to, I I, you know, does taste better than them nasty old bucks. And so I called a processor and asked if they would take the donation. They they said they would. I ended up finding somebody here on the station that needed it. So I didn't donate it, but man, that there are processors that are not part of a Hunters for the Hungry program that'll take donations. If you want to shoot a dough and make sure that it is used for something, there are plenty of avenues for something like that.
SPEAKER_02And we have made big strides in South Carolina on that. We're we're still not at the level that y'all are at in Georgia. And I remember uh talking with Charlie last time I was down in Tifton, and and I couldn't get over how impressive that was what they've orchestrated and pulled together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And and in South Carolina, we have uh accumulated some money for that, and then then another uh opportunity there is to just allow the processors to charge people the fee who didn't bring the deer. Right. Giving them that opportunity helps. And then the other side of it is the tax. Give me a tax exemption for what I've lost by not charging somebody for this. And at the end of the year, that's gonna help me out too. So there are big strides being made to help with that. And and I'm happy to say that you know, when I was talking with Charlie about it, in Georgia, it has actually helped. Yeah, they have actually harvested more doughs than they would have harvested. Yeah. And I think that's a great thing.
SPEAKER_01Well, and we're we're close to a one-to-one with does and bucks in in Georgia, right? And you know, the the other thing is that the way that you gauge the success of the of the Hunters for the Hungry program or whatever it is, is by using all the money. And they've done that for the last couple years. And so, um, but another thing that they did this past year, I I don't know if you heard about this, Court, but in in October this past year, it was still during bow season, they had an antlerless only firearm weekend. And the main goal of that was to harvest doughs and donate those deer to the Hunters for the Hungry program. And I mean, if you look at harvest trends over the entire season, I believe there were almost 10,000 doughs harvested that one weekend in the state of Georgia, which is huge. I mean, that you know, you never see a spike like that until the end of the season normally.
SPEAKER_02It it also explains to you why we have the problems we have. Oh gosh. They were able to go out there over that weekend and accomplish that. And kudos to y'all for accomplishing that. Right. You've done every deer hunter a favor and you've done every farmer a favor, and you definitely did the deer a favor. Right. Um so um there's if I I honestly feel like from a from a hunter and farmer standpoint, if a farmer went out there and did everything they could do, we're still gonna have deer problems. Right. Um, because farmers control a small portion of the land.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Everybody's gotta be on the same page. Correct.
SPEAKER_02We have to have everybody on the same page and working together. And uh I hope we can get to that point someday. Yeah. Um because again, it's the same numbers we're all going for. Yeah. It's the same numbers we're all going for for us to all be happy with what's happening.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. Anything else you wanted to talk about real quick?
SPEAKER_02No, I think I'm probably covered. If I keep talking, I get myself in trouble. But I do appreciate you letting me come, and for any of the farmers that's listening, keep your head up and stay with it. Don't, don't, don't let these deer whip you. Just stay with it, pay attention and spray when you can. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That sounds
Final Takeaways And Sign Off
SPEAKER_01good. Well, again, I want to thank uh Dr. Corey Heaton up there at Clemson uh for coming and joining us and talking about the deer issue in agriculture and the use of repellents and and other management strategies and and considerations and things like that. And Corey, I always enjoy visiting with you, man. It's a it's a lot of fun. But again, I'm Camp Han, Cotton Specialist based out of Tifton. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Cotton Specialist Corner Podcast. Thanks to Cotton Incorporated for the sponsorship of this effort, and we'll see y'all next time.
SPEAKER_04Where you take all my money, you take all my pride, you take up all my time, and then you take it all the ride. I got it. I can take it, I've been ruined. But it's still the only time I started to choose. Well, I finally made the money, it's the cotton picking, cotton grooving blue.