Featured Scientist

The Hope Valley Wildlife Area in Alpine County makes for great hiking in the fall and snowshoeing in the winter. Shelly, who helps manage the area for CDFW, enjoys a fall day there with her family.


Shelly shows off the D3-5 buck she harvested last deer season.


Shelly tags a sedated bear captured in the Tahoe basin. The bear was hazed upon release to keep it fearful of humans and away from developed neighborhoods.


Hunting season is family time for the Blairs. Shelly, her children Jesse and Amy, pose with their spring turkeys.

Shelly Blair is an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (CDFW) North Central Region. She serves as the unit wildlife biologist for Alpine and El Dorado counties.

Based out of her hometown of Placerville, Shelly’s ties to the local community and CDFW run deep. Her father, the late Bob Pirtle, was a California game warden for 30 years, with most of his career spent patrolling El Dorado County. Shelly’s brother, Sean Pirtle, is a CDFW wildlife officer in Yuba County.

In addition to conducting wildlife research and dealing with a variety of human-wildlife conflicts, Shelly manages CDFW lands in the two counties, which include the popular Hope Valley Wildlife Area, and the Heenan Lake and Red Lake wildlife areas. She holds a biology degree from Chico State.

What was it like growing up the daughter of a game warden?

I tell people I was a Fish and Game brat because it was so much a part of our lives. It was a wonderful childhood. We had wildlife around us all the time. My dad would have to confiscate fawns from people keeping them illegally. He would bring them home and we’d care for them a couple of nights. We had injured wildlife of all kinds. And my brother and dad have been avid hunters. They lived and breathed it – and my brother still does. All this amazing exposure to wildlife and the outdoors propelled us to follow in my dad’s footsteps.

In your job, you must run into some of the same people and families that you grew up with and who knew your father.

I do. I feel very privileged to be able to work in the same area my dad patrolled. These are my stomping grounds. It’s like an extension of my backyard. It is an honor to be investing in the people he was invested in – all the ranchers he worked with and all agency folks he had working relationships with. And now I’m able to carry on those relationships. I’m fortunate enough to have my dream job. This is always what I wanted to do – be the wildlife biologist for El Dorado County. I am very involved with the local schools and the community. I love to mentor students who are interested in what I do, and I try to instill a passion and appreciation in them for the work that we do. A lot of people don’t even know this is a career opportunity that’s available to them.

How did your career with CDFW begin?

It was a long and winding path. I volunteered right out of high school at our Wildlife Investigations Lab (in Rancho Cordova) and had a lot of different experiences there. I held a lot of scientific aid jobs while I was in college. I worked for our North Central Region 2 office. I worked in downtown Sacramento for our Upland Game Program. I worked in our education and outreach branch. I worked with the interpretive staff at the Gray Lodge Wildlife Area, and at the hunter check station at the Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area. So when I graduated from Chico State with my biology degree I thought I was a shoo-in for a job at Fish and Game. I think I applied for eight positions – and didn’t get any of them.

But I also applied for a position with the California Department of Food and Agriculture. It was the only wildlife biologist position within the entire agency – kind of a trial to interface with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services. And they hired me. So that was my first permanent position. And I’m actually so grateful for that experience because what I learned in that job was so valuable to what I’m doing today with all the human-wildlife conflict. It totally prepared me for what I’m doing now.

I did that for five years. Food and Agriculture lost funding to continue the position, and I had kids at home and wanted to spend more time with them so I quit. About a week later I got a call from Pam Swift at our Wildlife Investigations Lab about a scientific aid job with the Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) monitoring program. She told me I could work from home – and that was my foot back into the door with CDFW. That was in 2005. I got a permanent position in the Wildlife Investigations Lab in 2007 and my current job came open in 2010.

What’s a typical day like?

It completely varies. I can have a day all planned out where I am going to focus on a specific thing and then I will get a phone call about a wildlife conflict event or a wildlife welfare incident and I have to respond.

There’s a lot of field work in the spring and summer. All of our unit biologists coordinate and help each other with our different research projects – whether it’s deer darting or helicopter surveys or elk work. Obviously, there is more access to our higher elevation lands in the summer. I attend agency coordination meetings and county Fish and Game commission meetings so that I can remain engaged in the local community environmental issues and enhance interagency cooperation. The human-wildlife conflict work is often what we spend the majority of our time doing.

What kind of human-wildlife conflicts are you dealing with?

Wild turkeys. Mountain lions. Bears. I manage a lot of the South Lake Tahoe bear issues, and it’s one of the biggest challenges for my area. We’re getting more vineyards in my counties so I’m getting a lot more deer depredation calls. I deal with a lot of animal welfare issues because there is a huge wildlife feeding problem in El Dorado County. The result of that is deer getting caught in fencing, wire getting wrapped around their antlers and a lot of deer congregating in certain areas. I’ve had to rescue a lot of animals the last few years.

Besides being illegal, folks are doing more harm than good by feeding the deer?

They are bringing the animals closer to homes by feeding them – and that’s where there are a lot of obstacles they can get stuck in. Feeding encourages animals to congregate unnaturally, causing disease spread, habituated behaviors and unhealthy food options for the animals.

What’s the most rewarding project you’ve been involved with at CDFW?

I have a deer research project that I’m leading in the Crystal Basin area. We’re in the fifth year. It’s the Pacific Deer Herd on the western side of the Sierra. They are a mule deer-black-tailed deer cross. They are migratory deer, but they winter with resident deer, which is really interesting.

It started as a capture and collaring project to figure out survival and mortality, but it has expanded because the GPS collar data have given us great information on their migration, timing and behavior. We are discovering a lot of interesting things about these deer; it’s like pulling back the curtain on an amazing ecological mystery on the landscape. These deer haven’t been monitored since the 1980s, and the technology is so much better now that we can not only see what they are doing but sometimes understand why they are doing it or at least speculate as to why.

So what are we learning about these deer?

Their movement patterns, for starters. Some of them will go from winter range to summer range and then back in a two-week period. These exploratory movements cause an enormous amount of energy expended in such a short time. They spend a lot of time in burn areas and old fire scars. Obviously, there is better feed there and successional growth but how long are they going to keep doing that? We’ve also learned that they die a lot. There is a huge mortality rate for this herd – mostly from mountain lions, but we’ve also had four poaching incidents and three diseased deer.

In all of our many hours trying to dart and collar deer for the study, we drive around in varying areas of their summer range. Most of the time we find the deer hanging around campground areas where there’s a lot of human activity and recreation. So we’ve started to think about that while looking at the high mortality rates. And none of the mortalities ever really happens in those areas. So one theory we have – and I’m not sure how we would actually prove it – is that these deer have learned it’s safer to be around people because there are not as many predators that want to be in those areas.

Other observations are in the more remote areas where you think you would find a lot of deer and where there is just all this beautiful habitat – and we don’t see deer in those areas anymore. It begs the question: Are these deer changing their behavior to adapt to the predators? It’s just really interesting.

Tell us something about yourself many people would be surprised to learn.

I’m a hunter education instructor. I got the idea after my kids went through hunter education and I thought I could create a fun, interactive class. I teach with my colleague Sara Holm. We enjoy seeing the kids succeed and then venturing out to participate in this hunting tradition.

I love to hunt and fish, but I worry that the hunting tradition is dying. I’ve tried to instill in my own kids an appreciation for the entire hunting experience; that it isn’t just about the harvest. It was important to my dad as well. Before he passed, he bought us all lifetime hunting licenses. I’ve had the most precious, memorable times with my dad, brother, husband and my kids while we’ve been out hunting.

When we teach our hunter education classes, there are some people in there who just want their kids to learn gun safety. They are not really interested in hunting. But we really emphasize the whole experience of hunting. Hunting affords you such unique opportunities to experience wildlife and ecology and become part of that natural process. And if you go out and don’t get anything you’ve still had a great day.

What do you most like to hunt and fish for?

I love spring turkey hunting. It’s such an adrenaline rush and beautiful to be outdoors that time of the year. I love duck hunting because there really is no other reason to be up at 2 a.m. to sit in an often wet, cold duck blind other than to watch the sunrise and hear the birds flying and chattering above. I love fly fishing. Unfortunately, my busy family schedule doesn’t allow me to do it very often but there’s just something about the rhythm of it and being on the water.

I haven’t done much deer hunting, but I did get a deer this past year hunting with my brother in D3-5. I’m not a trophy hunter. You can’t put the antlers in soup. I want the meat. There’s something unique about harvesting game that you will consume. It’s delicious and healthy, too.

CDFW Photos. Top Photo: Shelly rescues a deer that was tangled up in a rope swing. Wildlife welfare and human conflict issues occupy much of her time.

As an 11-year wildlife biologist for CDFW’s Central Region, Nathan was involved in several captures, collars and relocations of California’s native tule elk.


Away from work, Nathan enjoys preparing wild game. Here he makes sausage out of wild duck.

Nathan Graveline was hired as CDFW’s Big Game Program supervisor in March 2019 after spending his entire career in the field as a wildlife biologist. Now based in Sacramento, Nathan supervises a team of headquarters biologists and research staff who support California’s deer, elk, pronghorn and desert bighorn sheep conservation and management programs.

Nathan spent the previous 11 years as CDFW’s wildlife biologist for Mariposa and Tuolumne counties. He joined CDFW full time as a deer biologist in 2001 after working as a seasonal aid for three summers at the Mendota Wildlife Area and later served as a scientific aid for CDFW’s upland game bird and deer programs.

Nathan was born and raised in Fresno and holds a degree in forestry and wildlife management from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

It’s still deer season in some parts of the state. How would you assess the status of California’s deer herds?

I think most of our populations are fairly stable. There are certainly areas that we are concerned about. The X zones – X12, X9a and X9b – still have not recovered from the harsh winter in 2016. We were hoping to see some recovery there and to potentially increase tags again. But the data are just not supporting increasing tags. The good news is that we have data to make those kinds of assessments.

Across what we call our opportunity zones – the A Zone and D zones – things don’t change that much in terms of populations and hunter success.

Is it an oversimplification to say that resident deer herds are doing well and migratory deer herds are not?

Probably not. We have two species of deer in California – Columbian black-tailed deer on the coast and mule deer in the eastern part of the state. And there are some hybrids in between.

We’ve done fecal DNA analysis on black-tailed deer in Marin County, for instance, and we got population densities that were through the roof, as high as 30 deer or more per square kilometer. Now, deer hunting is limited in most parts of Marin County, there are very few predators, and food is available year-round because people have yards with plants that supply a food source. And that’s similar to what we see in the Sierra foothill communities. Predation is low, you have more water, more forage and the deer populations tend to be more stable. Even in a drought, people still have yards that can provide food and water.

By contrast, our migratory mule deer herds are subject to every possible environmental condition plus other factors – development, highways, human recreation – that can impact habitat corridors and migration.

Are you a deer hunter?

I am. I think I shot my first deer in 2004. It took me a couple of years to get the first one. I’ve been consistently deer hunting since then. I try to feed my family with venison mostly. We don’t buy beef. Venison is our primary meat source.

Some hunters are discouraged about the state of deer hunting in California. The general sense is it’s much harder than it used to be and much tougher to be successful compared to other states. Is there any advice or words of encouragement you can offer?

I think there is some really good hunting out there. We have an amazing amount of opportunity in California. We have a lot of over-the-counter tags (you can purchase without applying through a lottery), but that also means you have a lot of competition in the field. So just thinking outside of the box with tactics is always a good thing.

Take advantage of our wilderness areas. We have a lot of wilderness in this state – roadless areas, federally designated wilderness. Hunters who are willing to get off the beaten path a little bit can find some quiet out there where they can hunt and potentially be by themselves. I don’t think hunters use optics as much as they could, especially on the east side and areas that are more open.

Take advantage of the gear that we have now. The technology has changed so much. It used to be that rangefinders would work out to 400 yards. Now they can range a mile. It’s just amazing. Optics in general are better than they used to be. There are a lot more long-range rifle options out there today, although that takes some practice to become proficient. It’s not something you just pick up and do.

You’re saying California deer hunters need to hunt differently than they did 10 or 20 years ago?

I think so. I hunted Zone X12 (Mono County) two years ago with my dad. We didn’t do a lot of hiking. We did some hikes, but we were primarily road hunting. We saw a ton of deer, and it was because we would stop and glass. We’d get the spotting scope out and just look. I was shocked at how many deer we saw from the roads.

A lot of other hunters were just driving past us – dusting us out. They’d complain in the restaurant later that evening that they didn’t see anything. I think it’s a matter of changing the way we do things. Slowing down. All the quads and mules and side-by-sides that hunters use – you miss a lot of stuff when you use those.

Mountain lions and bears are sore subjects for many deer hunters. To what degree are bears and mountain lions impacting California’s deer herds?

Habitat is the biggest limiting factor for wildlife. But when you have populations that are struggling – for whatever reason, maybe the habitat is not optimal – things like disease and predation can prevent those populations from rebounding.

We all know lions kill a lot of deer. Theoretically, though, if you have quality habitat, the deer populations should be able to handle that and you’re going to have cyclical population cycles among predators and prey.

Maybe the suburban deer issue has shifted some of the balance and lion populations are higher than we might normally see because those lions are now living on the suburban edge. And when the deer aren’t there, the lions can eat goats and sheep – and they do sometimes. And when the deer return in the winter, lions have plenty of deer to feed on. It’s a possibility and something we might discover as we continue collecting data on mountain lion populations.

We do know that bears prey on fawns in their summer range and they also steal mountain lion kills. Those lions then have to go out and kill more deer than they otherwise would. We’ve got that documented. We don’t have any scientific papers published on it as far as I know, but we’ve got lots of camera data to support that. We’ve had GPS-collared deer that were confirmed lion kills, we set up a trail camera, and a bear comes along and steals that deer carcass. It’s a concern, for sure.

To what extent can CDFW improve deer hunting in California?

I think our best option is to work with the land management agencies – BLM, the Forest Service – to try and influence the habitat side of things. I think we can provide them with data on migration routes so that if they are going to be doing a big project in an area we can use that data to help inform that project and undertake appropriate treatments. If it’s winter range, we need to emphasize the importance of winter range habitat for deer and how we can improve that range. We have good relationships with those agencies. But it’s just like anything else, we can always do a better job of communicating, using and sharing the information that we have.

And then we can control to some level the quality of hunting based on our data and the number of deer tags we issue. Typically with the X zones, we try and manage more for a quality hunt. The A, C and D zones are more about opportunity.

So many of our deer seasons in California start earlier than many other states. Is there any discussion to move deer seasons later in the year, closer to the rut, when hunter success would be higher?

The general consensus among deer biologists in the state is that the herds cannot sustain the added pressure of hunting during the rut. If we were to do that, we’d have to reduce tag numbers dramatically. And that’s the tradeoff. If you really want to have late hunts, you have to issue significantly fewer tags.

What about the resident herds that are stable or growing? Are there opportunities to create some additional deer hunts for the public?

Yes, we are looking at the Central Valley river corridors – the Merced River, the San Joaquin River, the Tuolumne River-- and some of the national wildlife refuges and our state wildlife areas nearby where we see deer numbers increasing. Those would be A Zone hunts. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is interested in doing some deer population assessments and potentially holding hunts on their land, and we are coordinating with them. Some of our Merced County wildlife areas – Los Banos, North Grasslands – would be good candidates to hold deer hunts – at least youth hunts. That would require some regulatory changes to permit deer as a species of take, but we are definitely looking at that.

Tell us something about yourself many people would be surprised to learn.

I do a lot of foraging – mushroom hunting and general forest foraging. I love cooking. I love to make charcuterie, sausages and cured meats with wild game. There is a lot that goes into harvesting a deer or an elk or whatever species it is – a lot of time and money and personal effort and all of that. So to me, honoring that wild animal and turning that wild game into something really special – something more than what you’d do with a chunk of beef – is important.

CDFW Photo. Top Photo: Photo Captions: Nathan Graveline with the X12 Zone 3x3 buck he harvested in 2017 with his father.

Josh Bush is an environmental scientist with the Wildlife Management Program in CDFW’s North Central Region. Based in West Sacramento, he is the unit wildlife biologist for Colusa, Lake and Yolo counties. His work includes a multi-herd tule elk project, collared mule deer studies, coordinating the region’s land acquisitions, management of CDFW lands, and numerous resource assessment projects and surveys. He works primarily with elk, deer, bear, dove, pheasant, quail and turkey but dabbles with lions, bank swallows and Swainson’s hawks. His responsibilities include responding to human-wildlife conflicts and providing technical expertise to hunters and the public.

Josh earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology, with an emphasis in Wildlife Management, from the University of California, Davis in 2007. He started his CDFW career as a scientific aide in 2005, and worked his way up started his current position in 2011.

Who or what inspired you to become a scientist?

I have always been inspired by my dad, Mark Bush; my fondest memories are the many hunting and fishing trips we enjoyed together. My dad taught me everything he knew about wildlife, biology and the outdoors. He was a constant backstop for all my questions and never discouraged my asking them. After a long day in the field, I would come home and grab my taxonomy book to ID any animal we did not recognize. Those early trips evolved into an obsession with wildlife and progressed into a need to understand interactions between species and the role each played in the environment.

It was much later in college and after I arrived at CDFW that I learned that, you can apply science to the outdoors to help understand and ultimately help manage and create more of the wildlife that we all enjoy seeing. I strive to do this every day.

What is a typical work day like for you?

The only thing that is typical about my day it that is it is always unpredictable. I work mostly in my three counties but my job takes me all over the 17-county North Central Region. It’s a healthy balance of about 65 percent field work and 35 percent desk work. Field days are often 14-16 hours long with lots of overnights and varied tasks including setting camera traps, rescuing injured wildlife, visiting potential land acquisitions, running survey transects and capturing and collaring study animals. You could find me one day near Clear Lake tracking elk and then the next day in Lake Tahoe darting deer. Public phone calls and answering emails are a big and necessary part of the job. I like to start and end each week by clearing the phones and answering any emails that fieldwork prevented me from getting to. It is especially rewarding talking to hunters who are excited to get try their luck.

What is most challenging about working with wildlife?

The most challenging things are the hours that wildlife keep. I enjoy sleeping at night but wildlife can make that difficult. While I am still up early and out late to do portions of my job, science is evolving and remote cameras and satellite collars have made getting some normal shut-eye a little more possible.

What is your favorite species to interact with or study?

I have a soft spot for all animals but mule deer fascinate me – they are so hardy and able to live out their lives in some incredibly rough environments. There is nothing better than darting a mule deer, watching its migration via satellite and then picking up the collar after it is released. It is especially rewarding when you see an ear-tagged deer you collared years prior, knowing that it is still out there doing its thing.

What is the most rewarding project that you have worked on for CDFW?

I am currently working on it. I am the lead on a tule elk project in partnership with UC Davis and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. The project uses both collars and a non-invasive capture/recapture process that features DNA extracted from elk droppings to determine population levels, among other things, in the herds occupying Lake and Colusa counties. We just started year two of a four-year project but it is already the most rewarding and difficult thing I have worked on. This is the first project I have led and, while it is tough managing all aspects, it is rewarding to see the early results and to work with such dedicated people.

We are currently tracking 38 collared elk via satellite and just completed the first year of fecal-DNA collection, which had myself and UC Davis Ph.D. student Tom Batter hiking the interior Coast Range in 100 degree plus heat picking up elk poop. While not the most glamorous work, it is certainly rewarding!

If you had free reign and unlimited funding, what scientific project would you most like to do?

California’s Mediterranean climate is characterized by cold, wet winters, which can result in flooding, and hot dry summers, which can result in fires. My dream is to implement large-scale infrastructure projects that work with the climate-related ecology of California. Specifically, I would like to implement riparian setbacks and large wildland burn units as well as study and document the response from wildlife and the benefit to California. Last winter’s rainfall and flooding, as well as the unfortunate large-scale fires that followed, make these projects all the more important.

The Central Valley has lost a large majority of its riparian habitat since European contact. Riparian setbacks are a truly multi-benefit project. Setbacks could benefit flood control by slowing, sinking and spreading out water. They would also increase habitat for native wildlife and increase recreational opportunities for all. An excellent test case in benefit to recreation and wildlife is the Sacramento River. Above Colusa, the river is dynamic -- it meanders with gravel bars, cut banks and oxbows that are teeming with wildlife diversity. Downstream from Colusa the river is channelized with less habitat, wildlife, recreational opportunities and wildlife diversity.

Wildfire is a part of California, as years of suppression created unhealthy forests with high fuel loads, which lead to high intensity large-scale wildfires. These fires can be detrimental to urban areas, wildlife and wildlife habitat. Wildland burn units – large rotating wildland areas that are burned periodically on a rotational basis – can restore some of these native areas, increase the value to wildlife, habitat heterogeneity and fire safety at the wildland/urban interface.

Any advice for people considering careers in science or natural resources?

My advice is to embrace everything about your potential career. Show up early, leave late, volunteer, network, be available for the jobs others do not want to do. If you are a hunter, get to know the little fuzzy creatures or little brown birds you would normally overlook. If you do not hunt or fish, grab a fishing rod or take a hunter’s safety class and sign up for a CDFW-sponsored hunt. Be well-rounded and let your passion for the job be visible.

CDFW photos of Josh Bush