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For many Texas land stewards, big game species are among the most visible and valued wildlife on the landscape. White-tailed deer moving through a dusty sendero, mule deer crossing sage and silvery open country, desert bighorn sheep navigating a steep, orange terrain or javelina barreling into South Texas brush all offer a glimpse into the connection between wildlife, habitat and land management.

For Stephen Webb, Ph.D., research assistant professor with the Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute and the Texas A&M Department of Rangeland, Wildlife and Fisheries Management (RWFM), those observations are only the beginning. Webb studies game and large mammal species to better understand how animals move, what habitats they use and how they respond to changing conditions across working lands. His research uses tools such as GPS collars, field observations, camera and helicopter surveys, habitat assessments and long-term data sets to answer questions that matter to landowners, wildlife managers, hunters and conservation partners.

“Really what it comes down to is the type of questions, no matter what species it is,” Webb said during the Season 3 opener of The Land Steward Podcast. “I really like to study species that have an impact on the landowners.”

Javelina, or collared peccary, in South Texas brush

For Webb, that connection to landowners is central. Big game species often carry cultural, ecological and economic value, especially in Texas where private land stewardship shapes much of the state’s wildlife habitat. Understanding these animals more clearly can help landowners make informed decisions about habitat management, harvest, conservation and long-term planning. Much of Webb’s work falls within animal movement ecology, a field that uses tracking data to understand where animals go and how they use the landscape. GPS collars allow researchers to collect location data in near real time, monitor movement patterns and better understand survival, habitat use and response to environmental conditions.

No argument here, the technology has changed the way researchers study wildlife. Webb comically describes how older VHF collars required researchers to manually track animals by listening for signals in the field. Today’s GPS collars can transmit location data, record temperature and alert researchers to possible mortalities. Some collars are programmed to fall off after a set period of time, allowing researchers to retrieve them without handling the animal again. That retrieval can still be…challenging. In Webb’s projects, collars may drop in mountainous terrain, thick South Texas brush or remote areas that require careful coordination with landowners and partners. Even so, the data collected can provide a clearer picture of what animals are doing when people are not watching.

“When we start seeing all the data, we can pull it in and it looks like points on a map,” Webb said. “They don’t really tell you a whole lot else except that you’re seeing a lot of dots on a map. And so that’s when we get a lot more sophisticated in what we do to understand how the animal was moving, where it was moving to and all those different types of things.”

That step to turning points on a map into management insight is where research begins to serve land stewardship more directly. For example, Webb described work with desert bighorn sheep where video collars offered researchers a rare view from the animal’s perspective. The footage helped researchers observe how bighorn sheep used caves during the heat of the day to thermoregulate, how they navigated steep terrain and how they interacted with food resources such as cactus. For researchers, the footage added context to location data. For land stewards and partners, it helped make the species’ habitat needs more visible.

In another study focused on white-tailed deer and hunters, researchers tracked both deer and hunters to better understand how hunting pressure influenced deer behavior. Webb said the data showed deer changing habitat use once hunters entered the landscape, avoiding areas such as ponds and roads where hunters were more likely to be present. The lesson for hunters and landowners was practical: animals learn patterns, and management decisions benefit from knowing more than where wildlife has been seen in the past.

The newest and perhaps most timely example of Webb’s work centers on javelina, or the collared peccary. Although javelina are a native big game species in Texas, they are often misunderstood and commonly confused with feral hogs. Unlike feral hogs, javelina are not pigs and are not considered a nuisance animal. They are native to Texas and occur in regions including the South Texas Plains, Trans-Pecos, Edwards Plateau and Rolling Plains. Webb shared that javelina are finally receiving much-needed attention after decades with relatively little research.

“It’s about time for the javelina to get a little bit more respect in terms of being a game animal in Texas,” Webb said.

His current javelina research, funded in part by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and supported by several partners, is focused across South Texas. The study spans private ranches and large landscapes, combining GPS collar data, camera surveys, helicopter surveys, citizen science observations and historic records to better understand population dynamics, habitat use and survey methods.

One of the major goals is to refine how javelina are surveyed. Webb noted that helicopter surveys, while useful for some species, can miss javelina even when researchers know collared animals are present. Dense brush and imperfect detection make it difficult to count animals accurately from the air. Camera surveys, roadside counts and other methods each offer different kinds of supplemental information, but researchers need to understand how well each method works. That matters because population estimates are foundational to game management. Knowing how many animals are present, how populations change over time and how many young are produced helps inform sustainable harvest and long-term management.

The research team is also working toward a user-friendly decision-support tool that would allow landowners to enter survey data and harvest records, then use that information to forecast population trends and consider harvest quotas. The goal is not simply to produce more data, Webb said, but to create something landowners can use.

“It’s information, but how do I use it?” Webb said. “We did all our science-y stuff. We did all our math and statistics behind the scenes. Now, here’s something that can be simplified for you, and it’s a support tool to help make decisions.”

That translation from science to application is a consistent theme in Webb’s work. Peer-reviewed publications remain important, but so do maps, fact sheets, Extension publications, presentations and conversations with landowners. Through a partnership with students in RWFM’s Communicating in Natural Resources course, Webb has also helped guide student-created Extension materials, including a collared peccary fact sheet that explains basic javelina biology, distribution and key differences between javelina and feral hogs.

Webb and a graduate student conducting javelina helicopter surveys at La Copita ranch

For Webb, working with students is part of the larger purpose of applied research. He gives a humble nod to the professors who gave him early opportunities and helped shape his career. Now, he tries to do the same for students learning how wildlife research moves from fieldwork to data analysis to practical communication.

“I wanted to pay it forward,” Webb said. “That’s what I try to do for the students, too.”

The javelina work also reflects a broader model of collaboration. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, private landowners, conservation organizations, university researchers and students all contribute to the research. Landowners provide access, local knowledge and interest in better managing the wildlife on their properties. Researchers provide data, analysis and tools that can support those decisions. In many cases, a simple map can start the conversation. Webb said when landowners see where a collared javelina has moved across their property, they often become more interested in the research and what it can tell them. From there, researchers can begin showing habitat use, areas of higher likelihood and information that may eventually support management planning. For land stewards, that may be the most important takeaway. Big game research is not only about the animals themselves. It is about the relationship between wildlife, habitat and human decisions. It helps answer where animals move, how they use available resources and what landowners can do with that knowledge.

Research rarely produces a single, simple answer. More often, it adds clarity. It helps land stewards ask better questions, observe more carefully and recognize that each species is responding to the landscape in its own way.

As Season 3 of The Land Steward Podcast begins, Webb’s work offers a reminder that the species sharing Texas’s private lands still have much to teach us. Whether the subject is white-tailed deer, desert bighorn sheep or javelina, paying closer attention to big game can help landowners and managers make decisions grounded in science, shaped by experience and connected to the land.

Listen to the full conversation with Webb in Episode 13 of The Land Steward Podcast on Spotify and Apple.