We took the day off yesterday to have a little fun fishing with the boys at the Webb Center here in Garnett. It’s just too bad that you can’t eat fun, because we sure didn’t catch any fish!

However that wasn’t really the point. The objective of the day was to get outside, hike around the woods and enjoy the beautiful lowcountry. And what self-respecting fish would come to Bo’s pole when he is stomping on the dock, throwing sticks in the water by his bobber and yelling with excitement every time a ripple moved it like a biting fish would? But the boys had a great time running back and forth on the dock while pointing out all of the birds flying around. Bo also wanted to take a few pictures with my “special” camera, and that is his image of Bluff Lake below.

When they finally ran out of energy, we loaded up the van and cruised some of Webb’s back roads checking out all of it’s beauty. The neat looking old oak stump with the amazing flowers growing out of it was just one of the many of the sights you can encounter on the 26,000 acres that makes up Webb, Palachucola and Hamilton Ridge.

We then headed home to spend the rest of the day in the yard picking up sticks and burning them in our fire pit - truly a redneck’s favorite past time!

We are having our QDMA’s deer management workshop tomorrow at Webb, so I will have a full recap of the educational event on Monday. I will also get back to work on some of the other promised posts by then as well. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Jeff

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I have not finished some of the other posts I have promised, and we are headed out the door for some family fishing right now. So instead of some deer management or hog trapping articles, you get a couple of shots of trapped beavers provided by Gillian Casstevens. I don’t know the guy in the second picture with his beaver, but the first shot is of Jack Belles.

Jack is one of the most knowledgeable outdoorsmen in our area, and he traps beavers for many local landowners who have problems with the buck toothed critters chewing up their valuable timber. Jack also ran the tri-county sportsman’s lodge for many years and has probably killed more big bucks in the lowcountry than anyone. In addition, Jack is well known for his turkey hunting skills and was even mentioned by Ronnie “Cuz” Strickland in his book on turkey hunting published by Mossy Oak titled THE TRUTH about turkey hunting according to “Cuz”.

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I have gotten a lot of calls and emails lately inquiring about clubs and leases that are available currently here in the lowcountry. Here are the ones that I know of …

Cubbedge Hill Plantation’s Blount Place has at least 2 of their 4 spots open. This 450 acre trophy managed tract also includes a club house to stay in along with planted food plots. $2500

Morrison Forestry in Estill has quite a few good leases open right now ranging between 100 and 1000 acres. Prices are $20 to $25 an acre. You can visit their website at www.morrisonforestry.com for more information.

Dog/still hunt club in Hampton has 3000 acres and splits the week between dog hunting and still hunting. This is for SC residents only! $500

Wise Batten, Inc also has some great leases available ranging from 50 to 5000 acres. You can visit their website at www.wisebatten.com for more information. Prices normally run $20 to $30 an acre.

Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or for more contact info…

Jeff

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I hope that everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend! I know we did… while we didn’t do much, we enjoyed having a quiet few days around the house and in the yard.

My wife and two boys finally came back from California last week, so we just spent time together and didn’t go anywhere. However since my wife had a been traveling so much lately, she didn’t mind at all. And the boys acted like their kiddie pool was just as good as the beach. Plus, when we were done outside, we could come inside for some big buck and predator hunting videos! Always a great way to spend some family time together.

With life back to normal around here, I am hoping to get back to some hog hunting/trapping very soon. And I know that others have the same exact idea since that is about all that you can shoot during the summer. For those that are either just starting out or that are looking to increase their success rate hunting or trapping, I am going to lay out a few of my techniques that should make a big difference.

Obviously the first step is locating and securing access to an area that has a good hog population. If you don’t do this, you are already getting off on the wrong foot. Don’t get me wrong, you can pull some over from the neighbors or kill one here or there while deer hunting. But that isn’t the same as having a good native population to exploit.

Once you have the access, you need to key in on how the hogs use the property. Most likely you will see hog tracks all over the area, however they will only be using some of those areas at night. So don’t be fooled in to setting up an area that will be tough to hunt. Look for the thickest cover you have that is close to the water they need so much. That will most likely be the best spot to hunt. If you are trapping, that will also be the best spot, because while you can also trap in those areas they use only at night, you will catch more hogs where they live all of the time than where they feed sometimes.

Once you have your area picked out, start loading it up with corn, and my special ingredient Hog Wild. I know that everyone has heard of using sour corn, brown sugar and cool aid, diesel, etc. These all work, but not as well as the Hog Wild. They also all have their own drawbacks such as weight for the sour corn and pollution for the diesel.

As for how to load up the area, it just depends on if you are hunting or trapping. If you are hunting, spread out your corn in a 30 foot circle. This makes it easy for a big pack of hogs to all use the area at the same time without some running others off. If you are trapping, do the same (we will change it up later). Then spread the Hog Wild all around your circle of corn. It will probably take the whole bag to really cover the area and really stink the place up. And that is the key. The hogs will find the corn eventually, but why not get them on it within just a few days. That way you can start hunting/trapping asap.

The hog wild’s yummy stench will flow in the wind currents all over your hunting property, and if you have any hogs at all around, they should be coming in pretty good within a week. At first, just a few hogs will arrive, so you can probably wait a few days before restocking your corn/hog wild pile. However every night they will bring more of their buddies with them. And before long, you will have to restock your area every other day. When you have to do that, you are ready to hunt or trap.

Tomorrow I will finish this post on how to maximize your hog hunting/trapping, so make sure and stop back by. This week I will also be finishing up my series of posts on managing your property for big bucks, and this time I will be keying in on how to kill those big bucks that you have grown. Once those are up, I have two special posts coming. One will be on “why I hunt”. Arthur over at SimplyOutdoors.net wrote a great piece on why he does a while back and challenged others to do the same, so now it is my turn. Then as soon as I get the pictures to go with it, frequent contributor Gillian (that is her great hog picture at the top of this post) has a wonderful story about her husband and his tracking dog!

I look forward to sharing all of this with you!

Jeff

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This morning I want to highlight Gohagan’s Guide Service. It is run by Marion Gohagan, and he offers deer, hog and turkey hunting out of his lodge located just down the road in Scotia.

Not only has Marion lived here in the lowcountry his whole life, he is a master deer and hog hunter himself, so he really knows how to put you on game. Some hunters may know him from when he managed Bostick Plantation, while others may have read about him in Boar Hunter Magazine or seen him on ESPN when they did a special show on hog hunting with dogs.

I was fortunate enough to be invited out a few years ago for a truly exciting stand hunt for hogs, and that is my nice meat hog I harvested in the picture with me. I saw tons of pigs with a couple of real monsters. However I left those for his clients and took home a tender young one.

Marion offers hunts by the day or week on his 1650 acres, and you can find lots of information about those hunts as well as the prices for them on his website http://www.gohagansguideservice.com. This year he is also offering a handful of premium memberships. So give him a call if you are looking for a great place to hunt with everything taken care of for you. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Jeff

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This morning’s post is more of Gillian’s great big buck photographs along with examples of how to manage for deer like those pictured. Also included in these shots is some behavior that many hunters will NEVER see - a whitetail buck breeding a doe.

Let me just say that the most important part of growing big bucks is passing up young bucks! However once you have gotten control over your trigger finger, the next thing you need is to keep those deer on your property as much as possible so that they can grow healthy and old. To do this, you must provide the right habitat so that they have everything that they need on your land and never want to leave (or at least less often).

The two most important pieces of habitat is a good deal of thick cover for deer to bed in along with a lot of food for them to eat. However the one mistake that I often see that keeps deer from fully utilizing all of the food that the property manager has provided is not putting the food where older, wiser big bucks will feel comfortable eating. A lot of food plots that I see are planted along the edge of a big fields where it is easy to plant and easy to hunt. That is fine for killing some deer, but it will not work that well for those big boys.

For those, hunters are far better off if they spend a little extra time and effort to put those plots deep in the woods, preferably right next to the thick cover where big bucks like to hang out. Check out Gillian’s pictures of some of their food plots. Those nice green strips run down through the thick pines and clear cuts where big bucks bed. They are also long and narrow, not big and open. This allows big bucks to feed VERY close to thick cover, making them feel safer to come out to eat.

I understand that it is tough to put these types of plots in, so you must work with any areas that are conducive to it. That probably means planting fire breaks and reclaiming logging decks. You can see the pile of timber leftover from a cutting being burned in order to clear the area to be planted. Not only does the fire clear the brush piles, it also helps fix the soil with some much needed nutrients from the ash. You will still want to fertilize your new plot, however this should reduce the amount needed. Please note that it will not reduce the amount of lime that should be applied, and only a soil test will be able to accurately detail the exact amounts of each that will be required to bring the soil up to optimum condition.

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In this morning’s post are all lowcountry big buck photographs taken by Mike Cassteven’s wife, Gillian. As I have told you before, Mike ran Pleasant Hill Plantation for many years, and probably has forgotten more about managing for giant deer than most hunters will ever learn. He now works for Wise Battan, helping him manage some of the best tracts of big buck landscape anywhere in the country, and they really know how to implement a quality deer management program that is second to none.

That is Mike in the first picture with a monster velvet buck… just check out that deer’s neck; they just don’t get that fat that early in the season unless it is at least 4.5 years old or older!

And I’m not sure who the second hunter is (except that he is one of Mike’s friends), but I sure know what he is… out $500 bucks for a mount of his fantastic deer! Again, look at the giant neck on him, his old face and those long main beams. Truly a fantastic lowcountry buck.

The third picture is of a really nice buck that Gillian took off of one of Mike’s stands. Check out the great spread on him along with his sweeping main beams. Another awesome buck that most lowcountry hunters would have a hard time passing up!

And do you know what happens when your quality deer management plan starts producing a balanced age structure and bucks like these - you find monster rubs. Look at that oak that Mike is standing by… it is literally torn to shreds. And Mike said that these are all over the properties they manage; he even said that he has one rub line that goes on for over 1 mile!

You definitely won’t find that on your property if you are shooting all of your young bucks before they can put some serious age on. And you probably won’t find it on your property if you are not working closely with your neighbors since most hunters do not control enough land to get this type of result without some serious cooperation!

Mike is a board member on our Quality Deer Management Association’s Salkehatchie Branch, and he will be the first to tell you that producing big bucks is all about cooperation - Cooperation among land owners and hunters in their management plan to achieve a good buck to doe ratio within a herd that is under the carrying capacity of the land. He will also tell you that you can find lots of information about how to achieve this at the Quality Deer Managment Association’s website.

Stay Tuned! Tomorrow I will have more of Gillian’s great photographs along with the management practices required to grow unbelievable bucks like these. And later this week I will get in to the hunting techniques that best enable hunters to harvest those bucks.

Also, don’t forget to check out the previous post I did of Gillian’s big buck photos if you haven’t already… Just click on the link to go right to it. You can also click any of the other hot links to go directly to any of the other websites that I have mentioned.

Jeff

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This is going to be a great week of posts featuring some amazing photographs of our our lowcountry’s spectacular outdoor scenes.

Mike Cassteven’s wife, Gillian, has been kind enough to send me a huge batch of unbelievable photos including some great shots of hogs feeding, deer mating, food plots growing and deer management practices being implemented. If you remember, I posted a few of her big buck pictures two weeks ago, and I can’t wait to share more of her work with you.

However this morning, I am going to highlight Mike’s daughter, Faith, and her wonderful pictures of a brand new fawn. I will let her Bonus Mom tell the story…

Jeff,

Here are a few pictures Mike’s 13-year old, Faith, took the other evening while out on a ride with her Daddy. Mike and Faith love to take rides together and she loves animals. She has learned so much from her father and growing up in the country, Pleasant Hill. Mike’s deer hunting buddies joke that Faith was “raised by wolves” because she is the female version of the Jungle Boy. Much like her father, she has no fears and probably could tell a few tales of her own in the woods of the lowcountry.

Mike said this fawn was probably born the day the saw it and Faith was quick to point out it will be a buck. Makes you wonder if he’ll make it that long…..whose wall he may end up being a trophy on….and whose “deer tale” he will make. You know what I’m hoping for!

Anyway, spring has definitely sprung in the lowcountry!

Enjoy!

Gillian

Thanks Faith for allowing us to see your beautiful photographs. You are a true inspiration to young outdoorsmen and women everywhere.

And to everyone else, make sure to stay tuned all week for Gillian’s amazing lowcountry photos.

Jeff

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All hunting does not have to be done on land. You can also hunt for lobster, fish, pictures and a good time underwater as well.

These pictures were taken last summer when my wife and I were in Fort Lauderdale snorkeling off of the beach. We used one of the disposable cameras, and it did a pretty good job. It has been sitting in my car since then, and while I was in town the other day, I finally got it developed. So I thought that I would share a few of the shots here.

The neat thing about diving in Fort Lauderdale is that you do not need a boat or air tanks. You can literally just swim a couple of hundred yards off of the beach to one of the reefs and see some amazing things. And while having an air tank would allow you to stay under longer, since it is only 10-20 feet deep, you don’t really need one. Plus it is a great workout!

The reef runs parallel to the beach, so once you get out to the reef, you can just swim along with the current until you are ready to get out. Then you swim back to the beach and walk back to you car. It truly is one of the easiest and neatest dives I can recommend. And depending on the experience of the diver and their physical fitness level, there is a reef for you.

There are generally 3 reef lines that you can reach from the beach. The first one is only about 75 yards offshore. This is the easiest and the closest, so it is perfect for beginners. The average depth is normally about 8 feet, so you don’t have to work very hard to get down, and since it is so shallow, you don’t even have to… you can swim along and see pretty good. This is perfect for beginning divers!

The second reef is about 200 yards offshore and tends to be a much better dive. However since it is a longer swim with an average depth of 15 feet, it tends to be a little tougher for those not comfortable in the water. You can still see lots of stuff right from the surface, so being able to dive down is not mandatory, but it helps when you want to get a closer look at some of the coral or what’s under it (notice the lobster hiding). Expect to see lots of sea fans, tropical fish, sea turtles, tarpon and nurse sharks.

Then you come to the holy grail of beach diving, the third reef. Unless you have a boat, this one is not recommended for inexperienced beach divers due to the difficulty and the distance. It is about 700 yards offshore and averages 20-25 feet deep, so it is definitely not for the weak at heart since you must first swim all of the way out there. Then once there, to really enjoy it, you must be able to dive down to truly see the wall of corals and the abundance of sea life that live in and around them. But if it is clear (and it normally is), you can still see from the top, so it is not a wasted trip even if you can’t get down. Here you can expect to see an even greater abundance of tropical fish, lobster and grouper as well a more diverse landscape of corals.

The best way to do this dive is to tie a raft to your dive flag so that you have something to hang on to while you rest. Like I said, it is a pretty good swim (usually against the current) to get that far off the beach, so if you have a cramp or something, a raft really comes in handy. And since the life guards can’t see you if you have a problem, you are on your own.

Diving in Ft. Lauderdale is truly one of my favorite underwater excursions due to the cost - nothing. You don’t need any special gear, just a mask, snorkel and fins. Most people already have those, and you can rent them from a local dive shop if you don’t. And if you live anywhere in Florida, you can do this dive on a day trip, so no lodging is needed. However if you have just a few bucks, you can get a basic room right on the beach strip for around $75 and walk to the beach to dive. And by staying, you can then go a little more hardcore by doing a night dive! There is truly nothing like swimming offshore hundreds of yards in to the black night to see the reefs come alive after dark…

I may have to do another post on this!

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Last October, a group of us here in lowcountry started the Salkehatchie Branch of the Quality Deer Management Association to promote the organization as well as provide educational opportunities to aspiring deer/land managers. We now have one of those events ready to go! Please read our press release about this exciting day and all that is included… I hope to see you there.

The Salkehatchie Branch of the Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA) and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) will be conducting a one-day Deer Management Workshop on Saturday, May 31. The workshop will be held at the Webb Wildlife Center in Garnett, SC. The workshop will feature seminars, presentations and field demonstrations given by wildlife biologists, foresters and agricultural specialists. Guest speakers include:

Charles Ruth, SCDNR Deer Project Supervisor
Dave Guynn, Professor of Wildlife and Forestry, Clemson University
Marion Barnes, Clemson Extension Agent
Jay Cantrell, Wildlife Biologist and Webb Center Manager

Presentations and field demonstrations during the day will cover topics including: soil testing, food plot management, tree and shrub plantings, enhancing native vegetation, timber management, harvest strategies and herd management.

Hunters, landowners and others interested in managing deer are invited to attend. The workshop will begin at 10 a.m. and will run until 4 p.m. Lunch will be provided for all participants. The workshop will be limited to 30 participants to ensure a quality experience and opportunities for discussion. The cost is: $15/person. Anyone interested in attending must pre-register by no later than May 28.

Contact Jay Cantrell or April Graves at the Webb Wildlife Center: (803) 625-3569 or
cantrellj@dnr.sc.gov or gravesa@dnr.sc.gov for further questions or registration.

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