The SCDNR and QDMA Salkehatchie Branch’s quality deer management workshop held this past Saturday at the Webb Wildlife Center here in Garnett was a complete success! We had about 45 attendees including 24 registered guests and 10 branch board members as well as quite a few employees from the South Carolina DNR, law enforcement and forestry commission.

Our three main speakers were Dr. Guynn, professor of Wildlife and Forestry from Clemson University, Charles Ruth, SCDNR deer project supervisor, and Marion Barnes, our county’s Clemson extension agent. The workshop started at 10am and ran to 5pm, and in that time we listened to each speaker address their area of expertise, ate lunch and toured several food plots on Webb. Dr. Guynn spoke about the four pillars of quality deer management, Charles Ruth covered trends in South Carolina hunting such as baiting and the use of tracking dogs and Marion Barnes addressed food plot and orchard planting. Webb biologist Jay Cantrell also covered how to keep deer out of your food plot while they are being established (a real problem here in the South) as well as helped Webb technician Ted Rainwater show how to plant food plots with various farming tools running the gamut from an ATV with a spreader to a tractor with a grain drill.

Everyone came away from the day with lots of new knowledge and a renewed excitement about quality deer management. We even handed out a anonymous survey at the end of the day to assess how well the day went along with the quality of our speakers… and much to our pleasant surprise, we had almost unanimous agreement that it was well worth a whole Saturday!

It is through efforts like this that will allow hunting to flourish as our true great American past time in the 21st Century. I truly want to thank everyone that attended, helped with the preparations and spoke at the workshop!

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