Did you know that there is a new camouflage on the market and ALL of the products made with that it are not only made in America, but made right here in South Carolina?

Well, there is. It’s made by Swamp Fox Products out of Andrews, SC, and the two patterns that they offer are Black River camo for deer, turkey and dove hunting and Cord Grass camo for all waterfowl hunting. These two great patterns are available in different length rolls (54 inches by 12 feet to 54 inches by 100 feet) for use on all kinds of hunting blinds. And best of all their camo cloth is strong, odor free and will not fray when cut.

Swamp Fox Products also puts their two camo patterns on many types of hunting apparel and supplies including ponchos, gun socks and game bags as well as on some great specialty items such as place mats, coasters, table cloths, tri-fold beds, curtains and even carpet tiles!

I encourage everyone to check out their website (www.swampfoxproducts.com) for more information on their camo patterns and the products they make with them.

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Kip Adams, QDMA’s Director of Education and Outreach for the Northern Region, just released a new article that he has written reflecting on how quality deer management has drastically changed the face of deer hunting over the last 10 years.

In “Deer Harvest Trends”, Adams highlights the amazing improvements in buck age structures across the country as well the ratio of does to bucks in the harvest from 1999 to 2005. For instance,

• the percentage of yearlings in the buck harvest declined from an average of 51% in 1999 to 45% in 2005

• the percentage of 2.5-year-olds increased from 28 to 32% and 3.5-year-olds or older increased from 19 to 23%

• In 2005, about 2/3 (65%) of the states shot as many or more antlerless deer than bucks

• the percentage of yearlings in the buck harvest declined from an average of 51% in 1999 to 45% in 2005

Please click below to read the entire article! You will be amazed at how QDM has positively impacted our hunting. And please note that I have included the entire article instead of linking to it since it has not been released on the QDMA website yet. Read the rest of this entry »

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This morning I wanted to update everyone on a few changes that have happened around here over the last few months. First, as I briefly wrote about a while back, I will not be managing Cubbedge Hill Plantation this year. I have run out of time to do everything that I want in my life, so some changes had to be made. Giving this up was one of them. And it was a tough decision since I have so enjoyed working with my family and having access to truly one of the best chunks of deer country in the state.

I will also not be managing Jericho either. Times are tough and filling memberships on highly managed deer hunting clubs has been even tougher. Don’t get me wrong, I would have filled up what I needed to, it just was taking longer than expected. And there was another group that was committed to treating the place right (and had the funds ready), so they have taken it over. And while I was a little disappointed in this, this development has also worked in my favor as far as my goals and time management go.

Please note that I didn’t immediately stop advertising my lowcountry hunting services since I considered leasing a smaller piece of property for just a few of the right clients. However again, this was going to take up too much time for not enough return. So a couple of us are headed over to hunt with Marion at Gohagan’s Guide Service. He is doing everything that I would have done and just as good, so I am going to enjoy the benefits of hunting a great place without expending all of the time.

Don’t misunderstand. I love managing prime hunting properties. However the amount of time required to properly do so is enormous. And so is the money. Just to give you an idea of what it takes to fully fund one here in the lowcountry, take a look at these numbers… A prime lease will run around 25$ an acre; that makes a 1000 acres worth around $25,000 a year! Then add in 500 to 1000 bushels of corn at the current $8, and that will tack on an additional $4000 to $8000. And of course everyone likes to have a nice place to stay at night along with sitting over some nice green fields that require planting with $5 a gallon diesel, good seed and fertilizer. Add that all up and you are at around $35,000 to $40,000! Do the math, and 12 members (about right for that acreage) and each one will have to pay $3500 a season. That is a lot of money for most folks right now… And that is all just to cover the costs.

I also have a family that I must take care of, so that has made me look at my life goals as well as at our finances. In addition, I have something else that I would like to do more of that requires time - writing about managing for big bucks and hunting in the lowcountry. So, since there are only so many hours in a day, I have decided to use my time for other projects including several new websites and a magazine. I will be posting much more about these undertakings very soon. However that may not be on this blog (or this blog in its current form).  I may have to switch this site over to a self-published one in the very near future, so please bare with me as I make any of these changes.

As you can see I have lots of big stuff going on, but believe it or not, there is more. Since I still want to continue to work in the hunting field, manage for big bucks and gain valuable experience, I have another exciting development to tell you about very soon…Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

Jeff

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Many people believe that there are panthers living in South Carolina. And many people believe that there are crazy people living in South Carolina who believe there are panthers.

I wrote about lowcountry panthers before, and now it seems that the Bluffton Breeze has done its own investigation. Check out this recent story about panther sightings in the lowcountry. One of the outdoorsmen they interviewed was my friend and cousin Marion Gohagan of Gohagan’s Guide Service who I posted about just a few weeks ago here.

Let the debate continue…

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Have you been dying to eat some gator tail or to make yourself some gator-skin boots? Now is your chance!

This year South Carolina will have its first alligator season since they were removed from the endangered species list. Applications are now being accepted through the SCDNR’s website, and it is $10 to get on the list. If you are drawn, the tag itself will cost $100. You can also find out all about the new season as well as the methods allowed here.

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It is a busy week for our Salkehatchie Branch. We had our first educational event this past Saturday, and now we have our monthly business meeting tonight at Roebuck Plantation in Garnett.

The meeting is at 6:30pm, and we will be working on the plans for our first banquet to be held at the County Line restaurant on August 9th. If anyone is interested in helping us, please call or email me for directions. And even if you can’t make the meeting but are interested in helping us, please call or email as well. There are plenty of things to be taken care of, so there are lots of ways to assist.

Speaking of our branch’s plans, I am still amazed at how well our deer management workshop went on Saturday. Like I told everyone in my post yesterday, all of our speakers did an outstanding job of educating everyone there while all of our volunteers made sure that the day ran smoothly, our reference material binders were packed full of great stuff and that lunch was served fresh, hot and tasty. I just can’t tell everyone how pleased we all were. And that makes the time everyone invested putting it together all the more worthwhile.

And in my “news” post yesterday about the event, I know I told everybody exactly what we did. However the one thing that I didn’t mention was all of the personal interaction that went on. By that I mean all of great conversations about deer management and hunting that we all had among ourselves in between the speakers, during lunch and while on trucks touring the food plots. It is always just wonderful to have an opportunity to speak with so many fanatic deer hunters/managers, whether they are veterans in the field or just starting out. And you can just imagine the stories that were swapped with that many hunters together!

I also have to share a story with my fellow outdoor bloggers… One of the many hunters that I had a chance to hang out with was Robin from my cousin’s Lightsey Hunting Club for Ladies. She periodically sends me emails with pictures and updates on their successes, but I had never met her in person, so it was great to finally get to meet her. And during lunch, she said something that cracked me up - that she felt like she totally knew me from reading this site every day. I just thought that was fantastic, since having people check out this site every day is one of the goals, and obviously I include A LOT about myself and my family in my writings so I hope that many of my readers feel that way too. I know that style is not for everyone, but I feel like people need to know exactly who I am to truly believe what I am writing about. However I also felt like I had to apologize since I know that I can be completely annoying sometimes with my “expertise”, making “really knowing me” not always a great thing. LOL

One more time, I would like to thank everyone that attended, spoke and/or helped put the day together!

Jeff

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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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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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Carolyn Mansfield of the Sierra Club recently emailed me about a new website, SierraSportsmen.org, that her organization is launching to reach out to sportsmen in their conservation efforts. The question I have it, should we support them in this effort?

While I am not going to tell my readers what to think, I will tell you what I have found in my research of the Sierra Club so that you may make up your own mind. I also will direct you to the Hog Blog where Phillip has written a great article on this as well as how hunters should use this opportunity if they choose to.

As for the Sierra Club itself, it seems that there is currently a huge battle going on inside and outside of the organization over the use of hunting as a conservation tool. The groups official policy currently supports it.

Sport Hunting and Fishing — Within both modified and natural ecosystems, the Sierra Club believes that acceptable management approaches include regulated periodic hunting and fishing when based on sufficient scientifically valid biological information and when consistent with all other management purposes and when necessary total protection of particular species or populations. Because national parks are set aside for the preservation of natural landscapes and wildlife, the Sierra Club is opposed to sport hunting in national parks and national monuments.

This support for hunting is creating quite a bit of conflict among some of the old supporters as well as within the management. For instance, renowned eco terrorist, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder and Sierra Club board member Paul Watson quit two years ago over the group’s acceptance of hunting as a conservation tool, and particularly over their use of a writing contest “Why I Hunt” where the grand prize was an big game hunt.

On one hand, getting rid of a eco terrorist and anti-hunting activist like Watson seems to be a huge step in the right direction for the Sierra Club if it truly wishes to represent hunters. And when you consider that the powerful conservation group has over 1 million members, it is definitely a huge gain for all sportsmen. However one has to ask why he had to quit when he should have never been in such a position to begin with.

You can also see the battle over hunting as a conservation tool going on right now in the Sierra Club’s Florida chapter where the entire board was just terminated and the entire chapter suspended. The club says that this was to end the infighting amongst the state group over the state chapter’s refusal to go along with the Sierra Club’s partnership with Clorox. But I have found other articles that refer to the state chapter advocating and adopting a vegan lifestyle while completely refusing to support hunting as a conservation tool which created a huge rift between the state board, its members and the national board even before this deal with Clorox.

Again, this looks like a positive step in the right direction for sportsmen. However you can still find plenty of current instances where the Sierra Club, and even more often its state chapters, still has a knee-jerk reaction to prohibiting hunting to control animal populations. And this is definitely the case with cougar hunting out West; You can find plenty of info on this here at the Oregon state chapter as well as here at the California state chapter.

And while the Sierra Club claims to be for hunting as a conservation tool, it says that it takes no position on the 2nd Amendment and the individual right to bear arms. This stance seems to ignore the fact that if that right is removed, hunters will NOT be able to provide their very necessary conservation efforts. You can also find a list of the candidates that they currently support here, and I doubt that many sportsmen will find it to their liking.

There is a ton of information on all of this if any concerned sportsman is willing to just follow the links, and I encourage everyone to do so. For instance you can also read all about the current group of candidates that are running for the Sierra Club’s board of directors here as well as their positions on many important environmental issue. It is in these details that many hunters will find their answers to the question of whether to support the Sierra Club’s outreach to them.

And while I will not be signing up as a member just yet, I do think that I will at least enroll in their newsletters so that I can follow these issues at the Sierra Club as well as at Sierra Sportsmen Network so that I can make an educated decision about whether to support them in the future.

I will also be submitting some images to the photo contest that they are running that, as their new Sierra Sportsmen Network site says, “captures your passion and respect for the people, places, and critters we love to share our outdoor experiences with”. This contest will be judged by some very important and influential members of our outdoor community who are obviously looking to help build a bridge between sportsmen and “conservationists”.

Like I said, check out the Hog Blog for more perspective on this very important issue. In addition, I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this, so feel free to leave detailed comments.

Jeff

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QDMA hit a major milestone the other day when it’s 50,000th member signed up. This great accomplishment is due to all of the hard work and time its members have contributed to promote the organization and quality deer management.

As a member and a founding board member of a local branch, I would like to say THANK YOU to everyone that has joined the organization, donated to its cause or implemented its practices. And to give everyone some perspective on the group’s growth, there were just 10,000 members in 2000, and local branches have grown from 30 to 275 in the last four years alone.

QDM is the “management philosophy/practice that unites landowners, hunters, and managers in a common goal of producing biologically and socially balanced deer herds within existing environmental, social, and legal constraints. This approach typically involves the protection of young bucks (yearlings and some 2.5 year-olds) combined with an adequate harvest of female deer to maintain a healthy population in balance with existing habitat conditions and landowner desires. This level of deer management involves the production of quality deer (bucks, does, and fawns), quality habitat, quality hunting experiences, and, most importantly, quality hunters.

You can read the full press release as well as learn all about the organization and its recommended practices on the QDMA website.

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