While I haven’t posted much here at LowcountryHunting lately, don’t think for one minute that I haven’t been working like crazy on several big projects. And one of those projects is of course our annual Quality Deer Management Association’s Salkehatchie Branch REACH banquet that will be held on August 8th at the County Line restaurant. The banquet will feature a live auction, a silent auction, games, raffles and another amazing meal fixed by the County Line’s own David Rowell.

However this year we will be doing something EXTRA SPECIAL for all of those that support QDMA and our banquet – we will be publishing a NEWSPAPER to publicize their businesses as well as QDMA’s mission. The paper will be 12×12 inches in size, have 16 pages with color on the front and back and have a minimum run of 5000 copies that we will distribute across Hampton County during the opening week of deer season!!!

And in this paper, we will be giving ads to our sponsors as well as selling ads to other local businesses that would like an advertising mechanism to reach all of our visiting hunters. So please contact me at 803-842-1155 if you would like to purchase tickets (single $50, couple $65) become a sponsor for the banquet or just purchase an ad in our newspaper.

PS: I was able to take the boys out in our new, nicely used F250 for a hog hunt last night. And while we didn’t kill anything, we sure had a great time watching a sow with her piglets… MUCH more info about the truck, the boys, our hunting and my projects coming very soon, so stay tuned!

Jeff

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This past Saturday, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, the Clemson 4-H program and the Salkehatchie Branch of the Quality Deer Management Association all worked together to provide a great day of fun at the Palachucola shooting range for local kids and their families.

Me helping Bo shoot on the .22 range

The event ran from 10am until 2pm, and I would guess that we around 40 to 50 kids along with about that many parents/grandparents. And while that did not meet last years attendance of 100 youths, it was still an amazing day. And if anything, by not being so crowded, it allowed the kids that were there to take multiple turns at each station and enjoy the day that much more.

David from the Webb Center assisting Will on the archery range

As for the stations, we had a youth archery range set up with targets and life-size 3D animals for them to shoot with special youth bows. We also had an air gun range that was totally self contained in the back of a 4-H trailer that allowed 2 kids at a time to shoot paper targets along with small metallic animals, 5 .22 rifles with instructors on the rifle range shooting metallic animals and 4 skeet stations where the kids could bang away at the flying orange discs.

Everyone really had a good time, and I know that our two boys sure enjoyed it. Amy brought them by around midday, and we took them all around… You would have thought Santa Claus was there the way that they ran from station to station giggling with glee!

David helping Bo shoot a doe

Both boys really loved the archery range, and I must commend David from the Webb Center on his patience. He managed to not only help 4-year-old Bo shoot the deer target, but 2 year old Will as well. They both also really loved the air gun range, and Will even out shot his older brother! I then held Bo in front of me while we tried in vain to hit those flying orange targets that the trap

Bo and Will with the instructors on the airgun range

machine through out; while we didn’t ever connect on any of them, Bo really loved helping me shoot the BIG gun.

I must really commend Webb biologist Jay Cantrell and his whole crew for planning such an amazing day along with all of the SCDNR employees and game wardens in addition to the 4-H volunteers that helped at each station and provided such a quality event for our youngsters.

Bo's friend Jackson getting gun safety instruction

And I would be remiss if I left out own QDMA branch contribution of money to help purchase much of the ammunition that was used Saturday. These were funds that we raised by hosting our REACH banquet last August at the County Line, and these are the type of great local events that it was meant to be used on. So the next time you are wondering what the banquets are for and where the money goes, you will now know!

QDMA volunteer and master long-range shooter Mike Casstevens helping on the .22 range

Dan from the Webb Center helping on the archery range

Russell from the Webb Center assisting with the skeet shooting

Jackson's mom taking her turn with the .22

Even the volunteers got a turn

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With opening day just a little over a week away, I wanted to show everyone how bad our local deer are flaunting their current safety during daylight hours. I had a bunch of my work/hunting clothes hanging out back overnight, and when I went to get them yesterday at 1pm, a yearling buck and young doe were scrounging for corn scraps under them. And this is why I always laugh when I see people putting up the white, plastic grocery bags around their gardens… because after just a night or two, the deer know that they are no danger and just eat right around them. And don’t forget we also have a yard full of dogs that protect the corn.

As for the lowcountryhunting team, we have a big wedding this weekend up in Virginia. So unfortunately we will miss the QDMA REACH banquet that I have helped organize for Saturday. But the event isn’t about us, it is to support the QDMA mission and philosophy, and we were already committed to this job, so we will just have to deal with it. However I hate that we will miss it when it is going to be such a great event. We even just got word that QDMA founder Joe Hamilton will be attending as well as Mark Buxton, former QDMA deer manager of the year. So I hope everyone that can attend will. I truly believe that you will not be dissapointed.

As a matter of fact, we had a meeting last night to work out all of the last minute details, and it has come together perfectly. We will be having a deer scoring contest, where if you guess the closest to the gross B&C score of a nice lowcountry buck, you will win a gift certicate for a head mount from an award-winning taxidermist. We will also have a minnow race, where you can bet on your fish to outswim the rest of the pack to win a tower treestand as well as a guess the number of corn kernals in the jar to win a 30 gallon spin feeder complete with corn. And, like I posted about before, we will have several great hunts offered including a ladies-only hunt from Lightsey Hunting Club for Ladies, a deer hunt from Paradise Valley hunt club and the one from Cypress Creek Hunting Lodge that will be filmed for the Outdoor Channel. We will also have tons of stuff to raffle off and on the silent and live auctions such as deer/hunting prints, hunting grear and lots of guns! Like I said, you don’t want to miss it.

I will be back late Sunday night, but have to go right back to the deer season preparation grind on Monday, so my next post will be on Tuesday. Then I look forward to letting everyone in on the work that I am currently doing. And with the season in, I should have lots to write about, allowing me to get back to my usual posting frequency.

PS   You may also want to keep an eye out for the next South Carolina Sportsmen; word has it that there is an excellent article on patterning big bucks with your trailcam, and they speak to an “expert” from the hunting blog world that lives in Garnett

Thanks for reading!

Jeff

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Our QDMA Salkehatchie REACH banquet plans are coming along perfectly, so I thought I would take this opportunity to tell everyone about some of the great prizes and bid items that we will have available on August 9th. Right now that includes lots of great hunting gear such as rifles, shotguns, bows, treestands and camo clothing as well as deer processing, wildlife art and mounts.

We will also have several amazing hunts available. One is a  womens only deer hunt from Lightsey Hunting Club for Ladies that includes lodging at their bunk house. Another is a very unique two-day combo deer/boar hunt from Cypress Creek Hunting Lodge that will include lodging and meals as well as the processing of their kill and a head mount of their trophy! And as unbelievable as that sounds, it gets better…. the hunt will also be filmed by Hunting The World… Southern Style for use on the Outdoor Channel! That’s right, banquet attendees will have a chance to live out the dream of many sportsmen to have their hunt shown on TV.

And all you have to do is come join us for a great night of partying at the County Line at 6pm on August 9th in support of the Quality Deer Management Association to have an opportunity at all of this. Tickets are $50 for singles and $75 for couples, and they are available by calling me at 803-842-1155 or by stopping by Wiggin’s and Son Hardware in Estill or Garbade’s General Store in Tarboro. We hope to see you there.

Jeff

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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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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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The Salkehatchie Branch of the Quality Deer Management Association will be holding its monthly meeting Wednesday April 2nd at 6:30pm at the Webb Center in Garnett. We will be working on our plans for our May 31st food plot seminar and our August 9th REACH banquet.

Anyone that is interested in learning more about managing their deer herd or helping with our projects is encouraged to attend. We will be having some good food and great company, so you don’t want to miss it. Call me at 803-842-1155 if you have any questions about the organization, our branch or the meeting.

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Some of you may subscribe to the Buckmasters Tip of the day, so you might have seen the tip this morning in your email that deals with scrape hunting.

Tip of the Week: Don’t Give Up On A Good Scrape

Most hunters like to hunt near fresh buck sign, and what could be better than a hot scrape? Unfortunately, hunting a scrape can be a real hit-or-miss proposition. After all, it’s a good possibility that the buck is checking/refreshing its scrapes at night. Rather than spending day after unproductive day on stand or (and more likely) spending one or two days and then giving up and moving somewhere else, get into the buck’s head.

Help the buck make that daylight mistake by juicing up the scrape and staying with it. Sprinkle in some buck urine and some hot doe pee as well. Make him think he’s really missing something throughout the day. Watch the scrape carefully to make sure the buck is still refreshing it. If he’s not, then it’s time to move.

Well, while most of their tips are usually pretty good, this one just totally irks me. After all of this time, don’t they know that more than one buck uses a scrape! This Buckmasters tip basically says that whatever buck you finally see while sitting over a scrape is going to be the ONE that made it and the only ONE that is going to check it. Therefore if you are after a big buck, they suggest changing stands if a young buck comes by since that is the only buck you are going to see there.

Maybe Jackie should do Buckmasters a favor and join the Quality Deer Management Association. Then his staff would have seen the article in the new issue of Quality Whitetails, the QDMA magazine, that talks about all of the studies that PROVE more than one buck uses a scrape.

Or, if they were really wanted to learn about hunting, the would read all of the Outdoor Bloggers Summit member’s blogs including this one. Then they would have seen this post where I show at least 4 different bucks using one scrape or this post where I documented 10 bucks using the same scrape in just a few days time.

I am sorry to rant this morning, but holding uninformed beliefs about deer and deer hunting is just one of those things that drives me crazy! I talk to a lot of hunters, and it never ceases to amaze me how many of them still hang on to the many wive’s tales that abound. Those same hunters then can’t believe that they did not see a deer this season, much less kill a monster.

And since I have highlighted one great article in Quality Whitetails, let me tell you what else you are missing in their magazine if you are not a member… Some of the other great articles in this month include how to use a chainsaw to create better habitat for deer, how a whitetail research round up is done, how to buy, calibrate and use a sprayer, and how to keep deer from overgrazing your food warm-season food plots. And in the last few issues, they have had great articles on deer diseases, coyote impact on deer herds and aging deer on the hoof. You can also check out the QDMA website for lots of great articles from past issues including some on harvest data collection, deer biology, herd management and hunter management.

I doubt that you will see anything like these articles in ANY of the other hunting magazines or websites out there. Chances are they will be rehashing what brand camo to wear or what sponsor of theirs you should be purchasing it from.

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