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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Beginning tomorrow, South Carolina lowcountry turkey hunters will have tens of thousands of public land acres to hunt on. Because while the private land season opened on March 15th, public land hunts for region 6 (which covers the lowcountry) runs from April 1st to May 1st.

One of the best public hunting areas lies just across the road from me here in Garnett, and that would be the Webb Wildlife Management Area, Palachucola WMA and the Hamilton Ridge WMA. These three tracts sit right beside one another and total almost 27,000 acres!

There are also many other wildlife management areas open around the lowcountry as well as across the state, and you can find a complete list of them on the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources website. Hunters must possess a South Carolina WMA stamp ($75) and follow all other state and WMA rules. Interested hunters can check those out on the SCDNR Turkey Regulations website).

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I have been going through some of Dwight’s old hunting albums and transferring all of thepictures in to new albums. They were not stored very well, so they are pretty dusty. However most of the pictures are fine, so they look great in the new albums.

The couple of albums I am working on right now are of the Webb Wildlife Management Area’s harvested deer from 1996 until 2004. So I thought I would pull out a couple of the nicest bucks I have come across that were killed on the 5,500 acres in 1996, 97 and 98. I also thought I would show a typical hunts harvest since they did not have their antler restrictions in place at the time… only one buck out of the 6 displayed would be legal since the change 3 years ago, so you can imaging how many bucks are getting a chance to grow old now!

The picture of the two guys with two great bucks was taken on Nov. 23, 1996 while Sam Mounts is pictured next to them with his 162 pound, 9 point with a 16.5 inch spread that he killed on 10/25/1997.

Daniel Richards, in the blaze orange vest, is shown below with his 175 pound 7 point (19.5 inch spread) , and Jeffrey Wirchball displays his 144 pound, 10 point (17.5 inch spread) that he killed on 10/29/1998.

And just to let you know, I am working on a great story about my worst hog hunt ever, so please check back. You don’t want to miss it!

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That’s right, one of kill shots that I took of Cody Whittle and the Monster buck he killed while on a Webb Center draw hunt is on the January cover of South Carolina Sportsman. The same shot as well as one of our trailcam pictures was also used to compliment the story on the inside.

I always love to see my work being appreciated, so it was fantastic discovery when my wife came out of the gas station holding up the issue. I also truly love to see the Webb Center, Hampton county and our amazing lowcountry bucks being showcased in a state-wide periodical.

And while it is on the Cubbedge Hill web site’s old blog, I thought I would include the trailcam picture of the buck when he was just 3.5 years old. What a difference two more years makes! And if you haven’t seen the shots of him in velvet, check it out…

I also want to let our readers know about a local website SCOutdoorAdventures. I see a good number of viewers coming from that site’s forum, thanks to “2Tired4Dux”, and I truly appreciate the link! I have also registered on the site as well since it seems to have good discussions in the forums WITHOUT catering to the belligerent idiots who constantly spew venomous comments!

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As usual, Arthur over at Simply Outdoors is ahead of the game. This time he has a great post up about the coming Spring (and with it, turkey season) and how he is looking to take his first big redhead this year. Since I am already getting ready myself, I thought I would create a short post from my comments to him on how I believe is the best way to kill one of those darn things - Because I too spent several years trying to bag my first gobbler.

The one thing I would recommend is to forget what you see on TV. Those guys usually have lots of land to run and gun on, which is fine if you know the technique and have room to roam. And while I have definitely killed some birds doing it, I have found that calling aggressively and moving around so much usually just burns out a small chunk of property in a hurry. I believe the best way to hunt them if you only have a small tract of land is to set up/build a blind and hunt them almost like deer. This means that you must pattern them so you know where they like to go - it is always much easier to call them to where the they want to go than where they do NOT. Once you have picked your best spot or two, call SOFTLY off and on (maybe every 30 minutes) and WAIT.

That big, ugly bird has nothing else to do but survive, so he usually is in no hurry to die by rushing in. And he may or may not gobble, but I will bet that he IS coming. Your task is to keep from giving up and going home before he gets to you. Your hunt may not look exactly like the ones on the Outdoor Channel, but my 5 birds last season all agree the technique works!

The big gobbler in the picture with me is the largest bird I have ever killed (a 5 year old bird with 1.5 inch spurs and an 11 inch beard) that I truly doubt would have been stupid enough to fall for the run and gun approach. A dinosaur like that will usually take hours to come in! So the next time you don’t hear any birds sounding off, let your buddies go home while you wait him out…

And if you have never killed a turkey, just remember that you will make lots of mistakes before you do! Some of my best ones were: stepping out of the truck at daylight and having my wife’s locator call make one gobble - only to realize that I had forgotten my gun at the campsite; working a bird for an entire morning before finally getting close enough to realize that it was in a neighbor’s pen; leaving my spot after having a truck bust my

working bird - only to have another hunter come in talking about the strutting bird right were I had been just 30 minutes ago; and, while taking a bathroom break out of one blind window, looking out the other to see a giant gobbler watching me!

Unfortunately there are lots of ways NOT to kill an old bird. But if you use my technique I think you will find one that WILL.

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I just came in from loading up the corn on Aunt Mary’s tract over in Scotia, and I saw a GIANT buck run across the road at 11:30 on the dot. He was only 75 yards from one of their stands, and he was a true monster!

Like I have been saying, if you want to kill a big buck right now, you have to be in the woods during the midday hours. The big ones just do not seem to be moving until at least 8:30am, and often much later. I believe that most of the mature bucks are tending does right now, and the only times they are moving are when they are chasing the doe they are with, or when they move around during the midday looking for a new doe.

As for the weather, it is like summer here. And it is not supposed to get much better over the next week. About the only thing we can look forward to is a small cool down this Saturday. However the cold weather did not help us last weekend, so I am not counting on it now. I think everyone just needs to accept that the abundance of acorns still in the woods along with the heat is KILLING the deer movement… and is going to for the rest of the season!

So just remember it is the RUT, and hunt hard especially during the midday, preferably as deep in the woods as you can get, and you might just luck up. If you are not willing to do that, then just go ahead and cut on the Outdoor Channel because that is as close to a big buck as you are going to get.

And as if I needed more proof of what is going on with the deer movement, two friends of J.O. were down last weekend hunting on Palachacola, 6500 acres of prime WMA land. And one of them had this to say about his hunt:

Jeff,

Buddy and myself were down this weekend staying at the house hunting the Palachacola Drawed Hunt. Just dropping a line to let you know it was terrible. There were 21 hunters hunting 3 days, the result for the whole weekend equaled 7 does, 1 button buck, NO antlered bucks. The weather was bad Thursday night with 22mph wind but Friday and Saturday the weather was no excuse. I have read your notes and you are probably right, the bucks are in the woods with the does. I saw 3 bucks Friday night but they were small basket racks. Mr J.O. invited us back in December to help you guys take a few does out of the herd when yall start doing so. Have a good week and good luck

   Thanks, Bryan
So there you go… Now suck it up, get up here and hunt like you mean it!

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AMAZING! By next week, I should have the pictures of the CH/Webb Center Monster’s sheds from when he was 3.5 to go with everything else that I want to put up of him… we just figured out that Webb biologist Jay Cantrell had found one of them while Webb Supervisor Ted Rainwater had located the other one. Ted was the one who also found the right side to the Monster’s rack from when he was 4.5, and that matched the left side that I found this spring! So we now have both sets of antlers that the Monster grew as a mature deer before being killed… what are the odds of that?

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The trailcam at the Big Oak caught these bucks last week, and I thought I would put them up - Because that is as close as I can get to showing everyone  a good buck at the moment!

We just can’t seem to kill anything good at the moment due to the abundance of food in the woods. However at least we are getting some opportunities (Raymond’s grandson Josh missed a chasing buck Monday am at the Bulldozer), and it should really pick up now that the cold has arrived. It was right around freezing this morning, and then has not gotten above 58 today, with more cold all week!

Raymond, Josh and Carle are hunting tonight at Cubbedge Hill,  so  along with their  deer sightings and some fresh pics when I check the cameras tomorrow, I will have one last  hunt report before we go to Florida this weekend (We are taking the boys down to visit their grandparents in Melbourne as well as the Thomas the Train Day in Orlando). However I am going to try and set some other posts up so that  there will be something new over the weekend too!

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Quality Deer Management works!!! And here is the proof that if you let the young bucks walk, they will grow in to a MONSTER!

146 6/8inches of gross antler and 136 inches of net antler will easily put him in the SC record book. Cody Whittle of Leesville, SC put him down this morning about 2 miles from our line deep in the Webb Center. And that shows you how much these big bucks roam when the does are ready.The second picture is Webb biologist Jay Cantrell with the buck and last year’s sheds. The buck was 5.5 years old and weighed 167 pounds. He would have topped the 150 inch mark if he had not broken the fork on his left G-2!

And while I certainly wanted to be the one who killed this great deer, I am so happy that this young man did. He will have the memory of pulling the trigger on this huge deer for the rest of his life. And one day, hopefully he will pass the story - and his love of hunting - on to his kids… Congratulations Cody!

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