Everything You Need to Know About Food Plot Screening Whitetail hunters all over the country spend countless hours planning, preparing, and planting food plots. Many times, they are pleased with how the plot looks come hunting season. It’s a beautiful-looking plot, and the deer are hammering it. However, some are disappointed when they are hunting over their food plot, and the big mature buck they are after never steps out during daylight hours. So what is stopping that from happening?...

Big bucks and long beards have always been a passion of Mark Newell, owner and operator of Newell Wildlife Services. Fueled by this passion, Mark pursued a degree in wildlife biology to further study the critters he loves to hunt. Mississippi State University, one of the premier schools in the country for its natural resource innovations, became his home for several years. However, some of the professionals and professors at MSU told him that a wildlife degree is not enough...

Data is one word that can make or break your management program. It’s the Achilles’ heel of managing anything from warehouse inventory to your deer camp. Just as in anything in life, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. Taking a little time to plan your method of attack on how to obtain proper, representative data can go a long way come deer season. Because wildlife management isn’t an exact, set-in-stone science and practice, it takes a little...

Reality. Life. Whatever you want to call it, it has definitely found its way into my world this year. Up until this year I have always had a work schedule that was flexible enough that I could take off when ever I wanted to spend in the woods. This flexible work schedule has allowed me to hunt more than the average Joe, therefore giving me the opportunity to be more successful as well. This year, however, has been a different...

There are two iconic pictures that always come to mind when thinking of the south: Elvis Presley and pine plantations. It is also ironic when thinking of these two that jungles come to mind: the jungle room in Elvis’ Graceland mansion and the pine jungles of the forest where the white-tailed deer finds its home. This article has nothing to do with Elvis, but it does have something to say about creating a healthy huntable habitat within the jungle like...

Ever wonder why the biggest bucks tend to live in our most productive agricultural regions, like the Midwest, Central Canada and the wonderfully productive irrigated alfalfa country of the Plains and Prairies and West. There are huge bucks in these areas. Why is that? The answer is simple – lots of high-quality food.Well, you may not be able to hunt these hot agricultural areas, but you can have the same high-quality nutrition as these places where you hunt…with food plots!Food plots...

Potential Negatives of Supplemental FeedingAlthough there are many positive aspects to a supplemental feeding program, there are also several potentially negative aspects. Thanks to researchers at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, and cooperating landowners who are funding the research, we now know a lot more about these potentially negative aspects.Drs. Charlie DeYoung, Tim Fulbright, and David Hewitt initiated a long-term, large-scale supplemental feeding study back in 2003 on two large, private ranches in the western...

You’ve heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” Is that ever true in deer management! Poor food, poor deer – good food, good deer. It’s just that simple. No other area of deer management has the potential to make such a difference in deer quality…and quantity…as nutrition. And, is there ever a need to do it!In many places, long-term overcrowding has so damaged native habitat that nutritious browse has all but disappeared. And, even reducing deer numbers won’t necessarily...