Ep. 491: Backwoods University – Mississippi Deer History

00:00:05
Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife, wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to conserving both. Big shout out to ONEX Hunt for their support of this podcast. I’m your host, Lake Pickle, and on today’s episode, y’all are going to hear one of my favorite kinds of stories to tell. It’s a story of redemption. It’s a story of wildlife conservationists pulling up their sleeves, reaching down and pulling an entire species and hunting culture out of a deep, deep hole and literally saving it from becoming nothing more than a memory. White tailed deer honey, the most ubiquitous type of hunting in the country, hands down, was at one point almost lost in the state of Mississippi, and we’re going to hear how it was triumphantly brought back to the high populations that we know today. Let’s get into it.

00:01:08
Speaker 2: Now.

00:01:08
Speaker 1: Before we dive off into this one, it’s important to know that we, and by we, I mean myself and y’all the Backwoods University listeners, have kind of already laid some groundwork for this episode. In fact, this particular subject is a long time coming because it’s first mentioned goes back to the very beginning of this shows. It’s astounding. Man, Like, there’s an episode that I’m working on right now that delves into the state of Mississippi, because Mississippi is one of the last states to put in a formal game and Fish agency. You have established laws, and that’s when Loopold made his trip down there and he wrote and he wrote a report in nineteen twenty nine where he basically just goes over the status of all these game animals and it’s astounding, especially like now the white tailed deer population in Mississippi now is like one point five million. Like our game agency is asking they’re employing us, like please shoot more deer. We have too many. When Loupold was there in nineteen twenty nine, in his report, it was it was estimated we had twelve hundred deer in the entire stage.

00:02:08
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you’ve got the kidding. It was that bad down there.

00:02:12
Speaker 1: Wow, it’s like going through it and like how bad. And it wasn’t from a lot of It was during the Great Great Depression, and people weren’t they’re mainly just this is how I feed my family.

00:02:24
Speaker 2: But again, it’s just like.

00:02:27
Speaker 1: Really trying to grasp how heavy of an influence we have.

00:02:31
Speaker 2: It’s it’s wild.

00:02:33
Speaker 1: The episode that I was working on that you heard me mention turned out to be the Fanny Cook episode, which is still to this day one of my most favorite episodes that we’ve ever put out on this show. Seriously, if you’ve not heard that one, you should go back and listen to it. Episode three forty six, Backwoods University, The woman who saved Mississippi’s natural resources. Fanny Cook, without a doubt, one of the greatest conservationists to ever live, And in that episode you will have heard us mention the state of Mississippi’s whitetail deer population. But my friends, the detailed story of events that happened after the Mississippi Game and Fish Commission was established in nineteen thirty two to pull that deer population up and away from near extirpation to now being one of the most dense deer populations in the country is a story that simply cannot be glossed over. And as we slowly creep towards those beautiful fall months, those wonderful days of cooler temperatures and days spend up a tree or in the woods, some facet. I humbly present to you this episode in hopes that all of us be reminded of just how good we have it as hunters in this beautiful country, and hopefully implore all of us to never take this resource for granted. I am now sitting across from a man that I have a whole lot of respect for. His name is William McKinley, and he is the Whitetail Deer pro Coordinator for the State of Mississippi. He is excellent at his job, and he also knows all about the history of this state’s deer herd. Let’s dive in. I want to go as far back as you want to go to really like lay the foundation of what we had and where we came from and where we are now.

00:04:18
Speaker 3: Well, we’re going to start with what are we looking at today? And we’re looking at a herd of right at one and a half million deer. So it’s only about three million people in the state of Mississippi, guys, and so it’s a lot.

00:04:31
Speaker 2: Of deer out there, a lot.

00:04:33
Speaker 3: And our harvest last season, based on our hunter survey we do every year since the late nineteen seventies, two hundred and seventy nine thousand deer harvested by licensed hunters last season, so two hundred and seventy nine thousand deer harvested. That’s about, on average thirty four hundred deer a county. In nineteen twenty nine, the population estimate for the entire state was twelve hundred deer. So we’re back up less than one hundred years, just under about ninety five years ago, twelve hundred deer. That’s when Aldo Leopold came to Mississippi and he wrote a report on his findings. He was considered like the father of conservation.

00:05:19
Speaker 2: He was one of the first wildlife biologies. Y’all know who I’m talking about.

00:05:22
Speaker 1: Well, we talked about him in the Fanny Cook episode because he went and visited her, and then actually we found out that he sent his report to Fanny to look over.

00:05:34
Speaker 2: I didn’t know that it is good.

00:05:36
Speaker 3: Well, he reported just a few isolated deer populations along the Mississippi River, along the Knoxby River system, along the Pasgoula River system, and along the Big Black River system up outside of Canton. Those are the only residual populations. And we were looking at a they were looking at a state that had been basically completely cut over. How he figured out how many des we’re here? I got no idea. I’m still having trouble with that myself. But Yiah, we had a few wildlife laws, you know, after we gained statehood in eighteen eighteen, when the state of Mississippi was formed. You fast forward until nineteen o three before there was a first actual game law passed in our state, and there was no game in fish agency. So how did you enforce that? How was it enforced? That first law was actually to prohibit the practice of fire hunting as a tactic to push deer out to shootle I.

00:06:39
Speaker 1: Know we’re on a bit of a roll here, but let me interject quickly, just to make sure we don’t miss anything. Key point number one. In nineteen twenty nine, we had an estimated deer population of twelve hundred individual deer. This estimate came from none other than out of Lipold, who made a special trip down here. And why we do not know the exact methods that he used to come up with his estimate. I can tell you simply based off geography that by deciding to survey the Mississippi River, the Knoxiby River, the Pascagoula River, and the Big Black River. He did cover a good portion of the state.

00:07:11
Speaker 2: Key point two.

00:07:12
Speaker 1: In present years, we have an estimated deer population of somewhere over one point five million deer. So the question is, how in the world did we pull that off? How do you go from twelve hundred deer to one point five million deer in less than one hundred years time. Something significant had to happen, something very significant, especially since we learned that the first wildlife law passed in Mississippi in nineteen oh three was simply to stop quote fire hunting, which is the practice of using literal fire to push out deer so.

00:07:45
Speaker 2: You can shoot them.

00:07:47
Speaker 1: I don’t think that practice would be widely accepted today. However, I do think that Brent Reeves has probably tried it before, but maybe not.

00:07:56
Speaker 3: The first hunting season was set up in nineteen oh five, and I’m gonna give credit where credit is due. In two thousand and one, outdoor writer John Jay Woods put together a catalog a documentary here of what happened throughout the history of Mississippi restoration efforts and our season structure and such, and I’m gonna rely heavily on his documentary When our Magnolia records program formed in which is our state deer measuring handler records program, it formed in one He actually wrote this to put in the cover of the first book that was printed there. So I’m leaning heavily on his work here because I couldn’t find he’d already done to.

00:08:43
Speaker 2: Work for me.

00:08:45
Speaker 3: But the first deer season was set in nineteen o five. Remember we didn’t have game wardens at the time. That was just a county level. Okay, you just need to hunt from September fifteenth to March one if you going to shoot a deer.

00:09:00
Speaker 1: Can y’all imagine I mean really, can y’all imagine a deer season, just a general, wide open deer season that lasted from September to March. It’s not really a mystery why the Mississippi deer population was plummeting so much back in those days.

00:09:17
Speaker 3: Deer herds were low, low market hunting. Y’all had already mentioned that had already driven this population down, And there were just pockets of deer in the state, and people were probably dependent on those pockets for food, but they had already been market hunted out in a lot of areas. By nineteen ten, bag limit was set at five deer per season, but once again still no game and Fish commission.

00:09:46
Speaker 1: How much do you do you have any sort of speculation whether or not people were truly following that regulation.

00:09:53
Speaker 2: Oh boy, what do you think late?

00:09:56
Speaker 1: Because I’m just trying to pause a little bit on once you’ve touched on already, because what you’re explaining in the state that you know, all of us grew up deer hunting in, sounds so foreign to me, you know. I mean you said state that was pretty much completely cut over market hunting. I mean, like you hear the term of market hunting, but to imagine being alive and that’s actually taking place when it’s just basically just mowing deer down and taking them to market, you know.

00:10:24
Speaker 2: Taking them to market to get sold for food. Yeah, yeah, a lot of them.

00:10:28
Speaker 3: If there was a railroad nearby, they could be piled up on the cars and taken out, and that was that was happening all over the US. I mean, look at look at the bison, look at the American bison. I mean that’s the big example. But you think of that when you think of market hunting and the destruction of a species, and then come down here to Mississippi. We had black bears during that time, a lot of them. There are a lot of reports of cougars in the state. I mean Teddy Roosevelt came to Mississippi in the early nineteen hundred, right around the turn of nineteen hundred to hunt mountain lion and bear. It was so many of those here, and they’ve got virtually exterminated. Still got a few bears, yeah, still get a few cat reports.

00:11:11
Speaker 2: And documented one in a few decades. Yeah, you hear that, Clay.

00:11:15
Speaker 1: There’s not been a documented mountain line down here in Mississippi for a few decades. But I’d digress. Let’s move on.

00:11:22
Speaker 2: So nineteen oh.

00:11:22
Speaker 1: Five they have, they have. It was a state wide regulation five deer.

00:11:27
Speaker 3: State ride regulation. You know, the five deer was sett in nineteen ten, nineteen ten, and but state wide regulation five deer, five deer bag limit, and nineteen fifteen that was changed to bucks only. So but once again, our deer heard at that point by all accounts, was getting lower and lower and lower, and it never was as high we think as it was today even before settlement.

00:11:51
Speaker 1: Sorry to interrupt again, but we have just gave us some information that I cannot move.

00:11:55
Speaker 2: Past, he said.

00:11:56
Speaker 1: It’s believed that the deer population in Mississippi before human settlement was never as high as it currently is today, and ironically, a big reason for that is because of the amount of manipulation to the forest. Today, Mississippi has a lot of timber activity, pine plantation, planting and clearing clearings that lead to a lot of cutovers thickets that equate to a lot of deer cover, deer cover in an abundance that was not anywhere close to what it was back then, when you just had a lot of big, old growth forest. And you mix that lower amount of deer cover in with the fact that these deer were being market hunted heavily, and you have a recipe for disaster. In terms of the Mississippi deer population.

00:12:37
Speaker 2: They certainly were getting hunted.

00:12:38
Speaker 3: They were getting hunted by those cougars, They were getting hunted by those bears. Red wolves were present all through the state back then, so they were getting hunted plus by the Native Americans here by the tribes, Chalked Taws, Chicka, Saw’s, Biloxi, Natchez, you name it. There were several Native American tribes in the state, but their numbers after that when we started to market, that’s when it really started to plumbing. And in twenty nine is when Aldo Leopold made that report.

00:13:08
Speaker 2: But he also noted that this state carried a.

00:13:11
Speaker 3: Really strong desire to try to manage and manage this wildlife back. There was a lot of interest here in the people he spoke with. They wanted deer to come back.

00:13:22
Speaker 2: Lake.

00:13:23
Speaker 3: I sent you some pictures last week because some of those early restoration efforts near being led out. People would gather and we’ll get into that in a minute, but people would gather.

00:13:33
Speaker 2: Just to watch. They’d never seen a deer, never seen a deer track.

00:13:36
Speaker 1: I got the chance to see these photos, and if you catch this episode on YouTube, you’ll be able to see them as well. It’s kind of bizarre to look at these days. You see white tailed deer in people’s flower gardens. They’re about as common of a wildlife species as you can draw up. But here in these old black and white photos, you have people gathered around just to catch glimpse of one. It’s important history and it’s a big part of this story.

00:14:01
Speaker 3: We moved forward and in nineteen thirty two, the year the agency was established, we got established Game and Fish Commission, and we were established. From all of what I hear, game wardens assigned the counties. They were, you know, it’s still a dangerous job. It was dangerous then too my understandings. They had to provide their own weapon, they had to provide their own vehicle. In many cases, they were out there with a dedication in nineteen thirty two to conserving this wildlife. They’re risking their life for wildlife.

00:14:38
Speaker 2: Ye.

00:14:38
Speaker 1: Well, and I keep going back to I have to keep going back to that Fanny Cook episode because they coincide so well. But one of the things that we learned from that is when Fanny came home and started this basically this campaign to get the agency established and to get some regulations put so we could work on restoring some of these populations for white tails and many others. Is she one of the things they notated very early, they put this fine distinguishment between market hunters and conservationists, like there was a very clear line between people that wanted to market hunt and people that wanted to hunt and conserve the way that we do now. And she notated that the relationship between that kind of hunting and conservation and organizing those people. She accredited that to being able to finally get the agency established, And I would guess that kind of attitude is what led to some of those first game wards, because like you said, like, good grief, what’s their incentive?

00:15:36
Speaker 2: You know, it’s not It certainly wasn’t pay.

00:15:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you’re gonna go out and risk your life for wildlife conservation, for wildlife that wasn’t even there yet in many of these counties that is just about to be reintroduced. And so one of the first things from here after I’ll call it our agency. It’s changed names a few times, but it’s still that agency, and it’s still full of people dedicated that are willing to risk their lives and our conservation officers and devote their careers to try to manage this wildlife resource that we have today. So I’m going to preface that I work with some really great people, really dedicated, and I’d put them against any agency out there in the country by far, and they would stand out. So one of the first things our agency did close some counties.

00:16:28
Speaker 2: To deer honey boy, don’t you know that was popular.

00:16:32
Speaker 3: Probably wasn’t many deer, if any deer in most of these counties. They were closing. But just when you take something away, that mentality of you no longer can harvest a deer, even if you see one.

00:16:45
Speaker 1: Welliam is about to turn this conversation more towards looking into the details of the actual work that brought deer back to the Mississippi landscape. But before we kind of change topics, I have to make sure that we drive home the importance of what we just talked about. Game warns that had to provide their own weapon, had to provide their own vehicle. I don’t know what they were being paid, but my friends, it could not have been much. These people were operating on passion and the drive to do what they knew was right. Like I said at the very beginning, this is a story of people, conservationists that were willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work. And that’s what we’re seeing playing out right here. And that’s part of the reason why I enjoy telling these stories, not just so we can appreciate what happened back then, but because we can learn from those people and learn that that attitude and that willingness to work what it can really do. Obviously, we’re in a much better place as far as wildlife resources go now than then. However, that does not afford us the luxury to put it on cruise controls, so to speak. We see wildlife issues, natural resources, and land access come under attack all the time. Imagine what might have happened had the people around back then been nonchalant rather than having the initiative and dedication to do things like becoming a game board despite how difficult that job had to be back then. Sorry to get on my soapbox, but that’s one of the most important parts of this entire story. Let’s dive back in.

00:18:16
Speaker 3: And the state began to establish refuges. So we’re gonna talk a little bit about the Leaf River Refuge down there in Perry County, and so it was one of the first ones set up. And these refuges, you know, the agency then began trapping deer. They used some old Michigan box traps, and that’s just called a Michigan box trap. I swear they first started building to my guests, in a nutshell, it’s two pieces of four by eight plywood laying set upright lengthwise with a top and a dirt floor and gill atene style sliding doors on both ends. I’ve used these before. We used them in Lams County and we caught like several hundred deer and tagged them as part of a research study back in twenty.

00:19:04
Speaker 2: Ten eleven twelve.

00:19:06
Speaker 3: These things, they still weren’t so they would feed down through the inside of it and deer would start walking through it.

00:19:13
Speaker 2: You had to have it long enough. It had to be eight.

00:19:15
Speaker 3: Foot long so that when a deer triggered it right in the middle, the doors could hit the ground before the deer got to the edge. And so once you got deer to coming through, you put a piece of string in the middle for them just to hit. As a trip wire triggered the doors, they dropped. You had the deer. Many of those older ones they had a floor and they could lift the whole trap and then move the trap to and take trapping all with them. We actually designed a smaller box and a netting type that we would put them from the big trap to the smaller one for a transport if we needed to move them wherever, but that was used as well. But these traps were being used to catch some of the few remaining deer in the state, and deer were being brought from other sources, but by and lards. The majority of the deer that were brought into these refuges came from the native populations of deer in Mississippi along the Mississippi River, and that was the primary source. So they would catch a few put them on these refuges. It was a mixing pot that refuge was. It had a lot of deer from in state. It had a few deer from Mexico, a few deer from North Carolina, a few deer from Wisconsin, and other sources. And then they were protected a term conservation officer one now out there. Then it was a game boarding and they were protected and heavily protected.

00:20:36
Speaker 2: On those refuges.

00:20:37
Speaker 3: And as their numbers built, they would catch some of the offspring and move them. And I saw some of the you know, we still have a lot of the original records. I’ve looked at them written in pencil on old sheets of paper where they released deer in Winston County off by of the low bunch of bridge off a Highway fourteen released seventeen deer. And that’s how that whole area, got another population released in a Tali county. That was happening all through as they would catch the deer from the refuge, just move them and haul them in a trailer, put them out in a new area, and those deer just flourished because it was brand new habitat.

00:21:18
Speaker 1: Leaf River. Refuge was essentially ground zero for the Mississippi whitetailed deer restocking and restoration efforts. And I know y’all have heard me say this before, but I just flat out love hearing these old conservation stories. It reminds me a lot of our Turkey restocking episode we did with mister Benny Herring back during the spring. Wildlife conservationists and biologists back then did not have the vast amount of data that we.

00:21:42
Speaker 2: Have to look back on now.

00:21:43
Speaker 1: They had to figure it out trial and error, boldly pressing forward with optimism and determination. Michigan box traps, moving deer in from different states, moving deer in from Mexico. Did all of these methods work well, No, but some did. And by the way, I would love to see those old written records about them releasing deer in certain areas, like William mentioned about them turning out seventeen below a highway bridge.

00:22:08
Speaker 3: That’s some cool stuff looking here at nineteen thirty nine. It’s when a deer proof enclosure. They actually put up a fence at Leaf River to start it. And they started with those deer, with deer from end State and deer from Mexico starting down there. And by nineteen forty, remember nineteen twenty nine, we were at estimated twelve hundred deer. By nineteen forty we were at forty six hundred, so pretty slow growth, but twelve hundred can only grow so fast. So we allowed deer hunting back then in nineteen forty one, and that forty one season, out of that forty six hundred hunters turned in reported seven hundred and thirty eight deer. So you got to figure most of that was probably what hounds. And so I got a little interesting story here about a great uncle of mine that lived down in Kemper County and the Kemper County deer season opened in the early forties, and other than the stint he served as a pow in World War Two, he harvested a deer every year that the deer season was open in Kemper County up until the late nineties when he couldn’t wow, and he said, he used to joke, I’d sit and listen to some of his stories. He had this immense deer hanging on the wall, you.

00:23:34
Speaker 2: Know, and I’m.

00:23:36
Speaker 3: A little I’m a little guy back in back in the eighties, and you know, I’m just hunting, hoping to see a spike.

00:23:41
Speaker 2: And if I did, I shot him.

00:23:43
Speaker 3: You all know, right, you run out there and snatch him up real quick, hoping you can find a fork on him somewhere. And so but Uncle Wilmer harvested a deer, according to him, every year except when he was prisoner war. And the deer that he was harvesting back in were mostly killed by running hounds. And he said, you know, quite many of the time we would have only a four or five day season, and he said we would ride for one or two days looking for a deer track to turn the dogs loose on. And he used to joke that Kemper County there, he said, you better have yourself on Highway forty five when those dogs jumped, because that deer was headed to Alabama. And he said, if it crossed the state line, you lost your dogs for the rest of the deer season, but that was an expanding population of deer. That deer wasn’t going where he didn’t know, he was not just running aimlessly. So we had expanding populations coming in from neighboring states. We had restoration efforts from within state. So this herd has grown to what it is today, but not many people could know stories like that.

00:24:53
Speaker 1: Imagine heading out deer honey and your primary method, your most effective method is driving roads from multiple days until you cut a fresh deer track.

00:25:01
Speaker 2: That is wild.

00:25:03
Speaker 1: I also really appreciate we am sharing the deer hunting stories about his great uncle getting a deer all those years, and I also think it’s a perfect time to highlight that deer hunting with hounds was the most primary and widely accepted form of hunting back then. I know the folks that deer hunt with dogs is a small group these days, but they are a part of this deer hunting origin story, and frankly I still support them for what that’s worth.

00:25:28
Speaker 3: Forty two season deer hunting was allowed in twenty seven counties, and so we’re ten years or a little about ten years into our agency being formed or getting game wardens in counties, and so you know, we still have a very low deer population, and we got numerous counties out there that still have not had any deer reintroduction at that point. By forty three, the estimate was a little over ten thousand deer in the state that heard starting to build. Now we’ve now doubled for in just the past few years, from four thousand plus to over ten thousand. The very first deer hunting license came about in nineteen forty three.

00:26:09
Speaker 1: The nineteen forty three deer hunting license could be purchased for five dollars in twenty five cents. Now, it’s important to note that I am far from a mathematician, but from what I can work out, five dollars and twenty five cents in nineteen forty three comes out to roughly one hundred and one dollars in twenty twenty six. So this was by no means a cheap license.

00:26:29
Speaker 3: By forty five, we were live trapping deer on Leaf River Refuge and moving them to these different counties. Like I was saying earlier, Leaf River was one of the hubs, and deer population started to increase. Suddenly, we were putting deer into new habitats, and the fastest a deer herd grows, it’s when it’s well below carring capacity and it’s starting to increase, increase, increase because there’s plenty of high quality food out there, and it’s having twins, a lot of triplets, and that herd grew pretty quickly to an estimate of twenty five thousand by forty eight. Once again, it’s doubled in just a few years.

00:27:10
Speaker 2: It just started snowballing. It seemed to start to snow.

00:27:12
Speaker 3: Right, and once again, dear estimation methods. You know, we got a lean on these numbers, and that’s what was put down. Deer hard to count. They don’t stand still, guys, they still don’t. So but these numbers were increasing. We were beginning to see deer. People were seeing deer that have never seen deer before. Some of those old pictures that I sent you, you know, there would be a whole crowd of people gathered around just to see the truck that Game and Fish brought out to turn those deer loose in this area. And then they were under strict protection and no hunting season until they built up to a level that could sustain some buck hunting. In those areas, and you know, when I started to work in one, there was still a pretty strong mindset that you don’t shoot a dope.

00:28:00
Speaker 1: So you had areas where there was virtually no deer, where game and fish would come and release deer and they were under strict protection for a certain amount of years. Then once the deer population hit a certain number, it was allowed for people to deer hunt, but only for bucks. No does were available for harvest. Then, over time the population grew even more to a point where does needed to be harvested, but there were so many people around from the low number days that folks were even hesitant to think about killing a dough. I can even speak from personal experience here. I remember when I was a kid hearing old timers talk about how you should not shoot does. It was bad for the deer. It’s such a stark comparison to now, when we as a state are literally needing to shoot more deer because we have too many, according to some biologists. I would just love to know what some of the original game wardens, biologists, or anyone who worked or was around those days in the original restoration efforts, what they would think if they could see our deer heard today. Overall, what an incredible story.

00:29:00
Speaker 3: Just that big picture restoration, no deer restoration, increase in herds topping out at caring capacity, and now we’re trying to actually manage a herd that is in many places overpopulated. So all, maybe too much of a good thing in a few places, but hey, what a success story. Now, at the time this was written, we had had our first Boone and Crockett deer killed in nineteen fifty one.

00:29:28
Speaker 2: Really, yep, where was he killed at? Does? It’s Oliver County? And you think, I mean.

00:29:33
Speaker 1: From having twelve hundred deer in the state to having you know, your first boon and crocket killed in nineteen fifty I mean that’s a feat twenty years, that’s a feat.

00:29:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:29:45
Speaker 1: I get excited, and I get very keenly interested in especially the history of our own state. You know that wee because we you know, like I said, we grew up here, we did most of our hunting here.

00:29:57
Speaker 2: But just stories that.

00:30:01
Speaker 1: Just do nothing but show how much of an impact that sustainable conservation and hunting can have on wildlife from a positive that’s just so interesting to me, and I love learning that kind of stuff. And again, Yeah, twenty years is a long span of time, but from the rear view doesn’t look as long. And looking from that to nineteen fifty one, and we still got a lot of ground to cover between nineteen fifty one and now. But the heavy first boone and crocket deer harvested, that’s crazy. We started this story out in the early nineteen hundreds, We made it to nineteen twenty nine when the deer were almost completely wiped out. We fast forwarded to nineteen thirty two, when the Game and Fish Commission was established thanks to Fanny Cook and several other determined conservationists, and then we followed along for twenty years of this journey. They went from that low number of deer to having their first Boon and Crockett buck killed in nineteen fifty one and having some areas in the state repopulated to a point where hunting was made available to the citizens in that area. What a crazy, cool wildlife conservation story. But here’s the beauty of it.

00:31:04
Speaker 2: It’s not even.

00:31:05
Speaker 1: Close to being over yet. Next time we’ll be right back with William McKinley to get the rest of this incredible Mississippi deer herd story. I want to thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University, as well as Clay’s Bear Grease and Brent’s This Country Life. I know I say it all the time, but it means a whole heck of a lot to all of us over here. If you like this episode, do me a big favor and share it with someone this week, a friend, a coworker, someone you’re a better hunter then whoever you want, and stick around because of this podcast was an old school deer hunt with dogs. We’ve cut a fresh track, but we haven’t even turned the dogs loose yet. We’re just getting started. There’s a whole lot more on the way.