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Blog Entries from the WeHuntSC.com blogging crew


Bumper acorn crop leaves deer hunters lonely
   
  See the article online here
 

By BO PETERSEN - The (Charleston) Post and Courier

In the Lowcountry, after God, country and family, there's deer.

Young and old spend the entire year primed for fall season to open. They scout stand sites, set up motion-detecting cameras, run the dogs and watch the ground for telltale hoofprints.

A freezer of venison makes a winter; a rack on the wall is a story to tell. Hundreds of acres of corn, oats and rye are planted, and bags of corn are dispersed to lure big bucks out of the bottoms.

But sometimes they just don't come. Three-quarters of a million deer are estimated to live in South Carolina. A quarter-million bucks and does were reported harvested last year.

This fall, hunters find themselves sitting over food plots alone.

"They're not seeing the deer," said Trey Hoffman of Palmetto Deer Processing in Moncks Corner.

"The deer just aren't coming out to the fields," said Kyle Jones, manager of Echaw Creek Plantation in Berkeley County.

"It's not that the deer aren't there. There's plenty of deer track. There's plenty of deer moving," said Jacob Casa, of Ravenwood Hunt Club in Ravenel.

What it is, is the acorn. Maybe the best nut crop in 10 years is raining out of the oaks into the bottoms. That's like Haagen-Dazs to the deer, said Michael Cordray of Cordray's Venison Processing in Ravenel. And when there's ice cream lying right at your hoof, you're not going to go looking for corn.

The summer rains that brought the acorns also brought honeysuckle, greenbriar and other browse, or gazing food, that deer prefer. All that and warm weather has deer staying in the bottoms to feast and lying low until the late-night chill. It's one of those natural cycles. The better years for growing deer food usually turn out to be better years for acorns.

Some hunters are bagging deer. On Friday morning, more than 30 harvests already had been brought into Cordray's processing plant a few hours after opening. Two club hunters who brought in five deer said 20 more were spotted.

But a lot of the success has been among hunters who take on the sludge into the deep woods to stake out an acorn-rich oak tree.

So the season's a bust? Not so fast. Hunters said deer were moving when the night turned cold Thursday. The cold is thought to get them moving.

"The frost will kill the browse and sour the acorns. I think the hunting will be a lot better," Jones said.

"It ought to be pretty positive for the rest of the season," Casa said. "The bottom line is, you're not going to be able to harvest any deer sitting in your house."
 

 

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Deer Hunters Help Prevent Car Wrecks

In the upstate of South Carolina, we receive the Charlotte Observer which is the #1 newspaper coming out of Charlotte.  Today, they had an article showing statistics of wrecks that were due to deer.  Last year proved to have the most wrecks associated with deer in years.

It seems that the more the city grows, the less places deer have to live, thus causing more wrecks with deer.  The NC Wildlife Commission biologist for Mecklenburg County quoted ?We have to figure out a way to allow hunting in more populated areas?.  This could be good news down the road for bow hunters who live near populated areas regardless of whether it?s NC or SC.  The report cited that nearly 1 in 10 wrecks last year in NC involved deer with Wake County NC being the #1 county with 1,084 wrecks with deer. 

So, when someone you are talking to may not like deer hunting or hunters just tell them that you?re trying to help keep their car safe!

You can see the article online here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/topstories/story/985500.html

 
 

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WeHuntSC.com Video Shoot

We recently held the video shoot for the video spokeswomen for our WeHuntSC.com.  The shoot was a neat experience and I think the footage will turn out well on the site.  Jason Fararooei of Yellow Cape Communications ran the show and he did a very professional job. 

The footage was shot in HD with a blue-screen background.  Normally this would have been shot with a green-screen background, but due to the hues of green in the camouflage shirts, we could not use the green-screen. 

The shoot took about 3 hours in total and we had 3 different females come in for the shoot.  When the footage posts to the site, you will see these three ?video-spokeswomen? on random site pages.  Mostly they will be giving short intro messages to the pages.  The video will be flash-based, transparent, waist-up shots.

Also, if you need some high quality video work, be it for the web , TV, or DVD?Yellow Cape Communications can do the job.  Check out what they?ve got going on at www.YellowCapeCommunications.com or contact Jason at [email protected]

Below are some visuals to give you an idea of what went on at the shoot.

 

 

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South Carolina Hog Problems - Contact Us

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