Lessons from the Piney Woods
BleNDiNg DeeR MaNageMeNT aND COMMeRCial FOReSTRy TO BeNeFiT BiODiVeRSiTy
By Darren a. Miller, Ph.D.
Darren A. Miller,
Ph.D., CWB, is
Manager of Southern
Environmental
Research for
Weyerhaeuser
Company,
Southeastern Section
Representative of
The Wildlife Society,
and President of the
Southeastern Bat
Diversity Network.
Courtesy of Darren a. Miller
In the pines of Mississippi, Weyerhaeuser Company has been working with six hunting clubs and state game biologists on an innovative experiment to blend deer management and
commercial forestry in ways that benefit biodiversity. The results have been so successful that the
program could serve as a model for southern commercial forests.
At its core, the program involves managing white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) via Quality
Deer Management (QDM). Unlike traditional deer
management—which allows harvest of all legal
bucks and very few does—QDM protects younger
bucks and encourages adequate doe harvest, a strategy that benefits herd health, habitat conditions,
and hunter satisfaction.
Providing quality habitat is a focus of this effort.
Forest certification programs such as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) require participating
Kemper County lies at the southern tip of the interior Flatwoods Soil Region of eastern Mississippi (right), prime terrain for commercial pine forests and white-tailed deer. Here, within 60,000 acres of Weyerhaeuser land, the company founded the Kemper County Hunting Club Cooperative (HCC), a group of six private clubs that lease 11,500 acres of company land (outlined in red below). The HCC works with Weyerhaeuser and the state to promote habitat, a healthy deer herd, and biodiversity.
Credit: Mississippi Dept. of
Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks
Credit: Mississippi Dept. of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks
landowners, which include many forest products
companies, to conserve biodiversity within a sustainable forestry framework. The challenge is to
find viable ways to do so in industrial forests. QDM
offers one possible approach to cost-effectively improve habitat for a diversity of species in managed
forests. Applying it, however, requires a collaborative approach that meets both economic and
biodiversity objectives.
An Idea Takes Shape
A few years ago, Weyerhaeuser forester Ken McCool
and I began discussing the idea of uniting individual hunting clubs on Weyerhaeuser land to form
a cooperative within which Weyerhaeuser would
conduct habitat improvement activities as part of
a QDM program. The goal would be to improve
quality hunting opportunities for our “
customers” (hunters) and cost-effectively improve habitat
conditions for diverse wildlife species, such as birds
of high conservation priority (see the Partners in
Flight Species Assessment Database).
To test the idea, we launched the Kemper County
Hunting Club Cooperative (HCC) in 2004. We
focused our efforts within a 60,000 acre block of
Weyerhaeuser holdings in Kemper County, Mississippi, where six private hunt clubs leased 11,500
contiguous acres of company land. We chose this
site because it is large and well delineated, it holds
only six hunting leases, and it has high site indexes
(meaning potential for quality buck production) and
a landscape favorable to habitat management. Also,
one of the clubs—the East Mississippi Sportsmen’s
Association—was a founding member of the state’s
Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP),
and therefore was familiar with QDM.
Working with DMAP biologists Chad Dacus and
Scott Edwards, we managed the HCC as a single
entity under DMAP and QDM guidelines. For the
program to work, it would be essential that all
six clubs followed the same rules regarding deer
harvest and data collection. Therefore, the most
important step was to gain buy-in from the hunters
themselves. That took some doing.
