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Good Fences Make Good Deer

Any livestock producer will tell you that good fences make good neighbors.

Alan Priest will tell you that fences also make good deer. High fences, that is.

Priest and his family have learned that lesson on their 2,350-acre Tatum Plantation, located near Centreville, in southwestern Mississippi.

From the moment Alan and his wife Renee purchased their lush, pine-covered property in 1991, they wanted to manage their deer herd and be able to hunt on their own land. Every year, Alan, sons Slade and Tal, and family friends would cull out the inferior deer, always aiming for a 2-to-1 doe-to-buck ratio. They also focused on improving the browse, planting food plots and providing supplemental feed pellets.

“We were culling, but the deer weren’t getting any bigger,” says Alan, who used to raise registered Brahman cattle.

Then, in 1998, he and Slade hunted on a high-fenced ranch in the Texas Hill Country and saw the kind of trophy bucks they wanted to grow on their own land. The experience was an eye-opener.

The Missing Ingredient
“We realized that our missing ingredient was a fence,” he recalls. “Without a fence, the good bucks were leaving our property and being killed on other people’s property.”

Mississippi — unlike Texas and certain other states — prohibits the importation of deer from one property to another, but allows landowners to enclose the animals in their natural environment. In 1999, the Priests erected 11 miles of high fencing around their plantation, the first commercial hunting operation in the area to do so. They soon started to see results.

“By protecting the deer, we had big bucks in two years,” Alan reports. “Obviously, we’d already been managing them well; we just needed the fence.”

In 2001, the family began selling hunts to offset the cost of the fence. The hunting business soon became a focal point at Tatum Plantation, which produces pines for pulpwood, chipping saw, logs and pole timber.

They furnished a 16-by-80-foot mobile home for guest hunters, and converted an old dairy barn into dining and recreational facilities as well as quarters for the plantation’s seven volunteer guides. Further improvements were made to the property, and the family continued to fine-tune their deer management program.

The Pine-Deer Relationship
A fourth generation logger and former Georgia Pacific forest technician, Alan suggests that high-quality deer go hand in hand with a well-managed pine plantation. “When people see pines, they often think it’s not deer country, but the opposite is true,” he says.

The volunteer plants among the trees provide browse that is higher in nutrients than many cultivated food plots. “The deer eat the browse, then the sunlight hits the forest floor, and the young seedlings grow up. And when you fertilize those young trees, you are fertilizing your browse and increasing protein levels,” he explains. “No browse means the timber is ready to thin.”

During recent dry years, the Priests have stopped planting food plots. “We were just throwing our money away,” Alan says. Now they rely on natural browse, like Japanese privet, which, when fertilized, is more nutritious than fertilized soybeans, he notes. Ragweed, another natural plant that deer enjoy can contain close to 30 percent protein.

Grass-covered logging roads cut wide swaths through the pine woods, giving Tatum Plantation the graceful appearance of a manicured park. Yet even those roads play a role in the symbiotic pine-deer relationship, creating open spaces for the deer, while mature stands provide close cover. “It’s to our advantage to have timber of all different ages on the place,” says Alan, who is president of CST Timber Company, which specializes in thinning operations.

Logger of the Year
Last winter, the Mississippi Forestry Association named him the 2005 Outstanding Logger of the Year, an award he richly deserves, according to his loan officer, Gary Blair, senior vice president of Land Bank South.

“Alan is a very professional businessman and knowledgeable leader in the forestry field,” says Blair. “I’ve enjoyed watching him approach wildlife management with the same strong work ethic and appreciation for the environment that he exhibits in his forestry work.

“It’s also a pleasure to see how the operation has truly become a family affair,” he adds.

For the past year, Renee has been directing construction of a new hunting lodge, due to open this fall. Tal, 19, guides turkey and quail hunts and assists guests with their fishing needs on the plantation’s four stocked lakes. Several extended family members help with guiding activities. Alan and Renee’s 24-year-old daughter Christen, who is studying at Louisiana State University and works as a marketing director in Baton Rouge, likes to return home for hunting season.

80 to 100 Hunts per Year
Since Tatum Plantation started offering commercial hunts, customers have taken a number of impressive bucks. These included one buck that had a 193-inch gross Boone and Crockett score at harvest, although his score was estimated at 215 the previous year.

“We have a 100 percent success rate,” notes Slade. “And so far, anyone who’s ever hunted here has always come back at least once, except this year, when we couldn’t fit in one group.”

This fall, their sixth hunting season, Tatum Plantation will offer two trophy bucks and 15 management deer hunts. Their long-range plan is to run 80 to 100 deer hunts a year, if they can maintain deer size and quality. “We will never dip so far into our numbers that we will let quality suffer,” Alan emphasizes.

It may just be a matter of time before they reach that goal. One thing’s for certain, though — without the fence there would be no trophy hunts.

Learn more at www.tatumplantation.com.

Country Boy Outfitting

If you faithfully watch the Mossy Oak hunting shows on television, you might recognize Slade Priest. At age 22, Slade already has been featured on several hunts televised on The Outdoor Channel.

It’s easy to understand why.

The young Mississippi outfitter not only knows his deer and their habitat, he also loves to hunt. And he especially enjoys sharing his love of the sport with others.

“I’ve always said if I could do anything I want, I’d like to deer hunt. I relate to people who hunt, so outfitting is a perfect business for me,” says Slade, who started Country Boy Outfitting last winter.

He outfits for four landowners in the region, in addition to serving as general manager of hunting operations on the Priest family’s Tatum Plantation. This involves selling the hunting packages to individuals and corporate customers and either guiding the hunts himself or hiring other experienced guides to do the job.

The young entrepreneur realizes it takes more than passion to be successful in business. That’s why he is pursuing a degree in business administration from Belhaven College in Jackson, Miss. By the time he graduates from Belhaven in December 2006, he expects to have his real estate license too.

While a television career is not on Slade’s long list of plans, don’t be surprised to see him on the screen again. It’s not every hunting guide who’s comfortable in front of a TV camera.

The Lodge at Tatum Plantation

Over the past several months, Renee Priest has visited antique shops, scoured hardware and building supply stores, and hauled her horse trailer across the state line to flea markets.

Her mission: to create an inviting and memorable hunting lodge that will bring guests back to Tatum Plantation for reasons other than hunting.

Although the floor plans are from Coastal Living Magazine’s 2002 Cottage of the Year, special touches like a loft and ladder designed to resemble a deer stand leave no doubt that this is a hunting lodge.

Local Craftsmanship and Products
Indeed, it is a showcase of Mississippi craftsmanship and products. The cypress board-and-batten-style exterior siding was made from native cypress sawn nearby at Netterville Lumber Company. Appliances are from the Viking Range Corporation, headquartered in Greenwood, Miss. The horizontal lap siding in the great room came from a salvaged house built in 1852, and the Priests’ own timber was used for beams, flooring and walls.

“I want everyone to get a taste of Mississippi when they come to visit,” Renee says.

The soon-to-open lodge will sleep 15 at full capacity. It is designed so that a family or private party can occupy a private “house,” which connects to the main lodge through an enclosed back porch.

Available to Non-Hunters
Outside of hunting season, the lodge will be available for corporate events, family reunions and other gatherings, beginning in 2007. It also will serve as a retail store, where items such as willow and hickory furniture, antlerware and custom-designed light fixtures can be special-ordered.

Article, people and lodge photos by Janet Hunter
Deer photo courtesy of Tatum Plantation
Chair photo by Gary Blair