How Mississippi's Past Shapes Where Wildlife Is Today

Mississippi State environmental historians Jim Giesen and Mark Hersey join the Mississippi Outdoors Podcast to talk about something every hunter and landowner should understand — the history of the land they're on.

They walk through how the Mississippi Delta went from dense forest to farmland after the Civil War, how whitetail deer nearly went extinct in Mississippi, and how the shift from cotton to soybeans quietly became one of the biggest factors in the state's deer population explosion. They explain why most federal forests in the South are actually worn-out cotton fields the government reclaimed, why feral hogs were intentionally brought to Mississippi in the 1940s, and what the weedy edges of old cotton fields had to do with bobwhite quail.

It's a different kind of outdoor episode — but one that will change the way you look at every piece of land you hunt.

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