TRCP’s communication manager meditates on the common language of hunters

The two pickups jostled down the dirt track that followed the railroad south. I was in the second with Alex Harvey, founder of Legacy Land Management, and the pickup in front of us had the beagles.

We’d just spent a morning hunting swamp rabbits along a creek in the Mississippi River Delta. I was bloody from bushwhacking and tired from crossing the water three times trying to get in front of the rabbit. While I wasn’t fortunate enough to pull the trigger, the group bagged two of the oversized bunnies. With the day growing longer, most folks in the party had to leave for afternoon work.

Fortunately for us, Fred Johnson was willing to show Alex and I a potential duck hole for the morning, and we followed him and Zarius Moore up the lonely highway to the turn off that snaked us down along some flooded timber.

When the pickups stopped, we all piled out and looked at the water and listened to Fred say how six ducks were taken out of there two days before, so the birds were around.

Fred lit a cigarette, and I turned to Zarius to ask him how deer season had been. A grin cracked his face, and he reached into his pocket for his phone.

“It’s been good, deer seasons are good around here,” he said as we huddled around his screen to look at the bucks he and his buddies had killed in the last few months.

Light-tined bucks filled side-by and truck beds. Smiling faces of old and young hunters slide-showed by as I picked up moments of the hunts through Zarius’ first, second, or in some cases, third-hand accounts.

Being a Northeastern hunter at heart, I asked about the size of the deer, naively guessing that they were small like most southern deer I’d encountered.

“What do the bucks weigh? 110 here?”

Zarius, Alex, and Fred all shook their heads and chided me for such an outrageous assumption.

“So, you have bucks here that get to 200?”

“We have does getting to 200!” Alex laughed. “All they do is eat, then disappear and grow.”

“I just thought it’d be like in Texas or South Carolina with the smaller bodies.”

“No, this is Mississippi,” Zarius chuckled.

Zarius scrolled to a video where he was on the ground and a heavy-beamed eight point cautiously made his way through the brush along a trail.

“I took this video last week. I was done hunting. Had my rifle there though, but I knew I wasn’t going to shoot him.”

I watched as the deer stepped closer to the phone. Head bobbing up and down trying to tell what the figure was at the base of the tree. Not so scared as to turn and throw the white flag, but unwilling to commit fully to continuing down the trail.

“I just wanted to watch him. I like this video.”

Finally, Zarius behind his phone shifts and the deer moves off and the video ends. A few more deer and happy hunters appear, then we’re on to talking about rabbits and ducks again and how the expected cold next week will really change things.

I realized then that the moment of us passing stories epitomized the collective home of hunters. No matter that we’d all just met hours before, no matter where we’d been or where we were going, we as hunters were able to listen and share a common reverence for the creatures and spaces we love.

This common language, this connective tissue that binds all of us who find the woods and water to be clarifying places for our lives, is why we can join together for conservation. The woods and waters where we can gather and pursue our passions is the common space that must be conserved. It’s why I can see a young hunter’s face smiling with a deer and recognize myself in that joy. I work to ensure that the animals and places that makes that joy possible endures for generations.

Conservation makes more stories possible.

In January 2025, TRCP traveled to the Mississippi River Delta to talk with land manager Alex Harvey, founder of Legacy Land Management, about the hunting traditions of the region as well as his work to enhance the wildlife values of private property by implementing conservation measures with support from United States Department of Agriculture programs included in the Farm Bill.   

“If a landowner is able to make conservation improvements on their property, they will likely be able to utilize it more,” Harvey explains. “Better conservation practices mean more rabbits, ducks, and deer. More animals means better hunting, and that means the landowner and their family will spend more time hunting there.” 

Watch The Land Manager below and find the full playlist of short films HERE.