Newly conserved lands bring low-cost, sustainable wild protein to a part of Louisiana where subsistence hunting is a way of life.

By Lisa W. Foderaro 
Published December 12, 2025 

Photo: Shane Granier/Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries

In southeast Louisiana, Todd Carson has visited a new wildlife management area five times since it opened earlier this year. A corrections supervisor for a local jail, Carson hunts deer, wild hogs, rabbit, and squirrel, both for sustenance and for the experience of being in nature. “I’m not going to harvest anything if I’m not going to eat it,” he explains. “I do it to feed my family and to help out my neighbors.”

The Bogue Chitto Wildlife Management Area (WMA), which TPL helped create, offers a varied landscape. “It’s terrain you don’t really get to see in Louisiana unless you go up north,” he says. “It’s got rolling hills, steep bluffs, and creek bottoms.”

For now, the state allows only bow-and-arrow hunting for the white-tailed deer there, which is just fine with Carson. “It gives an animal more of a chance to be an animal,” he notes. “We all have access to grocery stores now. I like the opportunity for the challenge. In order to get a deer with a bow, you have to be within 40 yards and you have to do everything right.”

The WMA is one of two conservation projects TPL led this past year in the region. Together, they give rural communities in Washington Parish, where more than a third of the 45,000 residents live in poverty, access to nearly 2,500 acres of new green space. Until the recent conservation efforts, Washington Parish was the only parish in southeast Louisiana without a state wildlife management area.

Bogue Chitto, with 1,642 acres, appeals to residents who converge on its 6 miles of frontage on the Bogue Chitto River for tubing. In summer, the tubes dot the water with dabs of yellow, blue, and green as people of all ages drift downstream. The WMA also provides hunting, both for recreation and sustenance. The ecosystem spans floodplains, forests, and lakes and teems with white-tailed deer, rabbit, turkey, and waterfowl. “Providing more public access along that river is pretty key,” says Stacey Shankle, TPL’s Mid-South program director. “You might have 1,000 or 2,000 people on the river on a nice weekend. But seasonally, the WMA is used for hunting, a culturally important activity that is celebrated in the area.”

Immediately to the north of the WMA lies Bogue Chitto State Park, which TPL helped expand by 45 percent this spring, to 2,593 acres. It, too, has river frontage on the Bogue Chitto. Recognized as an emerging mountain biking destination, the state park draws bicyclists from the New Orleans metro area and even out of state. Plans call for doubling the number of bicycling, hiking, and equestrian trails in the state park.

Both the WMA and the state park expansion were funded, in part, by the Louisiana Outdoors Forever Fund, which provides financing for outdoor conservation projects. TPL acquired the two properties from a timber company and then transferred the land to the state’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and Louisiana State Parks, respectively.

The rural communities that surround the new recreation areas look forward to a boost in visitation. Now there’s talk of creating a support system of businesses to attract more visitors and promote outdoor recreation amenities to attract employers and keep young people in the area.

D’Ann Davis, executive director of the nonprofit Washington Parish Economic Development Foundation, says a strategic plan is underway to identify areas of economic growth in the parish. A particular focus: trying to attract some of the disposable income of people visiting the expanded state park and new wildlife area. Right now, after a day spent in nature, many of the hikers, cyclists, and hunters head to the bustling, more affluent parish of St. Tammany for dinner or an overnight stay.

“They enjoy our land resources, but then any money that’s spent is usually in a different parish,” Davis says. “We are coming up with a plan so that when people leave here, they turn right toward Franklinton, in our parish, instead of left toward St. Tammany. We have some Airbnbs and cabin rentals and fast-food chains, but there is potential for more.”

For Carson, who often hunts with his 18-year-old son, access to the new wildlife area provides economic, social, and health benefits: nature immersion, physical exercise, low-cost “wild protein,” and quality time with family. While he has yet to harvest a deer at Bogue Chitto, he says the process of understanding a new landscape is part of the appeal.

“It took me about seven years to learn Lake Ramsay,” he says, referring to another nearby wildlife management area. “You don’t just go in there blind. You’ve got to learn the movements and patterns of the deer. It takes time.”