South Carolina Wildlife magazine September-October 2026 front cover: juvenile great horned owls by Phillip Jones
We are delighted to share the fall issue of South Carolina Wildlife magazine, brimming with stories perfect for curious minds of all ages. In this edition, writers wax poetic on topics ranging from owling, to hunting memories and younger years on the farm.
We are also excited to feature the SCDNR canine conservation team in a new SCW segment, K-9 Tracks!
This season’s collection invites you to deepen your connection with the natural world around you. So, let’s settle in and get ready to explore what makes our natural heritage so worth protecting.
Check out two excerpts from articles featured in the upcoming fall issue!
“Fright Night: Owling and Prowling”
by Will Mundhenke, SCDNR State Naturalist
Barred owl, photo by Ted Borg
If you have ever spent the early morning hours in the turkey woods or climbing into a deer stand well before the sun rises, you may have heard a haunting sound. Experienced sportsmen will know the call as one from a friend, but anyone unfamiliar with the twilight hours will feel a chill in their bones. The ominous and drawn-out tones ring throughout the hardwood bottoms of the Palmetto State. If you are fortunate, or unfortunate depending on your disposition, there will be a cackling and a pair or more “hootin’ it up” as you wait for daybreak. “Who-cooks-for-you-who-cooks-for-you-all” is the question of the morning when a barred owl makes their presence known.
There are numerous strange sounds when you find yourself alone in a dark forest. The alien-like yelps and howls from the coyote sends chills down your spine. The non-stop chants from the Eastern whip-poor-will and chuck-will’s-widow that are reminiscent of the infamous goatsuckers. This family of nocturnal birds called nightjars earn that name due in part to their freakishly large mouth and the ancient Greek myth that they could blind animals. The rustling of treetops and eerie crunching of leaves in the distance from an unsightly armadillo or voracious raccoon. Perhaps, even, the stealthy bobcat with razor sharp claws waiting to pounce on its next victim. All these denizens of our South Carolina woods call the night home, but none are more prominent than the haunting hoots of the barred owl (Strix varia).
Read the full story in the upcoming SCW September-October 2026 issue!
If you are scouting out locations to hear or see an owl, look no further than Congaree National Park! The following is another excerpt from the SCW September-November issue! In her story, Alden Zerkle ventures deep into the woods and waters of Congaree National Park to show readers what makes it unique.
“The National Park Everyone Gets Wrong: Why Congaree National Park matters to all of us.”
by Alden Zerkle, SCDNR intern
The boardwalk trail winds throughout Congaree National Park. Photo by Alden Zerkle
A Different Kind of National Park
Congaree isn’t a landscape park. It’s a biological one.
Beneath its seemingly ordinary canopy lies one of the largest remaining old-growth bottomland hardwood forests in North America — a place where seasonal floodwaters still shape the land, where wildlife thrives in ancient ecological rhythms, and where some of the tallest trees east of the Rockies rise into the sky.
In fact, Congaree contains the highest concentration of champion-sized trees in the United States. Some tower more than 170 feet overhead, roughly the height of a seventeen-story building. Standing beneath them is a humbling experience. Photos don’t quite capture it, statistics don’t either. Only when you crane your neck upward and watch the canopy disappear into the sky do you begin to understand what survives here. Much of the southeastern United States once looked like this. Vast floodplain forests stretched across river valleys, shaped by seasonal flooding and untouched by development.
Today, most of those forests are gone, but Congaree remains. And the deeper you venture into it, the more remarkable that fact becomes.
The moon from Congaree National Park. Photo by Alden Zerkle
The Forest Most People Never See
So how do you actually experience Congaree?
For starters, discover extensions of the boardwalk. Some of the park’s earthen trails offer an excellent introduction to the forest, winding beneath towering hardwoods and across pockets of swampy terrain. But stopping there is a little like visiting the beach and never touching the water. The real adventure begins beyond the wooden planks. A short walk from the visitor center, you can find Cedar Creek flowing quietly through the heart of the park. Its tea-colored water reflects the forest so perfectly that the trees seem to continue beneath the surface. Here, visitors can kayak, canoe, or paddleboard through one of the most unique landscapes in South Carolina. Bald cypress rise from the water on fluted trunks wider than compact cars, Tupelo trees lean over the creek’s edge, turtles slide from fallen logs as your paddle passes, and bright yellow prothonotary warblers flash through the canopy like sparks of sunlight. Around every bend, the forest seems larger, older and quieter, and you are pleasantly surprised how quickly civilization disappears.
Within minutes of launching a kayak, Columbia feels impossibly far away. The noise of traffic vanishes, there are no crowds waiting for photos and no lines of tourists at scenic overlooks. For students accustomed to constant notifications, crowded schedules and endless deadlines, that kind of silence feels almost foreign. And yet it might be exactly what we need.
Congaree offers much more than first meets the eye. Photo by Alden Zerkle
Read the full story in the upcoming SCW September-October 2026 issue!
Press check!
A stack of SCW covers fresh off the press. Photo by Cade McCants
The September-October issue of South Carolina Wildlife magazine is hot off the press! And with the creation of each new edition, our magazine staff have the opportunity to visit the print shops where the physical magazine comes to life. It is awe-inspiring to witness the speed and quality at which the magazine is produced.
We visit the printers to ensure that the finished product matches our vision for the magazine. The original file passes across many screens and through a variety of machines to fine-tune the pages.
SCW Art Director Kathryn Badal Diaz plays a vital role in ensuring consistency and high quality. At the printer, as pages pass quickly through the machine, she compares the output with our original prints. She works in real time with machine operators to adjust color levels to get the right match.
SCW art director Kathryn Badal Diaz inspects pages for color accuracy. Photo by Cade McCants
The machines that print South Carolina Wildlife magazine are truly impressive. The web press, which produces the inner pages, is capable of printing around 21,000 pages an hour and spans nearly the entire length of the warehouse. Each page begins its life as part of a giant roll of paper. As the paper zips through the press, black, cyan, magenta and yellow ink are applied in stages. Then a glossy coating is applied, baked on at 300 degrees and rapidly cooled. Then it’s off to another machine for cutting and binding. This entire process happens in just a matter of seconds!
The web press prints and finishes pages at incredible speed. Photo by Cade McCants
We are proud to present the fall issue of South Carolina Wildlife magazine, arriving in mailboxes soon. It is not too late to subscribe and receive the September-October edition.
The holidays will be here before you know it! You can wrap up your gift shopping today with a 2027 SCW subscription! South Carolina Wildlife is a wonderful, lasting gift that reconnects us with nature during every season of the year.
Thank you for your support!
South Carolina Wildlife
September-October 1995
South Carolina Wildlife, September-October 1995
Thank you for supporting South Carolina Wildlife magazine, the flagship publication of the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.
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