Mississippi Outdoors Podcast

What makes a turkey trumpet different from every other call?2025 Mississippi Sportsman of the Year Bill Lester joins the Mississippi Outdoors Podcast to demonstrate the calls he's spent decades developing and explain why he believes the ability to call softly can make such a difference on a gobbler.Bill takes us from traditional wing-bone calls to acrylic trumpets, brass mouthpieces and some of his newest designs. He also shares stories from a lifetime outdoors — homemade bird decoys, his first dove hunt, calling turkeys from a quarter-mile away, teaching art at Delta State for 38 years and the artistic side of building every call by hand.

Outdoor magazines go back further than most people realize. In this episode of the Mississippi Outdoors Podcast, Matt Wyatt sits down with returning guest James T. McCafferty, author and outdoor historian, to talk about the writers who documented hunting and fishing in Mississippi as far back as the 1830s.

You know Mossy Oak for deer and turkey hunting gear — but did you know they have a tree expert on staff? In this episode of the Mississippi Outdoors Podcast, Matt Wyatt sits down with Dudley Phelps, known around Mossy Oak as "the tree guy," to talk about growing trees for wildlife habitat.

Have you noticed it's a little harder to see the stars at night lately? That's light pollution, and it turns out it's doing a lot more than dimming the night sky. In this episode of the Mississippi Outdoors Podcast, Matt Wyatt sits down with Murray Burgess, ornithologist at Mississippi State University, to talk about how artificial light is affecting migratory birds.

Mississippi is the Hospitality State — and few people have done more to prove it than Robert St. John. In this episode of the Mississippi Outdoors Podcast, Matt Wyatt sits down with the Hattiesburg restaurateur, author, and travel host to talk about food, Mississippi, and a career that started because he flunked out of college.Mississippi Outdoors is produced by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks.

If you've got a pond on your property — or you're about to dig one — this episode is for you. In this episode of the Mississippi Outdoors Podcast, Matt Wyatt sits down with Larry Bull, retired MDWFP fisheries biologist, to walk through exactly how to stock a pond and get it right the first time.

If you've driven the Natchez Trace on a rainy night south of I-20 and seen someone out there with a safety vest and a flashlight, that's zoologist Tom Mann — and he's been out there for over a decade studying Webster's salamanders.Tom joins the Mississippi Outdoors Podcast to explain what Webster salamanders are, why scientists thought they didn't migrate, and how he and his wife Deb proved them wrong by spending years watching what the animals actually did instead of what the textbooks said.

Mike Strickland from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources joins the Mississippi Outdoors Podcast to talk about what marine patrol actually does — and it's a lot more than checking fishing licenses.