white tail deer gonna b like the buffalo.the worst thing that coulda have happened to hunting was all these hunting shows.everybody wants to b a hunter now.eventually only rich folks will b able to hunt and it will be in a high fence type deal.cause we gonna kill every wild one there is

Great post, nailed it!

Let me put it in simpler terms:

It's the duty of the DCNR to protect, conserve and increase all the various species wildlife.

It's OUR choice to hunt or choose to attempt to manage a particular species within the limits that are set for legitimate purposes defined by law.

My situation is exactly the same and if we dont put pressure on the Legislature our grand kids wont see a deer in AL

IMHO the shooting of a few does isn't the big problem, the problem is the increased population of coyotes that kill close to 70% of the fawns that are born. I havn't shot a doe in 4 years.

I agree with this. We are still killing a few does, but don't seem to have the numbers of deer we used to have; however coyote sign is everywhere. We have also noticed an absence of rabbits and armadillos.

There is a major issue around our place as well. We have around 1000 acres and only 3 hunters. While it is split into 3 main tracts, that is a lot of land with very little pressure at all. We have only shot 2 does in the last 3 years, but it sounds like ww3 around us. Last season a new neighbor of ours shot 12 deer on his 30 acres. When you combine that with the normal harvest that has been happening anyway, you get what we have now. It's truly sad to see a once great place to hunt and see tons of deer get turned into what it is now. We actually stopped all hunting on that 200 acres this year just hoping that some survive the season. I contacted the DNR and they are supposedly going to come out and do a spotlight survey to go along with our cameras but I have to say I am skeptical as to what it will accomplish.They told me that there were no plans at all to change things. So until more hunters realize deer don't magically spawn from the creek bed, we are just out of luck.

Short of changing the bag limits on does the state could at least start educating the rank and file hunter that the entire state is not over populated and that you don't necessarily have to shoot a bunch of does to have better hunting and bigger bucks. That would help.........

The state management plans in the South are a joke. I hunt in a club in Mississippi and we have 12,000 acres. Had a game warden tell me the other day that the rut has a more defined second sequence because there are too many does in the area and that we needed to kill more of them. What a doggone idiot! We have already killed 206 deer this year. We killed some good deer, but you ain't gonna go out and see 4 or 5 at a time. If it was up to the fish and game commissions, they'd have it where there ain't no deer. I have seen a couple of clubs ruined by the DMAP program in MS. We had a club that you could see 20 deer in a hunt at one time, and then we got on that program, and after that it was hard to see a deer anymore. It's quite frustrating to me that our State game and fish commissions can't be more responsible for their policies. Really even more frustrating when the folks I hunt with follow the recommendations of shooting the mess out of every doe they see.

I like this idea best. I'd love to think hunters in this state could make the right decisions but I don't know if they will or not. Unfortunately, the state will probably make another blanket rule, affecting the ones that need to kill does.

BigT...I am enjoying this debate. I have followed your posts for a while as we live and hunt in the same areas. I live in Saraland and have hunted in Deer Park for over 30 years on and off. When I was a young lad, in the mid 1980`s, my father and I hunted all over in Washington, Clarke, and Monroe counties. The common thread in all of those places was the amount of deer we saw back then. Especially in Deer Park, Vinegar Bend area it was quite common to see 15 to 20 does in a field on any given hunt. Did we gripe back then? Of course we did....Hunters are a rarely satisfied group of people. Back then the argument was too many does and hardly any bucks. I believe the state had good intentions in increasing the doe harvest when they did, but I feel as if a perfect storm is brewing. With loss of agricultural food sources, coyote predation, and very liberal harvest policies, the state, I believe has done some serious harm to the numbers.
Too many times this argument devolves into a pissing contest between hunters. One guy says he sees plenty of deer and says the other guy is doing it wrong. The fact is..unless you can pay five or six thousand dollars to hunt on some quality managed land with deer managers and all, you probably are just a working class stiff like me and have to take what you can get. The thing is, back in the mid 1980`s any old piece of land would do. The woods were teeming with deer and weekend warriors like myself had plenty of opportunities to fill the freezer or take a buck. Those were great times. Partly because I was a young man learning to be a hunter and partly because those years were filled with great hunts and plenty of deer. It just felt different....good people,and good hunting. Stevie Wonder can see that the deer population is different these days. Maybe if we learn to talk about it instead of accusing each other of being inferior hunters we might could get something done about it.

ShaneB that is one good post!

ShaneB btw my dad grew up in Deer Park and I hunted there as a kid. There sure was some good hunting up there back then

How many deer should there be?
and how do they get counted?

As far as management goes, that's been the idea all along:





DMAP pretty well fits that provision in the law. If you're not cooperating, why not?

Good question 49er, because when I talked to someone about the program they asked how many does we killed the year prior. I told them the number which was not many and my concern about the low population they said we were going to need to kill more for them to get some baseline data to start with.....that aint happening just the same old kill more does they grow on trees theory

49er the kind of education I am talking about is put an article or two in the regulation book they put out every year and give away all over the state. A lot of rank and file hunters are not in hunting clubs with large tracts of land.

OK, I'll bite, I can't see paying the state to tell me how to manage my property. I'll educate myself and "roll my own".

I agree with ya 2Dogs... There are not enough biologist in this state to manage all the separate..individual..private..public..shared...high fenced lands out there... You can't control what your neighbor does... but you can control what you do... The State will do what the State wants to do...They change the buck rules/laws...it won't change how we manage our property...

2Dogs,


DMAP is free... and you set your own site-specific goals with a state wildlife biologist/game warden to give you advice and approve exceptions to statewide bag limits for your property when appropriate.

Sure beats you trying to tell me what to do on my land with the rules you support.