Been hunting 40 years as well.Got my start in good old Coosa county. Got several hundred deer under my belt. Stopped counting. I as well have seen lots of changes. Used to get them cheap Union Camp, Hammer mill and Kimberly Clark permits and thought we had the world to ourselves. Sometimes we hunted properties that few people ever ventured on. And Coosa County was crawling in deer. I can assure you Coosa county deer numbers aren't a fraction of yesteryear . But not all is bad. And I don't want to be a pessimistic old geezer ! I however am a realist. I have hunted pretty much all over the state and there are still good places to hunt. But what we have now are isolated good areas. And a lot of what is considered good is in the eye of the beholder. If you are older like me and some of the others on the forum and have hunted some Milk and Honey lands, then you have some pretty high standards as to what is "Good Hunting". A lot of guys now are looking for a real good place to hunt and I see their ads saying please find me some cream of the crop hunting , I am willing to pay dearly. But you can't always buy it. Nonetheless demand is high and there are a lot of dissatisfied hunters across the state. But here is the bottom line. And hold on before you post " But my place is just full of deer and big old bucks". Your place may be and if it is it is not the norm across the state.There are plenty other places that are not worth the gas it takes to get there. Our state needs an overhaul in the deer dept. If you want to hunt the land of Milk and Honey it comes at a price.You can't shoot everything you see, stay in the woods for 3 months, then squall about substandard hunting. And change is hard. We that were brought up under a buck a day and all the does you want to shoot have had bad scoolmasters. Alabama hunts very hard and aggressive. In the area of Illinois where our hunting lease is they hunt 7 gun days a year. And the deer aren't dumb but they will get on their feet a whole lot more in the daylight. I am not saying we need only 7 days but I do think our gun season is too long. Also getting our hunters out of the "If it's brown it's down " syndrome has got to go.