yeah, actually it is probably the best plan if you want to kill an older age class buck. Stay out of it completely until whenever the rut hits and they will be chasing. It takes discipline to do it and I know that most on here want to be able to hunt every waking hour but if your goal is to kill a big bruiser, less is more. We havent set foot on our property since Thanksgiving and this weekend will be the first time back on it and we will see a bunch of deer and some good bucks tomorrow thru Sunday. It's not for everyone and to each his own but if you want to kill big bucks, you have to stay off of them completely until the time and weather is right.

Better plan - shoot more does to see more deer

Yep I got spots I save for rut and other places I'll hunt hard and hope to get lucky

He's after 140 class deer. This is the best strategy for that if we're being completely honest.

What county are you hunting in? Curious.

How many years have y’all had the lease?

I’ve found these things are very cyclical and vary year to year.

I’ve had years where I thought all the deer were gone.

I usually see the most deer on the places where we do the least amount of work.
The cutover behind my house is full of deer and we have zero greenfields.
The 40 acres, just down the road, is full of deer and we have zero greenfields.
Leave it alone, and hunt itn

I guess it just depends where you are. I saw over 40 deer in an hour driving home the other afternoon from Bullock County to Opelika. I also grew up on 24 acres in Cullman County where we saw deer tracks for the first time after living there for 5 years. Now, there are several big bucks killed in that area every year and everybody has deer on their property.

I don't disagree that some areas of the state have a lower population now than they did in the past. I'm sure that is true in many areas, but I also think there are plenty of places where there used to not be many deer and now they have a good population.

Good advice so far on here. I think you may just have not hunted on the heavy movement days. I have hunted some excellent property and had zero sightings for two days and then crazy movement on the third. Also, I am not a fan of feeders. They make deer nocturnal. Your presence and scent reloading them is bad. They are unnatural. Just relax, keep doing the food plots and hunt only on the good weather days if you can. Even wait until the rut as others have suggested. The first time hunting a stand is usually as good as it gets so make it count. You are not a lone ranger, many of us have had the same experience.

Turn the feeders off! Are the deer eating in the food plots? Change how you hunt the property. Get away from the foodplots and find the travel patterns in the woods, etc, etc, etc.

There are a bunch of things that could be the cause. If it were me I would look for a different lease.

Feeders do NOT make deer nocturnal. I can send you hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures of deer at feeders in the daylight, from 5-6 different states. Just because the feeder is in Alabama doesn't drive the deer nocturnal.

Deer DO, however, change their patterns based on the time of year and timing of the rut. I had deer last year that disappeared during the rut, only to show back up 2 months later.

His best strategy for a 140 class deer is another State lol

Got to love the advice to kill more does when the complaint is about not seeing any deer lol

To be honest, it has been preached for over 30 years that we should shoot more does, no matter what. I realize QDMA is more nuanced than that, but let's be honest, most deer hunters want to pull the trigger, and they've been doing it with QDMA's blessing for decades now. It's hard to fix.

Yes and it is going to take years of reeducation and then a few years of trigger restraint by the majority of hunters before people get it. They think they need to shoot every couple of hunts and Alabama law appears to encourage it.

Man I’ve got a piece of property that is about the same way. If it wasn’t for trail cam pics I’d a done left that place. Beautiful fields ate down feeders throughout the property and you just don’t see hardly any deer. They are on camera and all but most everything is at nighttime. Those deer are the smartest I have ever seen and it makes for hard hunting. You can hunt all day and see a couple right before dark. One afternoon I decided to sit late just to see what all comes in after dark. I had a doe and fawn in the field with me right before dark. As soon as it got pitch black dark and all the 4 wheelers and traffic was out of the woods from the other properties around it was like you opened a gate. I bet I had 30+ deer in the field with me and lord knows how many bucks. Then it sounds like a dove shoot around me from all the locals harvesting deer under their night lights. That made me realize why the deer were so nocturnal. They get shot at every time they move. Over the years it has gotten a little better for us but it is the same ol thing around there every year. Hard to compete with the locals

Sounds like you just don't have many deer, you might need to find another spot further south. I'm sitting here right now looking at 13 in this field. Deer population in this part of south Montgomery Co is about where its been for years. We probably don't kill enough does but the coyotes help thin the herd some. I feel your pain man and realize that I'm blessed to be in the situation I'm in. Good luck

Thanks for all the ideas and comments. Our rut is just starting to kick in so hopefully it will get better. The first two weeks of bow season are fantastic. Rattled up 6 different bucks this year. Then everything goes to crap, this more than the past. It’s our 5th year on the lease and I had very high hopes. Oh well

I think I might look for a smaller piece that I can hunt the middle of November through about now next year and see if that changes anything. There’s just too much potential here to give it up. And too much blood sweat and money invested. We are in the block of Fayette county where Walker is to the north and Tuscaloosa county to the south. About as Far East in Fayette county as you can go. If you look at sat maps for that 5-10 sq/mile section you will see it’s very sparsely populated.

One other thing regarding feeders. We have a huge crop of young bucks. We can fill a feeder at 5:30 pm and have 1-2 young bucks eating out of it 20 min late. I have pictures to prove it