No.
On private & leased land if you don’t manage your doe harvest, to keep your numbers right they will eat everything.
I like being able to decide the time & place to kill them, helps people take there time and not shoot small bucks.

1000% too many with how long our rifle season is...I mean 3 months to kill does everyday?? Good Lord I am surprised there are still some left! I wish we would go back to the two week doe season or maybe decrease our gun days and replace with archery days...something has to change...

Managing the whole state's herd as one is bad practice. Different areas have different carrying capacities and landowner goals so they should be managed differently. I worked much better when there were limited doe days but if you followed the stipulations set out, you could have a biologist look at the land and issue doe tags. It involved a little work such as keeping up with the jawbones and weights from every deer and sending them to the State after the season, but it was a sound management program. It should be brought back instead of the One Size Fits All approach used now.

1) For those that don't shoot does and think there is no problem - let me know when something around you comes up for lease and I will lease it for my neighbors and let them come hunt next to you. The issue here is totally up to your location and who is hunting around you. Nothing more or less.


Biggest question I have to ask.....


If you have a "doe problem" who is shooting all the young bucks? Because, someone is shooting them. Do you think the does just hatch up out of the mud or something?

From where I'm sitting the scenario goes like this....

Someone (neighbors, whoever) shoots all the small bucks. 5 guys hunting 500 acres and they shoot 10 basket or otherwise less than mature racked deer. That's not their limit ( 2 each) but....That's too many for their acres. So they have killed every small buck off their place and some of the small bucks off their neighbors.

Now you have a "doe problem". All you see are those pesky does. You never think about the fact that they are your breeding stock. The breeding stock you need to overcome your neighbors blasting every small buck they see.

But instead you read ALDeer and are convinced you have to do something about all those does you have... Next you embark on some doe killing. You increase hunting pressure. You see fewer deer. You have less deer to see and less does to make more small bucks for your neighbors to shoot.

Rinse.

Repeat.

You Never have or shoot a mature buck off your property. You can't have it both ways.

VERY high percentage of hunters in AL live this cycle every hunting season.


Instead of a "doe problem" I would love to have a "small buck problem". At that point I would be much more likely to see a mature deer.

No.

No. Not too many does days, but maybe too many to be allowed to kill.

The problem is too many hunters.

The problem is not the number of doe days, or limits available it is the hunters themselves. A lot of hunters think they have to kill a deer every time they hunt. That is the problem. The 3 buck limit is goofy, we have a doctor that hunts next to us, he owns property in Fayette, Pickens and Lamar county. Yet, he can only kill 3 bucks. I hunt in Fayette county and at the Cahaba WMA. If I kill a buck or doe at the Cahaba, it doesn't do anything to the deer herd in Fayette county or vise versa.

Additional rules/regulations and laws from the government aren't needed, we as hunters need to manage the resource better than we have.

For those answering "yes", how many of you support baiting?

Seems to me that is an opposing viewpoint.

You're obviously blaming others for "shooting all the does", but fully supporting something that in theory makes it easier for them to "shoot all the does".

Don't limit the days, just the number your allowed to kill. Maybe there's someone out there that thinks he needs to kill every deer he see's. I know one family like that. As has been said, you can't just throw a blanket over the whole state. We have plenty of deer where we hunt, probably too many. We need to harvest a few more doe deer than we do. To keep the density where it's at, we probably need to kill 8-10 doe a year and we've only killed two during bow season. We used to kill 10-12 a year and really couldn't tell a difference. IMHO, I think peoples method of hunting dictates them not seeing the deer this time of the year and so they think they've killed too many. They over hunt stands. Hunt mainly green fields. Hunt every single off day they have and hunt pretty woods instead of deer woods. Doe deer become educated just like bucks do, when they get too much pressure they move. Biologist will tell you, hunter sighting are a piss poor indication of deer density.

I would be in favor of a lower limit on does and keep the days the same.

The goofy folks here in GA seriously limit my doe days. My county had 8 days, 7 of which happened while I was in Texas. The other is January 1.

I typically see at least 5 does when I hunt my place, and have seen as many as 12 in an afternoon. I have one green field, about 3/4 acre, on my 22 acre place. 100 yards south is the county line, and on the other side, they get 72 doe days.

I don't want to kill a ton of does, but I have a couple of old ones that aren't dropping fawns any more. I will be hunting with a crossbow next year to open up my options.

In my original reply I did not make myself clear. Like I said it is a gray area to me. I do understand the concept though. If a cattle farmer kills 10 heifers and one bull calf every year he is diminishing his herd. If the role is reversed the herd grows a lot closer to its maximum capacity. Overall the answer depends on the end goal. Big herd that may be more than mother nature can handle and let nature run its course or a smaller healthy herd with quality bucks. I don't really know that the latter could be managed as needed with wide spread chiefs and not enough Indians.

Before I’ll answer let me ask if you believe if there are naturally more does born than bucks?

The days ain’t the problem

The people is the problem

Absolutely! We definitely don’t have the deer we had 20 years ago! But just because we have them doesn’t mean you have to shoot everyone you see!

Those of you complaining of low deer numbers, how many coyotes have you trapped?

That's completely irrelevant.
We have high deer density and high Coyote density.
All my life, the places that I found the most deer usually had large numbers of coyotes too.

I wouldn't have a problem with a 2 buck and 3 doe limit season.

2 week bow season & a 1 week gun season, no limits kill all you want.

not too many days...just need a limit on how many does you can kill each season.