Good stuff Stickers 🤣🤣

I hav said for many years - them deer don't wear name tags - but people sure act like they do. I guess i do to sometimes 😀

I want to try to shoot 5 r bettr and manage my small peace - and i would lov to hav great neighbors. Wish i could grow 130 inch deer a lot easier. But At the end of the day - i am very blessed to still be able to go and do it and hope i always hav an appetite for it. Dang i lov hunting!! Gone hate to see it end. Only got one shooter n tville and he no monster - but he 5 and a good Bama deer and i sure hav had fun chasing him. Wish that bass-turd would cooperate bettr 🤣🤣

This. I have 217 acres. Big enough to kinda lose yourself in if you don't look too far over the hill - not big enough to manage properly. I share all my deer with my neighbors, and they share theirs with me. My young sons have a free pass, but I typically don't shoot young bucks, unless I can get one close to me with my flintlocks. We don't have a high deer density, but we have enough to keep it interesting (except in Dec). No way to regulate mine in the same way some would regulate the same number of acres in Marshall Co., or Bullock Co.

PWYSE, its not that I necessarily have an objection to a warden being on the property, I don't have anything to hide and I am a legal and ethical hunter, but the easy entry way is also an easy entry way for others as well. So stopping uninvited "piddlers" has the consequence of stopping all uninvited people.

If the GW called me and wanted access, I would probably give him the gate code. But I don't like being surprised when I am hunting by finding someone there I wasn't expecting.


I would think we would be less of an interest now since we can't bait.

Ah I gotcha. That makes sense.

Updated doe map.......

SE Alabama finishing the season strong with some doe blasting

Since the rut is on down there... you'd think they'd hold off for a Spike or a 4 pointer but you know we are over here in the real world..........

I guarantee you there’s a portion of it that’s coming from people shooting does because “there’s not enough bucks to breed them!!!!”……..Give this setup a couple more years and watch what happens…….Frankie called it……folks gotta learn the hard way. This will end up being no different than the 2 per day doe rule…..It wont be until another few years down the road that folks will start looking back and saying….”Hey, remember when we thought that was a good idea??”

Keep in mind that what you're looking at on that map is also a lot of 4 year highs in those southeastern counties and a lot of 4 year lows in the northern counties. I have a feeling that the "crash" stage is lagging just a little behind in the southeastern counties. I'd imagine that its gonna be less severe than in the northern counties but still occurring just the same.

What's the buck harvest look like in the southwestern counties?

I’m gonna throw out the last 4 year’s buck harvest totals for a few counties....aka "the trend". Looking at the map I just posted and using that info along with this….you tell me if it appears like something needs to be looked at further in these places. I just picked out a few examples. Granted there’s 11 days left but most of these places are post peak rut. Jackson is probably the most concerning in my opinion because its always been one of the premiere counties in the state. Hate to see a great county go in decline

County.....20-21......21-22.....22-23......23-24

Blount.......1077.........994.......1181........852
Colbert......1160.......1028........955........712
Franklin....1565.......1427......1554........1133
Jackson....2946.......2626.......3099.......2226
Marshall......760........723.........870..........588
Morgan........792........676........872..........629

Most of them have been pretty consistent.....There's a couple that are a little suspect. The southwestern portion seems to be the least effected as of now

They must not be using corn in the south eastern part of the state, or all your corn and cell camera theories are wrong?

Looking at Choctaw, Marengo, Dallas, Clarke, and Wilcox on the buck numbers: huge increase between the 19-20 season and the 20-21 season. Harvest numbers in all 5 counties doubled. Why? That was when Chuckie required a harvest ID to have deer processed and Covid put a ton of hunters in the woods for an extended period of time. More people hunting more days than normal and more people were forced into reporting what they were actually killing but had not been reporting previously. If you just looked at the numbers, without evaluating the underlying data and root causes, you'd think a population explosion had occurred in all 5 counties and there were twice as many bucks available to kill, and they killed them. Not the case.

20-21 to 21-22 was pretty much flat. 4 counties up 100 or so and a one county down by 100 or so. No regulation changes, Covid and stay at home work still going on, people hunting a ton more than normal and still killing a lot more deer. Just about what you'd expect.

21-22 to 22-23 buck harvest was down across the board in all 5 counties. Choctaw down 10%, Marengo down 10%, Clarke down 15%, Dallas down 25%, Wilcox down 16%. No regulation changes. Why the decrease? Because all those people were required to go back to in person work and simply were not able to hunt as much. Couple this with the higher than normal kill rates in the 20-21 and 21-22 "Covid work from home, hunt every morning and afternoon before logging onto your computer for 4 hrs a day years", and you'd expect to see a drop off in kills in the 22-23 season. Less time to hunt and not as many deer left in the woods to shoot.

Covid and all that additional time in the woods was an anomaly, and it has to be taken into account. Additional man days hunted, and higher than normal annual kill rates as a result, are skewing the statistics. The additional deer killed in that 2 year period are also one of the reasons that this year is down. Less deer in the woods available to be shot due to higher than normal/ potentially overharvest, in the previous 2 seasons, means you'll see drops in this years and future years numbers too. Couple this with Alabama's kill them all, virtually zero trigger restraint attitude, and it's going to take a while to recover from the 2 yrs when AL killed 30% more than the historical norm for 2 straight years. If people dont lighten up on the trigger finger, it'll take a long long time to build back up. Hopefully, that's what's happening and why the harvest numbers are down this year. It's what needs to happen in some areas. It also ties into your fragmented property theory. The areas with more people, on small homesite properties, having significantly more available free time to hunt and being able to do it right out their backdoor, resulted in a ton more deer being killed, in areas which might not have the carrying capacity and herd dynamics to withstand the additional harvest, which they are now paying the piper for doing.

Lots of variables at play. Corn makes it easier to move and position deer, but it's only one leg out of the 4 on the stool. I looked at bucks but I'm sure doe harvest in these counties follows a similar trend.

😁

No baiting allowed in Colbert due to CWD buffer zone.

Excellent point on Colbert there Rainbow, but regardless of your most excellent observation, it's obviously still the corn's fault. Corn is always the question, answer and reason.

One other point to Lauderdale and Colbert. When CWD was discovered they extended the season even further with no limit!

Yep, different changes most likely producing the same result…..fewer deer. You can see what happens to your doe harvest numbers with a decline occurring……those other umpteen counties are showing decline too. Hunter perception probably hasn’t caught up the change yet …..or if it has its being blamed on “ a weird year”. I suspect the southeastern corner will likely follow the same pattern in the next year or two. It’ll be interesting to see how high the doe harvest keeps climbing this year in those areas. Last year we added 15-20% onto the harvest totals in a lot of those counties in just the 10 days of Feb…..If you get 25-35% increases then it’ll get interesting.

The thing is corn got legalized in the entire state the same day, so how do you explain the lag in the south east counties, if corn was the problem

The argument/logic is that the northern counties have more fragmented land holdings.... i.e. there's a corn pile on every 5 acre plot with someone killing a doe.