Variety truly is the spice of life. A lot of interesting opinions in this thread.

I don't envy the people who make our game rules.

No!

I hunt a state that requires you to tag the deer. I have seen in the past where in the case a local lives close or on the property shoot deer, load them up with no tag and off to the skinning shed. A tag does nothing if there is not a game warden there to enforce the rule. The fines are pretty stiff in said state and that still does not prevent the poaching. They know the likelihood of being checked is slim to none. The state understaffed on GW just like AL. When folks are never checked it does not take long for the unethical folks to figure it out.

All the above can be said for AL. You can't even report a known poacher in our state and have anything done about it.

If tags are used, they need to come from the state. It doesn’t need to be something you can just print yourself.
The 10% rule hits hard on this one. You have to be intrusive on the 90% just trying to keep the 10% in check. Albeit it’s prob more like 30-40% not doing right with game check. I’d be fine with tags.
Again, enforce the rules we have, THEN see if changes need to be made or they had it right the first time.

Where I hunt the deer we kill never see the back of a truck. No big deal to tag one, but loading up and taking to a check station would most likely not happen. Wouldn't mind dropping off the jawbone or whatever else they wanted at my convenience.

Yay

We used to have to do the check station thing in Missouri. We had to drive 15 miles and wait 2-3 hours in line to check them in. I’m sure that will go over well in Rural Alabama!!

We have tags here and they are basically stickers with all your info printed on them. They also have the months, days, and if you killed it on public printed on there and you have to notch out the date/public land portion when you kill the deer. Processors are the main enforcement tool as they will not take an untagged deer. The processors also have a log they fill out with your tag info before they start cutting. The wardens check the processors regularly from what I’m told. Puts a lot of burden on the processors but it seems to work. The SC style tag system could be workable in AL in my opinion and using processors to help regulate the private land guys is about the best you can do. If some guy wants to shoot 20 deer on his private property and process them all himself then more power to him. That’s a ton of work. Public hunting ground is a different story.

The public where I hunt a good bit, you’ll see wardens riding around, especially in early gun season when pressure is the highest. That keeps a lot of folks in line just by seeing the man in green jeans out and about. I’m sure there’s some folks that won’t tag one on public but I’d wager the vast majority do comply. The enforcement aspect is key and I think SC DNR does a good job of making their presence known on public ground. That’s what Alabama needs regardless if they take up a tag system or not. Unless I was on a WMA gun hunt I never ran into a game warden in 20ish years of hunting. I hunted the national forests and bow hunted WMA’s a lot and never once even saw a warden riding on the roads. That’s a real problem. Until the state gets serious about having law enforcement officers enforcing the regs, then there’s no benefit to really any harvest reporting requirement. Maybe the state should focus more on getting more officers in the field instead of setting up special lottery hunts and finding ways to add fees onto licenses.

This.

No

My answer,
Mr. Smith you have 48 to report your deer, my I get your CID#, I will be calling in 48 hours to see if you registered your deer, you do know the 1st time fine is $$$$’s if not I’ll be seeing you, have a good day sir and congratulations on the buck. Mr. GW.

A little extra work on GW but something but, should be able to get it done quickly

Kill buck, take chance, get home, saved tag, do 10-20 times, rinse/repeat

Similar story, we were snapper fishing after Deep Water Horizon blew up, the area we were in was open but closing at 5pm it was 4:30 a federal GW boat pulled up informed us of the closing which we knew, before they left they took boat information and their last words were “ you have been informed don’t let us catch y’all after 5, have a good day” and they left and we left.

This would be a good start.

For you guys that think we should rescind the 3 buck rule……Do you believe that the hunters’ freedom is more important than herd health and what’s best for the resource?? Do think that hunters should be allowed to have the most potential freedom possible even if the herd is being poorly managed as a result?? Where do some of you draw that line??

Another question that needs asking if you arent for tags…..What method has been shown to work the best in other states for getting compliance in adhering to buck bag limits??....or....... are you for no enforcement at all??......which leads back to the question I just asked in the last post above……^^^^^^

It’s been stated to exhaustion that no changes will make any difference until you have the ability to enforce said changes. You can make all the laws you want but if the ones who break the laws are not held accountable, you have nothing. Look around the country right now and see how well not enforcing laws is working.

False dilemma, at least where I'm hunting. We have more bucks than does.

You would think with all the revenue from baiting and non resident hunters they could beef up rhe number of game wardens. Also the fines would have to be much higher.

Same on my lease.

Horsechit…..The only place I’ve ever been that had more bucks than does was in a high fence and they had to abort the strategy because the bucks were killing each other and breaking up all their racks…..You might be seeing more bucks than does on your particular property due to how the areas habitat sets up but that’s not how it occurs across the broader landscape…..which is what matters.

My place is damn near 50/50, cameras don’t lie

CNC, until that type of attitude changes it doesn’t matter what you do