I’m predicting that this is gonna be a down year overall for most hunters around the state……Buck harvest will be down 15-20% or more in many counties........

i predict i will still have buck fever every time i see a deer with horns..

CNC - What are you basing your opinion on?

Harvest trends over the last 4-5 years….. along with a hunch……Most of north Alabama was down 15-30% last year……I think South Alabama is about to follow suit and then we’ll find ourselves at a new norm moving forward for annual harvest totals…..North Alabama may see a slight uptick from last season but it wont recover back to what it once was

We have more pictures of 2-3yo bucks than weve ever had. I expect 2/3 of them will be dead by february 10. Also have pics of 3-4 older bucks i would like to kill. Most people im talking to around here are seeing the same. A little patience would lead to a really good season next year. I dont expect it to happen.

Nothing happens i predicte ill be eating deer meat next year if I hunt . Id like to kill 5 or 6. I get a little help getting them to the house . Its brown its down this year.

Based on my camera activity, It’s not going to be great.

I disagree. Acorns are spotty at best. Food plots may not do well in large areas of the state. They’re predicting a dry fall and early winter. Corn will be king and people are going to kill the piss out of deer over election frustrations.

Did Kamala promise a buck in every crosshair?

You can only take a population and “kill the piss out of ‘em” above the norm for so long before its catches up to you and there’s no longer a piss load to kill…..We’ve already been killing the piss out of ‘em for a few years now…..

I may not be the most normal person, but I just can't understand someone who would take their emotions out on a deer herd because of an election.

I think 4+ year old bucks are becoming more scarce in many areas and part of this harvest decrease will come through a portion of the hunters no longer having many “shooters” to target……That big increase in buck harvest we’ve seen over the last few seasons has likely came from more of the 2-3 year old age class being taken out……

I predict that I will fire my old processor and take all my deer, except for dog deer that I process myself, to my new processor who makes delicious bologna and summer sausage and did not almost kill me like my old processor. .

After the Harris/Walz victory, the Lamb will lay down with the lion. There will be no more killing.

Based on my cameras and others I’ve talked with I completely agree with Cnc. A few have some shooters but the majority don’t. My honey hole I’ve had pics of 3 bucks where it was 10-15 racked bucks 2 years ago.

She promised 2 bucks in every crosshair, extended seasons, unlimited buck tags, free bullets, free camo, free treestands, and also reparations for the poor AL hunters that dont have any big bucks to kill like they do in midwest.. She's working hard to buy those Aldeer votes.

We've been killing the piss out of bucks since they opened deer seasons back up again after the original re-stocking. I dont think that you'll see a big decrease from the guys shooting 4+ year old bucks because there simply are not that many in Alabama hunters exclusively targeting older bucks. It's all the 1-3's being taken out of the herd by the semi-trailer loads, every season, that are making up the overwhelming majority of the buck harvest. Maybe Matt can provide the data but I'd bet that somewhere around 85% of alabama's annual buck harvest is made up of deer younger than 4, with the majority being 2-3 yr old basket racked 4, 6, and 8 points.

I’ve seen a pot load of em just like every year… but I aint

The areas of the state I work in have not seen a decrease in deer, despite killing the piss out of em. It’s actually stable to increasing most everywhere in west and north AL that I’ve been. Deer populations are not the issue. Age structure is however. I think we both agree on that.

Season prediction? I’m gonna suck it up like always, but make some great memories along the way.

I predict those that always gripe about deer numbers or size of bucks will continue to do so.

Gonna be tough to pin down a good buck with the amount of acorns out there.

I didn't know anybody killed bucks anymore. I thought everyone waited to let them grow for just one more year.

I'm gone bust the $hit out of them. And fill my freezer like every year.

Bad data gathering so no use in making predictions

More mature bucks on camera than I've ever had.

287 deer killed for 24-25 season before the season even opened, according to gamecheck. We are off to a good start.

With the drought we've experienced in North Alabama, i think opportunities will be plentiful due to food sources being more limited, causing deer to travel further for food. JMHO.

Quality of bucks could be down a little though. I hunted SE Kansas last year for the first time and they've been in a drought for 3-4 years. The outfitter told us the quality of bucks was way down and that's what we saw. I saw 3-4 yo bucks that wouldn't score more than typical Alabama bucks of the same age.

hell , i aint hunted in 5 years and my finger is itching really bad . even the ones in the yard aint safe this year . deer come slipping through by itself me setting on the porch , it gone .

I hav one really good deer for me on camera - likely a mounter 11 point and a few solid 10s and one other stud older 8 and a few older ugly bucks - all n clarke county - could b great season - if i killed 11 and stud 8 will be tremendous season for me

There is BEAUCOUP deer this year……..
A lot, lot lot, bunches of um. 😜😄
Everybody I’ve talked to has a good deer to hunt.

Yep, there’s a lot of middle aged deer running around. Don’t know how, but they’re everywhere.

I hate we not gonna hav lush fields by opening weekend - i doubt we hav rain next 3 weeks

One of my fav things about deer season is seeing fields grow before season - mine are all crap and no rain in sight - may not hav any by early November

In came in October 1 in zone e.

Based on camera surveys I will see a huge number of does and a pile of crappy horned bucks. I am gonna rename this place the SE Bama Home for Genetically Challenged Bucks.

I predict we gonna have fun at the camp. We gonna eat good. We gonna drink good and occasionally kill a deer. Basically the same thing that happens every year.

You could do all that at home. Good eating, drinking, and crappy deer hunting sounds like Louisiana to me

I had a place we thought was "genetically challenged" and by just removing 2 hunters from a total of about 6 that killed "cull bucks" because they didn't have brow tines.... Each year they were no longer hunting with us the antlered bucks increased in number to the point that where we once had spikes, one horned deer and all kinds of messed up racks... NOW had some decent racked bucks. About 5 years goes by and the dynamics of the horn characteristics completely changed.

That's just from removing 2 dudes that killed 3-5 deer per season but all were basket racks. We invited them to hunt somewhere else. They really weren't doing a thing wrong by most hunting club's standards.

Great decision. However, I don't think the average person would believe this until they saw it with their own eyes. I didn't really think it was going to play out like that myself I just thought the genetics were all piss poor and there was nothing I could do about it.

WRONG. Apparently.

You have to accept that your trigger finger on young bucks is what influences your deer herd. It's not your food plots or your doe blasting that gets results.

Season Prediction = like every 97.945254% of the buck harvest will = 1-3 year olds

Folks always wonder where all of their young bucks disappear to……The answer is that bucks are not going to stay stock piled on one property while everyone in the larger area around you “shoots the piss out of ‘em”…..They are going to spread out to fill the voids

……AND……They especially arent gonna stay stock piled on one property if the doe population on said property is scant…..You cant think that you can manage for a 1:1 or 1:2 buck to doe ratio on 1000 acres while everyone around you is shooting the piss out of bucks…..Bucks arent gonna fight to the death on that 1000 acres when there’s voids with no competition all around them…..Buck to doe ratios occur across big areas….If you have too many does like some folks want you to believe is the problem then you’re bucks wouldn’t be disappearing to other properties.

CNC I’m not promoting killing the piss out of em. I’m just telling you that’s what’s going to happen because it’s the mentality of AL hunters.

A lot of the reason the average hunter has the mentality they do is because they’ve been misinformed and hoodooed into shooting a bunch of does to keep the populations levels down……To each their own but I’m not buying into it…..You need at least 3-4 does for every buck if you want to hold them on your property and keep them from going elsewhere……

If you've got less than several thousand acres, it doesnt matter how many does you have available for each buck that you have on your property, it's not going to keep them from going elsewhere from Dec -Feb in Alabama. The overwhelming majority of your bucks will wander on and off of your property regardless, and most especially in the rut. The best that you can hope for is that your property, on any given year, encompasses the core/area/home range for several mature bucks in your area, which means they will spend a decent percentage of their time on it. Bucks will travel during the rut. They'll walk until they hit the trail of a hot one. Might be a 1/2 a mile or it might be 5, 10, 15 miles. It is just what they do. We control a lot of land and we kill new bucks, that we have zero history or pictures of, each year. At the same time, we have bucks that we have 3-4 years worth of pics of, killed on neighboring properties 2-4 miles away every year.

Goat, I have been trying. Been 4+ year olds or better for at least 5-6 years, I have great mixed habitat, great plots, lots and lots of does and essentially no hunting to my north, south and east and not much west to Rucker. I don’t hear 5 rifle shots in a year.

I predict there will be a lot of deer shot that require the services of a man and his dog. If these hunters would spend a few dollars on bullets and time shooting their rifles, I predict the number of gut shot deer would plummet.

More deer shot and not reported. It was tried from a few I know and got by without reporting. It will only get worse. Tooooooo many people hate rules/laws.

I predict that we will have arguments because everybody thinks they set the standard for what a deer hunter should be. I predict that I might get all huffy when someone tells me that. I bought this place to hunt I pay the taxes on it also. Buy you some land and do like you want to. I ain’t shot any thing yet but if they come in after while I have got that old excited feeling

And government will cover all taxidermy fees

Out of 8 properties this yr we don’t have a shooter on cam so far. Last yr we had several and only took 1. Not sure what’s up this yr.

Hunting is not hunting any more with game cameras and baiting. It is just live grocery shoppng. If you are not killing a monster every year you suck or he aint there. Excuse me the correct verbiage is killing your pet.

i kill the guys next doors pet deer not mine .

Voting for Trump will add 10 points to your bucks antler score……….just saying………

Got more good deer on my property than i ever had. 3 tens - 11/12 point and 2 stud 8s and a few mature/old 8s.

Harvest numbers are never correct, which don't mean piss to me anyhow. Long as people do like some of the meat eaters did where I hunted, most deer will thrive. I never shot a doe, but noticed the population never grew too much. There was one guy disabled that didn't work that killed no telling how many deer one year. These folks named their deer. Not saying they let any bucks go intentionally, but they probably did shoot most of the does and probably let a few go in each area they hunted. Not saying they let bucks go, but could have some years. All does seem to get breed year after year. If I was hunting around these folks I would just take does if I wanted some meat, cause there not going to be many mature bucks in their neighborbood. You can't shoot what's not there. These folks stacked up the venison year after year. I doubt they worried about harvest reports, but whether or not the freezer was full enough.

My wife killed a stud 9 yesterday afternoon. One of the best she's ever killed and she's killed some good ones.

I grew up hunting acorn flats, creek crossings, pinch points and walking clearcuts.
I’d be better off if they outlawed corn again.
My wife and kids wouldn’t
But the deer population around here is booming

not the first shooter on my properties yet

Have you seen any benefits to the reporting other than not getting a ticket if you don't and giving people like CNC some worthless numbers to play around with?

Deer are going to be in valley and bottoms. Slim pickings on acorns and drought killed food plots. Corn will get a lot killed this year.

This!

Well, I guess I don't know anything about deer hunting. And I guess, according to you, I Suck too.

I'll just get back to eating my bowl of deer chilli.

Someone needs to write a computer program to keep up with GC numbers on a daily basis.......It would be interesting to be able to compare where we are on any given day to years past........This has been the slowest start to a season that I can remember in the last 10 years

Every day 4-6:30 corn slinger 6-8 does. Every 2-3 days a buck come to eat right behind them. The buck comes in again between 3-5am. Sooooo can’t call it hunting it will be I’ll go shoot a doe this afternoon just pick the evening when ya not busy. Corn will be the way to go green fields even pastures look terrible.

I not sure we hav fields before thanksgiving - i plan to re throw when rain - but aint no rain close for a while and it may be a while after that

I got more deer n clarke than i ever seen and a lot of mature and a handful of studs - about 1/2 dozen shooters

More podcasts and YouTube channels about hunting would help us all out.

The first week or two of bow season has been pretty consistent for the last few years……Everyone has some deer coming to a corn pile or feeder for several weeks leading into the season opener and then you get a flurry of arrows being slung at them for the first couple weeks no matter what……resulting in a flurry of tracking calls. This year its dramatically different and its not just me seeing it…..A lot of counties down here haven’t even reached 1% of last year’s buck harvest yet…..meaning that there isnt chit getting shot right now……Maybe it’s just the perfect storm of bad environmental conditions with the full moon we had to start off followed by warm weather…….

CNC, up here, the start of bow season has been unreal. Ppl are killing BIG bucks, lots of them, and seeing as many or more deer than ever. It’s weird how it can be so different in different regions.

“Patterns” have a tendency to start showing themselves very quickly…….so just for chits and giggles I went ahead and put the numbers on a map…..Instead of just comparing the start of this season to last year’s total I used the average of the last four years’ totals……Yes its still really early but the pattern that is emerging is setting up just like I was suspecting it would in the original post of this thread. We shall see where it goes from here………

Been a great start down here. Bigger bucks coming In the shop than I've seen in yrs.

So far so good for me. I’ve been seeing quantity and quality this year. Typically I’d have pulled off my personal place by now to let it rest until January, but they have remained consistent even with the pressure. It’s shaping up to be a memorable season.

Chuckles better hurry up and get those tags issued before the buck hunting completely tanks……This sucks.

Just out of curiosity and with nothing else to do I went ahead and made a map showing the doe harvest as well……Pretty interesting that a county like Blount has already killed 15% of their annual doe harvest. I guess zone c folks gotta get after ‘em while they can…..Of course keep in mind also that zone b in the far southern portion of the state just opened doe season 4 days ago

So you would think that whatever impact baiting was going to have would play out in the first 3-4 years of it being legalized and that would be that…..BUT…….thanks to the way we’ve educated the public on “buck to doe ratios and how to fix them”…..I don’t think that’ll be the case…..

I’ve said this before but I’ll throw it out there again…….I think you’re going to get an initial impact on the buck populations in the first several years but once hunters start seeing fewer bucks, more late born fawns, weaker ruts, less opportunities, etc…etc…..they are going to start hammering the does and in doing so create a second wave of impact/change…..I think that’s the phase we’ve probably entered…..South Alabama hunters shot the chit out of does last year compared to normal for some reason…..Either hunter attitude changed or there was a big influx of additional hunters......either way a bunch more does got shot.....which most likely is going to result in less bucks being produced.....

11/4

Updated map for bucks and does……This is just watching the harvest come in week by week ……You can see where the bulk of the harvest is or isnt occurring right now…..most of it being in North Alabama up to this point……Again this is the % of the annual total that has already been killed…..

Bucks


Does

Cnc I started trapping beavers again. Number 32 died yesterday I love picking at you about habitat. Now that i have the best habitat you could ask for like it was 25 years ago I shall add to the game check numbers. Wife and I hunted first 2 days of bow season seen 17 deer. Been working for deer and duck hunters ever since but should be done this week. It is a joy to pull up on some farms that you would love to hunt and make it better habitat. I want ever be Matt Brock but he probably enjoys parts of his job as much as hunting.

Just hope me or my daughter gets one. Running out of venison ain't good

First time in a club in 10 years. It will be a success whether I kill one or not. Just sitting by the fire drinking cold beer/whiskey with good company I can’t wait 👍

I have not hunted any since October 16. But we are taking kids on my place this weekend and I am looking forward to seeing some smiling faces on them hopefully killing their first deer

Well done!

That could be a Red Mirage.

8% of the spikes and 4 pointers in Jefferson County have been killed. That's how I read that map. Less 5 year old bucks than Black Panthers in any given county in this State.

You can't eat dem horns...

you know what I'm saying?

Lets see how many get game checked in the next couple days......Current tally is 18,361

You’ll get 18000 this weekend with the weather.

4,000 so far

When I left my processor they had 134 for today. At ONE processor.