I’m sure that there’s some weather effect that’s adding onto the slowness but I’ve been tracking 11 years now and I’ve never seen anything remotely close to it being like this……Folks are still hunting and killing deer though as shown by game check…..I think the number of good bucks out there is just much lower…….The top end of your age structure pyramid has taken a severe hit along with a lot more high grading of young bucks……That’s what happens when you jack your buck harvest rates up by an additional 20-30% or more for several years……That isnt sustainable and why I fully expected for reality to catch up with us at some point……

Tracked a deer in Madison County earlier. The hunter tracked him around 200 yards and lost blood. Muzz and Cotton tracked him another 1,000 yards. Started out where the hunter lost it. Crossed a big pasture and the dogs took a right once we got into the woods. We go around 200 yards and find a speck of blood. The dogs turned back the way we came from then back off to the right where we found him DOA around 1200 yards from the hit site

I became friends with a tracker from Linden, Michigan years ago due to him getting a Kopov and wanting to know about mine…..I’ve watched his Facebook feed for quite awhile now and I can tell you that what most of us trackers do down here in Alabama doesn’t seem to hold a candle to what they’re doing up there……He said the other day that he had gotten 86 calls in a 48 hr period and he was telling folks that all the trackers on their network couldnt keep up at the moment……And he’s just constantly posting pics of one stud after another too…..They have a lot stricter rules than what we have though…..From what I can tell they allow a 2 buck limit with a 2 week gun season along with some muzzleloader days and a few more extra gun doe days ……I think the result is a bunch of good bucks that people want to find when they shoot one of their two……His volume of calls almost needs its own operator...

I say that just to point out that we are just the opposite in Alabama……on the other end of that spectrum……Its an unbridled free for all at this point…..“Come one, come all and corn the chit out of ‘em for months on end with a rifle and no enforced limits”….. and the quality heavily reflects it….Seeing what their trackers are doing in comparison is why I feel pretty confident that we just slid farther to that chitty end of the quality spectrum….Trackers seem to be a pretty good indicator of a few things……

I have no doubt that corn and 3 months of gun season plays a huge factor. Be interesting to see what the numbers show once we get some cooler weather. Good luck this season and keep the tracking stories coming!

This. I think you are reading to deep into this CNC. The best bucks I have on camera are seen in daylight most evenings, but myself nor anyone I hunt with has gone in the afternoon due to the extremely warm weather.

Our property the bucks start really showing in late January. After opening week it’s rarely hunted until then.

We don’t have a single good buck on camera still. Neighbors are your worst enemy or best friends when hunting. The one deer i have with any rack will get killed if he shows up in daylight. I’m to the point to turn my daughter loose on him.

I’m guessing this same scenario is playing out in a lot of places right now……This whole process is still ongoing because of just what you said, a lot of hunters probably start shooting a buck they typically wouldn’t when they start feeling like they have no realistic chance at a “shooter”…........It wasn’t hot around here this weekend…..It’s dang sure cool enough to be in a tree with a front moving through if you’re a bow hunter. I kind of wonder sometimes if the state is intentionally sitting back and just waiting for the hunters to knock things back so bad that the hunters themselves start calling for stricter rules…..I guess that’s one way of going about gathering public support……Truth be told it’ll probably be a pretty effective plan long term…..It just may be another 5-10 years from now before we see it all come full circle……and it’ll just be a matter of how chitty does it get in the meantime before it gets better.

The tracker business will be booming in a couple days.

That's what I'm predicting as well

I doubt it……We’ll definitely get some calls coming in next weekend for the youth hunt but I don’t expect any kind of “boom” to happen except a little bit around the rut…..The "boom" was the last few years while folks were shooting the chit out 'em......December is typically the slowest time period of the season….I think its gonna be a trickle of calls with a few tracks here and there…….The most depressing part is knowing that it isnt gonna get any better anytime soon….Folks will eventually start coming around to the realization of what we’ve done (are doing) just like they eventually did with the 2 per day doe slaughtering after it had already occurred…..The same way folks started looking around saying “Hey wait a minute, there arent as many deer anymore!”……They will say….”Hey wait a minute, where did the bucks go?”……You cant just shoot a pile of extra ones for multiple years in a row and think its not going to catch up with you eventually……Its just common sense to expect it…..I think the chickens are coming home to roost in many areas.

If the current forecast for opening rifle weekend holds, it's gonna be good hunting weather.

Here’s the conundrum…….When they passed the legalized baiting rule they should have went ahead and passed stricter buck harvest regulations of some kind in conjunction with that change in order to balance out the impacts…..From a herd management standpoint that would have been the best way of preventing what just happened…….

However, there’s more to consider than just the deer……there’s people management…..I get that…..Hunters would have pitched a fit back when baiting was legalized if the state reduced the buck limit or issued tags, etc…..They would have had their pitchforks out hollering “No new rules!!”……..A lot of hunters will still have this attitude when the drum beat starts for change in the coming years……But they have you by the short and curlies now because most people….even the ones who would protest new rules now…..will eventually concede over time if their hunting gets bad enough or if your tracking calls remain a fraction of what they used to be……Its just a matter of whether you concede now or whether you kick and scream for a while…..The baiting genie isnt going back in the bottle even if folks wanted it to……

The thing I keep pondering over and going back and forth with is the question of…..Exactly how bad have we dicked it up??.....A little bit?......A lot??.......Somewhere in the middle??.......I keep telling myself that the weather is just amplifying the perception of it being bad-bad and it’s probably closer to just being more moderate levels of negative impact than what it looks like right now……

However, there’s still the very real possibility that we’ve dicked it up bad in a lot of places and haven’t even reached the bottom yet……I’ve just gone three weeks without getting a single call other than one false alarm. As far as I can recall that has never happened in 11 years…..It may have my very first year or something but this is definitely a severe deviation from the norm…..which is why I say that there’s the potential that we’ve dicked it up pretty bad……Call rates for folks like me and John are direct reflections of hunter opportunities or lack there of. There’s no doubt that all the trackers are about to start getting more calls over the next couple weeks with gun season cranking off……We’ll see how the rest of the season plays out from here….. That will tell us a lot more about how much of this has just been the weather.....As it is right now though, bow season 2024 is officially going down as a flop.

Good grief I wish you’d get busy

The state allowing baiting, has nothing to do with the reason people aren't calling you

🤣

Went on a 3 mile track this evening. Got eyes on the deer twice. He was shot facing the hunter and he shot him through the arm pit. He'll live anyways