I’m familiar with that area…..There's a lot more small properties with fragmented habitat as compared to say Russell or Bullock Co………Montgomery Co has a much higher rate of 5,10, 20 acre hunters or even 40-100 acre hunters…..Its a lot more diced up with less big, big properties….Put your finger in the center of town on Google Earth…go out in any direction and someone is sitting over a corn pile in just about every woodlot you can put your finger on……

That’s where your impact is coming from…..A corn pile in every wood lot and the back of every cow pasture has a lot more folks getting a slice of the pie……Sure there’s still a good deer population there but it’s likely less than it used to be for some or maybe most….Its being reduced from a lot of deer to a moderate amount…..Instead of seeing 25 per sit the norm becomes 10-15……..then 5-8…..That’s how that works……

I’m just saying, if this is what you see happening then there’s a good explanation for it…….People arent just deer watching…..There was an additional 1000 deer game checked last year in Montgomery Co in a county that was averaging around 3100…..That’s a lot of extra……For some reason southeast Alabama hunters slayed the does last year…..I have a couple theories as to why

My guys and gals killed 6 deer this past weekend. The first hunts of the season. They killed 4 does. 115lbs, 107lbs, 96lbs and 82lbs. 2 bucks were killed. A kid killed his first and it was a 95lb spike and another guy that is 70yrs old killed is first buck ever. 135lb 6pt. That was a great trip but I fussed at them. As soon as they each killed a deer they pretty much stopped shooting. I would have liked the to kill a couple more does. They wanted to shoot bucks only after they killed their does. Hopefully we can kill a few more next week when we go up to camp. Judging by the numbers of does and yearlings seen, we need to take a few more out.

I predict that this years numbers will be just as worthless as all the previous years

So far this has been a great year in our area. More large bucks at every processor than ever. I'm seeing more deer and larger bucks myself.

I predict that many counties are going to have a trend line that looks like this………



Just like the green line for does on this chart back when we had the two per day doe slaughter……Something to notice is that there’s a point where doe harvest numbers come back down and match the same total as before the slaughter began…..What we all know to be true though is that even though harvest totals may be the same… the deer population post doe slaughter was not……The same thing is currently happening again……but this time its bucks and does that are taking the hit. The doe slaughter situation had some self-correction that took place once folks finally wised up to what was happening…..The current situation is not the same though from that standpoint.