Here's a list showing the counties where doe harvest is up the most over the last 4 years….. There’s quite a few more in the 10-15% range……Wilcox, Bibb, Mobile, Lawrence….etc…..Keep in mind that we’re just talking about the doe harvest here…..This is on top of the increases in buck harvest that many places are seeing…..I think these are the places that are likely compounding the issue of killing too many bucks by now shooting too many does……


Covington 59%
Montgomery 49%
Henry 43%
Bullock 43%
Lowndes 39%
Geneva 38%
Coffee 33%
Autauga 33%
Houston 30%
Crenshaw 30%
Dale 29%
Jackson 26%
Macon 24%
Pike 21%
Russell 20%
Barbour 19%
Chilton 16%
Chambers 15%

Wonder how much of that increase is a direct result of increased food costs at the grocery store? Folks killing 2 or 3 more does per year to supplement their grocery bill?

What Treemy dog said and I also wonder how much the Chuckie Check/Game Check participation has increased over the past 4 years too? I'm betting its up 30-50% from where it was originally. Both could be driving factors in the percentage increases. Or it could also be caused by having a bunch of people like us. When we first got our property and established the co-op with our neighbors, it had been dog hunted for the past 25 yrs. We didnt shoot anything but older age class bucks and injured or cull deer for the first 6 years and never killed a single doe off of it. Population now is probably 5X what it was when we first got it. We started back killing does on our co-op 3 yrs ago, because we needed to, in order to keep the herd and ratio in check with where we wanted it. We were a zero for reported doe kills for the first 6 yrs and now are averaging about 30-35 per year that are all being reported. You get a bunch of big managed clubs or private lands in this same situation in a given county and it'll skew the statistics quickly.

Yup I shared showing they get I think 3 to 1 matching money. Saw a poster somewhere showing how they’re funded
Nothing is free

I always mention how Arkansas looks at duck hunting. Way back in the early to mid 90s there was an article mentioning Arkansas saw 8 million in revenue daily from duck hunting. I’d imagine it’s at least 10 Xs that these days. It’s BIG business. Look at Mack’s prairie wings. Never been to the new store but used to frequent the hole in the wall place. Look at all the technology across the hunting equipment and look at the cost associated with. It’s a huge industry.

That was my point that Teague fails to grasp. Math is probably hard for him. 3 to 1 in matching license money? Per my example above, which is probably pretty dang close to accurate, out of state licenses probably account for close to, if not more than three times more total license revenue $$, than all the in state licenses sold. When you throw the Pittman match on top of that, in total $$, you've got the local residents, with the match, generating a total of $12 million, and the out of staters generating a total of around $32 million. Like I said, it's about the maximizing the total $$$$$$$$$$$$$$. It's also why Chuckie has been raising the price on the WMA licenses, instituted the baiting license, and also raised the price on resident licenses over the past several years. Chuckie is never going to do anything to intentionally lower the number of out of state hunters. Anyone that thinks that is the case is just kidding themselves. It's where the majority of the wildlife funds come from and is an economic boom for the state and all the small towns, restaurants and businesses in the fall, not only in the actual $$ spent by the hunters coming in, staying in hotels, and eating at restaurants, but also to the state in the sales taxes collected on those expenditures. He's raised the price about as high as some of them are willing to pay now, in order to continue to come here and hunt, so watch for no more increases for a while.

Florence always mentions bass tournaments and the millions in revenue brought into the area. Ball tournaments bring bank. How much you travel ballers spend? Anything that gathers large numbers of folks into an area brings money. Heck look how much a little ole concert brings in

Love it or hate it the world doesn’t go around on feelings. Money is the bottom line otherwise nothing else exists.

Let’s look at the doe trend line for a few other counties to see how they compare………This is what helps let you know that those above ^^^^^ increases arent just from an increase in GC participation……

Choctaw……1308…….1250……1245…..1235
Clarke…….2063……2152…….2115…….1983
Marengo…..1629…….1584……1509……..1620
Monroe……..1847…….1827…….1678……..1788
Pickens……..2246………2101……..2208……..2058

We just went from 200K hunters to 235K hunters…….If you ask me to give up 3 bucks and go to 2…….then I don’t want to look up in 5 years and suddenly we have 275K hunters as more continue to pack in to pay for lease prices……If there’s not some kind of cap on the total amount of hunters you’re gonna let in to pay for inflated lease prices then supporting stricter bag limits would be a hard no…..

Just for fun, let's assume our co-op mentioned above was in Choctaw county. Us starting to shoot needed does, and checking them in at a rate of 30-35 per year would've caused Choctaw county to show a percentage increase in doe harvest of 2.75 - 2.8% in the year we started doing it, and that would be the effect of just one tiny 5000 acre contiguous block of 4 separately controlled properties. Meanwhile, Choctaw county is made up of 581,000 acres of land, yet one group of guys on just 5000 acres can change the total harvest for the entire county by almost 3%. Just 10-15 big or even decent sized clubs, changing hands, changing membership, changing management practices, changing reporting participation, in any given county, can have a massive effect on what the trend lines look like. Likewise, if clubs are not seeing the numbers of deer they think they should be, or want to see, and do what we did the first 6 years and say, we are going to build up our herd numbers, and completely quit shooting does or severely restrict doe harvest, which I know some have done, you'll see the harvest numbers start to fall off and you'll think you have a more significant problem than you actually do. Taking 12-16 years of harvest data and breaking that into 4 yr averages and comparing it might actually show something but looking at trends over just the short period of time that game check has been in place, when we know that participation was minimal at best in the early years, simply cannot be used to establish anything that is ultimately useful for determining anything other than the number of deer checked. I understand your concern, but there are just too many variables and unknowns to make any blanket hypothesis that all the deer in Alabama are now being killed off because of corn piles, or out of state hunters. I'm sure that Game check has the ability to provide how many deer are checked by out of state hunters versus Alabama residents. You ought to petition Chuck to release that data. I may be wrong but I think when you look in the mirror, you'll see that they problem is yourself, as in Alabama residents doing 95% of the killing. Yes I'm like you and I too think that too many bucks are being killed, but way too many bucks have been being killed in Alabama since the Charles Kelly days. It's why the state's overall age structure and herd is pretty much abysmal in comparison with reaching its genetic potential and it has pretty much sucked for the past 50 yrs. Too many young bucks being killed, overly extended breeding seasons, late dropped fawns, overstressed bucks, etc etc. I dont know what the solution is because it is quite apparent that most of the state of Alabama, likes to shoot any buck they see with a rack on his head and nobody that does, has any plans to slow down or stop doing it.

Here's both the good news and the bad news. We are not going to have a choice, that decision is going to be made by the department and the CAB, with absolutely no regard or input whatsoever, from the landowners or residents. Input will be given and ignored, just like the input from the deer biologists like Matt Brock and Chris Cook. If they dont listen to them, what makes you think they give a crap what you think. And what will happen, the residents will be pissed and say I'm not giving up killing bucks, does or being limited to just two bucks a year, I used to kill 10 a year and everything was fine then so I'm going to just do what I want. Screw Chuck Sykes and the new regs, I'm going to continue to kill any buck I want and just wont check them after I kill my two and I wont be caught, because AL doesnt have even one GW per county statewide. Just like a whole bunch of residents have done since it went from 1 buck per day to only 3 per season. Pot meet kettle. The sooner you recognize it, the less stressed your life will be.

Can't please everyone, I suppose. The 6,000 acre trophy club who has a strict antler requirement and are conscientious about doe harvest are playing by the same rules as Uncle Billy and Aunt Gert, 1.5 miles down the road who gets to hunt 5-6 times a year on their 60 acres they are still paying the note on. They count on killing 5-7 deer a year to put in the freezer to help the grocery bill and cover the vittles for the New Year's party they have with the whole family that coming in. They don't give a crap about alot of things the trophy club members do and Uncle Billy has a well worn 30-30 ... proof of his prowess as a deer hunter, complete with a lean-to shed with 10-12 sun bleached basket rack antler sets on top that used to be seen on the club's game cams. Good, bad, or indifferent, they are utilizing the resource in their own way within the bounds of the law, just like the club members are. And no matter how hard you pitch stricter deer regs to Billy and Gert, they are going to be the first and loudest ones at the public hearing yelling against changes that affect their home-place hunting tradition.

Billy and Gert ha ha I think everybody on here knows them and their grandson who comes over to kill his 3 bucks off the 60 acres too. Your right though nothing is going to change with the regulations or length of season.

Abolt you are saying the same thing I’ve been saying for 2 years with this bait pile/ GC deal. The information the GC provides is not enough information to make herd management decisions. Period.

My opinion is that hunters have been creating a food source and using it to kill deer for decades. It’s nothing new.

Abolt300 asked me earlier about which was it…..more hunters or the fragmented property theory??.....and I said both……The impact on Montgomery Co is probably a prime example of both at play…..That county has lots of smaller properties for folks to be able take advantage with a feeder or corn pile…..Its also a well known county for good deer hunting that draws hunters to seek land there……so what you end up with is people flocking to the area scooping up any and every 5-20 acre parcel that someone will let them hunt where they can set up a feeder……You’ve probably had the double whammy of having the hunter density increase as well as more properties being utilized…..and that’s why you see the big increase in harvest occurring for both bucks and does…….Hunters are utilizing the small properties more in all of the “good” areas……A lot of the impact depends on the number of small properties that exist in an area and how coveted the area is to hunt in….There probably arent as many people flocking to Marshall Co to scoop up every 40.....

It was like that back I the mid 90s when baiting was illegal and a buck a day was in place.

We had folks hunting all around our 5000 acre club and a few that slipped in. They appreciated all the hard work we were doing, one pasture went from not seeing a racked buck to killing numerous 2.5 and 3.5 yr olds in that pasture. Actually there several different pastures where this occurred.

It is what it is until a fence goes up

That’s why fences keep going up. Ppl pay money for large blocks of land hoping to manage it, and quickly realize they can’t unless their neighbors agree. If they can’t agree it sells to the next guy or a fence is erected.

That’s why I pushed for buck limits so hard!!!!!

The guys that invited me to come here were experiencing similar situations

There’s so much truth to this it’s insane. This is what’s currently going on in our state. That 10 acres that use to be irrelevant is a diamond in the rough against your trophy 800. And with less acreage, you’re way less inclined to manage or let walk that borderline three year old. When they are done with their three bucks they start taking family. I’ve witnessed it.

So this begs the question. Landowner rights versus public property so to speak.
It’s a slippery slope and I try and look at both sides

I learned not all land is the same. I could take 20 acres on that 5000 acre lease and kill trophy and does all I cared to. But it’s have to be that certain 20 acres.

This is no different than what I’m seeing with duck hunting and properties. Big money is buying land around their properties to control the pressure.

Honestly if I win the lottery I’ll be one of those guys. 😝

The solution to how many deer are killed isn't limiting amout of license sold or how much corn is put out. It's limiting how many deer are killed , and the only reasonable way to do that is tags. I'm not saying I'm for that, but that's why they have lottery out west. The government ain't going Backwards on dollars so yall can hang that crap up.