all reader are with allowing tss. hunters killing turkeys out to 40-45 yards with a 410 now 60 yards and better with a 12 . then theres the decoy thing . you make it easier to kill some thing then the more of them gonna die .just is what it is . lol


im surprised you cant buy a permit to use a electronic caller .

I'm talking about season dates due to some total bull chit dominant gobbler theory.

No CNC, the first thing we need to do is eliminate baiting completely and enforce the laws and fine the chit out of anyone caught baiting and take their hunting license for 5 yrs. Make intentional game violations hurt. That’ll solve most of the over harvest problems and the guy with 1-10 acres will go back to only being able to harvest zero or maybe a single or couple deer, at most, on his over hunted, poor habitat, over pressured property behind his home. .

You keep,saying it’s out of state hunters. Remember too that there are a ton of people from other states that own significant acreage in AL and they have to buy non resident licenses too, unless they own every single acre they are hunting, which most aren’t. Post up a chart showing annual out of state license sales by year. Not a google guess or estimate, but the actual number of out of state licenses sold by year. That’s a trend that would actually have statistical significance and mean something. Are you even sure that the number of out of state license sales has actually increased dramatically in the past 5 years? Could the license increases be the result of Alabama’s resident population growing from just under 4.8 million in 2018 to 5.143 million in early 2024? Average age of males making up this population increase being 38 yrs old and 66% white? Prime hunting demographic. How many of those 350,000 new residents hunt and now buy a resident license and leased up land or joined clubs? Just saying’. If just 10% of that 350,000 hunts, then that accounts for basically all of your license sales increase. Everyone is always complaining on here about all the urban sprawl with big subdivisions being built everywhere, causing property fragmentation, and how all these people are moving into alabama from out of state and crowding the roads. Every single one of those people becomes an alabama resident as soon as they rent that apartment or buy that house and get that AL drivers license. Are they not allowed to hunt because they were not born in alabama?

dominant gobbler theory ,,,,, yeah . lol

Post it up if you can find it......I dont know if the public is privy to that information

Here’s something I think is worth giving some thought to……What is the point of raising the additional $$$ through license sales if the resource doesn’t benefit from it??.....Isnt that what the money is supposed to be for?? If the deer herd is declining then doesn’t that defeat the point?...

So let me get this straight, the issue is the guy hunting 5-10 acres?

Hmm. There is zero evidence of that.

We had 20-30 guys in the 5000 acre club which most were thought to be good deer hunters.

It was entertaining hearing the bitching from

All I’m seeing are young bucks and a few does
All I’m seeing is does and a few young bucks
There’s too many does
We’ve killed all the does and not seeing any
I was seeing a ton of deer, where’d they go now
The guys not saying anything, were seeing the big bucks. lol or tried a lie to cover the truth

Very entertaining in my experience because what was being seen versus reality was often not one and the same

I’m not doubting there are areas where a declining population exist but I’d assume those are few and far between. AKA site specific depending.

No sign of any decline in our area. As I said before, we have more deer now then I think we’ve ever have. Leave us alone on your mission to get more rules and laws enacted.

I’d say probably 2/3’s of the state are seeing declines in buck age structure like Matt has said numerous times………A good portion of the southeastern part of the state is likely in overall population decline along with several other north Alabama counties ……You can bet your ass that Montgomery Co is currently declining……The least impacted areas being southwest Alabama and up the Mississippi line in the most rural areas with large landownership patterns.…….

When doe harvest rates significantly increase like you see in Montgomery Co….either the population is growing to support that increase or you’re lowering the population levels with all the extra killing…..one of those two is true and its likely not the first option….It’ll be interesting to see how many does they kill again this year…..That same pattern is happening in a lot of southeastern counties but Montgomery seems to be one of the worst

Must be nice.....

Yep, that’s CNCs theory and it’s valid to some extent. Now that baiting is legal, anyone with a small parcel, of what used to be marginal at best deer habitat, can turn it into a honey hole with the ability to bait. His theory is that all these smaller properties that used to take minimal deer annually, are now able to impact harvest numbers much more substantially. I tend to agree. Back when baiting was illegal, I had several neighbors successfully baiting numbers of deer off our big heavily managed property and onto their little 2-20 acre parcels surrounding us, where they were summarily executed on sight with zero restraint. I had those people busted by the GW multiple times and they’d be right back doing it again the following year. So yes, bait can and will definitely enable the small property owner to drastically increase the number of deer he can take annually on a sub par parcel and it is now happening all over Alabama.

It’s a lot of deer too… ……..You can easily have 10-20 acres that accounts for filling more buck tags now than the 1000 next to it…..and you can have a LOT of those 10-20 acre parcels in an area where parcels get chopped up…..Lots and lots of backyard hunters now too on less than that…..I’m not saying everyone is this way but most guys hunting the small properties arent thinking a whole lot about overall management either so many of these places are just shooting while the getting is good……Y’all can decide whether you want to label it “bad” or what…..I’m just pointing out what’s occurring……

Same here. Besides the obvious of what I see on properties I visit, some hunters were talking at the processor about how many deer they’re seeing. It’s more than they’ve ever seen. I still attribute most of that to lack of acorns in our area, but populations aren’t hurting anywhere up here.

Let me save someone the response that people have always hunted in their backyard……People have always turkey hunted public land too but when the youtube guys started their shows a lot more people began to turkey hunt public land……Seek One backyard deer hunting is really popular now….especially since everyone can freely sit over a corn pile without worrying about repercussions from it……Lots of young bucks are getting killed this way and that’s what results in the buck age structure decline……I actually think this may be getting hid in the numbers for some areas……The total buck harvest may not look that much different when in actuality WHICH bucks are being shot has changed significantly…..The harvest has probably moved back to more young bucks being killed and fewer old bucks being present in the herd in many areas

I can make a map if I need to……

Your area and southwest Alabama are probably the least affected areas……I don’t know but I suspect you don’t have a whole lot folks from out of state hunting in your area do you??......I’m guessing you probably haven’t seen an increase in hunters……I bet hunting lease prices are lower there too than down here…..which means less need for clubs to increase hunter density.....You don’t have the $20+ per acre stuff occurring yet……..I’m just throwing out some of the variables that are probably at play in what you see compared to other areas……

Carter I feel like this thread is just a version of the hunting club talk you are referencing 🤣

Do you guys get compensated for this??.....If so, they’re probably paying you too much…..

No one is saying some areas of the state aren’t having a decline in the deer herd due to more people killing more deer. What is being said, use this huge effort you are making to paint the whole state as a problem and try to get something done in the areas of concern. You have a valid concern but the concern you have has nothing to do with certain areas of the state. Fight for more zones like we have here in Louisiana and get lowered limits and shorter seasons for those areas. Fight for what you can prove and leave the rest of us alone.

I’ve said over and over that some areas are affected and some arent……Don’t know how you take that to mean otherwise…….The areas that arent effected probably represent about 1/3 of the counties……with 2/3 being impacted……Monroe Co is in the 1/3…..noted.