and depending on the moon phase and when high tide occurs, also the wind direction. You'd argue with a rock goobler.....

If in Alabama for the deer population to have the highest quality food in high enough quantities to reach there full potential equates to 10 deer per square mile. I hope I never have to hunt in a place like that again. I have hunted some areas of walker co that probably contain somewhere around that and you will hunt days on end without seeing a deer and I just can't hunt like that.

Dang your a sensitive little thing





The problem with this is that none of y'all are considering that habitat management can and does change carrying capacity of a property. I can show you places where the habitat could support 50-60 deer per square mile in a healthy condition and we try to keep the numbers down to 25-30 deer per square mile. These places yield an average of 2-3 deer per hour hunting and 200-225 lb bucks and 125-145 lb does (yea in the pines!)

The impact coyotes are having on Southeastern deer herds is a compicated equation, but the fact they appear to be having a major impact in some areas is now indisputable. The question is, how severe is the impact?

Calculating approriate doe harvests in a high coyote environment is a very complicated equation.

I disagree about 120 in Alabama being as good as it gets on average land.

With average land and a stable population, there should be enough groceries to have something better than a 120. The addition of any food plots, mineral supplements or other assistance, should the hunter or club want to add anything, could increase that, too.

Not disagreeing with you about your personal choices or that some areas may not have a lot of deer. But I don't believe a 3-year old at 110 or 120 won't improve over the next 3-4 years, if allowed to live and it has ample food, either.

Dang your a sensitive little thing



The problem with this is that none of y'all are considering that habitat management can and does change carrying capacity of a property. I can show you places where the habitat could support 50-60 deer per square mile in a healthy condition and we try to keep the numbers down to 25-30 deer per square mile. These places yield an average of 2-3 deer per hour hunting and 200-225 lb bucks and 125-145 lb does (yea in the pines!)

BSK

I read an article years back mentioning mature bucks seek out less than ideal habitats as a means to avoid predators, this is in reference to the core area he uses


have you ever read or studied anything of the likes

Fifteen feet thick topsoil helps too.

Were those 20 bucks of years passed only 3.5s and older? Has your number of hunters decreased or hunting methods changed? Must be a reason neighbors, habitat changes, something.

If in Alabama for the deer population to have the highest quality food in high enough quantities to reach there full potential equates to 10 deer per square mile. I hope I never have to hunt in a place like that again. I have hunted some areas of walker co that probably contain somewhere around that and you will hunt days on end without seeing a deer and I just can't hunt like that.

No I would not rather hunt in a place where lets say you hunt 30 days during deer season and 25 of those days you do not see any deer at all. I also do not want to hunt in a place where the deer have surpassed the carrying capacity of the land and the deer are unhealthy. But you can have a healthy deer herd and also be able to see deer most of the time when you hunt. You can have a happy medium where you can have a healthy deer herd without reducing the deer population to the point where you can all week without seeing a single deer. Where I hunt you see deer approximately 75% of the times you hunt We also kill deer every year that scores in the 140s and a few in past years in the 150s. This is what I prefer I have hunted in places where you could hunt for a week and not see a single deer and we didn't kill any bigger deer there than we do where I hunt now.

I disagree about 120 in Alabama being as good as it gets on average land.

With average land and a stable population, there should be enough groceries to have something better than a 120. The addition of any food plots, mineral supplements or other assistance, should the hunter or club want to add anything, could increase that, too.

Everything comes down to habitat. I realize most hunters don't own the land they hunt on, but that is why habitat management is such a big deal in the Southeast. Much of the Southeast's habitat just isn't conducive to high deer densities. Unmanaged hardwood forests and pine plantations have very low carrying capacities. But with the right management practices, you can have good densities of healthy deer. It all comes down to food resources, especially natural food resources. And that requires getting sunlight on the ground. Not in little patches, but in large sections of a property. Would you rather have 10 deer per square mile [DPSM] in an area with a carrying capacity of 15 DPSM (67% of capacity), or 40 DPSM in an area with a carrying capacity of 60 DPSM (again, 67% of capacity)? I think most hunters would want the later.

Just remember that ON AVERAGE, those numbers aren't out of the ordinary for forested land in the Southeast. But on average allows for a huge range of scores to exist. In almost every large-scale study I've seen, where a large number of bucks from a given age-class are collected and measured, the range of antler sizes (scores) grown by bucks of that age exceeds 100 gross inches, and a distribution of those scores on a graph displays a bell-shaped curve. By increasing food resources, managers can slide that curve farther up the scale, but that bell-curve will still exist and display at least a 100-inch range. That means that even if mature bucks only average 120, there will be a few that only grow 50-inch racks, and a few that grow 160-inch racks. The average of all mature bucks in the area will be around 120, but mature bucks with tiny racks and mature bucks with huge racks will exist in the population.

In the ridge-and-hollow hardwoods where I conduct most of my work, I've collected trail-camera pictures of hundreds of mature bucks, and they average between 120-125. However, that doesn't mean we don't have any monsters. Even with an average around 120-125, I've got pictures of a few mature bucks with fork-horn racks scoring around 50 gross, and a few monster 10s and 12s scoring in the 160s. That's just the normal bell-curve distribution of antler sizes grown by mature bucks in my area. But an average around 120 won't mean you don't have any large-antlered bucks, just not a high percentage of the mature bucks will grow large antlers.

Mike, I think the problem in that most guys in the state have a hard time believing that there are areas where you can hunt 25 times and see deer once or twice. I live in an area like that, and like you I'd like to have more deer. The deer here are nowhere near 50% of the carrying capacity and/but their size is not better than it is in areas where the deer are closer to capacity. If you don't have the right minerals in the soil, the deer don't get bigger, regardless of how few there are.

[Go out in February and look and see what type of browse is still available and at what quantities. If your weights are where they need to be for the area you hunt and there are still a good quantity of quality browse left killing more does will not increase the size of your bucks. It will only decrease the number of bucks recruited into the herd each year.

Most of the browse I look for is only green from April to October. There are a few (greenbriar, honeysuckle, etc.) that may be considered but I am usually looking at browse in August/September. From now till March, they are going to work on acorns or other mast, greenfields, and winter rosettes.