Droptines, do you hunt in or near the black belt? It seems like the folks that are real gung Ho on carrying capacity and such are used to seeing 20-30 deer in a weekend.
I never see that many. Ever. ( I didnt even see that many this whole season). And the land I hunt is nowhere near capacity, obviously.

But for the most part, their populations are WELL below what we have here, even though their habitat, soil and available food is exponentially better than ours.

If you truly want quality hunting where all different age classes exist in your area, you should be in favor of populations based on the carrying capacity of the habitat.

I can assure that their deer population are not WELL below mine. The only other state I have hunted was in east Texas and they definitley had more deer, but I am also friends with people that hunt in the midwest and they all see way more deer in a hunt than we do in person and on camera.

I agree with this statement, but it seems hard to educate people that it is not always necessary to shoot every doe you see until it is almost too late.

I guess it all depends on what your goals are. If you simply want to see a lot of deer and don't really care about the quality, then your opinion of deer hunting in the future may be that the overall experience is worse than what it is now. If you are more interested in increasing your chances of killing a mature deer, the idea of keeping populations of deer within the carrying capacity of the habitat they live on should excite you and be a priority on the property that you hunt.

Look it up. I'll bet you a dollar Alabama has more deer than any of the states I mentioned.

The reason you see a lot of deer in certain areas of those states is because they are not vast woodlands like what we have in most of Alabama. I've seen over 50 deer in one sitting in Kansas, but that was on a narrow strip of woods in between two giant cut milo fields that covered more than 1000 acres.

The funny thing here is that we killed more mature bucks every year on our land until the biologists came in with the yall got shoot x amount of does every year. Our buck harvest declined every year afterwards until we convinced our landowner that it was not in his best interest to keep having us follow the biologist advice to the letter.

Look it up. I'll bet you a dollar Alabama has more deer than any of the states I mentioned.

The reason you see a lot of deer in certain areas of those states is because they are not vast woodlands like what we have in most of Alabama. I've seen over 50 deer in one sitting in Kansas, but that was on a narrow strip of woods in between two giant cut milo fields that covered more than 1000 acres.

I hope you do not truely believe the population estimates this state puts out on our deer population....

I hunt in Bullock, Russell, Macon and Madison counties in Alabama. I also have farms in Lincoln and Marshall counties in TN. My best tract is a farm that I own in Lincoln county TN where the population also happens to be the lowest. That tract has been managed very well and it flat out produces.

I'm not saying there are not parts of Alabama where the population could be higher, some areas could be A LOT higher. My point is that there are MANY parts of Alabama where the population is FAR above the carrying capacity and a lower population is not necessarily a bad thing for those areas.

Just curious, what method did the biologist use to determine the number of does that needed to be killed on your property?

Come on man, there is plenty of data provided by multiple sources to indicate that our population is higher than those other states.

Where are these places where the deer are far above the carrying capacity.

I don't know what data you're speaking of?? I hope they really do know a number. I do agree that we may have more deer, but we also have a ton more places for them to live and hide. Which seems to me what they are basing their numbers off of. When you have hunters with boots on the ground going off of cameras, sightings, and sign saying there are less deer, I tend to agree with them more than someone saying " well this area has always had tons of deer, and the habitat has done ?this? in the last several years, and there's this many hunters, so there must be this many deer." It just seems that's what is happening more and more often.

The funny thing here is that we killed more mature bucks every year on our land until the biologists came in with the yall got shoot x amount of does every year. Our buck harvest declined every year afterwards until we convinced our landowner that it was not in his best interest to keep having us follow the biologist advice to the letter.

Seriously? If you can't concede this, there is no use discussing it any further.

Good luck with your situation guys. I truly hope you get whatever it is you are looking for out of your property. I'm out...