Why does Alabama have the worst genetics compared to surrounding states?

We grow bigger deer than Florida. Big deal.
Whats the factors?

I disagree with your assumption. Alabama, Tenn, Georgia, south Carolina are all similar. Mississippi grows some fine deer in the delta but the majority of Mississippi is on par with Alabama.

Age is more of a factor than the genetics. Alabama does not try to restrict the harvest of yearling bucks like other states. Granted these guidelines below don't protect young deer, they provide a greater survival rate of yearling bucks as opposed to our state laws.

The state of MS and their harvest guidelines statewide are better than AL. They start in the Hill and Southeast zone with min. 10" spead and 13"main beam length. The delta zone has a min. 12" spread and 15" beam length.

Georgia for example has a two buck limit where one buck is required to have a minimal 4 points on one side at least 1" or longer.

Alabama can not really compete with the MS river delta. That place is just something special all in its own.

There are some freak nasty bucks killed in Alabama every year. Man in my club killed a 192" in Bibb co last year. Too many people want to kill a buck instead of a 130+ deer. Hey won't get big hen killed at 100"

I've seen several pictures of bucks killed in the Florida panhandle that are as good as anything I've seen killed from Prattville south in Alabama.

Alabama as a whole will never produce what mississippi does bc of soil, that mississippi mud is something special. Look in the alabama record book deer and the counties with the most deer with the exception of jackson co, are in the blackbelt. Most of miss has what the blackbelt has. Better soil, better plants, deer take up more nutrients. As simple as that

Age.Example Kentucky

Nothing wrong with Bama genetics, age and soil ours will do just fine.

That is incorrect about GA...except for QDM counties, GA has a two buck limit, with only one having to be 4 points on one side, one inch or longer. The other buck can be of any size.

Misprint. Was trying to type in the middle of a safety meeting

I second that. You just have to know where to look....

Ditto what 2Dogs said. Nothing wrong with Alabama's genetics in deer.

Shooting 90- to 110-inch bucks every year and calling them "great" is why they don't grow any bigger.

Age, voluntary trigger restraint and good groceries ... three biggest things.

1. We shoot bucks too young.
2. Most of our deer were stocked from herds in the Mobile delta area that naturally are small, Florida type deer.

Is this whole thread a joke?

This thread is funny. This is not meant to be demeaning or rude to anyone.

#1 reason--> lack of education about management on the part of the hunting public

if you really want to know about whitetailed deer in alabama you should read this, it explains alot. and there is absoloutely no reason you cant have good deer in alabama. http://www.outdooralabama.com/sites/default/files/DeerBook.pdf

Care to educate us?

That is what books, seminars, workshops and the like are for. I go out nearly on a daily basis and work with landowners and do the exact same thing. When folks come to the realization that they have done what they know to do and need help. There are all kinds of outlets to get quality management advice, all you have to do is ask but we can't just sit down at a keyboard a dump it all out. We don't have the time. The DCNR has very good biologists that will help if you will contact them and ask for assistance. We also have a technical assistance staff that their sole purpose is work with private landowners and assist in wildlife and habitat management.

What would consultation like that cost for, say, a 500 acre property?

Free... Shoot me a pm for details. Depending on where you are I'll line you up with the appropriate biologist.

AL can, and does, annually produce deer every bit as nice as any southeastern state. The MS delta is one of the most fertile soil regions in the world, so yes they're going to produce better deer, on average. The rest of MS is no different than AL. The black land prairie and the TN valley area produce big bucks because of soil fertility as well. Other areas in AL put up some very impressive deer each season that compare to anything from surrounding states. I believe you are starting to see a higher percentage of older age class deer in the harvest because of the state mandated 3 buck limit, and self restraint on the part of hunters. Nearly every other SE state has had a limit on either the number of bucks a person could take each season, or an antler restriction, or a combination of the two. Obviously if you are protecting any segment of the buck population more of them will reach another birthday. Birthdays mean larger antlers. AL is in the 8th year of the 3 buck limit. I've certainly noticed an increase in mature bucks being killed. Whether it's a perception or reality I don't know. Social media sure makes it easy for big bucks to make their rounds. I believe the surrounding states have historically had more big deer killed for the simple reason they've had buck restrictions longer than we have. AL produces it's fair share of big deer.

And has for years, and for years has said it will work with all landowners and hunters -- not just "the rich ones!" or "the big landowners!" -- to achieve goals and help with good education and info about management ... and still there's a big "What? Really? Who? Where? They do this?" group of people who don't know about it but would like the assistance.

Now ya can't beat the price.

That's what I thought too, but I just couldn't help myself.

Chris Cook one of the co authors of the book i posted a link to, came to my little 150 acres and gave me advice, no charge, the book also details alabamas history of whitetail deer restockings and such and why the biologists have done what they have done,and why its time to change gears now that the herd is at or above ideal levels in most of alabama.it really is a great read and its free too.

Nothing wrong with Alabama's deer genetics......Got more to do with genetics of the hunters in this state. They seem to have bred the ability for trigger control out of the majority of hunters in this state when it comes to bucks or does

all I know is Ive hunted all around the country,..have had leases in Illinois, Indiana , Kentucky, and more...heck..I have a 300 acre Illinois lease NOW....and the BEST bucks Ive killed are a 169 7/8 in Alabama, a 153 in Bama and 143 and a few 130s. I think the hunting absolutely rocks here!

If you pass em and let them grow and get to see them at 5 yr old plus..youll be pleasantly surprised!

This exactly. Practice trigger restraint..( I know its tough) like they do in the midwest and youll have the same results. Shoot them at 2 - 3 and youll never find out IMO.

Heck..if you all saw what this crazy arse roflmao guy shot last year watching them grow youd understand. He shot a couple studs letting them get old.
Youd think he studied deer in college or something!

Genetics play a bigger role than anyone will accept. The Georgia (Wisconsin) deer here at the house are a good bit bigger than the Clarke/Marengo county deer at our farm. As long as the northern deer genetics keep moving west from the Chattahoochee, things will continue to improve.
The average mature doe here near the river weighs 15 to 20 lbs. more than the Alabama stock.

Got a question on BODY WEIGHTS: Are the deer generally bigger in the Black Belt than a neighboring non-Black Belt county?? If so, why??

Georgia has a two buck limit but they also have more hunters. Georgia also has more B&C bucks in the book than TN, NC, FL, SC, and AL put together.

more nutrient rich soil types, the coastal plain soil types are overlooked on that front also,big thing is the hold out of agriculture in blackbelt areas. soybeans peanuts cotton corn.acres and acres, = big deer.

So, your thought is the foods grown there and not the soil??

Not many row crops in the belt like used to be. The TN valley though can rival the Midwest in certain parts now since we quit cotton 10 yrs ago and went to grain.

Another thing the alluvial floodplain of Mississippi has going for it is a lack of people living all over the place.

The main thing keeping bucks from growing nice racks in Bama is trigger control. They have to be allowed to reach their potental.
There are still too many wanting to kill every buck they see. If we had way more bow days than gun days wed see more good racks.

You know I spend a lot of time in the Black Belt. Soil natural Ph high 6 - low 7. I also spend a lot of time in a neighboring non-Black Belt county. I see a LOT of animals. The deer do seem to be a little bigger in that area. But the turkeys, rabbits, raccoons, cows, donkeys, etc. all seem to be the same. If its the soil, shouldn't the rest be bigger also??

I've hunted for years just north of Vicksburg, and a major difference is they put age on the deer. Most shoot 130 or better over a very large cooperative area. That, and the alluvial soil is very rich. The rut, around Christmas, literally just explodes. Its incredible.

And that right there is why the delta also kills a higher percentage of big bucks. There is nowhere in the entire state of AL that manages deer on such a large scale as the alluvial soils in the delta. Some properties in the delta manage for 145" 4x4s and 160" 5x5s. Anything less than that is not a shooter. When you manage 10,000 acres, and your neighbors to the north and south manage their thousands of acres, with little to no human habitation inside a levy, you can do that. AL has no such place.

You're right on Matt. Catfish pointe and Montgomery island are a few I've been blessed to hunt. Nothing like it here in bama.

Trigger control? Somehow I thought this was about genetics.

good soil is a huge advantage i didnt mean to imply it isnt, it is my opinion that it is not magical minerals in that good soil that makes the deer bigger, things grow better in good soil= more food.if your into commercial agriculture your much more likely to grow on good soil, agriculture = big deer. all that being said poor soils can be fixed, the hardest thing to overcome is sandy soil that just wont retain moisture. like texas, where they had this argument 10 20 years ago, will you ever grow deer that compete with northern whitetails probably not, genetics do play a role,but in no way should you think the deer in alabama are expressing thier full potential. i own 155 acres in 3 years of feeding 4 to 6 tons of protien and several tons of corn,plus going from 1 acre of tillable to 6 acres of tillable ground i have seen a big jump in deer size weight and antler mass, this year i opened up to 12 acres and will eventually have 15 acres of tillable ground with summer and winter plantings,my point being you dont have to have 10,000 acres,the other thing i do is share pictures with my neighbor, i know crazy im gonna show him where they are and he'll kill them right? wrong now that he has seen videos of me passing big bucks he is much less likely to shoot it because he not worried about me getting it first. what really did it for me was seeing the deer return the next year after having so much food,the ones i have passed, worth it every time, dont get me wrong some serious contenders have gone missing every year, but new one have always shown up too. maybe we dont have the best genetics in the world but getting them to reach thier full potential is where the fun is for me. and if you shoot them at 2 your just really cheating yourself. and your neighbors. remember everytime you say if i dont shoot it the neighbor will,you create that very situation,its just as easy to say if i pass that buck and tell the neighbor maybe he will too. even brown and downers deep in thier hearts would prefer to shoot big bucks.

Todd, i leased 275 acres 10 yrs. I planted spring and fall .
I planted crops not kill plots. i provided food, not just grass to provide shots. The deer will return ans stay close if food is there. Brassicas and clover in fall, soybeans, peas and corn in summer. Providing nurishment and age will give Alabama some fine deer. Dr Grant Woods maintains that planting crops is better than feeding pellets. In the time I leasaed that farm I saw the average doe go from 90 lbs to 140. Its hard work but very rewarding. More people should look into QDMA.

I think it's because the democrats that run Birmingham must be the reason,
As stated about the Mississippi delta that place is almost unreal what it produces and the number of critters

Man you got that right. HUGE difference in our deer hasnt it been???

Gotta love corn, soybean and that winter wheat. Year round feed!

Genetics is the number one excuse used by people without adequate trigger restraint. VERY few are willing to admit that they have control over arguably the MOST important factor of the three at play.

Age, Nutrition, Genetics. In that order and it's not really close.

"They're nocturnal" and "neighbors are baiting" are 2nd and 3rd.



PRESSURE is the main cause of Hunter lack of success. People hunt stands regardless of wind, too often, and ride ATV's all over the lease and THEN wonder why they don't see anything.

The most common screwup I see is stands set up in such a way that they can't be hunted without walking through the plot. Nobody wants a stand off the plot.

Good post.

If I wanta shoot a mature buck, I won't be sitting on a plot.

well said,

However, mature bucks can be killed on plots with very low pressure which is hard to find in club type situations...

Sure they can, however, the majority killed in the hills of NE Bama are killed in the woods.

Most of the good ones killed in North Central bama are too...at least in my experience.

Too many hunters and small tracts hurts our place. Our club is 8 outside ears or mature, next best around us is 6 or better, and a few that don't regulate. Our only hope is the wildlife refuge that borders east side of club. Sit on e side of property you're liable to see 20+ deer in the woods, rest of property is a gamble if you'll see anything at all. Have 20 plots, and only one deer was killed off plot. Guest killed it, mature 8 probably 130" deer. Rest of plots didn't get hunted much. Only during "rut" which wasn't impressive. Several good bucks seen but none killed. Of 13 members, 4 bucks were killed. Primarily bow hunt only. However, it sounds like a war around us most of the year with gun shots. If only you could get neighboring properties on the same page. The "if I don't shoot it, the other guy will" clubs ruin it for everyone.

I agree perchjerker , I didnt mean to imply that protien rations were the answer, in most cases they probably have no effect at all, Im talking about putting a couple bags in a trough every couple weeks here,Thats not going to do anything,if it isnt measured by the tons per month in most areas its just bait. i agree growing food is much better, i rented a dozer this year and opened up 9 acres in addition to the 6 I had on 155 acres, Im also cutting 20 acres this year and 4 acres of that will go to crop production,so 19 acres of year round ag in 155, plus feeding.protien and corn year round by the ton. im hoping this gives the deer more than they need year round,

Im also not trying to sound like I know everything, I dont im relatively new to this, but I love learning and spend hours every day researching, from biology texts to basic animal husbandry,wildlife management , timber management,how to get the most from my agriculture efforts, blah , blah, anyhow Im sure Im getting some of it wrong, thats why I like discussing it in places like this.

so thanks for having me lol.
that being said my neighbor of 350 acres has great habitat and doesnt hunt, so im feeding his deer too.

I went and looked at a table of state records by state. When compared to other southern states we are right on the thick of it. Our best typical is only a couple inches less than Mississippi's and Georgia's while our non typical is better than one of them.

The one state that surprised me for size is Kentucky. Both of their record bucks well exceed ours.

Now just imagine if Alabama reverted back to having more row crops like we used to.

Guess us Yankees are a little sharper, we never quit row cropping to plant stupid pine trees.

I grew up hunting in Mississippi, both in the delta and elsewhere in the state. For the past 20 years I've hunted in Alabama too, both in the black belt prairie and elsewhere in the state.

I'd obviously have to set aside the MS delta as a stand alone testament to itself for all the reasons already identified in the thread already.

But in other parts of MS and AL, in my non-QDM simple lay person opinion, I see a trend in big deer, in no particular order:

1. Big River bottom land- deer that have river bottom habitat are often bigger than other areas. Great farming soils equate in my mind to outstanding browse groceries, either natural or ag. Ms examples I know well are the Big Black River and Pearl River in areas not in the delta.

2. Farm land--deer that have access to row crops year end and year out are just bigger than other areas. Better food supply.

3. Age: Areas where deer get to grow up and get 5-6+ years old with regular occurrence are obviously bigger. Doesn't take a degree in wildlife to figure that out. Low human population, lower hunting pressure or either strict management rules = larger, older deer--even in the non river bottom or ag land areas. Even isolated areas, pockets, can produce huge deer.

4. Genetics: I don't know enough to even speak on the genetics. But I'd suspect that even lesser gene deer can be the most they can be with great land, great food and little pressure.

We've all heard stories and even seen photos of suburban big mature or even "monster" deer around B'ham. The hunting pressure is almost zero, but for a few bowhunters on ninja hunts. The biggest threat is car traffic. The areas doesn't have much agriculture row crops, but tons of browse and plants and gardens. I've seen and heard of really large deer rivalling anywhere in the state in pockets in Hoover, Liberty Park, and other places in Greater Bham area----where there is basically no hunting at all. Same is true for Jackson/Ridgeland/Madison, MS---minimal if any hunting pressure in these pockets.

That leads me to believe that age = big, mature deer and add to that great soil and groceries to make outstanding size deer.

Please PM me his phone number.




Great post, Stray. I would tend to agree with everything you've said.

his number wouldnt do you any good, he doesnt allow hunting on his land, leased it one time, and the hunters had the audacity of complaining about him driving the property daily during hunting season and stopping to chat with them in thier stands.so he just puts out some salt licks and a few bags of corn every once and a while, and watches "his deer". but hes fine with me we get along, i can hunt the property line and he could care less, if a deer jumps the fence i can call day or night and i always get permission to pursue. thats the key to small properties . good neighbors. of course hes not my only neighbor, across the cahaba from me is a 1000 acres or more and that guy is turkey crazy, doesnt hunt deer mind you, but his stinking turkeys are always coming over here eating my deer feed

If the state was to change the hunting laws for whitetail deer and center them around growing bigger bucks people would flip chit and have a all out come apart.

I thought the state did, and the people have.......3 buck limit, liberal doe harvest and such.

What i mean is if they went with a 8 point or better or 3 year old buck or bettwr. Or a combination of both.

if you were truly managing for larger racked bucks you would only allow killing of 3 1/2 yr old minimum. 7 pt or less bucks, and enough does to keep ratios right, this leaves 8 pt and better bucks to reach there full potential, and be harvested at 5 to 8 yrs old.which gives the superior genetic bucks more opportunity to become dominant in your area spreading better genetics, of course research says momma throws the antler gene so i dont know how to get around that, none the less momma got some of her genes form daddy so it stands to reason on an evoloutional level this selective pressure should result in improved antler genetics sometime within the next 10,000 years if we all do it. haha still thats my plan. in the short run it lets your current best deer reach full potential and you still almost always have a deer to hunt,"management bucks" as long as your deer density allows, we all want to see tons of deer every sit but we dont want so many that body weight and body mass indexes drop, noone wants cwd black tongue or ehd to become a problem here i hope.

but i dont think that should be the law. each group of land managers needs to decide its goals, with general overall supervision by the state biologists,to implement laws that help the herd stay at generally sustainable levels. no matter your management goals. laws should be there to keep us from getting back to the times where restocking was our only option.or times when people talk about sterilizing deer because there are too many,wtf. but thats just my crazy opinion,not a reflection of reality.

No matter where you are, if you have tons of agricultural land, the deer and genetics are better. I feel like where I hunts it looks more like Kansas or Illinois than Southern middle TN for example