Observation about quantity and quality of deer over the years

I've been hunting hard and hunting A LOT since I was 13. We own land in several different spots in Lamar co and I've been fortunate enough to kill some good deer and a good # of deer on the same property for 30 years. ive gone through a lot of phases in my hunting career and the deer are no worse for wear. We use to kill a few deer when I was little (5-6 as a family), but around the late 80's early 90's we really started killing some deer (more like 5-6 per person). When dog hunting was outlawed, My brother and I killed 10-15 each for several years until we got out of that phase. We've let good deer go, video taped good deer instead of shooting them and let some areas sit out for a year. We were expecting to start seeing monsters over the next couple of years! Didn't happen. Now, I take my kids and want them to shoot whatever they want (within reason) and I love it. I said all that to say that deer numbers have risen and fallen over my 30 years hunting the exact same property. We've killed good bucks and we've had some lean years. My/our trigger fingers have had the least affect on the deer numbers on our place. Habitat change like, clear cuts, hardwood clearing, burning, not burning, spraying, not spraying, closed canopy with NO browse have had the most impact on deer numbers on my place and I suspect always will. My parents have had two pear trees in their yard for 20 years. 5 years ago the pears layed there and rotted. Now there's a 4 year old clear cut behind their house and I get 6-7 buck pics under that tree. Every pear gets picked up and eaten.

So there it is, good or bad, you can do everything in your power to help the deer as far as harvesting goes and still not be as productive as your neighbor who you hear shoot every evening. Habitat, if you can control it, is the absolute equalizer.

I agree. I hunt Choccolocco WMA a pretty good bit, it's 58,000 acres of mostly mature unbroken hardwoods. Primarily the deer are small bodied and small racked. You almost never hear of a 140-150" deer killed there. Heck, for that matter, it's not easy to see deer there at all. Conversely I hunt another public tract (25,000 acres) in the same county and it is loaded to the max with studs, and dadgum bunches of deer period! You'll see 30+ deer some days on that 25,000 acre place. What's the difference? I don't think there's any difference in the deer. This other place is about 50/50 mixed timber and cutover. Has tons of thick areas, browse, bedding galore.

Interesting points. You say you hunt in Lamar county, which is very unpopulated (human-wise). I have often wondered what effect the number of hunters in the woods has. In my opinion, that is the biggest variable in terms of deer numbers.

A hunter on every 40 acre tract can never be good.

Everybody hunts where I live. I can walk outside any given evening and hear shots from my yard in all directions.

Our habitat hasn't changed in years, but our quality and quantity has risen over the years.

Our habitat and quality of deer hasn't changed in years, but our quantity has dropped constantly over the years on both my lease and owned land. I can tell you from experience on my hundred acres property that a hunter on every 10-20 acre tractor around it can have a devastating effect quickly.

Bigt you hit the nail on the head the previous club i was in for 15 years had a abundance of deer then the word got out at the quality of deer we were taking and slowly before you know it there is hunters on every corner and the amount of deer and seeing the big boys vanished considerably .

Virtually impossible for habitat not to change in years. It usually changes year to year and sometimes significantly even if there has been no cutting, storms, etc to alter the canopy. Simple plant and tree growth, mast production in addition to weather variables change habitat each and every year. IMHO

Not impossible at all.

If your quantity of deer has changed, the habitat has changed simply by different browse pressure on it. Sorry but that is habitat.

It hasn't changed.

Is it stuck in a time warp?

It could be mature hardwoods. That won't really change much over a lot of years.

If he has a mature hardwoods habitat change would be very little year to year wouldn't it?

Perhaps it's his neighbors that have altered their property causing a net gain for Brad.

True. I was kidding with him, but it may be better to say that it has changed minimally instead of not at all. I guarantee a tree or trees have fallen from a storm or etc. Something has to have changed somewhere.

A tree or two falling is not enough change IMO. Now a tornado , wildfire would be a different story.

If your "habitat" consists of only mature hardwoods then 1) I feel sorry for you because your "habitat" sucks, 2) you can't tell me that a top didn't die somewhere allowing sunlight in or a blueberry bush finally grew too tall for deer to browse, therefore habitat change and 3) your habitat then consists of primarily acorns which DO change in quantity and species that are falling, hence habitat change. I would not consider "no change" in a case where your property is half a deers home range since habitat is changing on the neighbors. Mature hardwood is as close to no change as you could get just not there, again IMHO.

Our property has not changed, like I said earlier. However, the "sucky habitat " seems to have more, higher quality deer than years ago.

I don't know what it is, but I commute about 38 miles one way to work 5 and 6 days a week. I know that I rarely see deer to and from work anymore. I used to see 10 to 20 every day during the winter. I only remember one day last year that I saw more than 10 deer driving home at sunset. It might be habitat, because nothing looks like it did 20 years ago, but I think there just aren't the quantity of deer in pockets of Alabama anymore. Maybe in 10 years, with some changes, it'll be back like it was in the 90's. I just hope tight rolled blue jeans, spiked hair, and sebagos don't come back in style.

So in essence, habitat plays a big role in quantity and or quality.

If the habitat hasn't changed then what do you attribute the increase in higher quality deer to?

I guess I should have been more specific lol. Our landowner burns our property according to a set schedule and has a set timber harvest rotation. So different sections of our property are in different stages of habitat all the time, but as an overall property the habitat has not changed.

I agree with gobbler. Habitat changes more than you realize. It's just so gradual that you don't see it. It's crazy to think that it's not changing. You have hundreds if not thousands of plants and trees per acre growing everyday, hundreds of animals eating from those plants and trees. Some changes are going on

My main point was that you can drive an electric golf cart, only hunt one day a week, and shoot nothing but 5 yr old deer, and it may not pay off like you think. If your neighbor has a nice new clear cut , he's gonna kill more (and better) deer than you do in a 20 yr old pine plantation that has been managed for timber only.
I've seen it, done it, and am still doing it. I've been really good to deer and I've hammered their ass. Nothing I've done with my trigger has had the effect on them like I've seen with habitat change. I was going through some old 8mm film from 2000-2003 where I had bucks on video making scrapes in one of my greenfields, now you can't hardly buy a deer there in the daytime. 26 yr old pines are there now with no browse. They come through at night to eat a little, but they don't stay there. Just a little first hand FYI.

Sure it does change , could be very small, that being said how much does one tree top dying in a mature forest effect the big picture. Yes , I'll agree it's technically changing if one twig breaks I suppose.

Acorns are on a 4 year cycle I believe and that's just the cards you're delt in hardwoods. We get used to it. I don't know if that's a change or cycle.

I agree, if all you have is mature hardwoods and nothing else, your habitat sucks.

We use to see a lot more deer when there was a dog season. We would hunt from daylight until dinner. We would then go back and stand hunt the same areas we dog hunted that morning and see a ton of deer. They were moving back in to where they had been jumped earlier that morning. Killed more and bigger bucks then as well. These days they don't have to move and when they do they just wait until after dark. That's a fact! People use to be a lot different as well. There was no jealously among our group. If someone killed a big buck everybody was tickled-to-death as if they had killed it themselves. We all hunted together and had a great time. It was social and a great time every deer season. Now days you hunt by yourself and very seldom see anybody. You have to call around and hope you can get someone to come help you drag one out. Even then you may have to wait a long time for them to get there to help. We use to all get together and clean and process our deer as well, which just added to the social part of the hunt. You would get to talk and cut-up with uncles and cousins. Now days people just take their kills to the processor drop them off, pick them up the next week and complain about how much it cost to have them processed! My how times have changed.

I agree a 100%

Since you have not worked on improving your habitat and you do not think that is important, then what do you think has caused the increase?

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