Game Check Numbers today...

At 3:00 p.m. today the statewide number for total deer was 197,514.

Since then it has increased to 199,758 the last time I looked.

So far, 2,244 total deer checked on the last day.

Every time I refresh my browser the number goes up.

Who is still checking in deer at 8:00 p.m. at night?

Since I started typing the thread the number has now gone to 199,787.

At this rate by 10:00 tonight it ought to bust 200K wide open...

Chuckie got blisters on his thumbs I bet!!

199,831 now...

Everyone is checking in few extra so they can hunt tomorrow

Definitely been thought about.

200,075 at 10:45 p.m.

If I recall, the past few years' total harvests have been close to or at 300,000. Was there really a 100,000 drop in harvests this year or is there missing data?

The GC harvest totals have been at or below 200k. The annual hunter harvest survey indicates 300k, which I feel is more accurate.

Thanks. That makes sense. No way there could be that drastic of a drop year over year.

If you’ll look it will actually go up a little for 2-3 days . Folks with guilty conscience? Or just finding deer they shot Saturday ?

200,351 this morning and still going up...

Don’t you technically have 48 hrs to check it in? As long as it’s written down on a check in card.

Unfortunately, we all probably know people who have not game checked deer this season. I believe the real harvest number is between 250k and 300k. I wish there was a better reporting system.

Why not participate? I don’t get that. If one wants accuracy then participate. Otherwise quit complaining because it would be as accurate as any other system that has participation. I see it in other states when I buy a license so it’s not just here.

I wonder what participation rates are in other states.

200,435 and climbing...

Number is still increasing.

Today it is at 200,911.

So today , little after dark should wind it up.

Guess that means I still have time to add a few. What county do we need more deer killed in?

Jackson for sure......

Nope , I've figured it out . Most Jackson Co. hunters are closet Aldeer lurkers and have drank your coolaid............

I have an idea. Whatever county has the most kills, lets get everyone on aldeer to add as many kills to that one, as we can.
A quick view of CNCs maps looks like Montgomery county would be a good candidate. Who's in?

These may be a non-factor, but similar to there being an unknown number of non-reported deer, couldn’t there also be an unknown number of reported deer that were never killed? I wouldn’t think this would be very common but hawndog’s comment got me thinking that there’s nothing that “confirms” a deer was actually killed or where it was killed when it’s reported

My guess is that after all those big deer were reported killed in Jackson. Folk’s decided they did not need the publicity and quit reporting

Unreported kills I’d say is common rural areas not having to drive the interstate/main roads or taken to processor or taxidermist. Many are cleaned and never leave camp as a whole deer. Close the tail gate and go home.

The 4 year trend shows Jackson Co stair stepping downward in decline......Really the only question is where will it level out under the current conditions?

Can anybody tell me what gems of knowledge we have gleaned from ALL he data we have gotten from gamecheck over the years that would justify us'uns having to go thru the gymnastics of reporting kills.

Sure, now the state has all the data they need to twist and mold to fit whatever narrative they decide to push anyways.

No, no they can't. Now be compliant and put your mask on and get the jab!

So does more dead deer mean more live deer, or less? Serious question.

200,979 as of 7:30 p.m.

So, has anyone ever been to a meeting and asked?

This right here in lies the problem. I believe the data can be twisted either way and used to justify shorter or longer seasons/bag limits.

none , just spent money for nothing and force the processors to work for the state with out compensation .... oh , they counted dead deer .

aint been to a meeting but i have , aint got a real answer yet . no better off than ever before , they still making a guess

“Lies, damn lies and statistics”. Anyone can take the numbers and make them say whatever they want.

....but....but........the graphs!!

this is the thing , even if the population stay the same there could be many reason why the kill number could go up and down .

I love a good mystery!

200,984

I totally do not understand why 2 full days after season has ended that the numbers are still climbing.

Slowly, but still going up.

Who is checking in that many deer two days after season has come to an end?

i wouldnt check one in that late might get a ticket

The outlaws are still killing them.

What percentage of deer do yall think were legally killed in this state this past year? I don’t mean the game check numbers either, I mean all kills. Completely legal: had a license and bait permit (if required), proper season, game checked on land you had permission or public in season. My guess is 30%

The state may just have some software issues like a blinking envelope

So, you’re saying of the roughly 201,000 deer reported only 66,667+/-, were 100% legal or you saying all GC’s were legal and the total deer killed was 600,000+/-?

Neither, I’m saying we have no clue what real number is, but whatever it is only 30% were legal

when I worked Greene Co my partner and I figured that the illegal kill was as high as 50-75% of the legal kill numbers....and we caught less than 10% of the violations that occurred.

That’s interesting to hear. I guess my point is all this money that’s been spent on game check and SOA’s could have hired more game wardens and we could really start solving some issues. If we cut down on half the illegal kills the season length or baiting wouldn’t put a dent in the population.

Now you making sense.

High percentage of deer killed between the legal cutoff and when it actually gets dark. Not even gonna try to put a number on that. So I guess that would technically be an illegal kill. Even when folks trying to obey the law.

I never worried about borderline too late deer kills, there were always plenty of outright night hunting kills to keep you busy.

Yep. The 5-10 min after legal light are not the issue. It’s the DARK hunters.

I’d bet that statewide about 50% of deer are killed 100% completely legal.

Matt and Troy, I'd agree with both of you on your conclusions, based on being friends with several GWs and wildlife biologists, but you guys do know that you just gave CNC and whole new rabbit hole to think about and run down.

50% ??? Really ? I guess I got more faith in my fellow man than that.

So what are we saying here ? Spot lighting ? So 50% of the deer are killed in the daylight and the other 50% are getting a shinning right before they see that great food plot in the sky ?
Call me what you want I just cant see it. If those numbers are correct, then a good many of the guys on here aint worth spit either.
Somebody agree with me here that it cant be that high can it !!??!! Do I have to much faith in my fellow hunters ?

In Greene there are 3,067 deer checked for 2023-2024. If 50% of that is the illegal number, that's 1,500 which feels crazy high to me.

Then from there if you caught 5% of those that would be 75 illegally harvested deer that you guys caught in the county in a given year.

Across the state that would be 100k or more poached deer. Seems absolutely mind boggling, no?

Source

Since baiting is completely legalized now, I’d say the 50% illegal kills is prob on the high side. Pre-baiting being legal, I’d agree with the 50%.

But 100% completely legal excludes the following kills-

Not game checking within required time frame, not having a bait permit, shooting a doe out of doe season b/c you couldn’t hunt during doe season and really need to thin some out, shooting two doe in a single day b/c who wants to waste a hunt and a trip to the processor on a single doe, shooting a deer 31 min after legal sunset or before legal sunrise (which was legal for years), shooting a deer in season with a rimfire while sqwerl huntin, shooting two bucks in a single day b/c you didn’t kill one yesterday, using a drone to find a bedded deer and stalking it, shooting within 50-yards of the ROW of a public road, dispatching deer after dark that tracking dogs bay, retrieving a deer from 5’ across the property line without obtaining permission first, etc.

Yep….I bet there are a lot of law breakers on here😁

That’s exactly my point and why I believe 70% are illegal

you boys never heard of daytime poaching(hunting w/o permit), road hunting, pre and post season killing of game, no license, illegal weapon, from the river, etc, etc , etc.....?????

Yes of course. Those are blatant violations. But there are a lot of things that are just a little more than the law will allow to quote the Dukes of Hazard theme song. Most people Aren't going to do those things you list but will absolutely shoot one at 31 mins after sunset or one go get a dead deer across the property line, and is why the number is likely so high.

At best it’s 70%. After working LE for a few years I learned real quick that the majority of folks you encounter had rather lie even if they’re not doing wrong than tell the truth. I don’t know why. It’s just what it is. I understand why most LEOs are so inquisitive and seemingly rude to get to the bottom of a situation. It’s simply because they get lied to so often.

Now on to why I believe the legal kill is between 50-70%. Do you really think most hunters are 100% within the law/regulations all the time? I know I’m not and I enforced them for years. Deer are killed while not wearing orange, with illegal weapons, before or after legal light (1 sec is technically illegal, and we’ve ALL done it), across public roads from a stand or blind to where the deer is standing, across a property line, w/o permission, w/o license, w/o baiting permit, from vehicles driving in or out, bayed by a dog and shot after legal hunting hours, non reported kills, kills over the daily bag limit, etc. When you add all of those categories up I promise you there’s no way more than 70% of kills are legal. There’s a lot of folks who hunt that do not follow regs they don’t agree with. Now that I’m not in LE any longer I’m made aware of even more of it through the people I talk to. I used to be very naive and think the majority of folks were well within the law all the time. I was fooling myself and experience has taught me a completely different story.

There are so many regulations , permits, and laws that I would think this would be a conservative number.

Most of mine was illegal , damn a orange hat . Lol

I had a brand new rookie Game Warden with me one day. We were investigating a theft of a der from a processor in Jefferson Co. We had a suspect and finally got an addy on him. We arrived at his residence and began to question him. EVERY SINGLE WORD HE SAID WAS A BLATANT LIE. And he changed the lies every ten minutes when I would question his girlfriend. My rookie said he couldn't believe that folks would just outright lie to us like this. I told him to remember that most everyone lied when questioned. Trick was to cypher thru the lying. LOL

We finally got the truth, arrested him and convicted him of theft.

Today's number is 201,073.

Still increasing...

...and I ain't lyin'...

There’s plenty of ppl out there who will keep entering deer as long as they can just to see if they can.

Are they so ignorant that they don't understand how easy it would be to follow up on them if they weren't legitimate recorded kills?

Makes zero sense to me...

They can’t prove or disprove anyone killed a deer by GC alone.

LE has brought it on themselves. With few exceptions every time I’ve had to talk to police or GW they come with an attitude. Whatever I can say to make them go away faster. When you need help they will not do anything.

I've never had a issue with a game warden. I've got cell numbers on speed dial for all 3 GW's in the 3 different counties I hunt. Took the time to meet them and introduce myself years ago, always say hello when I see them in town or waive when I pass them on the road. They've always been helpful and responsive, anytime I've had an issue or needed help from them on something. Lot of their attitude is dictated by your attitude.

Sometimes, yes. I have had that same relationship with one GW. Unfortunately that is not always the case. I will not go into any more specifics than that on an open forum. pm me if you would like to know more.

Edited due to not wanting to piss off this fine LEO. I still hunt in his jurisdiction and may run into him again.

Guess I'm wrong.
If you break it down like you did on everything, I guess you might get a few more illegal kills than I thought.

I grew up hunting in Green county in the 70’s through mid 90’s. Club house was next to the paved road with fields all along the road, and the road divided the property. In turkey season, at first day break, I would step away from the club and stand on side of the road waiting for a bird to sound off on one side of the road or the other. On several occasions while standing there in the dark I would here a vehicle coming slowly down the road. Once in sight I watched them spotlighting the fields all the way down. This was a regular occurrence on Green county. And pay attention that this occurred on more than one occasion during TURKEY season. Outlaws are outlaws all year, Not just hunting season. Those deer and turkey numbers I fear are far higher than anyone knows. Folks watch a good buck all summer and then shoot him 1 week before season opens. Happens.

How many tickets for road hunting do the game wardens write each season?.....Is there somewhere you can see it on a year by year basis?.....It would probably make for a nice graph…..If road hunting was really bad then you would think that folks would be wearing out those robot decoys…..

There's a grand total of, plus or minus 60 game wardens, depending on the day and time, patrolling 50,000 square miles of Alabama real estate. Thats 835 square miles or 535,000 acres, per GW. You got any idea how much land that is for one person to cover and be responsible for. Tickets cannot be used as a determining factor as to how many are poaching, road hunting, hunting without a license, spotlighting, killing 2 bucks a day, killing over 3 per season, hunting out of season, anything illegal.

well , they got all this free time since we got baiting permits what are they doing with it . lol

Thanks abolt. I assumed the severe shortage of needed game wardens to patrol the state was a familiar subject.
To operate a robot buck takes time and persistence. Alabama has no way in the world to do such a thing on a scale that’s needed.
Where I hunt now has one warden covering 3 counties. Which is why bama poachers do what they do. Almost no worry of being caught unless the warden is tipped off.

201123 on fourth day past seasons end.

if I remember correctly Al has slots for 130 or so GWs, two per county except a couple counties have three, NOT 60. I don't know how many slots are currently filled, and how many vacancies.

I personally made a LOT of night hunting and daytime road hunting arrests with decoys....until the state decided to seize our decoys that were privately donated and make em state property. I got rid of mine and quit using decoys.

I’ve had one bad run in with a game warden out of 1k probably. I wish we had enough to put a dent in the illegal kills. My wife’s uncle was a Warden in Winston County for years and he trained Ernie who’s there now. Ernie has been extremely helpful in every interaction I’ve had with him.

theres a ex warden that lives just up the road from me that makes them or did any way .
im guessing he still does



i remember back when was active he had a guy kill a deer in his front yard . he got him stopped in front of our house . he was half dressed but he got the guy .

Wouldnt it be funny if next year, everyone in the state game checks a doe every day of the season starting in bow season? Just to screw with CNC's graphs!

Troy, that’s why I said 60 at any given time. No way they can work/patrol 24/7. I was referring to 60-65, on patrol, and that’s only if every one of those 130 wardens is working 84 hrs per week. I know they work a bunch of O/T at times but we all know they aren’t working double the hours the state is paying them for. I actually think that the 60 number that I used is actually high, for the actual numbers of wardens on the road or in the woods, at any given hour, on any given day.

That's right bout , 130. But there are open slots. Here's the problem I've always had with them . Some counties one is plenty. Some like Jackson could keep 4 busy. Our guys will have more calls / contacts in one day than some GWs in other counties do all week. We are a large county , some areas are very remote , we have the game , ducks and fishing . A lot of hunters from area counties are here hunting and fishing , not in there home county. We get em from TN and GA too.

Only problem is they would do something wacky with the seasons. They would overcorrect , and then we'd all be mad about that instead.

Overcorrect how? They could say that since we able to kill so many, the population must be higher than we thought and open the season wide open. Or. They could go the other direction and say we are killing too many and need to shut it down.
And this is the problem with counting dead deer.

201,165 today.

Maybe some folks just didn't know it ended last Saturday...

Bingo

Question regarding the annual hunter survey. I just read the report for the 2022-23 season. It looks as if they surveyed 3200 hunters out of an estimated 305,000. That’s roughly 1.05%. Does the state feel like a survey of 1% or hunters is likely more correct than the game check that is in place? I may have read the report wrong and am not a statistics man, but 1% feels like a low number

I don’t know this to be the case but here’s my guess…….Part of doing a sampling equation is knowing how many you need to sample in order to get an accurate measurement. That amount depends on how much the population varies from one individual to the next…..There’s calculations for determining this stuff……My guess is that whoever did the survey understands statistics and surveyed the amount of people that the equation told them needed sampling. I imagine they had a good idea of how many surveys they needed to mail out to get the number they wanted back. Again that’s just a guess though….

Easy Answer is without the "tracking tales" crew to help, these poor marksman are taking a few days to find the backslapped/leg shot/shot back in the guts deer they were sure they hammered. Chucky will patiently wait for their compliance.

Someone shoots a deer or three and freezes them. End of season they take frozen meat to processor. Processor says I need your gamecheck number. Someone logs it in.

why do processors need a game check number....ain't their job to police for the state.

Price of doing business. Probably get audited one day.

Dept of Conservation has no authority over processors, no permit required by them.

Local processor had a GW come by to check their books, they told him to pound sand and GTFO. He left. Then sat a block away to check folks coming to the processor so they called Montgomery and bitched. He moved.

Exactly

23 more Game Checked today.

201,188 newest total.

Just proves the point of almost zero enforcement of any game laws in Alabama. Rule is 48 hrs after the kill. Today marks day 7 after the close of the season. Anyone checking a deer after midnight Monday night should be found and ticketed. There’s Dumb As in this state that probably think the season runs til the 15th of Feb or maybe even the end. Lax enforcement of our regs doesn’t even begin to describe how AL treats game laws, compared to other states.

Here’s my question, in other states that use tags, it’s affixed to the deer and processors record the tag, correct? If so what’s the difference with processors not accepting deer with out a GC #.

I like the idea of processor telling them to pound sound another question do you know if they record GC #’s or are they just playing hard ball with GW’s?

the processor I'm referring didn't check numbers, said it wasn't their job.

201,288 for final number, maybe.

Antlered - 104,986

Unantlered - 96,302

Almost 105K bucks killed.

That's a pile of bucks that was slain...

And I thought does are slaughtered disproportionally.

Remember: these are game check numbers, which may or may not be anywhere near the actual numbers. Proceed with caution.

and it doesn't prove a damn thing about the health of our herd....

I cant see where it has done any good .

Then those shouldn’t complain when it gets all screwy. I’m pretty sure most states have a similar system. Do they have as much resentment?
I don’t get it.

No, but they had those systems for decades. They’ve been accustomed to them and in some states, such as Wisconsin and Ohio, have citizen groups that actually work with and/or communicate with their DNRs about proposed changes.

Ohio DNR sets its seasons on two-year cycles based on “harvest” data and other factors. I think Wisconsin may do something similar.

I was more or less referencing surrounding states like MS, TN and Arkansas. Arkansas App is almost identical to ours. I don’t hear those guys commenting much at all. When I hunted WI those guys were bitching about their DCNR wanting to kill all the deer cause CWD was in the south east portion.

Several things stood out back during those 4 years hunted WI. From 04-07

GWs were seen constantly when we were hunting
They’d watch us shoot geese, 48 hours to call it in and they had your name and tag number I’m sure since they checked out trucks and watched the hunt. They measured our layouts from shore. Had to maintain at a minimum a 500 yard distance from shoreline while diver duck hunting and the wind did shift the water.

On the MF lease we kept records. They still do so that’s almost 30 years of data. If we had bad data we’d have screwed rules I guess.
Had to pull jaw bone and weigh it
Condition it, simple
Does if milk was present.
The same as what the state required. Two bios helped me develop a plan and interpret

That info told us the health of our deer herd and the timing of the rut. For for over ten years we could chart it and the rut never changed. Health did depending

The only thing I can think of is we as a state was so liberal compared to other states. The surrounding states I knew of had limits for the season, not daily for deer. We had the most liberal limit with bucks and gobblers.

Thats the only thing I can reason as to why.

Honestly I could care less about deer. Net a few times but don’t really care to fool with them. The guys at the farm keep me in venison so I’m good. Getting my turkey gun setup and been running mouth calls for a week now. So I’ll be chasing I guess

Tennessee final numbers are 152,738 with 60% being bucks and 40% doe.

Tennessee is approximately 83% of the land area compared to Alabama with 76% of the deer harvest compared to Alabama.

Those numbers seem fairly close. So is Tennessee killing too many deer/bucks or is it just Alabama?

It hasn't. It's given Cucky the ability to manipulate the numbers to do whatever his agenda wants to do. He truly is a piece of chit

Now what did you go and do that for? Injecting facts and accurate numbers up in here.