Old Portland Landing pics as discussed a few weeks ago.

A while back some of us were talking about Portland Landing and Mossy Oak's management and massive planting, managing soil pH, etc... I found some pictures of a field that MO planted its brassicas on. Talk about a good-looking brassicas field and it got hammered that Jan-Feb. I guess that was a 5 plus acre field.

The picture of the guy below (is NOT me) with the very nice buck is from LA and he came for 5 days and left with two bow-killed P&Y bucks.

The picture of the three kids are my sons on the outside and my buddy's son (he was involved with MO) in the middle. I am thinking these pictures were taken around 2005 or 06.

Anyway, I forget how big this field was... big... but it was all brassicas and it was green, high and thick and it got hammered towards the middle of Jan - March which put many deer entering the green-up in pretty healthy condition which provides a head-start in antler development for the upcoming fall or so believed by me to be the case! I can't quote a study though!!

That place was amazing and I guess it all starts with the foundation of quality dirt!

Very cool! I burned that stand of pines in the background last month!

I have sat on that field once or twice... Sure hate to see a gold mine run in to the dirt like that, sure miss that place...

Gobbler, I would not think that the present landowner (just from what I have heard) would foot the bill for any timber mgmt that would cost money. Somebody other than the guy from, where, Eufaula (?), must own that piece of property that you burned.

I know the piece of land that I hunted the most was raped and every tree worth hauling out was cut!!! From what I could tell when I saw it a few years ago, "responsible" timber harvest was thrown out the window. Even wetland areas, because they were dry when the chainsaws were present, were taken advantage of and scalped! It was truly very sad! But the AMOUNT OF BROWSE was incredible!!!!! Sunlight hit the ground!

It was a very special place at one time. Great pics!

Exactly what I was thinking... Lanier isn't gonna pay for burning, he's in the money business not the managing business...

I entertained clients, for the company that I worked for, there several times back in the '80s and early '90s. We always saw a lot of game, both deer and turkeys, there were no hogs there then. We killed some good deer. Heres one I killed. those G2s are +13inches.

Lanier sold a lot of it to a pair of brothers, one from Birmingham and one from Mobile. The several thousand acres he sold were not cut much.

Big Jack, wow! Nice buck!!! Congrats. Those type bucks were certainly down there when I was hunting there. I don't know about now but they were down there when it was managed. That place has potential!!! Big time!!

So I guess Elm Bluff hunting club doesn't have much, if any, land up there to hunt... Sure hate that...

I hunted Portland the first year Elm Bluff got the hunting rights. The place was awesome. It was covered with big bucks, turkeys, and hogs. I did not shoot a buck that season just because I didn�t get a chance at one of those old swamp donkeys. I did see lots of bucks and several nice 3.5 year olds.

I scored over 20 bucks that season that were taken by club members. These 20+ bucks I scored ranged from 120 to 153 gross. The largest two were a 153 in 11 point and an unreal 146 in 8 point. The 8 was massive and it had almost a 22 in inside spread.

It was truly a place of dreams for a deer hunter. Key word there is WAS.

I do believe it could be great again though. It would require a great amount of control and folks that really wanted to improve it.

I think there are a lot of places in the black belt that "could" be something special, but until pines turn back into row crops it will remain to be just pretty good, IMO.

I was in Jackson, Mississippi yesterday and was looking at a MS Game and Fish Mag. while I was waiting on my meeting to start. I realize a small portion of Ms. has soil like the MW, but from what I was reading their efforts, statewide, are really paying off big. Also read where LA. was #3 or #5 (can't remember) in the country in regards to killing older bucks. 60% of bucks killed in LA. in 2011 were 3.5 or older. That's amazing!

Why "WAS" it then and not now. Is it just because Mossy Oak doesn't lease it?? Still some large landowners, still managed land, still folks planting deer crops, still burning.... Not sure I understand

It doesn't have anything to do with MO. MO didn't do anything magical. With the exception of unlimited resources to plant, plant, plant tons of acres! And, I guess that's kinda magical if you can afford to plant that much! MO did nothing outside of normal QDM with the exception of maximizing QDM in "every" respect. Anyone or any hunting club can do what MO did. (Do what MO did in respect to buck harvest rules; not the acres planted as most all clubs can't afford to plant #'s of acres that MO planted. Spoiler is right in his post below!)

Before some QDM naysayers blast QDM and MO... I feel I have to qualify QDM and MO by saying that MO always did the right thing and certainly allowed first time hunters, special needs kids, kids in general, etc... to shoot immature bucks or whatever they wanted. If you were an experienced mature hunter, then you were expected to shoot mature bucks and if a mistake was made, the hunter wasn't given 50 lashes. That's QDM.

Anyway, anyone can QDM and grow big mature bucks but doing it at PL, seemed very productive. I don't think the comments by Spoiler and Elkhunter pertained to all the landowners around PL.

I have to disagree with you Rich... Mossy Oak had almost unlimited resources and money. I've never seen a hunting club with the expendable $$$$ or equipment that Mossy Oak had. MO planted a little over 170 acres of food plots according to the logs I read in the old lodge and that was some of the best forage money can buy. They also didn't have to worry about filling a lease and getting enough members so Cuz and Toxey set the rules to THEIR standards and didn't care who didn't like it because they paid all the bills.

So yeah, MO had the ability to run it a LOT better than it will probably ever be run and it will never be as good as it was when they had it because no one that will ever own the whole piece they had and managing for QDMA will not be their livelihood like MO...

Excellent post Spoiler. You're right, they controlled the whole thing and managed it intensively. The more property you have under your control, and the more $$$ you can expend on your management program, the more you can accomplish. It's just plain facts and math. If you've got tight regs, 1000 acres good land and you plant 50 acres in high quality year round forage, you're gonna be successful and see some good hunting. But if you've got 10,000 acres of good land and plant 500 acres in high quality year round forage on it under the same rules, your gonna be way more successful. They controlled enough land and had enough money to do it right. That situation was ideal, unique and will be very hard to ever duplicate again.

The perfect example is Dr. Woods' place in southwest MO, featured on his website. I was there when he bought the place, and it was sure enough CRAP! Yet a huge amount of effort, and a huge amount of $$$ spent, has turned that place into a showpiece for the region.

It went from a private/commercial operation to a hunting club situation. Pre club, the place was managed for big mature bucks. The big difference now is that the club has severely changed the age class of the deer. As I said in a thread here a year or so ago, the club came in and set a 4 pt on one side rule. The first year they killed about 25 deer that went 125+ gross plus another 40 bucks that met "club rules". Year two came around and Spoiler killed the highest scoring buck on the place at 120. Of course they killed another 50+ club rule bucks. I have no problem with the rule. The deer were legal per the club and that was fine. The problem came in when the memeber starting blaming me and a few others for not allowing them to kill the big bucks. Both years there were more bucks killed than does. And yet some members were fussing about the number of does killed.

It is plain and simple. If you want to kill big mature bucks, you have to let the deer reach at least 3.5 years of age. If you want to shoot rack bucks only, then the 4 pt rule is fine. You just can't have it both ways. And you dang sure can't kill 70 bucks and 40 does each year and blame the guys killing the does for the lack of big bucks.

It was simple ego and greed. That place was good for about 25 mature bucks per season if the members could control their fingers. They couldn't.

If that pic was of you in the 80's... you must be old as dirt now.

Maybe a little older, 76 in two weeks.
And I am still that good looking.

Spoiler, big grin and I highly yield to your post! YOU ARE 100% right!!! I should have been more specific. No doubt that MO planted every available piece of land they could and they habitat managed it as much as they could. They did it right for BIG mature bucks AND a healthy deer herd.

But the part I was talking about (anyone can do it too) were the "buck harvest rules". MO was serious about mature hunters shooting mature bucks only! Way too many people paint QDM into a corner and say that QDM means you can't kill ANY immature bucks and that even means kids, first-time-hunters and that is NOT the case.

When MO had PL, the majority of bucks killed at PL were "mature". Being greedy and being trigger happy and shooting 2.5 yr old bucks or "4 pts on one side", was not tolerated. They also preached, which I agree, that you don't have to "kill" a buck for a hunt to be successful!

So yes, no doubt, MO had the resources to plant, plant, plant but the BUCK HARVEST or KILLIN' rules MO instituted when they had it, can be duplicated by any hunting club!!! So that was my point.

As Elkhunter pointed out, 4 pts on one side or better will not produce near the same results as "mature bucks only" rule. When you have several members killing two or three basket-racked 2.5 yr old 12" inside spread bucks every year, you're not going to have a great number of mature bucks.

Abolt300, you're right too. I am just glad that I got to watch the transformation MO did. However, even without the massive planting, quality bucks can still be produced there but the bucks will have to make it past 2.5 yrs old first!

Dang Rebelman!!! LOL!! I'm going to remind you in 30 years how dang old your @$$ is!!!! LOL!!!!!

Big Jack, I think you can still take him!!!!

Just kidding Rebelman!

So, (I don't know the history that well), while International Paper owned it (paper company managed), MO leased it and set the rules and planted food plots. After they left, it was leased and overharvested. Now some of has been cut hard and subdivided to private landowners (still multi-thousand acre landowners). Is that correct?

If so, I would think it would be easy to re-manage to excellent hunting through "mature buck standards", and better habitat management, which of the landowners I know there and neighbors, IS the standard. In addition, while 170 acres of foodplots sounds good, it still is a small proportion of the total land base (less than 2%) when the remainder is in mature woods and planted pines (again ownership dictated timber management for maximum wood production). I've got neighbors to them that plant a SIGNIFICANTLY larger proportion to quality summer and winter foodplots. Foodplots don't make quality deer - habitat management does and some of the new owners (and neighbors) are doing that with burning (something that, I assume, MO did not do since IP owned it). You can accomplish a LOT more quality animal production with a logger and a match than a tractor!

A lot of assumptions and I could be wrong on any or all



Most of it is not a club situation any more!

About 1,200 acres sold about 4 years ago. It was along Rum Creek. Has more sold now? If so, what part? A friend of mine made an offer a few years ago for about 600 acres on the south side where the big hay field is. The hay field is planted in pines now.

One guy I am doing some work for bought about 5,000 acres south and east of the hayfield. He's pretty serious about habitat management and deer harvest. Another guy bought a couple thousand on what was the North West side of IP's old ownership. He's putting up a high fence on a portion of it. The hayfield, at least, is planted in longleaf pine

An additional 2,000 or so bordering it is owned by a friend/client and he also does an exceptional job of deer/turkey management, both plantings, harvest, and "real" management on burning/thinning woods. Less than 5 miles away, another friend is growing deer (and wild quail incidentally) on about 3,000 acres of managed woodlands that, last year of their killed bucks, averaged over 200 lbs and over 140".

I wonder why MO didn't just buy the place. Or another question. Why did they ever let it go?

Preach on brother!

Until the chemical prep is sprayed on a lusciously green cutover in August killing all the browse so that the Feb replanting can occur without competition.

There have been several incidents where I was excited about the amount of browse in a clearcut during the summer and then, late summer, the clearcut gets nuked. That's always disappointing but I understand the business of growing trees.

Regarding PL, Mark Thomas treated a lot of thinned planted pines areas with Arsenal and wow did it make a difference when the sweetgums and other hardwoods yielded to the sunlight.

gobbler,

I was really surprised to see several coveys of wild quail on PL while I was hunting there. I killed alot of hogs in that long hayfield. I have no doubt I pushed some hogs onto some of those properties! LOL

If you are talking about the hay field North of the iron bridge I killed my first gobbler just west of there many years ago.

Amen! Plus the logger and fire is MUCH more economical....

Not only "economical" but often profitable. I'm making very good money from even the small timber cuts I'm having done.

I am pretty sure that is the land that went with the old Hit-n-Miss lodge... It doesn't sound like Lanier has sold any of the lease we were in Barry...

That's it... My daughter killed her first rack buck in the field that parallel's that road a couple of years ago...

You guys have to quit, you are killing me. Dang I miss that place.

Barry, as you know, I hunted the Bow Only land with my buddy Darrell for years. Oh heavens!!! I miss it too. Just think what it would be like today if the present hunting club let those 2.5 yr old bucks walk! You saw PL at its peak. The stories I have of that place! Hey Barry, remember when you saw that huge buck when he...? Oh, and when that big 10 pt gave you the slip when you were about to shoot him? And all those bucks you rattled up?

Sorry, you're going to have nightmares tonight!!!

That place just has some quality dirt.

When the Hit n Miss Hunting Club formed in the early ‘70s the agricultural land was primarily soybeans. In fact, the property was a quail hunting plantation previously and had not been a deer hunting club. My Grandfather primarily joined due to quail prospects and not deer and turkey believe it or not as he had never even harvested a deer prior to joining. As a side note, and ironically, my Grandfather harvested the first and last buck on the property as the Hit n Miss Huntinh Club. Anyway, there had been relatively very little to no deer hunting pressure on the property prior to the Hit n Miss forming. The combination of soybeans, hardwood bottoms, Black Belt soil, desirable genetics, and very little to no hunting pressure resulted in producing tremendous deer prior to any official, or institutional, “deer management” on the property. In hindsight, the worst management practice implemented during the Hit n Miss Hunting Club era is when bounty hunters were hired by the state to reduce the deer population during the off season. This occurred one year during the late ‘70s, or early ‘80s. Not only were deer killed, or culled, without been properly identified, the Club smelled for months due to all the deer crippled deer that were not retrieved during the process.

Wow. What a joke.

At the time, 40 years ago, it must have been considered a productive practice. I know in hindsight Club members regretted agreeing to the program.

Just a short 8 year break in the discussion.........

And the members agreed to that. That may be the most idiotic thing I have ever red on here.

Here is article including ideas regarding herd management, which includes concepts pertaining to reducing herds:

http://lookatmybuck.com/assets/articles/deerbook.pdf

40+ years ago reducing deer populations to improve genetics and herd quality was a relatively new concept in the Southeast. How and when a herd was reduced was arguably not as calibrated, precise, as it is today. There was not a fraction of the data, experience, and perspective available then as we fortunately have now. One can only assume that the State of Alabama was experimenting with concepts and practices in an effort to determine the most effective methods and practices to achieve the desired result. We all know the road to hell was purportedly paved with good intentions, and hindsight is always 20/20.

We used to get 40 doe tags on 1200 acres in Wilcox co. I killed 32 does my senior year in high school. We just did what the biologist told us to do.

>We just did what the biologist told us to do.

In this case the Biologist from the State of Alabama recommended harvesting deer using a 3rd party outside of the season.
A few years later deer tags were recommended as you reference and has become common practice.
Clearly, the State of Alabama was not as experienced/informed when they made their initial recommendation.

But I can also remembering quitting counting at 100 deer most afternoons in large soybean and cotton fields back then. Now those big fields were planted in plantation pines in the early 90’s. Sad to see now.

Like you I recall the vast fields of soybeans and corn in Dallas County during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and I can still remember the all the hardwood bottoms producing an abundance of white acorns. Now the agriculture is mostly pine, and the hardwoods have been harvested and not replaced.
Some would contend that deer meat tasted better back when deer were able to feed on more hardwood forage like white acorns and had more soybeans and corn to eat. Pine woods forage and food plots with oates, wheat, vetch, etc. do not produce as a high of quality of meat some would contend. Your mileage may vary.

Cutting hardwoods to make room for more pines is rampant throughout the blackbelt. Drive across the Choctawhatchee River where it crosses 10 just West of Abbeville if you want to see something heartbreaking. I have no idea how that was even legal to cut the entire river bottom down like that. Money for pulpwood trumps wildlife management every time.

Money trumps management (of any kind) .... Every time.

Just pull up an aerial plat map, of any rural county, and see how much land now belongs to some timber company or investment company that you never heard of. And then look up their recorded address. I'm amazed at the number of Alabama acres owned by some obscure LLC in Seattle Washington, or Portland Maine or ChingDang China. I keep wondering how the hell these people find 40 acres in podunk Alabama.

Sawbriers and honeysuckle don't produce the quantity or quality of wildlife as those big bean and corn fields.

Did those folks just quit farming cause they couldn't make any money, or did the government pay them to quit and plant pines.

The soybean prices dropped significantly in the ‘80. My family farmed soybeans South of Florala in NW Florida until the early ‘80, and then most agricultural landed was converted to peanuts where they soil was a good fit as prices were more competitive and there is less risk below the ground as opposed to above the ground. Pines provide less risk and a predictable return albeit a much longer window for return. It’s a shame though because when the soybeans started being removed the quail
populations followed suit. And the protein sources for deer have arguably never been fully replaced when soybeans were removed and white acorns sources diminished.

I figured when they went to pines they entered the land in some kind of government program where they got paid to remove the land from crop production.

Most of em did. Yes

I am sure there were government subsidies involved as well. However, if the prices of soybeans were as high in '80s as they were in the '70s, there would have been less reason to consider government funding. My Father lives in Baldwin county, and I have seen more soybeans in the past decade than I had seen in 20-30 years prior.

Very few big time paper companys own timberland nowadays. Mostly investment firms owns all the land now an have a third party manage it for them an do the hunting leases. Usually they have fiber supply agreement with paper mills . When invest firms or reits buys the timberland they have to buy it all not just the bigger blocks. A lot time they will own forty acres in middle of nowhere but they had take it to get the rest . Pine plantation have pretty much a guaranteed 5% return. Thats why so many firms invest in timberland. No mutual fund company can guarantee that especially over a 20 term. but timber keeps growing every year no matter what stock market does.

Little off topic but does mossy oak still own the place around Bellamy. Think it’s called Lee Haven?

I hunted the bow only properly the year before Mossy Oak got it. We had a ball. I was planning to do it every year but the guy who showed us around told us we were the last pay hunt like that, that it was being leased. We got started too late.