Why are AL deer so wild and weary?

I’ve hunted several different states and I have to say these AL deer are the wildest, most easily spooked deer I’ve ever seen. One little noise, anything to alert them and it’s over, they are gone and back in the thick stuff. Why is this? I wonder if it’s the years & years of dog hunting deer here in North AL? Not blaming dog hunters because I enjoy a good dog drive myself, it’s just a theory? What do y’all think? Robinhedd

Because our hunting season runs thru 5 months of the year

I've often wondered the same. We had 16 bucks on camera last year.
EVERY SINGLE PIC of a BUCK was at NIGHT. Even during the rut.

Even the skwurls on our place are paranoid. My son and I were sitting in
stand late one afternoon as a skwurl made his way up to our stand. My son
has these gloves with the magnetic finger openings that automatically close.
As he was putting his finger back inside the glove (we heard the skwurl coming
and thought it was a deer) those magnet closers made the slightest, almost
imperceptible noise and that skwurl came unglued. He hauled ass about 50 yards
before he ever stopped. He looked back our way and then continued running.
That sucker was still running last time I saw him. This is on private land that
is very lightly hunted only by us.

BTW, we saw one DOE all season long. Knowing there were bucks around,
made it very frustrating.

I don't understand it either. Other states seem like a petting zoo.

I think it's due to the trail cams. Constant traffic in the woods every weekend cuz folks gotta know what's on these cameras. They weren't near this spooky back in the 90's imo.

There is no dog hunting in Northeast Bama. I bid 4 months of constant hunting season harassment. Not to mention contact during scouting time , trail cams and a turkey season.

Long season.

Had a doe pick me out this am. I was solid still and had face covered.

Y'all just gotta be more stealthy

Long season, the doe death rape that goes on , trail
Cameras and the over abundance of coyotes

I think your over thinking it. They're not pets lol

Constant human presence by hunters for several decades tromping in the woods for 6 months a year has trained deer to walk on pins an needles in this state....and walk around lookin up...and know exactly what we smell like..move like..and sound like. Their is no aluminum or steel in the woods..and nothing else wears boots...so it make it rather easy for them to pick us off a tree...or duck..at the sound of an unnatural thump...or come straight to atention at the clicking of a rifle safety..nothing else makes noises in the woods like us..we are dumb and clumsy with poor senses..its a wonder we kill anything at all..oh wait...we are the most intelegent species on the face of the earth...nevermind

Do the trail cameras themselves spook em? (the one's that don't have to checked like cell cameras)

Over-hunting. Getting shot at with guns for months. This is my first good season in Kentucky and these deer are retarded in comparison, even the big bucks. I've had three shooters at eye level in the past couple weeks not notice me standing there at all. Closest was 7 yards. I had a stare down with a spike at 10 yards yesterday and all he did was slightly change his direction and continue on his way unscathed. Didn't really care. The deer here don't really spook they just kinda go around you...cause they don't get blasted every time they stand up.

Extended gun season and hunters that don't practice scent control when checking cameras. Smaller states have more deer and they act differently because they don't get blasted several months. Usually, mid-western states only have a week or two gun season.

I've hunted in Alabama for 40 plus yrs and they were spooky on public land as far back as I can remember.
I noticed when I started going up north and the midwest...it was a big difference. They are wired down here unless you're hunting in a low pressure area.

No one likes to get raped definately will make some skiddish.

They can.

They do on big nastys that ain't encountered em I know for fact I don't use em in season unless it's right by my house or close to populated activity

Didnt have the doe death rape back in the 90's, nor the trail cams. Huntd north madison county and had friends that hunted the other side of state line. We all vowed that you could tell exactly when you stepped across the line by how the deer n turkeys acted.

I've seen it both ways then doe I missed Saturday was sneaking in like she was walking on broken glass I've seen that several times the 6 point I shot a few years ago walked into a green field broad daylight post rut and never checked up. I've seen does come through the woods sounding like a dozer push out a fire lane making all kinds of racket. Last year I had a six point come through on public land with out a care in the world and made a chit ton of racket when he came through and the 8 point I shot 30 mins later on the same trial the 6 point came in on was on pins and needles just slow and steady stopping about every 3-5 yds sniffing the ground up in the air and looking around at his surroundings.

Midwest deer are easy to kill in comparison. I can’t tell you how many deer came in down wind of me the last two weeks. The worst reaction I got was they turned around and walked back the way they came. Our club never gets a rest. 10/15-2/10 deer season. They shoot hogs every weekend in February or folks are riding around. Turkey season in March and April. Then some folks come once or twice a month and hog during the summer or just knock around. Then tractor work starts in August. There may be a few weeks they get some peacefulness, but it ain’t much.

I've seen it both ways, and I'm not convinced that human presence is always the culprit. Obviously it can be, but I hunted swamp land in Lowndes County, with 20 other hunters and more coyotes than I ever seen anywhere. Those deer would stand 30 yards away and watch you climb a tree. We used to joke about how Mello they were, and even wondered if they was grazing on someone's local pot stash.
Then I've hunted another place with only two or three hunters, and often nobody on the property for weeks at a time, no cameras, no atvs and still the deer would act completely paranoid. If you even seen one, in the daylight, buck or doe, they was on ultra high alert and spooked at any movement or noise.
Thats totally opposite behavior, from deer herds that are less than 50 miles apart, but two examples that I've seen personally.

This made me remember one time when I snuck up on 2 does at about 100 yds. When I saw them I stopped and was just watching them, I don't think it was even hunting season but I know I wasn't hunting at the time. They were browsing in some reasonably open hardwoods. They never even looked my way but all of a sudden they both just took off running wide open but I've never seen deer do this, instead of heading out of there as fast as they could they ran in this great big pattern that sort of looked like a race track. They did this a couple of times and then finally took off. The only thing I could ever figure was that they smelled something that made them jump but they didn't know where it was coming from so they were just running until they finally decided on a way to go. It was a crazy thing to watch.

this is the million dollar question that i don't know the answer to!
He lease 80 acres that is surrounded by large land owners that for the most part do not hunt. our deer will leave in a heart beat or start showing up at night for no apparent reason. we managed to kill a couple last year. were very picky and this was the first we have taken in 5 years on this place. but to do that. we brushed in our ground blind in july 235 yards from where the deer would be entering our field and they still walk out and look at the blind before entering the field.

ive noticed the more human contact they seem to have that isnt trying to kill them the less wary they act in hunting season when you go from 0 human contact to bullets flying its no wonder but when they get used to atv riders, hikers, people in general i think it takes them a few weeks to figure it out. I still have deer that watch me cut grass in the middle of the day across the pond on a green field itll stop after next weekend im sure.

Let's see, could be the ever changing landscape due to logging/timber industry, I don't know the stats but I dare say we are one of the countries leading producers? Hunter saturation/ number of hunters per acre. Extended hunting/gun seasons. IDK, do they have greenfields in KY, IL, SD, NE, that requires almost constant activity? I'm just guessing........

Makes you wonder what thought process causes them to leave the safety of a lush green ditch and hurl themselves in front of a 60 ton log truck.

Yep. Run away at the sight of a falling leaf, but walk right into the path of oncoming automobiles.

Long gun season. Dog hunting.

Most states have seasons that are over 80% archery only and no dog hunting at all.
Alabama has a season that allows firearms to be used 80% of the season and still allows dog hunting.

It ain’t hard to figure out.

I tend to agree with you but Mississippi has a long and liberal season and the deer I’ve hunted in the Mississippi delta were the most calm deer I’ve ever been around. You could ride a side by side through a green field and the deer would watch you go by. Those deer weren’t jumpy at all.

Probably a double dog dare from cute doe who was "only kidding". Damn wimmin!

Human Presence has nothing to do with it. They will get accustomed to people. Like farmers and loggers, etc. Pay them no attention and rarely do anything but just get alert when they smell a human.

What they don't get use to?

Being shot at.

If you deer are skiddish someone is shooting at them. Based on the current free-for-all system good luck trying to curtail anything related to that.

You've seen variations of this answer in the first page. I've not read all replies. Basically when you factor in prep for season, trail cams, people with atv's riding right through all but the thickest woods, not JUST on roads, stocking feeders, etc, our deer have close human contact from September thru mid Feb. That's almost half the year. Deer are highly adaptable to conditions and surroundings. They know where they're safe and not.

There is a college over in Rome GA called Berry College. It's campus is the largest contiguous land mass campus in the U.S. at 27,000ac. It also borders a Wildlife Management area. Their season is as long as ours running from Sept 8-Jan13. On Berry's campus, deer roam freely and bed down on the lawns of the campus buildings. Student's walk among them, and they simply keep their distance, which is basically just our of arm's reach. They, at least on the campus don't fear humans, while just a short distance away, they are hunted. I've seen neighborhoods overrun with deer eating shrubs, and bedding in yards in various suburbs here and there. They just know. It's why they are so easily restocked and thrive in so many places where once hunted out. They are masters at just keeping out of our way when they have to, but doing so while living in such close proximity to us.

The deer in the rural areas that only know being totally wild, and only know man as another predator learn to live accordingly.

That's a shorter way to say what I just said above, but yeah. Humans don't bother them per se. In fact, many deer like being around humans that feed them and they are easily tamed to a point. But shoot at them, and kill their mates, and God (or mother nature if you prefer) gave them a sense about that too.

I'm not too sure about this. I use to hunt on 40 acres belonging to my friend. Less than a mile away people would sometimes target shoot. I'd get all wound up about that when they started because after all, didn't they know I was deer hunting? One afternoon I was sitting on a power line cut watching 4 does on the next property 500 yds away when the shooting started. They never even looked up or took notice in any way, continued browsing for another 20 minutes, and didn't leave until finally a helicopter flew almost directly overhead. Even then they didn't run in terror, they just eased off into the woods.

Later that same year, which I think was the first year I hunted, my son and I were crammed into a one man shooting house one afternoon. A spike and a buttonhead walked out of some short pines into a little small green field. We both thought the buttonhead was a doe and he shot him at about 80 yds. He spined him so he just fell right there. The spike never even raised his head at the shot, kept browsing, and about 5 minutes later finally walked over to see why his buddy was lying on the ground, sniffed around and kept on browsing. Not 15 minutes later 3 does appeared from a bend in the road about 150 yds away, walked down the road and entered the green field. They alerted on the down deer right away but didn't run or do anything besides look at him until I put a hole through one.

they werent being shot at being shot at and hearing gunshots is 2 different things and they sound completely different hearing the bullet clap over your head before you hear the muzzle blast is a life changing event hearing someone shoot at a gun range 500 yards away is nothing the deer know I used to get agravated hunting our little 600 acres because a neighbor used to shoot like he was reinacting the Iraq war but the deer just went about their business

Ok but what about the deer standing 5 yds from the one that just got shot or the does that showed up 15 minutes later who couldn't have been very far?

If someone kept riding around throwing lead at me 24 hours a day I would be a little paranoid too.

Long deer season. Also constant predation. I have managed farms with little to no pressure deer act the same. Coyotes and now pigs are the issue.

loud ass mufflers, roaring mud grip tires, 4-wheelers, foot traffic, trail cameras, lack of scent control, neighboring hunting pressure, stupid stand placement, etc. etc. etc. i could go on but i'll stop with those obvious ones ...

true story .. was hunting a spot years ago on my land & the land next to me had been leased to these guys ... our property line bordered a road they'd cut into their lease ... literally, when the deer would hear their trucks rolling down the main road, they'd jump up & run onto our land, & "hide" from the hunters ... sometimes they might go back to the spot the idots had just drove past - but most times they'd just ease around our land & browse & have a good ole time ... the entire time they were "hiding" on my land, i could have blasted 'em off their hooves ...

Midwest deer are a different animal and they are just dumber
They also routinely come to grunting and rattling (even in areas with a very high doe to buck ratio)

Rednecks.....say no more