A 150" deer is well above average for every place in North America. I don't blame anyone for setting a high standard for what they consider a trophy but If they think 150's are dinks they don't know much about whitetail
deer.

Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana along the Big Muddy produce monster bucks that rival the midwest and "plenty" of them. Most are kept very quiet. Read an article in NAW mag a few years ago about a intensely managed farm in east central Arkansas that bordered the Miss. River. 150" was a dink on that place, they were pumping out some world class bucks.

What counties in Alabama could one even grow any significant quantity of 150"-170" whitetails if given proper management. I think it would be very rare in free range even with a large track of land and unlimited budget to accomplish this.

"I" wouldn't call a 150 a dink ever, but I can see passing on a young 150 on a well managed big place with like minded fellow hunters. A six year old 150 gets the arrow every time, same as a six year old 130.

There are a few areas of Alabama you could manage for 150+ deer and expect to kill some on a semi regular basis. There are actually some that already do but they aren't talking about it on open forums.

Yep.
But the "guys" in question, as I take it, have expectations well beyond 150" and haven't killed anything in three years.

Dang guys. They call the 150s dinks jokingly. I guess I need to choose my words more carefully. Should had said several and not plenty. But to me 1 would be plenty. And they have several 150 class deer on their walls from the Midwest. One has a 170. That is their goal is to try to have some 170s . They probably will start taking a few this year. Their goal was to let em grow for a couple years to see what developed. I can see from the post that at least BhamFred understands their logic.

Did they not give the four of you a chance to lease it.

I can't understand why in the world would people spend 25k a year on a LEASE what happens when say 6 years down the road and you've sunk 150 grand in a place and they decide to not lease it again or somebody buys it. It may just be me but if I have the money to spend 25k a year on a lease I'm gonna buy my own land where I know I will have something to show for it.

I had no idea it was even in the works. The older gentleman has turned a lot over to his son and he saw the opportunity to make some money. I've been very blessed for along time it's hard to complain. It does hurt though.

From your above posts they had illogical management goals IMO. Your post made it appear they were passing 150" 4.5YO all the time. Glad you cleared it up.

Now that I can agree on.....

^^^^^^^^This

We took on avg 6 bucks a year off 4800 acres for 12 yrs. We ran 12 cams on mineral sites and maybe had 3 bucks total in that time that would break 150. I killed the only one and we had no pics of him. The 140 mark is a total different story. The 150 mark is almost like a majic number to break. Most of the mature deer killed would fall in the 120 range.

Did that tract lay on the state line and belong to a fellow out of Acworth? For some reason I'm thinking you hunted there. I saw two that would bust 140" while we had logging crews up there a few years ago. CD.

Yes that's it. I might have one of those 140's on the wall.LOL

You have obviously never heard of a place called Portland Landing or Mr. Henderson's place in Miller's Ferry or you wouldn't make laughable statements like that...

If you have only gotten 2 deer close to 150 in 8 years on camera, you might wanna reevaluate your management or find somewhere else to hunt because the genetics just aren't there....

Didn't the Edwards guy split up Portland Landing and sell it off several years back? I know of those places you mention as well as several other nice places over there (e.g. sedgefield) and they do kill a few 150" deer from time to time, but I still think the vast majority of free range deer are in the mid 120's to low 130's. I do agree that the genetics and etc. seem to be better in the Portland Landing area, however I still would agree with the previous poster that 150" deer are still a very small percentage of mature bucks at Portland or anywhere else over there in a free range herd (even with unlimited budget).

You are absolutely correct despite what anybody else posts after this.

When you get above 150"....you are getting elite and it takes a perfect combination of age, nutrition and genetics to achieve it. ESPECIALLY in Alabama.

Unless Portland Landing was way better than South Texas ranches like Kings Ranch, and we all know it's not, then 150 was a rarity, even more so than in South Texas. We all know places that have the potential to produce some exceptional world class deer but to say they aren't very rare is not true and shows just how much perception differs from reality.

http://www.eslabonranch.com/blog/?p=405

An excerpt from the above link:


Specific to the first question — when does antler size peak — researchers collected 4827 capture records from 3098 individual bucks over a 13-year period. About five percent of the unique bucks captured had a gross Boone and Crockett score above 150, two percent were above 160, and only half a percent scored above 170. Four out of 3098 bucks grossed above 180, two out of 3098 grossed above 190, and only one buck in 13 years involving nearly 5000 capture records gross scored above 200.
“That gives you an idea of how rare those really big native deer are in the wild,” Hellickson told listeners. “In fact, the average gross score of the bucks captured in this study that were 5.5 years or older was 130.”