First off, how I feel now might not be the same as how I felt early in the season. After seeing so little during the season, I feel differently than I did in early December. Secondly, I doubt that the problem at Skyline and other areas are guys like me who hunt a handful of times during the season and take one doe if they even see anything at all. Yeah, I'm sure it's intermittent weekend hunters like me that's the problem.


I'm 49 years old and have taken 3 deer in Alabama in my lifetime. In those years, I have probably hunted less than 15 of them, so even 3 deer in 15 years of hunting is not that big of a ratio that would lead one to characterize me as "I gotta shoot X number of deer per year". To be honest, for all of the January hunts this season I told my wife I wasn't going just to shoot anything, I was looking for a buck and something bigger if at all possible. I only have a small chest freezer and can really only justify paying for processing for 1-2 deer a year. In actuality, my concerns are about the lack of seeing deer.


I take very seriously encroaching or disturbing other hunters and dislike it when it is done to me. Last Saturday, I knew with a very high degree of certainty that we were the only two hunters in the area because of the remoteness and elevation. The wind was blowing so hard and the temperature was such that there was nothing moving. The deer had obviously moved out of the area to bed and get out of the wind. Plus with the snow on the ground and wet duff underneath from the soaking rain before the snow, it was very quiet walking. It wasn't like I was stomping through the crunching leaves with no concern for my actions. Additionally, I would respectfully suggest you research "stalk hunting" to add to your repertoire of hunting skills and also research grammar and spelling to polish your snarky repartee. /sarcasm

In general, if you fully read my post you will see that I was frustrated about low deer sightings and concerns about herd numbers. However, you will note that I was surprised by the abundance of tracks in the snow proving there are a lot of deer there. It's just I was not seeing them and what factors may have contributed to it.