I will add that where I am, and I'm saying this for ONLY where I am and what I am seeing, there is less hunting. I have been all over 2 countries today and have seen zero hunters. I was looking at wood and field roads and probably 75% had no traffic since the last rain. I went by 2 hunting camps where I know the people and was going to stop and talk to them but nobody was at either one.

Interesting thread. I don’t mind the game check and honestly it is not a burden. I am curious for those of you that oppose it what is your suggestion? This thread covers how the pre game check numbers were just estimated and nobody really had good numbers. This thread covers how the game check numbers are not accurate because not everyone enters the info. You have to believe that the info entered is accurate so you can at least have the beginning of building an accurate database to enable decisions on management based off hard numbers. It is also pointed out that people have not seen a difference in their micro area they hunt. I use micro in an effort to put some scale to the few acres you actually hunt vs the landmass of the entire state. I hunt 1200 acres with two land owners that border our property for a combined acreage of neatly 8000 acres in Jackson county. We have been 8pt or better for 16 years. Property is managed for deer and turkeys. Some years we see lots of nice bucks and some we don’t. Maybe it is weather, or pressure, one year we logged about 250 acres and it took about 2 years for us to have high numbers of deer sightings again. We keep good records, date, time, weight, estimated age, etc. there are only 4 of us that hunt the land I hunt so very little pressure. I guess we keep all the data off our small prop yams share and compare it with the two larger border properties in an effort to manage the combined properties. It has worked quite well. Our average weight on does last year was 109 pounds on the hoof. We saw 17 unique bucks 8pt or better, only 3 were killed. I don’t have the number of smaller bucks in front of me, but the average number of deer seen during a hunt was 9. A hunt could be any length of time. So all of that to say what is your suggestion or idea to get the state to where you want it? If game check is useless what would work?

Got any openings?

"only 4 of us that hunt the land I hunt so very little pressure" That pretty much sums up the whole issue!

How is only having 4 hunters impacting Game Check?

I believe that the current GC number is much closer to accurate. Chuckie thinks 70% of us are cheating and avoiding the GC system, because the numbers aren't lining up with the elusive survey numbers. But I never believed those SWAG survey numbers anyway. I don't believe we have the millions of deer that ALFA and AWF would like you think we have. And I don't believe we're killing a half million a year either. Just like I don't believe Auburn's predetermined study that suggests coyotes kill 70% of our deer herd annually. It's all politically motivated bullschit.
I think the vast majority of hunters are in compliance with the laws and the GC numbers are very close to the accurate accounting of deer kills. Whatever that's worth, knowing how many we kill kill, without knowing how many we got.

With the survey we THOUGHT we knew fairly accurate numbers as hunters. Now with GC we don't know what's right, GC or survey. Are the vast majority of hunters in compliance or not? Well, how many tickets have been written for non-compliance AFTER a kill? I'm not talking about hunting without a harvest record but actually killing a deer and not reporting it.

Let's say Outback is correct which I have no idea if he is or isnt. Last year's number was about 81,000. What if that is 81% compliance meaning the actual kill is 100,000. That is about 150,000 less than the estimate kill which should reflect on a lot lower deer population than was thought. Ok, now what?? Cut days or weeks off the season? Cut limits?? Like it or not, $$$ is one driving factor in deer season and people start losing money (like our Lt. Govenor) there will be some serious discussions to be had.

See, I don't think that should matter at all. Now Matt and Jeremy are going to chime in here directly, but I was in this fight while they was still in Jr High. The DCNR is an acronym for Conservation & Natural Resources. That does not include Public Relations or Hunter Happiness or Good Ol Boy Networking or Billy Bob's High Pen Hunting or whatever the hell Chuckie is misinformed about this week. It means manage the wildlife and game animals for the betterment and procreation of the resources.... Period. Unfortunately it's been done so wrong, for so long, that the solution is strategically impractical by now.

ABSOLUTELY money should not be involved in the decision making. But we would be fools to believe it is not. The best we can hope for is to keep it to a minimum.

Matt and Jeremy both are doing everything they can to educate the public, IMO. I know Matt does his job and tries to stay out of the “politics” associated with his employer. I do however think the population is lower than was estimated all these years. There are pockets with a high enough density to support mass doe killings. There are other pockets where 2 does killed per 500 acres would be TOO much (guess which pocket I’m in).

We know for a fact GC is not being used by everyone. We even have some members here that brag about not participating. But I don’t know of any way to get a solid data point for how many deer are actually killed.

I’ve said it before but if the processors were REQUIRED to submit their annual numbers (buck and doe) we could get a pretty accurate count. It would probably be within 10% of the actual number.

If I was in charge this is what I would do BEFORE making any other changes to GC. And don’t tell me that’s more government regulation we don’t need. Their job is to “conserve natural resources” and 90% of the processors could spit that number out in a matter of seconds

It's not the processor's job. And requiring them to do so, could have a negative impact on their business. The last thing we need is more state government regulations on small business.

How would that have a negative impact on their business? I’ve used several processors over the years and EVERY one of them know exactly how many deer the process every year. The DCNR has to have data to do their job correctly. You can’t shoot down every thing they could or try to do in the name of no more government regulation AND gripe about what they are doing.

Having processors provide that information would have ZERO impact on their business, would not require them to do anything different and would not have any of the Hunters information attached. I run a small business and I don’t see any negative impact it could/would create.

I kinda get tired of the whole deal about ‘hurting business’ for the processors.
They damn near have ZERO regulations on them now.

Good Lord.......try getting ISO certified or EPA licenses or something along those lines like real businesses. I have paperwork obligations at work, as most people do. They should be no different!

I'm not getting into the processors giving the number or not. I'll abstain from that vote. They would have to provide buck/doe along with the county. I'm going to venture a wild guess that only 70% of deer to go a professor which is double what we are told GC is at at this point. I process my own but with that running about one a year and I won't kill one this year, I'm not going to swing the number much. Then what do we do with GC. It's here to stay. Now there will be 2 sets of numbers that could vary greatly. If GC is higher, then realization that compliance is much higher than thought and is fairly accurate. If the processor number is higher, then GC is useless, people are not using it, and will give the appearance of a disregard for game laws with no reprucussions. One would need to go but won't just to save face.

would of been easier if ol Chuck hadn't insulted half the hunters in the state.

I agree. Most of us have good relationships and interactions with game wardens and state biologists. If somebody that was more representative of the common man had presented game check in a different way, folks may have jumped on board. I’ll never forget that condescending email he sent me when I inquired about the CAB taking daya away from turkey season.

There is a division. There will never be everyone on board with any proposal but the division now is larger, unfortunate, and probably can't be overcome with the current situation. Seems with any law, rule, regulation, or whatever you want to call it that certain things have to be considered when drawing up the proposal. 1) What to do it everything goes right. 2). Backup plan in case things to astray. 3). Can the proposal be enforced. With GC it seems nothing but total success was considered.

Here is the problem.....

How will ANYONE ever know what the Compiance Rate is?

On average how many interactions do you have with a local warden per week?

Yep, Sykes is an out of touch, inept leader and the bad thing is we as a collective group of hunters can't really do a whole lot to get rid of him. I wont do a damn thing to support him and his agenda. I appreciate Matt and Nighthunter at least having the balls to face the fire here on aldeer and give us some insight as to where these decisions are coming from.