You must be blessed with a very healthy deer herd, or feel comfortable sitting on a food plot for 4 hours and seeing a single doe. I just don't have the patience to sit all day and not see deer. I love seeing them on my place.

I do think this happens a lot on properties where people are only trying to kill big/mature deer. I am as guilty as th next guy at letting one or two go that should have been shot that just didn't have enough head gear that was probably over 3-4 years old.

Hard to survey the land from a stand or while hunting. It’s best to have several mineral licks on your property with cameras. You can keep a record of the bucks per their RAck. Does are much harder to assess but early season they tend to stay together so you can count them somewhat. One must understand that bucks get pushed out by their mothers their second year, so they must find their own range. This makes them very mobile and they get killed if your neighbor does not share your harvest goals. The idea is to have the best habitat so you can to keep enough food and cover to “hold” as many mature bucks as possible. That is why many people on this site spend tens of thousands of dollars each year developing their land. Not completely to build the heard, but to enjoy the complete process of deer hunting.
I was at Auburn 1987-1991 when the deer population was exploding and we must of had 100/mile. It was awesome and the bucks were big. Now I am in a big $$$ leads in green county and we have about 40/ mile but lots of does. However my 1800 acres in Jeff co has more deer and a much higher buck to doe ratio.

The biggest question to ask is how you your fields look by January. If they are tall and lush...you can have more deer. If they are mowed down and 2% of your land is planted...you might want to take a few more out

Is 2% in plots the goal? That doesn't seem like much. Now, if you've got 10% of acres in green fields, and you've got serious browse, you've got too many deer.

If you did 10% in fields.... that is a ton!!! That means every club that has 1000 acres would have 100 acres in green fields. If the average “club” field is 1 acre, that means the club would have 100 fields. On paper land, that just doesn’t happen. Get my point? If we are taking ag land, that is different. Mostly, only the boys in N.Al have land like that.

I’ve hunted land with 100-125+ deer sq/mile and I’ve also hunted land with 10-15 deer sq/mile.

It made it a lot easier to get out of bed when seeing deer was a given. Deer were healthy, lots of fawns, lots of bucks. As someone said, it looked like kicking dirt off an ant bed in the afternoons.

Not everywhere can accommodate those numbers but the majority of the state is very much below carrying capacity. There is an ABUNDANCE of browse all over the state.

I would say the majority of the state could easily carry 60+ deer sq/mile. I would think that would be a good balance for herd health and great hunting.

Thats right percents sound small till u actually figure...ag land will make a difference but...

I'd say a minimum of 5 acres of plot for 100 acres of land to get a feel for if they are impacting too much. Personally I think a property will do better with closer to 10% planted food sources. I see what you are saying about the surrounding area, but there is usually not a lot of natural food in hunting season. I don't care what is planted for summer cause the deer have a ton of natural browse. I'm talking about in February, when all deer have are Woody browse which isn't their favorite and food plot that have better greens or soy pods. That if those plots are bare dirt, you have too many deer usuing your land at that time than the land can hold. Same as if deer are eating multiflora rose. It is not their preferred food, so if it is eaten down. Then they have nothing else and you should decrease the deer or increase the food. The deer may be using it for several reasons. Food, hunting pressure, thermal cover ect. But that is how I would gauge a property.

You’re getting into some real hypothetical situations now. I’ve been around to a lot of properties and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one that had 5-10% of their acreage in food plots…..even the big wigs. I’m sure there’s a few out there but its few and far between. It’s also incorrect to say that there’s no natural browse in late winter. Some of the highest deer density properties in this area are nothing but 100’s and 100’s of acres of natural browse supporting deer densities that are likely 75-100 DPSM or more ….think of your quail hunting type plantations. How do that many deer survive without us planting massive green fields for them?? It’s through browse…..We don’t recognize just how much of a goat that deer really are……

All I’m getting at is that using food plots to determine how many deer you need to shoot is not a very accurate gauge. Also, what each person thinks is an acceptable density is very subjective. So what if the deer are eating sweetgum sprouts or multiflora rose? Are you finding dead deer that have starved to death? No probably not….Take for example some of the high deer density property where hunters tell me about seeing 50-60 deer on an evening hunt….Should we tell them that they need to start shooting a bunch of them just so that the deer aren’t eating sweetgum sprouts?? Why? So that the bucks will weigh a little more or the does start having twins instead of singletons? Maybe they like seeing a lot of deer. See what I’m getting at…..where we choose to manage is very subjective.

It's ironic to me that the highest deer density parts of the state are also the places with the biggest deer and the best racks.

That’s not necessarily true…….There’s some good deer killed in these high deer density areas but for the most part its just a bunch of average dinks. I’ve seen better deer come from other counties that aren’t as well known. For example, I tracked for a guy the other day that had a wall full of true studs that all came from Autauga Co....we're talking about deer scoring in the 150's and 160's. I've seen some whoppers in Elmore Co too. I’ve also seen deer of the same size though come from Bullock Co where populations are really high. From what I see it doesn’t matter which area we’re talking about….there’s only a small handful of high scoring racks coming off of any property regardless of the population. The high deer density areas produce a few and the lower density areas produce a few. There are some areas with better soil that produce better racks on average though….

I’m no wildlife biologist but I don’t think this is true. There are huge bucks that come out of Bankhead and the deer density is below average.

One less.

That's because they've got a genetic strain that is from the north. I don't think those deer can be compared to other parts of the state. They just get bigger once mature.

Exactly.

Autauga isn’t known as a black belt county or a major deer hunting county but look at how much Ag land Autauga County has. I’ve seen some studs killed here and there’s no telling what’s all been killed in Autauga County or any county for that matter that no one knows about. I know as a kid hunting with My grandpa and uncle they would kill 15-25 deer a year on 600 acres. They where not trophy hunters but would kill a mature buck every 2-3 years. My grandpa only mounted 4 deer in his life the biggest coming out of Bullock county. 2 where shot at Bear Creek swamp. And the other one came from that 600 acre Property which was located around Independence Al.

I think Lamar co has more deer than ever. I hunt 600 acres in Bibb county that lost a lot of deer to blue tonaje in the late 90s. Just now starting to resemble the good ole days. I’ve got 3 real fields about 6 acres total and about 20 acres in cut pasture with no cows. On a good day you can hunt all three fields and see 40 deer. Maybe kill 3 deer a year

Here in SE Bama, I think the dpsm is much less than average. I've sat 13 or 14 times and have only seen 4 deer..gets discouraging sometimes when you feel you're doing everything the "right" way. Btw, I have been a long time reader of Aldeer and just decided to join tonight. Ya'll don't be too hard on me.

Welcome DG!

I’d like to see a higher density in the places I hunt. Shockingly, I see more bucks on property with higher deer densities. There are places I’ll go to meat hunt, but won’t shoot a doe on my land. I do wish there were some public land that was buck only til the population grew to 60/mi. I’d also love to see better wildlife management on our public lands. Most of the public land I’ve hunted seems to managed for timber over wildlife. I’m not a forester or biologist, but opening up some of the canopy and rotational burns would pay huge wildlife dividends IMO.