Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Doe numbers

Unless something really changes over the next 3 weeks there’s gonna be quite a few counties see a 25-40% reduction in the number of does killed this year versus last…..Counties like Blount, Marshall, Franklin, Madison, Jackson, Jefferson, Lauderdale, Limestone, Marion, Randolph, St. Clair and others. Mainly your northern counties...Colbert is even sitting at 50% right now…..What do the Aldeer experts attribute this decrease to?? Are people just shooting less does in these areas??

Less deer to shoot in Limestone, just my observation where I live. Shooting baby bucks

It appears there are less deer here than there have been the last couple years. Im not seeing nowhere close to the numbers i have been, about 25% really. A neighbor a mile or so away found 4 dead does on his place this fall. I hope thatsnot whats going on here. Im hoping my big plot being sorry as crap is what is going on. Hoping the deer are still here, just spread out. We seem to have more 2yo and 1yo bucks than normal, but you can tell them apart in pictures. Seems to me every year it isnt what you hope and expect it to be, alot like farming. Once in a while its better. But if i had to guess the answer to your question is just less deer in general in blount county.

I sure hope that's what it means.

It takes several years to see the the damage in population that shooting does, does in an area. Your not just killing that doe, your killing all her offspring for her lifetime. A place that has 30 does today, if you kill 5 has 25 to start next year, still alot of deer. It takes 3-5 yeareas till you realize, those five deer represented well over a hundred that would have been reproduced by those five. So I think what your seeing is the long term population effects of all the doe harvesting that has taken place. Just my opinion

I have a feeling its not…..That would mean that there was a major shift in hunter attitude toward killing does across north Alabama…..I just don’t really think that’s likely the case…..My guess is that its due to less deer……I’m calling it the corn crash. I think its impacting north Alabama more due to the habitat fragmentation and there being so many small parcels of land with a feeder on it.

I was just talking to a hunter last night that was saying how as long as they had corn out then they saw deer…..but if they let it run out then they disappeared quickly……We both agreed that it was because they were just going to the next corn pile across the road….Alabama hunters were given the rope to hang themselves with and that’s exactly what we’ve done in a lot of areas.

Poole may simply not hav the money to kill deer and take them to a processor.

Have you looked at any possible correlations between hunting licenses sold? After years of declines, 2020 was a huge spike that took license sales back up past 2011 levels, but it seems to have dropped off and is heading back towards where it was pre-pandemic. I have no real conclusions, but wondering how that plays into any that could be made.

The private I hunt in Blount county seems to have more does than ever. Me and some friends like to hunt refuges in Jackson county and we have noticed a decline the past couple years. My friend talked to farmer that owned land that joined some of the refuge and he said he had a permit and killed over 20 does out of his field this summer. Went from deer everywhere to shucks

Uhhhh..the vast majority of marshall county shouldnt even have a season…i hope people quit shooting deer period…for awhile…dadgum..i had two does an a fawn at my house comin to a corn pile..dang neighbors shot ever one of them an i aint seen a deer in 3 years..i hate this chit hole

May need to start going 1 buck 1 doe like in other states and additional bucks/does are an additional permit, with a small fee of course.
Geez that's actually pretty frustrating as if the public land in that area wasn't already tough enough to hunt.
Maybe they should just integrate the farm into the refuge and have a special opportunity hunt with more doe days in that block.

There is more deer around here than iv seen in years. Cant hardly drive down the road but I never hear any shots when im hunting

Doesn't seem to be as many people hunting in my area, or maybe less doe killing. I hardly hear a shot now, in years past I would hear two or 3 per afternoon hunt. Been this way for a couple of years. My cousin and I have not shot a doe for at least 3 years, his daughter killed two nice bucks. There are plenty of does, I always see 5 or 6 per afternoon, have seen as many as 17 plus some small bucks.

Thats awful

Yep, some counties have culture issues. Kill every damn thing that moves.

What areas are y'all hunting?

That's annoying. I never kill part of a mother/fawn pair. Try to go for lone does when I take one.

I hunt Pickens, Fayette, Lamar. We have plenty of does just don't shoot them. When my cousin was actively farming we would kill 12 - 15 a year and a couple of bucks. He is not farming any more but the deer are still there.

There’s no shortage of deer in Colbert or Lauderdale

People are just tired of messing with does. I’m one of them.

The problem is simple. You can only legally kill 3 bucks, one of which has to have 4 points on one side, and last year, you could kill a doe a day, and the season was 118 days.

No way you can manage a deer herd when you can kill 118 doe's and only 3 bucks per hunter.