Yeah I like bow season

And this is the problem with Alabama. Folks can’t see past their nose when it comes to betterment of anything, it’s just about them. It’s always people screaming “I need to shoot 36 deer to feed my family!” and they’re on disability living on handed down land not doing a thing for society, broke as a joke but you can be sure their fridge is full of beer and they always have cigarettes.

Ain’t never earned nothing in their life but always hollering about someone taking something from them, sheesh

When it comes to any proposal to shorten or change the seasons in Alabama, I honestly think that part of the problem is that only a very small percentage of Alabama hunters have ever hunted in a state, where the deer herd is actually tightly and actively managed, and everything is fully enforced, be it KY, IL, TX, KS, IA, MO. I wish everyone in AL could hunt a prime week in any of those states, seeing what can be accomplished, with shorter seasons, tighter regs, better age structure, and better management by the powers that be. Having not experienced it first hand, people simply do not know what it is like and what is possible. It will honestly change the way you think about deer hunting. I honestly think if everyone had the opportunity to see and understand what it's like in person, it would have everyone in the state begging the DCNR to do something. Bama is certainly not the midwest by any means, but the hunting here has the potential to be 2 to 3 times as good as it currently is and better than it ever was, if just a few changes were made. But those changes will never be made with the current attitude of "I want to deer hunt for 4 months and be able kill any deer and as many as I see".

It's hard to get someone to buy into something that they've never experienced for themselves, and have no clue how much is being left of the table. First trips to IL and MO were both truly eye-opening experiences. Honestly when you come back, you're just not that excited to be hunting the entire rest of the season in Bama.

Cmon now Abolt, folks don’t want to learn anything when they already know it all. I bet there’s 1k people on this site that have never left the county they live in. Nothing wrong with that but don’t play like you understand how the world works when you’ve only seen your local environment

Agree 100%, the states you listed are great places to hunt and experiencing hunting in any of them would open a persons eyes on what could be in AL, I have hunted in several of them and got a good one from MO, couldn't close the deal in IL or KY, but the opportunity for really good bucks was there.....

For my little part of the world

All weapons legal: Saturday before Thanksgiving thru Saturday After
December 26- January 31

If you guys think that Alabama could be similar to those states listed above ( KY, IL, TX, KS, IA, MO) then you will always be disappointed hunting in Alabama.

I think something people miss with that is not everyone is a hardo out to shoot 140inch deer. A lot of people want to go to their hunting lease/camp, hang out, and sit in a shooting house about 20-30 times a year mostly on weekends and holidays. Hunting is very much a social thing in Alabama. I've got relatives that go to "hunting camp" just to hang out, shoot the shucks "with the guys", and cook breakfast.

I hunt with an old timer who hasn't killed a deer in 3 years in probably 60 sits. If you told him he could only hold a rifle 7 days a year and sit in his shooting house he'd be livid, even though he isn't even shooting anything.

If you really want to improve the age structure, you need to limit the bucks taken or put antler restrictions in place. Then actually go out and enforce it.

Lastly, there's a nutritional and potentially genetic differential between AL and a place like MO.

These types of proposals don’t really make much sense……Out of 190,000 being reported to Game Check, about 10,000 of them come in during bow season…..Cutting out bow season does nothing but take away opportunities for Alabama hunters with virtually zero benefit.

Yup. You could probably have year round bow TBH and not put a dent in the deer herd.

My gosh man. CNC I agree with you on some things but quit trying to reinvent the wheel. Leave the season dates alone. You wanna push for an ending on January 31 for the northern part then that’s fine but all the early season bow hunting sucks. Along with the break in gun season. Put an end to the season long slaughter of does sitting by a corn pile if you wanna make changes. The season length is fine. I’m only allowed three bucks so it doesn’t matter how long it lasts. The season long corn piles that get all your does killed matter more than any date change.

You don’t have to hunt the early bow season if you don’t want to but there’s plenty of folks who would be all for it and it wont hurt a thing…..plus it simplifies it for us all to start and end on the same dates……

As far as the Jan 31st end date for north Alabama…….How do you suggest we go about making that change?.....Are you just gonna take away 10 days from Zone A hunters? I have a feeling a lot of folks will cry foul when you tell them you’re gonna shorten their season while allowing Zone B to stay the way it is….. Corn is likely not going anywhere so you can probably throw that option out the window.

Well they seemed to have figured the ruts and zones that follow. Just make it a month of rifle surrounding the ruts and be done with it. People hunt with crossbows now a days so we are not really taking anything away.

An early bow season is for the birds. Plus you wanna limit that to buck only. I get it because it’s truly too early to take a doe from a fawn. So then let’s just leave it alone. Let it start same as always. I’m not for changing around gun season dates either. Nothing you are proposing is truly helping the deer herd. You’re only moving dates around to make it sound like change is being implemented. But change just for the sake of change isn’t helping. Until this state truly wants to help the deer herd out and ban corn then nothing will change.

Yeap ,,, I got the good life . Its,was just handed to me . Lol

It’s amazing to me that most ,if not all, of those in favor of limiting the dates in the season are also those putting out thousands of pounds of corn and blasting deer off their feeder. Corn is the real issue that we are facing. I drive by a house the other day out in the country. In his approximately 1 acre lot he had a feeder 100 feet out his back door. This is happening all over this state.He is killing deer out of his backyard that would have lived before corn was legalized. But because corn makes it easy no one wants to get rid of it.

1000%. I grew up in and still hunt Texas. These last few years or so I have been fortunate to hunt Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma. It’s something that every Southeast hunter should do at least once in their life.

95% chance he was baiting before it was legal. I've seen illegal baiting since I started hunting in the early eighties.

Corn ain't the problem.

Hunters are the problem.

This thread is proof of that fact.

Three things they need to do leave ever thing else alone

No legal baiting
No extended season
Limited does days WHERE needed. .

If you felt singled out by that it wasn’t the intention. That comment was a generalization and wasn’t intended at any particular person.