Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Season Predictions: The Final Tally

There may be a few more stragglers get checked in but I don’t think anything is going to change too significantly……Here’s the final tally……Again, this is compared against the average of the previous 4 seasons so 100% represents the “average” line……Also the green * represents the highest harvest in the last 5 seasons and the red * represents the lowest harvest in the 5 seasons……

Bucks



Does

All of District 5 just went to pot didn't it? The snow really screwed us up down here, then it got hot.

Yeah that definitely didn’t help the southwest corner…….I don’t know if I’d completely chalk it up to that without looking more into it though…..Whatever is occurring in my area around Macon/Bullock/Montgomery/Russell wasn’t about the weather…….There’s a lot of counties seeing 5 year highs and 5 year lows……Some of the best areas, like where Matt hunts, are stable and not seeing any major change…..

Let me rephrase that……It wasn’t completely a weather related down turn…..Weather definitely still plays a factor……In my area it made a bad situation worse…..

I picked up a deer from my processor yesterday morning and he said they would finish at around 2600 deer today. That was up 400 over last year which was a record year. They stopped taking deer on at least 4 occasions for multiple days. He's located in Walker County

If we’re looking at it and trying to be as fair and unbiased as possible and not just being a cheerleader for one which a way or another…….then the next thing we have to do is ask “why” is there record numbers of deer being reported in these counties to determine whether it’s a good thing or not for the long term.....Is the record harvest because the deer population is growing allowing for more deer to be taken??......or is it just because more deer are being taken out of the same population base…… If it’s the latter then its going to catch up with you next year or the year after kinda thing……I think that’s where we are at now in my area after the “record” harvests of the last couple of seasons……especially the big increases in doe killing……I think my area will continue to be down for another couple years because we still have to cycle through that big dip we likely had in fawn births…..In other words, this last years “age class” is already starting off slim before they ever even make it to 2, 3, 4…..etc…..I think its gonna take a minute to recover…..Maybe some folks will rethink the doe killing strategy and how we go about it moving forward….

Can't have it both ways. Either short numbers or high numbers are bad. Gotta pick one.

That's one of the more retarded quotes anyone has come up with in a while......

Let's see.. Worse than Milroe will win a Heisman and a Natty ?

Point is that the numbers you were using to make your argument were short numbers , if I recall correctly. Well, the numbers aren't so short. What gives ? Now is the argument that the numbers are too high ? Just trying to wrap my head around it .

BPI, he's using a 5 year average

I'm not for sure what you're asking

I think north and south Alabama are slowing switching deer populations. I think this has been happening for the last 10 years. In the late the 90s northwest Alabama didn’t have as many deer but some true giants came from there (they still do) but the population of deer has increased. In the late 90s there was a lot more crops in south Alabama and the deer population reflected that. I’ve hunted from Camden to Hamilton the last 10 years and it seems the further north you go the better. Which is completely opposite of the past couple decades.

Here's what I predicted would happen and what we see occurring with the trend line in a lot of counties…..I’ll use Montgomery doe harvest numbers as one example to represent them….You can see that over the last five years we’ve trended upward in doe harvest and now we’re coming back down……

Montgomery…….1421…….1486……1706……2122…..1655

That creates a one of these peaks on the doe harvest trend line…..



Which looks just like the same kind of peaks and trends we had back during the two per day doe killing……And what we know about that situation looking back on it is that if doe killing goes up and there isnt an increase in population growth to support that…..then you end up with less deer on the backside of it……and that’s where we find ourselves in my area……



I think some of the other counties that are seeing big five year highs this year in the upper right quadrant may just be a little behind on the down turn....... I think counties like Covington Co in south Alabama may be as well…..Here is its doe trend line……Either their population has grown a bunch or they’re about to see a big down turn when folks get done killing them off…….although like I said, it is possible that some areas are seeing population increases.....

Covington……1392…….1634……..1730…….2219……2162

Just an average year imo.

This

I think there are unlimited reasons why deer kill numbers could fluctuate year to year. If they continue to only go down there may be a population issue, but I'm not seeing or hearing of one in my area and the percentage is down. Are people struggling to see/kill does in their area?

I definitely have less does this year.

Is that due to you/neighbors killing them? Habitat changes in the area? More pressure? I'm not saying some areas aren't experiencing a decrease in population, but that's not the only thing that would affect harvest numbers.

At least part of those big decreases you see in Macon, Bullock, and Russell is due to many of the bigger players cutting off doe harvesting this year because their numbers are down that much……When you take that into consideration and then look at a similar county like Montgomery who’s running another 12-15% ahead in doe harvest it makes you think that maybe there wasnt those folks in that county to pull back the reigns……so they’re still whacking away even though they probably need to be woa’ing up themselves……Probably similar things going on in your county as well where there was a big spike in doe killing the last couple years…..It peaked and folks just havent pulled back the reigns yet.....