A buddy of mine went Freedom Hills today. He got to the checking station a little before five thirty. The gate was locked and no one was there to issue a permit. He checked the box at the camp ground but no permits. The gun hunt runs through the 17th and the regulations say that hunters are to retrieve a permit for all gun hunts and that the checking station will be open by 5:00 AM as is normal for most WMAs. My thought was that today is a state holiday so GW were off. My question is would it be legal to go ahead and hunt without the issued permit? He looked for something in the refs but could not find anything. I have hunted WMA since the late seventies and have never had this come up.

Might depend on whether he had access to the permit at an earlier date but all in all you're hunting without a permit so even if there was a holiday that prevented you from getting one your probably SOL

This happened at Black Warrior a couple of times. Someone was taking all the permits. Me and a couple of hunters drove over an hour to hunt. We found some paper and wrote the date and time and our name and left it at the check station and went hunting. I don't know if that would have worked but we didn't get checked. So it worked that time. After that I started printing them out ahead of time.

I think I can shed some light on why. If you look at the Freedom Hills WMA Map that you have to have signed in your possession, in the fine print at the top it says,

"This map is your Season Permit to hunt all small game, archery deer, spring wild turkey and deer on Gun Deer Hunts of 4 or more consecutive days in length, in accordance with the seasons, rules and regulations listed on the back of this map."

So because these last 2 gun hunts are 4 days or longer in length, you don't have to go to the check station to receive their little permit, just take your signed map and you're good.

I will add it is a bit contradictory when you read further down and it says hunters must check in for ALL gun deer hunts, when in reality it is only for the either-sex gun hunts less than 4 days in length. They should probably clarify better.

That clears it up. Thanks for the info.