I do not.

But I don't believe in more regulations and then more on top of those and so on, like many of y'all do.

Call me crazy, but I see way more dead deer on 280 than I see on the road to my hunting club. I don't think the issue with the deer population is a rural problem it's an urban problem. I also seem to notice more deer killed during the rut on the roads too.

Not everyone can feed them either. We can plant food plots and do, but we are no longer allowed to supplemental feed the deer. Or sure would have helped while all the plots were burnt from the cold weather.

I also think the yotes have put a damper on the population too.

I believe the liberal doe limit has marginalized them. They are looked at as meat, not as a management tool. You want to grow a nice buck, you need a nice doe to make that happen. And killing everyone in sight seems like a poor method to get there.

This is anecdotal and meaningless but on the way back to Mobile from Camden yesterday I saw 23 dead deer, 5 yotes, 6 dogs, and 2 swine.

I’d always read mature hardwoods will have 10-20 deer per square mile. Mixed habitat 35-45 deer per square mile and young early successional like freshly planted pines to 5-6 yrs old will sustain 60 plus. 35-40 were ideal because of mostly mixed habitats etc…..

With increased habitat management I’d assume one could support many more but that depends on many things

One thing I always read about was replacement rates of age class of deer. It would make light of other threads about certain age classes etc….basically it would take 7-8 years to replace a. 5-6 yr old buck if I recall reading it correctly.

Here’s a few interesting things
http://conservationframework.tamu.edu/media/47705/TPWD-harvest-recommendations.pdf

In the PDF linked above... Bottom of Page 1 = "Options Concerning the Buck Harvest Rate"

Y'all need to read this at least twice. Alabama is Option #2. Option #1 is about age structure and produces the most mature deer. Option 3 is sort of just BS IMO just a lesser of the other two and can be ignored in that it really adds nothing to the conversation, however, it's likely the most realistic outcome in the real world.

Interesting take on spikes.

I was under the impression that Auburn dispelled the spike theory years ago, when they put them on high protein diets and grew big antlers.

Spikes can grow large antlers. Birth dates has more to do with spiked one year olds here than genetics. But, given equal diets, fork antlered one year olds usually outperform spikes born at the same time.

Matt, I’ve read some studies done on big Texas ranches that showed that once they reached age 6, there was no noticeable difference in antler quality between them. It’s birthday related as you say and once their bodies reach full maturity, the spike catch up. Problem is very few bucks are allowed to reach maturity in AL