“Rugged” doesn’t begin to describe lots of the hills/hollows of that area!!! Folks that kill big deer around there really earn them. I’ve got some good friends that hunt around there and I’ve gotten to hunt a good bit as a guest on their places: it has whipped me every time between the rough terrain and swirling winds!!!

That makes for some tough hunting and gives those bucks a big strategic advantage….as well as creating lots of hidey holes where hunters just rarely go…..which ends up letting some bucks get old……

I also wonder if living in that kinda rugged terrain changes the deer physically…..You would think having to climb those hills day in and day out would build more muscle mass than a flatland buck….assuming they have adequate food…..I wonder if that somehow translates to better racks?

Hmmmmm, sounds familiar .

Exactly......

No doubt you need age to get them that big and rough terrain contributes to that. But there are a lot of places in Alabama with rough terrain and old bucks that never produce what other areas can. It’s a very frustrating state to hunt. Constantly toying with the despair of knowing you hunt in one of the bottom ten big buck states while being teased with the potential of the occasional giant that comes out of seemingly terrible strip mined mountain land.

I would think that food is probably playing a big factor in that. I know Jackson Co has a lot of fertile valleys mixed in with those rugged mountains…..Isnt Bankhead surrounded by farmland??

Something about this buck too that nobody has mentioned…..Its no doubt a stud with great mass but a lot of that non-typical stuff it has going on may just be tied to some kind of antler injury or something…..If you look at the other side its just a basic 8 pt……The hunter may have just gotten really lucky to have killed this deer on the right year

Most folks would be surprised to know that - there were NO deer in half of Walker County 40 years ago. I’m not saying a few, I mean ZERO. I grew up in one of those places. We would see a deer track in the garden, eventually - and you ran home to tell everybody. Then, in my teens - we killed a couple “around the house”. Things fortunately changed fast.

But there was a time that most every hunter in the area traveled south and west to find huntable populations.

To the north there’s a decent amount of Ag. Every other direction no.

Where this deer was killed there’s no agriculture to speak of. I typically see the better deer in north AL come from heavily timbered areas rather than ag lands.

Not really. Nothing substantial. And basically none in Walker County. The steep terrain doesn’t roll into a Ag valley at all.

That’s what I keep saying. There are large areas in northwest AL going through the population boom the black belt encountered in the 80s to early 2000s. The populations here have grown exponentially over the last 30-40 years. There were NO deer here 50-60 years ago. Not just a few, but like you said zero. That’s why I think the Bankhead population has maintained its genetic integrity for almost a century. It had no competition and movement from deer populations around it. It was an isolated pocket of deer expanding outward with no other influence until recently.

This sounds exactly like our area in North AL. Even 20 years ago there was very few deer. Now there’s deer everywhere. Robinhedd

According to MSU deer study- nutrition vs genetics, they did a study on three different deer from three different areas of the state. I believe they may have been different sub- species. The basis of their conclusion was that when all three were provided the same nutrition, by the second generation they were all equal size. I said that to say that evidently there is something else in Bankhead and similar that is putting inches on those deer. Age and genetics could be a factor, but that isn’t coming full circle without nutrition.

Yep......and its not every buck that reaches old age that's growing really big......It may just be the perfect storm of those few that live in just the right places

Heck of a deer. Congrats to him!

Timbers mom will be making contact soon I’m sure

Shame Wolfe Creek WMA was closed down. Definitely some Hollers on that place, they have to Pipe Sunshine into.

That’s what I find so fascinating about that area. Anywhere else producing really big deer has easy explanations: Bankhead’s Michigan genes, the Black Belt’s soil, other areas with lots of ag fields. Walker and surrounding areas don’t have any of that. Something has to be going on with minerals in the reclaimed strip mines.

We're only talking like 15-20 miles from Bankhead, correct???.......I wouldnt think it would be out of the realm of possibility for some of the bucks born to Bankhead does to disperse that far.

No. You’re looking at 30-40 miles

31 miles from Southern tip of Bankhead to where that deer was killed.

And I’m not saying no to your theory. I agree that some of Bankhead bucks do indeed disperse that far. I was just saying it’s farther than 15-20 miles. There’s deer like that one that have been killed all over north AL in several counties over the years. I know where several deer are now between 160-180 that are nowhere near Bankhead.

Lamar county used to have 180-200” deer killed as a regular occurrence. They don’t any longer in those same areas because the population is substantially higher than it used to be and deer have hit a plateau with available nutrition.

Really what you’d be asking is…..How far away is it from the southern most point of the November estrous area?......How far do the anomalies and outliers make it??......those handful of bucks that disperse way farther than the average…..

Its also possible for a buck to disperse “X” amount of miles as a yearling before he sets up his new future home range…… and then also have movement patterns as an adult that may go out miles from that point……I’m just saying that’s possible for a buck born from a Nov doe or “Bankhead” doe to get killed as an adult a long ways from there. It’s plausible for how the genetic aspect could be at play.

Entirely possible