40 year in the woods

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40 year in the woods #1652075 02/15/16 03:05 AM 02/15/16 03:05 AM
Joined: Feb 2016 Posts: 49 Chunchula Alabama S swampcracker OP spike
swampcracker OP spike S Joined: Feb 2016 Posts: 49 Chunchula Alabama	Just thinking how much it's changed I remember you could hunt all of Gillman land for 10$. Hunt Alabama threw Florida up in Georgia for a 10$ sticker. We ran hounds mostly and there was very few Clubs. We respected there line's but always we're welcomed to run with them. There was very little bitching about who hunted where and how. We just hunted hard and had fun killed a lot of good bucks too. I was into the Hogs and bear myself I was young And loved them porkers. We still hunted private farms to help the farmer out not pay for his New truck every year. Bow hunting was New and I was hooked instantly. The biggest taboo was Shooting a doe. Seen lots of fist fights over it. There were not as many deer then but we always took home meat and had fun. And over the years it's turned to this. I kinda feel bad for some of these younger guys they will never know what it's like to hunt 3 states in a weekend and never come out of the woods but to cross a river or creek. To hunt for days and never see anyone else. To have to know how to use a compass and a map. Not a GPS or cell phone. It was lots of fun. Now those places are. Quota WMAs or High dollar leases or golf courses and subdivisions. Everyone says how now's better because the management but I don't know we did also we fed We burnt the woods off for the feed. If a area didn't have a lot game we rested it a year or two. The difference was we did it as hunters together.

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1652112 02/15/16 03:44 AM 02/15/16 03:44 AM
Joined: Aug 2013 Posts: 3,265 louisiana D deerman24 10 point
deerman24 10 point D Joined: Aug 2013 Posts: 3,265 louisiana	been hunting for 50 years and it was fun back then. Folks were honest and farmers didn't have a problem with letting you hunt their land. Hunters took care of the land and not throw garbage all over it. You shot no does and there were some good bucks around. No posted signs as hunters respected others. This new generation of hunters with their silly slogans such as Brown is Down really suck. They want to kill everything so their children won't have anything to hunt.

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1652133 02/15/16 04:12 AM 02/15/16 04:12 AM
Joined: Nov 2011 Posts: 21,792 USA R Remington270 Freak of Nature
Remington270 Freak of Nature R Joined: Nov 2011 Posts: 21,792 USA	I don't think most folks realize how many more people there are now. Everybody's grandparents I know have 12-20 grandchildren. You do the math on that and realize what has changed.

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1652152 02/15/16 04:25 AM 02/15/16 04:25 AM
Joined: May 2011 Posts: 20,017 PDL, Fl T timbercruiser Freak of Nature
timbercruiser Freak of Nature T Joined: May 2011 Posts: 20,017 PDL, Fl	Some of my earliest hunting was around Saco, Al. Mr Jeff Sorrell owned a sawmill and several thousand acres of land. He was one of the first in the area to stock deer and turkeys. One of his rules was that a game warden had to be on hand, and there was no charge. That was around 1968. Great Southern Paper Company had thousands of acres of land in Pike County and Mr. Wakefield, the senior forester, gave me a pad of free permits and I wrote them to anybody that want one. Then I started hunting with the old Clayton Hunting Club in Barbour County. A few of the old members knew a lot of the landowners and most of them just wanted you to kill the deer as they ate their gardens and crops up, most of them had no charge. One of our best tracts we called the whiskey land. The old black man that owned it wanted and occasional bottle of whiskey for the hunting rights. Then around 1984 people from all over started leasing the land we were hunting basically for free and it was over.

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1652160 02/15/16 04:30 AM 02/15/16 04:30 AM
Joined: Feb 2016 Posts: 49 Chunchula Alabama S swampcracker OP spike
swampcracker OP spike S Joined: Feb 2016 Posts: 49 Chunchula Alabama	Do you remember Mr Larry Howard and his Son Scott?

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: timbercruiser] #1652162 02/15/16 04:31 AM 02/15/16 04:31 AM
Joined: Mar 2014 Posts: 2,658 Florida P Peach 10 point
Peach 10 point P Joined: Mar 2014 Posts: 2,658 Florida	I remember when you could drive across the entire state of Alabama and would be lucky to see one shooting house in a field.

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: Peach] #1652204 02/15/16 04:55 AM 02/15/16 04:55 AM
Joined: Mar 2014 Posts: 2,658 Florida P Peach 10 point
Peach 10 point P Joined: Mar 2014 Posts: 2,658 Florida	I purchased the very first Baker climbing stand in the South Alabama, North West Florida area and was laughed at by most of my hunting buddies. You had to hug the tree to climb and it was very dangerous. I still have it as a keepsake. Still hunting for deer was almost unheard of. I had the opportunity to hunt Hit and Miss hunting club, north of Camden way back then, and that was my first experience with hunting out of stands. I had a hard time convincing my grandfather that you could hunt a deer using other methods besides dog hunting.

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1652239 02/15/16 05:18 AM 02/15/16 05:18 AM
Joined: Nov 2010 Posts: 11,653 Longwood, FL J jlbuc10 Booner
jlbuc10 Booner J Joined: Nov 2010 Posts: 11,653 Longwood, FL	Isnt there still hundreds of thousands of acres you can hunt for cheaper than a $10 pass in AL,GA,FL, and Miss? It's just not owned by timber companies or old black men. It's in the form of National Forests, and WMA's. And I understand from what I've read from the old timers on here there weren't many deer at all in AL 40 years ago. I would have to assume that the populations on public land currently are atleast as good as they were before restocking. You can also still run hounds on some of these public lands. To me it doesn't sound a whole lot different than what the OP described

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1652243 02/15/16 05:22 AM 02/15/16 05:22 AM
Joined: Jan 2015 Posts: 733 Alabama P PapaJ 4 point
PapaJ 4 point P Joined: Jan 2015 Posts: 733 Alabama	No doubt about it, deer hunting was a lot more fun, and a lot less competitive in those days. Deer drives were pretty much a social event where folks got together, listened to the hounds in the mornings and early afternoon, and were back home before dark. Of course, those days are gone and hunting has pretty much become a rich mans sport. I tell my grandsons what it was like to actually hunt instead of sit on a food plot, and they will never get the opportunity to understand.

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1652269 02/15/16 05:41 AM 02/15/16 05:41 AM
Joined: Feb 2013 Posts: 6,095 Anniston, AL ikillbux ishootatbux
ikillbux ishootatbux Joined: Feb 2013 Posts: 6,095 Anniston, AL	I'm 41, been hunting since I was very little (maybe 5 or 6?), and my experience is that deer hunting is better today, but turkey hunting just flat out sucks compared to yesteryear. In the 80's / 90's we could hear 12/15+ birds gobble every day, and it was almost easy to kill your limit. Heck, we Fall turkey hunted and killed lots of birds. I see 5x more deer today than back then, but (for me) deer hunting peaked about 5-7 years ago and has actually declined somewhat. I do agree though that our modern-day hunting club mentality has commoditized hunting, it has caused the price of a good experience to be so high that most guys can't do it. The average guy just can't get in a $3,500 Dallas County club with low members and high deer anymore. He's relegated to WMA's (none of which are as good as they were years ago), or lousy clubs with low deer and high hunters. With a few exceptions, the guys I know who still have a high-level hunting experience are very wealthy. I have an uncle who purchased 180ac, and leases 1,055 acres surrounding it BY HIMSELF. That lease alone costs him $10/ac, and he literally hunts it by himself. He'll see 40/50/60 deer a day, and cherry-picks which buck he wants to shoot. 15 years ago there was 10 of us who leased all that land as a club, and we never saw deer like that. (just an example) On a similar note, the same fate that turkey hunting met has also happened to fishing. Just 10 years ago I don't think there were 50% as many fishing as there are today. And as you would expect, the fishing isn't as good. Last edited by ikillbux; 02/15/16 05:44 AM. We were on the edge of Eternia, when the power of Greyskull began to take hold.

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1652274 02/15/16 05:48 AM 02/15/16 05:48 AM
Joined: Nov 2011 Posts: 21,792 USA R Remington270 Freak of Nature
Remington270 Freak of Nature R Joined: Nov 2011 Posts: 21,792 USA	Back when a hoe was a hoe, a Coke was a Coke, and crack's what you were doing....

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: jlbuc10] #1652528 02/15/16 08:54 AM 02/15/16 08:54 AM
Joined: Feb 2016 Posts: 49 Chunchula Alabama S swampcracker OP spike
swampcracker OP spike S Joined: Feb 2016 Posts: 49 Chunchula Alabama	Originally Posted By: jlbuc10 Isnt there still hundreds of thousands of acres you can hunt for cheaper than a $10 pass in AL,GA,FL, and Miss? It's just not owned by timber companies or old black men. It's in the form of National Forests, and WMA's. And I understand from what I've read from the old timers on here there weren't many deer at all in AL 40 years ago. I would have to assume that the populations on public land currently are atleast as good as they were before restocking. You can also still run hounds on some of these public lands. To me it doesn't sound a whole lot different than what the OP described It was good in places just like now deer deer are not on 100% of land. And we are talking about a time when everyone had millions of acres to hunt not crowd 500 hunters in 50,000 acres. And we still and stand hunted also. I killed deer every year some better than others. The differences were folks let you hunt theirs and a everyone was happy for who ever it was that killed the big buck. Its a lot different now. Lot more jealous folks seen grown men get mad because someone killed "Their" Buck. Or someone poured out some feed and pulled all their deer off their 100 acres. You got Still hunters hating Dog hunters, Dog hunters hating still hunters ,Bow hunters hating Gun hunters and Trophy hunters hating meat hunters. And if someone don't agree with someone they act like a smartass punk because they see things different. If We seen a buck on the side of a farmers house we asked to hunt if he said No we said ok sir thanks. Now they just shoot it and call you a jerk if you say anything to them. Its a lot different now.

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1652817 02/15/16 12:18 PM 02/15/16 12:18 PM
Joined: Feb 2009 Posts: 4,157 Ramer ronfromramer 10 point
ronfromramer 10 point Joined: Feb 2009 Posts: 4,157 Ramer	Back in the 70's we used to dog hunt on Container corporation and Union Camp land. You could go all the way from Letohatchee to Mt Willing and Bragg's and never get off of land open to public hunting. Tens of thousands of acres. Lots of deer and turkeys

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: ronfromramer] #1652965 02/15/16 01:47 PM 02/15/16 01:47 PM
Joined: Mar 2014 Posts: 2,658 Florida P Peach 10 point
Peach 10 point P Joined: Mar 2014 Posts: 2,658 Florida	Originally Posted By: ronfromramer Back in the 70's we used to dog hunt on Container corporation and Union Camp land. You could go all the way from Letohatchee to Mt Willing and Bragg's and never get off of land open to public hunting. Tens of thousands of acres. Lots of deer and turkeys Ditto this!

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1653005 02/15/16 02:09 PM 02/15/16 02:09 PM
Joined: Nov 2004 Posts: 12,788 Thomasville, AL H Hogwild Booner
Hogwild Booner H Joined: Nov 2004 Posts: 12,788 Thomasville, AL	Here in Clarke County we had Headmill (Soterra), Scotch, Marathon/American Can, and several others, along with very generous landowners also. This provided free Permits for well over 100,000 acres of Public land to hunt at will. Deer were very plentiful in our area! But, they just did not hold the Trophy status/allure of later. It was mostly small game, turkeys and deer drives as a child in the 70's. Then, as time passed, Companies began to charge fees for Permits. People began still hunting and hunting slowly became more about ME than US. By the late 80's, the land was all leased up, food plots and shooting houses all over the landscape and the deer were not near as numerous as before. This trend held constant through the 90's with the biggest change being the land lease prices slowly creeping up and doe harvest increasing. The 2000's held ample opportunities, just at a higher costs as lease prices climbed and people wanted more acreage per hunter to 'manage'. Does were hammered in the quest for trophy bucks for all! This brings us to the current financial plight and diminished deer herds of today....we pay WAY more for LOTS less. As I sit here and think about all the bucks I have killed and seen killed, along with the huge shift in the overall deer population from seeing literal herds of deer to struggling to see deer on 'average' land......and sacrificing huge amounts of money and sacrifice to build up herds on certain properties to usually getting outbid once improved........to my current situation of being extremely fortunate to have family access to prime property......while others scream for Governmental Help to control 'others' in a dire effort to allow them to kill a Trophy Buck....... I can assure you that while I have enjoyed the Ride......the Good Times are past!

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: Hogwild] #1653094 02/15/16 02:55 PM 02/15/16 02:55 PM
Joined: Apr 2013 Posts: 4,329 Northeast Florida BamaGrad85 10 point
BamaGrad85 10 point Joined: Apr 2013 Posts: 4,329 Northeast Florida	Originally Posted By: Hogwild Here in Clarke County we had Headmill (Soterra), Scotch, Marathon/American Can, and several others, along with very generous landowners also. This provided free Permits for well over 100,000 acres of Public land to hunt at will. Deer were very plentiful in our area! But, they just did not hold the Trophy status/allure of later. It was mostly small game, turkeys and deer drives as a child in the 70's. Then, as time passed, Companies began to charge fees for Permits. People began still hunting and hunting slowly became more about ME than US. By the late 80's, the land was all leased up, food plots and shooting houses all over the landscape and the deer were not near as numerous as before. This trend held constant through the 90's with the biggest change being the land lease prices slowly creeping up and doe harvest increasing. The 2000's held ample opportunities, just at a higher costs as lease prices climbed and people wanted more acreage per hunter to 'manage'. Does were hammered in the quest for trophy bucks for all! This brings us to the current financial plight and diminished deer herds of today....we pay WAY more for LOTS less. As I sit here and think about all the bucks I have killed and seen killed, along with the huge shift in the overall deer population from seeing literal herds of deer to struggling to see deer on 'average' land......and sacrificing huge amounts of money and sacrifice to build up herds on certain properties to usually getting outbid once improved........to my current situation of being extremely fortunate to have family access to prime property......while others scream for Governmental Help to control 'others' in a dire effort to allow them to kill a Trophy Buck....... I can assure you that while I have enjoyed the Ride......the Good Times are past! ^^^THIS^^^ I came, I saw, so I killed them all......Vern

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1653122 02/15/16 03:11 PM 02/15/16 03:11 PM
Joined: Jan 2013 Posts: 43 SW Alabama C CB1 spike
CB1 spike C Joined: Jan 2013 Posts: 43 SW Alabama	I agree Hogwild 100%

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1653143 02/15/16 03:28 PM 02/15/16 03:28 PM
Joined: Dec 2008 Posts: 3,864 dothan eskimo270 10 point
eskimo270 10 point Joined: Dec 2008 Posts: 3,864 dothan	I remember when a $600 per membership club was high dollar and in the prime locations. The first hunting club I joined was in henry co and the dues were $200, the 2nd club we had 2500 acres in pike co, 500 in Barbour and a pile in ga and the dues were $400. Super Predator

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1653215 02/15/16 04:08 PM 02/15/16 04:08 PM
Joined: Nov 2010 Posts: 11,653 Longwood, FL J jlbuc10 Booner
jlbuc10 Booner J Joined: Nov 2010 Posts: 11,653 Longwood, FL	So what time frame was there not any deer in Alabama that caused the restocking program? I'm sure those times weren't the good ole days. I feel like I've heard stories on here of folks saying they never even saw deer growing up.

Re: 40 year in the woods [Re: swampcracker] #1653329 02/15/16 05:26 PM 02/15/16 05:26 PM
Joined: Sep 2014 Posts: 13 Helena, Al A Aubie1985 spike
Aubie1985 spike A Joined: Sep 2014 Posts: 13 Helena, Al	I am 55 and grew up in NE Alabama when there were no deer in our portion of the state. Just seeing a deer was a big deal to us. We hunted squirrels mostly and many times got scared to death when a covey of quail flushed as we walked by on an old logging road. How often does that happen now that you see a wild covey of birds? We crappie fished on Neely Henry Lake on spring break and my dad took the whole week off to fish with my brother and I. We would clean fish til our hands were raw and love every minute. Those memories are the ones I cherish even now. It does not matter what we harvest as long as we are good stewards of what God has given us and obey our game laws. The fellowship of friends and family are what makes the outdoors a joy. Deer hunting now where I grew up is as good as anywhere in the state. My dad even sees an occasional deer in his neighborhood where only birds and squirrels used to be . Even as wildlife mgt. changes We still have it pretty good in AL. I may never take a Boone and Crockett buck but that's ok, I would not trade with anyone.

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