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Wouldn't doubt it..The government is screwing the landowners! Hell I'd pull my property to

Man that's turrible. I didn't hunt there but hate to see any land withdrawn from the WMA system.

Reasons are understandable. It sucks.

But just another move toward the direction of working the working class out of hunting completely.

I can drive there in 15 minutes. 19k of free access in my backyard gone.

Decision was made a long time ago. Don't blame scotch, blame policy.

What exactly did the black pine snake have to do with the closing of the property?

Care to explain?

They raped the land anyway. Not many trees left.

I hunted it back in the 90's and it was some fine country.

I would. But not on a public forum.

I been hunting down there 30 years gonna be hard to tell me they didn't know it was coming the way they cut Timber last two years. Somebody knowed this was comeing . I said this year when I saw it looked like a dessert it wouldn't surprise me if they were fixed to shut it down like Boykin. Timber hasn't been cut like this since I been going to it.

I was wondering the same thing. Got to be a back story to this.

U ain't lived to you been setting in the middle of that place and heard them cut close to 200 dogs loose all around ya. I've had some fun down there but she is gone know

The more I think about this the more it begins to add up. It ain't luck that this wma is closing and nothing has been said about it, and then the state is decided out of the goodness of there heart to open another wma for dog hunting this year that was closed to it the last several years and let a man from the ADA run the hunt instead of the state. Who is buddies with Mr. Sykes

I have never hunted on a WMA, but I sure hate to hear that for those that have........

doc bar - that's a lot of assumptions!

For the record, I stated it's understandable and likely would do the exact same thing.

That doesn't change my view on the money game of hunting, especially in the south. I believe clearly there will be a day when I will not hunt due to finances, and there will be no options. That's ok, because hunting is not an important part of life - it's just a hobby. It's just disheartening how little public land is available in southern states.

I suspect the pine snake thing to be a cover for the real reason BUT......

I guess they could think that unfettered access to the property for Gov employees could result in Pine Snake sightings resulting in loss of land use. In other words not being able to manage the land as they see fit due to the existence of an endangered or "threatened" species. Just like the tracts in Monroe County that can't be cut due to the Red Hill Salamander or the Red Cockaded Woodpecker.


Don't get me wrong, I'm all for species being preserved but they go about it ALL wrong. They essentially "take" the land (or its value) by restricting the landowners right to harvest timber, or other management steps he might wish to take. The natural reaction if a landowner sees something like that on his place now is to get rid of it, quickly).

If there was some sort of compensation for not being able to use his land as he wishes (darn those pesky private property rights) there might be more people incentivized to help propagate the species.

There's two thoughts going on here.

- Don't blame these landowner's. There's not enough incentive to be enrolled, when other options are available. Not one person who gets upset about it would likely have it enrolled either.

- public land in the south (AL especially), will continue to lose acres unless something changes. But it probably won't change. And that's concerning.

I hate it for y'all that hunt it but I don't blame Scotch. Call me crazy but I believe the federal government will make up anything without scientific research to back it up to stop any and all hunting.

Its their land, they own it, it was a privilege that they let the public use it for so long. They really did not have to give any explanation but they felt they needed to. So that's that. They may sell it soon, so what, its none of our business what they do with it now.