The place I hunt in Madison Co, I think every house has a feeder it seems. I still see deer almost every time and I'm up a mountain 1/4-1/2 mile from the houses. It can affect you're place if the land has poor natural browse. Deer can't survive on green fields alone.

As far as the low pressure goes, all members live at least 2 hours away, there are designated areas to park vehicles when hunting. We don't hunt over food plots much and the club has 800 acres of 7-10 year old clear cuts which provide plenty of bedding areas. Only 2 members bow hunt and half the members did not show up until Jan 1. The problem with this club is not pressure. I think the existing food sources are poor this year and the deer migrated over to the corn piles on neighboring property. One neighboring club has 9 members on 900 acres and they shot 9 Quality Bucks last year.

Does the 900 acre club have younger cleat cuts? The deer may just be more visible to them? When you say 7-10 yr old clear cuts, are they planted in pines if so the pines should be tall now and starting to choke out the underbrush making it less appealing?

I think it makes a real difference. As soon as my south neighbor started feeding during season our sightings went down noticeably and there were no real changes in the area as far as habitat.I do not understand it because I want the deer on their feet looking for food, not bedding up 100 yds from a feeder and coming out as soon as its too dark to see/shoot.

Get the 12 of you together and buy a couple of protein feeders. Place them in the center of your property and make the area around it off limits to any human activity other than to refill the feeders. Feed year around.

We gave up a really good piece of land in Conecuh County due to rampant baiting on neighboring properties. This was before any feeding at all was legal. We would have a lot of pictures of good bucks up until about mid October then nada. We would see a lot of empty corn bags on the local roads though. Once gun season opened there were daily shots fired on the neighboring properties. You cannot make things work in that situation unless you break the law, which we were not willing to do. That is why Alabama's baiting laws even now only help the outlaws. Their advantage will go away if the state ever legalizes baiting. My opinion.

We have different age class pines, a lot of thick cover, swamps, Hardwoods, the club is very diverse. As far as the feeders go I believe that we will have to try that next year. I would think a club this size should harvest an average of 3-4 Quality Bucks per year. Right now we don't even see does or any tracks around, and don't get pictures of hardly anything. It is like 90% of the deer and all the bucks have left the club... In the summer we got pictures of lots of deer including some nice bucks.

The 900 acre club has basically the same habitat as us.

This to you may want to think about like what you said above 900 acres and 9 members means more guns in the woods with more deer being killed. As far as your neighbors feeding well I had the same thing happen. They were feeding by the truck load. I had tons on deer on camera in bow season but when gun season came in and my neighbors started hunting and feeding our deer numbers went way down. If they have pulled alot of does to their land then the bucks will follow.

Condor, if you've got 1800 good acres that are not very pressured, you are right on the money in saying your goal should be to harvest 3-4 quality, mature (3 yr old or older) bucks off your property. You might could sustain 5-6 a year depending on your density, overall age structure for the area, neighbors and what the surrounding properties are doing.

I agree. We had an 1800 acre lease in Butler County and had 7 members, 1 of those was only hunting for arrow heads. We didn't see a ton of deer, but we didn't shoot does on plots. Come mid January we saw a LOT of deer.

Your neighbors aren't pulling all the mature bucks to corn piles.