If y'all don't get a subscription to Quality Whitetails magazine, pick one up and read the article about genetics and nutrition in qdm. It is a topic I have thought about for a long time hunting both in Baldwin County and in Dallas County. I grew up hunting Dallas County. When I was a kid, mature bucks grew larger racks than they do now where I hunt. That is just a fact. What used to be soybean fields every year are now pine plantations. I was shocked to see how small the deer were down here in Baldwin County when I started hunting this area. Then recently, I started seeing old bucks folks killed back in the 60s down here in Baldwin County, that resembled Dallas County deer. This one article makes perfect sense to me. Thought I'd share.

Do you think the bucks in Dallas co are bigger now than they were in the '80's? I figure that's when the deer herd was the most numerous. QDMA principles might dictate they should be smaller in the '80's due to overpopulation. Just playing devil's advocate, most folks would say they were bigger then.

I read the same article and it does make sense. Was very interesting , takes it a couple of generations to get full potential .

I've often thought that the only difference in Alabama and IL or IA was everywhere they have a bean or corn field, we have pine trees.

No way. There are plenty of places in Bama where there are beans as far as the eye can see, yet no 300 lb deer. That's genetics.

Oh they definitely grew bigger then. Back then, you had gigantic, sometimes contiguous 4 and 500 acre ag fields where every farmable inch was planted and the deer bedded in the thick areas around the fence rows or in the old river bottom swamps. It wouldn't be nothing to see 50 deer come out of one corner of woods but them deer had hundreds of acres of fields to roam at night. Nowadays, them same fields being either cow pastures, CRP, or pine plantations, the deer have much more bedding areas and you don't see em all like you used to.

We definitely don't have the deer size that the northern states do, but we used to produce way more 140"+ deer here in South bama than we do now. Don't know what has happened around bankhead but they need to keep it up.

Yep there's not much row crop left in central bama like the good ole days Lip. I however do know there's a pocket up in N bama that'll rival the Midwest. It's called Jackson co

Not like those states.

This is my experience regarding this matter. I hunt on the same prime land in Dallas Co. I've hunted on since 1980. Back then it was approx. 1/3 farmland, mostly soybeans and some cotton and hay. 1/3 Hardwood timber and 1/3 Swampland. We had deer, a lot of deer and some real bruisers. The truth is, we really didn't know what we were doing. The landowner, myself and some more friends have become pretty good hunters on this tract through trial and error for so long. Just this afternoon I was showing another hunter some of my top secret bow spots since I no longer can bowhunt. We also went by a tree with four main beams that was perfect for a platform that served as an early treestand for us. I told him about using an open sight 30/30 to kill a spike from that tree and how big of an event it was for us. My first down there. The deer and big bucks were there, but we weren't experienced enough to take advantage of it.

Next came the drop in the soybean market and most of the farmland planted in rows of trees to create artificial fencerows. This was done to try and boost the quail population. The soybeans has supported many, many deer. When the beans left, we were left with many, man hungry deer. With the Management Program's blessings we basically went on a kill fest. It honestly became work and not fun.

Finally got the herd in balance with a great buck to doe ratio and we listened to biologists and now have more big racks than ever before. They may not be the inches short of B&C like one once was, but on the whole, we are seeing more big bucks. It all falls to two things, keeping the does in check and letting the younger bucks walk.

Just a side note: 80's began the pine tree boom. Pine needles dropping on the ground make the soil very acidic. This inhibits natural browse from taking up nutrients and passing it on to the deer.

As far as larger deer go, see Bergmann's rule. It states that within a broadly distributed taxonomic clade, populations and species of larger size are found in colder environments, and species of smaller size are found in warmer regions. And diet, genetics and ratios count too.

It's in the dirt, guys. The reason the midwest produces big whitetails, is the same reason they produce the most ag, the dirt.

I think the crops in the dirt count more than the dirt itself. If you reversed the agricultural operations and planted pine trees in the Midwest and more row crops in the south, I'm betting the B&C entry trend would also reverse. Soil plays a huge factor, no doubt, but pine trees don't provide nutrition to help deer reach their potential.

Soil and genetics are the footing and foundation of growing big deer. It'll take more than sticking corn or beans in poorer soil to consistently grow high end bucks.

I couldn't agree more. The nutrients in the soil is what makes the plant nutrtional. Thats why we add lime and fertilizer to our soil. Thats why we add other ammendments to our gardens. I also agree, that instead of pine tree's, if beans were planted, you would see an increase in antler growth, but it will never be like the midwest.

When I realized it was one day on the QDMA forum when someone from Iowa posted up a soil test. Here I was hoping to just build up to 1000-1500 lbs/ac of CA in my soil and this guy was holding something like 8000-9000 lbs/ac.

I think you missed my point. Good soil is an essential building block but how much benefit do deer get if it's planted in pine plantation. After the canopy shades the ground, that great soil doesn't produce much food for a deer. Soil is good, but the crop grown is more important.

I'll take crop land with marginal soil over great soil with pine trees any day of the week. George Mann killed some impressive deer in Alabama. Those deer had plenty to eat.

Oh I'm with ya, LA game and forest managers are pine cheer leaders. I've never seen a deer eat a pine cone.

I've hunted a lot of reclaimed mine land that had reverted to pines and fallow fields in IL that had very large deer. I didn't see any ag land around them. Soil alone doesn't do it without the genetics.