I report my kills on gamecheck but that being said the majority still have the issue "of more government control" causing a lot of people to not give a rats azz about reporting their kills.Just from my talking with some club members.

So said the King and all the lords in England...then a whole bunch of people got pissed, hoped on some boats sailed ascross a big ass pond, set up a new country, kicked some red coat ass, and set up a different system.

I guess I just won't ever be able to understand why most of y'all that don't want this. If I went down to the accountant's office down the hall and he said he didn't feel like he should record what we did last week because I am trying to control him and that isn't fair. I shouldn't be able to tell him what to do.

How am I going to run my business? If my business fails how is he going to keep a job? We have to know exactly what is going on in every aspect of what we do to effectively manage overall. Not just the accountant but everyone in the business is producing information that is usable for decision making. This the only way we can manage and make decisions.

When it gets right down to it... this Game Check thing is really no different.

I hope anyone that doesn't comply gets a ticket. The attitude is unbelievable to me.

Assuming no change in the harvest, and the quoted numbers, we have 25% compliance. That is pathetic and shows a total lack of support for the program. IMHO the Gamecheck system is a failure.

If I thought it would help things, I'd actually consider supporting it.

I've recorded every deer I've killed since Game Check has been implemented. The other guys in our club also record their kills, as far as I know.

What valuable information is collected? If you don't know how many deer are in an area/county/state, then how do you know how many should be killed? I asked Mr. Sykes this question and his answer was basically this, over time, you get an idea of how many deer are killed in a county. If that number changes drastically, then they could investigate and find out why. Then he brought up some anecdotal story about turkey hunting in another state. He also stated that Alabama was only one of a few states that didn't have it. I think that is the real reason it was implemented.

If people aren't reporting their deer, then even the modicum of value to Game Check is lost.

As more people turn to private land for their hunting opportunities, then I think Game Check has even less value. I know that I am not going to spend thousands of dollars a year plus numerous hours of my life working on food plots/stands/habitat improvement, and in actual hunting., then go and shoot every deer I see. The older I get, the more selective I become. If I see 10+ bucks in a day and 15 does, and don't shoot any of them, then what good is game check? On our club, we kill around 40-45 deer per year. Is that too many? Not enough? That is on 4000 acres. We limit what we kill. Sometimes, we may try to kill more does and at other times, we curtail that. How in the world will Game Check help me out? Very seldom does an individual member in our club limit out on bucks. It's not because they can't, it because they choose not to.

If I hunt all season on private land and see 250+ deer and kill 3 total and Billy Bob hunts 25 miles away on public land and sees 8 deer all season and kills 4, and all deer are recorded in Game Check, what valuable or even slightly useful information is obtained so that the State can "effectively" manage the overall deer population and how is this information (7 deer killed) useful for decision making???

If people could see and understand how Game Check was useful and provided valuable information in the management of wildlife, then I think more people would be willing to provide that information. The way it is now, it makes no sense to me.

That’s a big assumption. I’m of the firm belief that the estimated harvest numbers are way OVER estimated.

I’m a numbers guy so I can see value in the system. It’s not perfect but we have to start somewhere.

I also believe the state should implement a harvest data collection by having each hunter provide kill data for the previous year before they are allowed to buy a license. They could also add a sliding scale question of “Were deer sightings up down or stayed the same the previous year? Again it’s not perfect but in order to have data to base decisions on you have to have a starting point

I'm not totally against game check, but to address your point, knowing how many we kill doesn't tell us anything about how many we have.
I'm convinced the kill numbers were dramatically exaggerated in previous years, and game check is currently giving us a much accurate count. Problem is the top brass can't accept that they been so wrong for so long.

I'm not a supporter or a non supporter. Whatever, just kinda neutral but have found it very interesting. The compliance or lack of compliance, if there is a lack of compliance, in my opinion sends a strong message. I still don't understand this being used to set seasons and bag limits. GC went into use the same season as the 10 day extension in the North zone. If it was to be used for seasons and bag limits, why was the 10 day extension not delayed until the GC numbers could be put to use? What was the hurry? Also, how much of a total mortality of a deer herd is due to just hunters? Even with 100% compliance by hunters, what do we have?

mman - good post. You make some good points.

I think it is their responsibility to tell us, show us, etc. what the importance is. They should publish something we can see that validates that importance. Some of their research perhaps. They need to publish more data. For instance I'd like to see the report that shows how many deer we have period and where. Where are the 3 million deer we have? I'd like to see that map, I'd like to see that broken down by county, etc.

Never seen that.

I honestly think they have completely failed at this. None of us know what the department even does for the most part other than send some Wardens around to write us tickets.

I think we can agree on a lot. To me personally if they say they need my #'s of kills, etc. I'm going to give it to them and I think we all should. They might have their head up their arse but hopefully someone will eventually get in charge and they will have SOME data from SOME period of time they could possibly work with to answer a question or maybe several questions. Game Check is only one piece of the puzzle.

The issue is if we don't start collecting some kind of data at some point... when the time comes that someone competent is in charge.... they won't have anything to use. Any data has to be collected over a period of time and the longer the better. That's my perspective.

I am going to leave the issue of whether we are collecting the correct data to them.

In the end we can agree on a lot I believe. If this were a business meeting we could likely get on the same page quickly.

For the ones who believe the numbers were overly exaggerated and GC numbers more accurate (I'm not siding on either side), back to what I said: Now what?? If GC #s remain level for 5 more years, then what?

That's the question that nobody can answer. And if numbers go up or down, what does it mean? Its all just a guess.

You are also making a big assumption that previous harvest numbers were overestimated.

Most of us don't shoot 3 deer a year and kills are based on how often we knock off the safety. Hard to regulate that via any system.

The common problem with all these things whether it's GC, harvest records, hunter surveys, hunter observation logs, etc. They all tell you more about hunters than about animals.
Unless you're collecting much detailed information, like age, weight, health and habitat, then you're learning nothing more than hunters habits.
And knowing how many you kill, doesn't help you determine how many you have.

Bingo

Some have said this for a while, that more information explained and discussed, and less of the "Take your medicine, it's good for you and just listen to us so do it now." attitude, would have been best from the start. Back when the "voluntary" GC was put into place, and then the mandatory. But what hunters got was the "You know this is good, other states do it, we'll use the data" and pretty much were left to wonder. The insularity, lack of complete transparency and then "Gee, I wonder why they're not doing this and listening and they're rebeling?" happened.

And those on here who questioned and asked for more were, and sometimes still are, told to shut up, fall into lockstep, quit bitching, quit being "anarchists" wanting the ability to do whatever and whenever, that you're not "good conservationists," that we "should just know management is good" and more. We learned about private meetings around the state with specially invited folks. We learned about a supposed agreement for GameCheck in exchange for a February deer season extension. Lot of stuff has happened in the last five or six years that definitely warrants questions from a concerned constiutency.

So, welcome to the "the public should get more information" club, Goatkiller. It's not a matter of not being a conservationist or being legal or whatever, and I'll certainly not call you names or question your conservation ethics. But it's good to see you're also interested in wanting enough information and transparency to understand what's happening.

Perhaps the "listening sessions" with hunters that start next Thursday night at Hoover Tactical in B'ham will be helpful.

that theres my problem !!!!!! the accountant's know how much money he started with . we do not know many deer we have so what good is wasteing millions of dollars counted dead deer ??????

nother thing i dont work for the state and they send me no check !

just a guess . LOL

thats were we were . !!!!!!

call me a dumb A$$$ but i still aint been told how they can use GC as a management tool . i've been told a lot but the question still stands unanswered .

I totally agree the state would've been better off starting with an educational campaign. Education is always more effective than the simply the stick of enforcement. Social acceptance, chances of being caught and severity of punishment determine compliance with laws.

Its blowing my mind how many people can't see that the data would be useful. No, it won't tell you exactly how many deer are in the state but nothing will. There's been an aldeer consensus for the last several years the deer population is bottoming out in large areas of the state. If you were looking to convince the governing body of that you'd have nothing more to go on than the anecdotal word of your cousins, your daddy and some obstinate cats on a website. If the state had the game check data they could determine in which direction the deer harvest is trending and over time gain a pretty decent picture of the condition of the deer herd based on hunter numbers vs harvest. Again, they wont know the number of every live deer in the state but they can grasp trends and draw conclusions. They can cross check reported processor numbers and reported auto vs deer collisions for confirmation. If they saw that buck harvests were down they can look at the antler size and see that fewer spikes and more multi-pointed bucks (or the opposite) are being reported and draw some conclusions. Maybe then they'd send out some surveys to supplement if they needed a bigger picture. If you're concerned about participation skewing the numbers if there are 100 game wardens in the state and they each encounter 100 deer hunters in a season post harvest, 10,000 hunters (surely there would be much more) is a pretty statistically significant sample size and they could determine a rough compliance rate from there. Science is amazing guys, with a few data points they can work out a lot.

Even if you don't believe the data will be used appropriately the data is available to the public we've got smart guys here who can do some crunching and we can bomb our representatives with enough of the states own data and facts to disprove the management methods used by the state and get some changes made. There are proven methods for increasing and decreasing whitetail numbers, this part is not a guess at all. Having data is always better, even if its incomplete data.

Think about it. You're looking into a new hunting club, the first dang thing they tell you is how many deer they killed last year, how many bucks and what size. If that means something on 2,000 acres it dang sure means something regionally and statewide.