Originally Posted By: SpentShaft
Originally Posted By: Matt Brock
We get feedback from both sides. I take it all. Everything that comes in is taken into consideration, and personnel has changed a lot on BW in the last few years. It has had a lot if turnover. I don't plan on going anywhere. I want to make the place as good as it's potential allows. What exactly are the problems you see with Warrior? Other than saying quit changing everything, you were not specific.


Matt, I really don't have the time to get into details at the moment but there is a lot of things that I don't get. A few things that come to mind are; no youth hunt, inconsistent antler restrictions between zones, inconsistent hunt dates and length from year to year, sometimes you need a permit from the check station, sometimes you don't, etc, etc.

I will have to set down and look at several years of permits and get my head wrapped around it all. Maybe I'll just get with you in person sometime? I don't want you to think I am just picking on you or Black Warrior on here but if you add all the constant changes to state regs along with the changes to black warrior every year it can make a man wonder whether or not he remembers everything and is hunting legally each time he goes on a hunt.

I would like to add though, I do like some of the changes that have been made recently like the opposite zone of a gun hunt being open to archery and small game. It gives people who don't want to fight the crowd more opportunity to hunt.

On a side note...I saw Ron Eaks write about 10 asian guys from Huntsville tickets for squirrel hunting on zone A when there was a gun hunt on B. I think they had 42 squirrels or something like that, poor guys was probably just trying to keep they're Chinese restaurant a float...."Tree Rat on A Stick" laugh


I'll address some of that. On the youth hunt, I don't have an answer to that one. Maybe it has been done before there before my time? I haven't changed that since coming along, but am certainly not opposed to having one. We do have a youth turkey hunt and get a small handful of hunters on over 90,000 acres. I guess it's good for the 6 that show up, but I haven't seen a turkey killed on the youth hunt in three years.

Difference in antler regs comes from there being two zones. Zone A is mostly in the wilderness, what isn't in wilderness is under some other type of least management necessary agreement, so I can't touch that. Because we have no control or input on the habitat management on Zone A, we do not require antler regs. Whatever is state legal is good. I am in full support of that. I like having an area where hunters can hunt without fear of breaking an antler reg. They can kill whatever they want to. Zone B is different. We do more active timber management, record more data, and have antler restrictions to increase the number of older age class bucks. To me it's the best of both worlds. Deer hunters that don't care what they kill and have only a few days to hunt each year can hunt Zone A. Hunters who are more selective hunt Zone B. But I will say this, from what I've seen there is no difference in the trophy potential from either Zone.

When I got there the hunt dates were all over the board, and there were hunts on both Zones that required daily permits and map permits. It was confusing. I ASSUMED by making all Zone B hunts daily permits, and all Zone A hunts map/permits some of the confusion would be minimalized. Boy was I wrong. From talking to the hunters who are the most confused it's clearly no fault of mine. Majority of them ADMITTED to not reading a dang word on the permit. It states three times on that permit that Zone A hunts are map/permits, Zone B hunts are daily permits.

Those Asian guys are still at it! I see them every year on opening day now hunting the opposite Zone. They crack me up. They are as excited to be out there as any person I've ever seen.

Last edited by Matt Brock; 12/04/14 06:44 AM.