Originally Posted By: ikillbux
Choccolocco would benefit tremendously from extensive logging. It's hard to hunt deer on thousands of acres of mostly unbroken hardwood ridges. The cuts would provide obvious bedding areas, more food, etc. Besides that one huge cut next to the Hwy 9 check station, there's very little cutover on the entire 58,000 acres. There is one big fresh cut on the 500 road, BUT!!!!...see what I'm about to say below.....

There's another issue with Chocco that bugs me bad, but I doubt most people have thought about, and most might not agree with me. The Pinhoti trail system is intertwined all throughout the mgt area, from top to bottom, and it gets used HEAVILY!!! Just this weekend there was a large trail race event with hundreds of runners. I think that increased human presence hurts a lot of areas we grew up hunting. This past Wednesday I went up there to look at a place, and I saw three guys running on the trail. (This is also WILDLY dangerous if you ask me) That big fresh cut I talked about on the 500 road, the Pinhoti runs right through the middle of it. Last year I hunted off the back side of that cut, 20 degrees and frosty, and two times that morning people ran that trail. They talk loud, etc. Ruined what little confidence I had.

On top of that, for whatever reason(s), there just aren't the deer there that there used to be. It has become hard to even find sign, and traditionally the woods would be destroyed right now with buck sign.


Lol! I bet if those trail runners knew you guys where out there they would have a fit! Agree on charging a fee for anybody out there, just $5 a year would generate millions. But, the state would try to get all those revenues put in general fund instead of for wildlife enhancement!
Instead of cutting all the timber at one time would be better to cut every five to eight years small plots scattered throughout. And leave some trees to hunt from in clearcut. Maybe a small string of oaks leading to middle of clearcut and some in the middle. I know that is not what loggers want to hear, but would be great for access hunting. If they could lease local agricultural fields and plant summer crops that would help out too.