Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Deer and Natural Resources

As an avid hunter and many days in the woods I have noticed something over the years and I was curious if anyone else had noticed it to... So I used to hunt a well known particular area that always had big bucks taken from it. I killed three 140+ on the land too. Anyways I couldn't never figure out how the deer here were getting so big. The land got Sold and the 1100 acres got cleared off and I was left without a place to hunt. I joined another club and never got the opportunities to kill a big deer like I previously had. So I ended my membership last year. This year I decided I was just going to bowhunt only. I was thinking if I'm bowhunting only why not take a year and learn some Public land. As I began mapping a few areas before season started and placing a trail cam here and there, I always got a few good bucks, but nothing big. I decided I wanted to go scout out an area that caught my eye on the topo map, and I found several solid trails and some decent Buck sign. I put out two cameras approx. 300 yards from each other to see what was in there. Sure enough big bucks. I got two 160+ on camera. So I bowhunted some with high hopes, but haven't got one yet. According to my cameras all the deer are nocturnal. Last week as I was checking cameras, I found 21 scrapes between the two cameras, but I also found something else. It hit me. The land I was hunting years ago had this same thing and a lot of it. Much like this spot does. When I say a lot, I mean a lot. Wanna know? Coal! Laying all over the top of the ground, trees fell over with coal sticking to the roots. It's everywhere in this area. So I started investigating. Where the coal stops, the deer sign stops. It just so happened that I had both cameras in this one area. I took one camera and moved it away from the area, but not far, within 300 yards on another solid trail. I checked the camera today, different deer and one small Buck. Has anyone ever ran across anything like this and could there be a correlation to coal and Big Bucks? It sounds crazy, but I'm more than curious now. Sorry for the long write up, but this deserves a discussion.