Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum AL Outfitter recommendation

Sending you a PM with some info.

Also... for discussion's sake I know several "outfitters" in Alabama that put on good hunts and have happy customers. Not talking about high fence places either. What I have noticed is they attract people that want to deer hunt a couple times a year at most and they come spend the money on those couple days, have a nice weekend, country cooking and blast a 3 year old 8 pointer and ride back to somewhere in Florida or Atlanta or wherever they came from perfectly happy. They aren't looking for a 150 inch deer. They are not into deer hunting that much. That's their deer season. Instead of wasting their time hunting every Saturday, bored and blasting does just because the season is open. Take note.

Most hunts you look at are $2000 per person which would be $4000 if we both go

Six of us went to Enon Plantation a few years ago and all of us killed nice bucks.

That was a fine place. I’ve bass fished it a ton over the years.

Does Enon still offer hunts? I knew a guy that went a long time ago and shot a nice buck too

I hunted enon 15 years ago and it was awesome. It was bow hunting only back then and there were some sure enough studs walking around.

There is a guy with a charity hunt on aldeer - Lions club out of Montgomery - May want to look at - it will be with some private land owners and some good counties - he is looking for about 5 pms

I would look hard at that.

Enon is, or was, not your typical Alabama hunting outfitter. Bows only and they had 12,000 acres of their own property that was well managed.

Some advertise having thousands of acres, but the group I was with this year were rotated around the same stands on about 2000 acres.

I know they offered a very limited amount of hunts this year and didn’t hunt it at all last year. Should be primed and ready!

I've been giving some thought to what you said and just thinking about how I'd manage the situation....I think if I had thousands of acres to run pay hunters on then I'd divide it up into something like 1,000 acre parcels and have each one set up for different wind directions.....meaning that parcel "A" has all of the stands set up for south winds and parcel "B" has all of the stands set up for east winds.....and parcel "C" and "D" set up for north winds.....etc...etc......Then I'd rotate the hunting pressure around to different parcels based on that days wind direction.....This would put every hunter hunting in a advantageous stand position

But if 70% of the days had a N wind and only 5% an E wind, wouldn't you end up overhunting 1/4 of the stands while under utilizing 1/4?

What are the historic numbers for the amount of days with each wind type??…..We’ll set it up proportionally according to those numbers……Meaning that if historical trends show 50% of the days having north winds between Oct and Feb……then we’ll set up half of the parcels for north winds…..if it shows 10% of days having east winds then we'll set aside that amount of acreage to dedicate to east winds........Lets say we have 10,000 acres......We'll divide it into 10 parcels and east wind gets one of them.....north wind gets five.....as an example.....just gotta look at the historic trends

One thing I think might have to happen is to rotate the parcels over time by moving stand set ups because the north wind parcels would likely have more deer killed out of them while the south and east wind parcels may see few due to lack of movement on those days. You could just make this years south wind parcel be a north wind next season bt moving stand and make the parcel where you want fewer deer to be killed be the new south wind unit.....Maybe you're getting as many deer sightings on that parcel and want to ease kill numbers on that one....There may not be a huge statistical difference but I sure tend to see more deer on fronts with winds shifting out of the north

The places I've been, the outfitters did not pay much, if any, attention to wind direction when selecting stands for hunters.

Wind direction in most of AL is light and variable 75% of the time. Consistent wind direction is only associated with fronts, before or after. Light and variable is a bow hunters worst enemy.

Went to some place in Dallas Co. a few years ago and it sucked. The "guide" was drinking and paid no attention to wind direction. Sent me to a ladder stand and told me to follow the reflective trail tacks in the dark and half of them were missing and stumbled all around in the dark trying to find this stand. No one saw a shooter buck and very few does. It was obvious the same stands were hunted over and over.

At “Ray’s Boom-Boom Lodge” in Macon Co…..we use Unimogs with big green light bars that the deer can’t see at night to take the hunter right to the stand…..All roads are designed on looped trail systems where we make one pass through dropping out hunters….all stands are located right on the road/trail…..The deer are used to the Unimogs and don’t even pay them any attention…..We position our stands where we want them and then use the skid steer mulcher and road plane attachments to create a woodland road system that drops and picks up hunters right out of a warm, dry Unimog and right into their stand…..

In all seriousness I've seen how well this works doing it with a little Japanese mini truck.....Heck, we drive that thing right up to our stands and bury it up in the bushes and hunt......Keeping stands located along the roads and not having hunters stomping through the woods really helps the hunting whether its a club or a plantation pay operation or private property

My advice would be to adventure to the Midwest. Enon would be about the only place in this state that would be worth the money. You could take what you would pay a lodge for three days in bama and invest that into a small lease and have better results.

Have you looked at Dreamlake or Soggybottom? Never hunted them and they may be a little high$