Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum State Wide Deer Harvest

Meanwhile, back at the ranch......total deer harvest declines another 5% this season.

Thats good sir. Not here.

I’ve been on very few properties that had a deer population problem. That’s certainly not the case where I have been in north and central AL. There’s several counties up here going through what the black belt experienced 30-40 years ago. Deer are plentiful.

Some areas in Cullman, Blount and Morgan look pretty bleak but it’s a habitat/development issue in combination with too liberal of a season.

Sounds like more zones are needed to customize the management.

I think its a combination of things.

First, the 3 buck rule and game check is not truly effective. The only deterrent for not using game check is the risk of the game warden catching you with a buck that you haven't game checked. The processors track it so if you show up with an unchecked animal, they make you do it. But if you have private property or live close to your club, you could basically shoot whatever you want and never run a high risk of being checked.

Second, the doe limits are insane. As someone said, hunting in the 80's was better. You could plant a green field and sit on it all the time and see deer nearly every day, during daylight. When you shoot every doe that walks out on greenfields, they get smart and quit doing that during the daylight. And if there aren't doe's there in daylight, chances are there aren't going to be any bucks either. If you wanted to shoot a doe outside of doe season, you had to use archery equipment. That works for me. No need for Dmap. Especially if you actually see doe's on green fields....

If the doe's are nocturnal, then there is no reason for the bucks to be anything but the same.

The final thing is there is not a quick fix for this. It will take years to change it. For example, everything I have read in my research suggests it takes 3 generations to see a change. So if on my lease, we stopped killing doe's off green fields, it would be several years before I could expect to see them on them during daylight. The best I could expect to see in fawn births is a 48/52 ratio of buck to doe births, that was something else I found out. So if you think Mother Nature is going to adjust the fawn sex based upon the current ratio, that would be an incorrect assumption. Generally its 50/50.

That's the thing , some have a problem,,,,, its not ever body's problem

And most don't seem to know how dmap works either.

I guess this just depends on how someone defines “plentiful” and “a problem”……How few deer does it take to meet those thresholds for the state? I thought this was why Game Check was put in place anyways so we could put a real number to it and wouldn’t have to make these generalized assessments based on personal opinions about how many is "enough". We are gonna eventually use those numbers for something arent we??

It would be good if they used the information gathered by game check to really manage the resource. Like many have said, its different all over and may have to be looked at just that way. Everything should go into consideration. Fact is though, people hate change and most wont even listen to alternative ideas

I have properties I own and properties that I lease. I have restricted the doe harvest here on those in North Alabama. There are to be no does killed on these tracts-period. I had one of the most knowledgeable hunters I have ever known tell me years ago that "Wherever you have alot of women, there will be alot of old men hanging around." These words have spoken true over the years. My doe numbers are good because of this philosophy. I have a great crop of young bucks as well as a good crop of mature bucks. I had 3 mature, nice racked 8's this year within 30 yards and never shot the first one. I just decided that I didnt need to kill these as they would be very good bucks next year and I really didnt want to drag them out by myself anyway. Like the Native Americans who counted coupe on their opponents, I basically did the same. To me, it is all about the enjoyment of having a good deer population of healthy deer where we see deer and enjoy the hunt instead of shooting every young deer and taking it out of our gene pool. I enjoy managing the herd here and have no problem with going to a one week doe season state wide.

With the new CWD threat in North Alabama, I am really scared as to what this coming season will look like when the "brown and down" crew gets through with the deer.

^^^This^^^

Yeah, I seem to remember a lot of folks arguing and debating adamantly for why we needed game check and why everyone should be for it and use it and I’ll be danged if I hear any of them using the information now or commenting about the numbers that it shows.

Just for chits and giggles here’s a comparison between 2020-21 game check numbers and this years numbers. It’s a basic red light color scheme. The counties in green are ones that had an increase in the number of deer killed……the counties in yellow stayed roughly the same……and the ones in red showed a decrease…..with an approx 10% threshold to trigger red or green…..The counties underlined twice in red were ones that had a very significant decrease in the number of deer killed….as much as a 20-30% decrease in some of those counties....

Northwest Alabama on the struggle bus. And CWD going to make hunting there even worse I'm sure.

That pattern doesnt look too promising for the harm that may already be potentially taking place with CWD......I say potentially....take this map for what it is...a one year snapshot..... but there definitely seems to be a pattern. Here's some of the more significant decreases.


Lauderdale -21%
Marion -24%
Lamar -26%
Walker -17%
Winson -17%
Fayette -17%
Tuscaloosa -12%......(Just needed one red line)
Jackson -11%
Marshall -15%

Here's a refined map with some better maff work......Two double red lines are triggered by anything greater than a -15% decrease........

Ever think the numbers may be down because people are not going to eat a deer with CWD

Ever think the numbers may be down because people are not going to eat a deer with CWD .......

Kinda what I have been thinking!

B

I predicted harvest would be down this year due to the wet growing season and the bumper acorn crop. Nothing unusual. Especially coming off of a year like last year.

This doesn’t mean anything. If it starts trending down then there’s something to see.

I think if we’re taking an objective look at it then we wouldn’t draw any definitive conclusions at this point. What we would do would be to look further into ALL the potential reasons for such a pattern in the decline…….

If it were just a matter of it being a wet growing season and bumper acorn crop then wouldnt you expect to see that effecting things more evenly across the counties than what the map shows??.....