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Man there’s some jacked up harvest strategies in here. But as Wild Bill says, “It works for us.”😂

Matt what do you think about killing does after the rut in that February extension vs at the beginning of the season?

Matt will say get the mouths off the resources as early as possible I’m betting

I guess with that line of thinking, you would make your decision on what is more valuable. Resources or pressure. At the point that you can kill does, antlers have stopped growing so resources aren’t going to the antlers. Resources would be going to the does and fawns though.

Well put.

Personally, I try to set up doe harvest areas away from destination feed fields or other rut attractive areas. Baiting has made this pretty easy to do.

It would be interesting to radio collar some does up there in Jackson and Madison and see how much they shift their home ranges from one fall to the next over a several year period….

Killing deer, either sex makes an impact on your population. And so does your neighbors. Call it what you want, if not a huge tract of land, your not managing anything. I promise you. Too many corn pile hunters. Always have been, always will be. Even before it was legal. Just way worse now. Give them them 5 acres and they can kill deer on it!

I’m not sure how many acres you consider huge, but just because someone next to you can kill a deer doesn’t mean you can’t manage the deer herd. You said two opposites in your post.

1. Killing deer has an impact on the deer herd population.
2. You can’t manage the deer herd population.

If your decision to kill a deer has an impact on the herd, then you are managing it.

It’s very difficult to kill does late in the season, if you’re after a target number or quota. More often than not, you’ll come up short. Kill them as soon as you legally can, and anywhere you can, then coast through the season with no pressure, hunt your rut with fewer does (so much more fun to actually see intense rutting behavior), and you’ve removed those mouths consuming resources, yes. People don’t understand the stress placed on bucks when they have to breed does hitting estrus for 2-3 cycles. It actually places stress on the entire herd, and not just the bucks. They need a narrow breeding window so they can get back to food consumption to recover for the following season. Antler growth and body condition is a direct reflection of breeding stress and duration. Improving habitat, correcting sex ratios and keeping populations below a level where they’re competing for high quality food has tremendous benefits for deer and for hunters. I’ve got several properties where does are killed on plots and around feeders early, and then it’s over. Guess what? They kill the piss out of mature bucks on plots and feeders too, because they have a break between the doe harvests and rut, given the plots zero pressure until it’s time to go kill a buck being silly. Killing a doe or two off each plot a season is NOT pressure. Sitting on a plot 3x a week and never pulling the trigger, yet busting deer every time you climb down to walk out, is. That has way more impact on deer usage in daylight than killing a doe or two. People confuse the two. You can bust does on food plots every year, hit your harvest quota, and place less pressure on a property, than hunting the fool out of the plots each week and killing your does in the “woods” away from plots. Presence is pressure. Not trigger pulling.

Depends where you are in Ol' Hi-Jackson. If you're near ag and/or the river , they won't change much if any. If you're waaaay up in PRV , they'll travel. And back in the mountains , with as much logging that goes on up here , they won't have to go far to find some good browse. And now that baiting is legal , well , the food comes to them. Just because we have a lot of hardwood acres , there's more to eat than acorns up here. I'll bet $ they don't shift far and permanently .

The larger your property , the less the neighbors matter. Yeah , it ain't rocket science on bucks , if you want bigguns, don't shoot them until they are 4yo or older. If a food plot mixture or fertilizer rate isn't working , it doesn't take 5 years to figure that out. Records are fine , but it doesn't take 5 years to determine if you need to make changes. I'm too old to wait in 5 years increments to make changes.

FYI , I hunt a fairly large private tract , surrounded by some good neighbors. It's not a club . I'm the dictator, manager and main hunter, I've hunted it exclusively since 1987.

OK , I've reread your posts, it seems to me your 5 years is not a rolling 5 years but in 5 year increments before making a change. 5 years in the whitetail world is a long time. Let's say you have 1,000 acres , with about 500 of it in mature, ready to cut hardwoods . Hardwood prices go waaaay up, do you not cut the timber and make perhaps a couple hundred thousand more $ just because it'll increase carrying capacity and mess up the 5 year plan? A long range plan is fine , but habitat and deer are fluid , you have to go with the flow sometimes.

Some here are saying that allowing 2 does per day allows people the flexibility and freedom to manage their property the way they see fit (Which it does). Some here say it's a bad thing because allowing that freedom causes some people to act irresponsibly and kill too much (which they do). So, 2 a day shouldn't be allowed for the responsible folks because of the actions of the irresponsible folks, punish the good because of the bad. Sounds a lot like the same arguments used by the left on other issues like gun restrictions.

One... as Lockjaw is saying, there's no guaranteed accuracy on the numbers. The actual doe harvest for years is assured to be higher than reported. Two... even though you might have raw numbers, there's absolutely no way to determine WHY the numbers are trending in a certain direction. The following are all reasons (besides the more liberal harvest allowance) why doe harvest numbers could theoretically go up this year:
* More overall hunters - especially if more are youth hunters or out-of-state hunters
* Cost of beef - I plan to kill two more deer this season because of rising beef prices
* Lack of acorns in areas - in my area far more people kill does off plots; more deer on any one plot could simply be because acorns aren't available
* Change of habitat on hunting land - I had 200 acres clearcut two years ago on my lease; doe numbers have gone up
* Lack of "shooters" on a property - I'm going to shoot a doe for meat before I shoot a 4 YO that's a 120.
* Folks start having deer processed instead of doing it themselves (more reported); also, deer processors accepting deer due to things like SNAP

Causation and correlation are not the same thing.

I’m not sure how many acres you consider huge, but just because someone next to you can kill a deer doesn’t mean you can’t manage the deer herd. You said two opposites in your post.

1. Killing deer has an impact on the deer herd population.
2. You can’t manage the deer herd population.

If your decision to kill a deer has an impact on the herd, then you are managing it.[/quote

And this is the great paradox known as hunting in Alabama. You can affect the herd but you really can't manage it, depending on the acreage you have access to.

It would seem that the acorns play a major role in harvest up there…..kyles comment on page one suggests that he is getting less pics than ever because they have “shifted food sources and are somewhere feeding on acorns”…..So what I have pictured is that if you look at Google Earth right now you’re going to have a pretty solid concentration of deer around all of those big hardwoods……and if we keep looking at the map and skip to the next bust year for acorns then at least a portion of that concentration that’s currently in the big hardwoods are going to spread out to other areas….Without acorns all of those big areas of closed canopied hardwood mountains would be pretty void of food in comparison to the good years……Those are the years the doe population is getting hammered

For the viewers at home… …There will ALWAYS be folks on here who claim to not believe anything the numbers say……The reason for that is because its much easier to just make chit up and sell it to you when there isnt data to dispute it…..Just like the 2 doe rule has been done…..There’s nothing to back up the change other than the “hearsay” that some folks needed it…..

Let me ask some of y’all this……..Many of y’all say yourself that a big portion of the hunting public is either too irresponsible or too uneducated to make good decisions when given the freedom to shoot more……With that in mind…..what happened the last time we changed the rule to two per day??....Why do we think the reaction will be any different this go round given the statement above about many hunters??.....How many areas will this hurt compared to the amount it helps??

Any takers on that one??

….of course according to some I suppose that big spike in the doe harvest line could have come from about anything and had nothing at all to do with the loosening of the doe limits

Serious question.......Where did the numbers on the graph above come from being as game check was not implemented as voluntary until 2013 and made mandatory until 2016? How could it be proven as accurate?

The graph was made from the hunter survey data I believe

You know most folks on here are over the age of 40 and we all remember well what happened back in the 90’s and early 2000’s……..I mean it’s not a big stretch for anyone to believe that the doe harvest went way up back then just like the green line shows