Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Charts and Graphs

I bet the areas on the outer perimeter of the bigger mountain chain is where you really see the most variance occurring.....An area like New Market south to Gurley for example.... then maybe from Grant up to Stevenson......Isnt right around the perimeter where Kyles is located?? I would assume deer are more concentrated in the mountains one year then more spread out in the flatland the next....

Remember Google Earth makes it all look like mature hardwoods. Jackson Co is a patchwork of land owners and therefore a patchwork of various stages of timber harvests. They move a small distance and move back . Acorns come and go and are short lived, White oaks could all be consumed or rotten by Christmas. I was told by a biologist many years ago don't count on acorns and row crops . Manage if the deer have neither.

I took that to mean , you can't have a deer behind every tree in the hardwood mountains , they can't support them. You can have a lot of deer ......... if you have food for them.

I can say with 100% confidence the deer where Danny (Kyles ) is haven't gone far and for very long . I'm basically his neighbor. Deer have a lot of choices for food in our area, no need to panic if they get a little camera shy for a while .

Acorns are, and are going to skew the #’s this year. Never seen anything like it.
Gonna be a while before all these acorns are gone. All the food plot and feeder hunters will say deer numbers are down. 😃

No they haven’t likely traveled 5-10 miles away or nothing but I bet many did likely move within maybe a 1000 acre home range or whatever it might be for them up there……A square mile is 640 acres…..so just to shift around inside of a doe home range of 640 acres could mean possibly moving a mile…..and if you go up to 1000 acre range your closing in on 2 miles…..Its extremely feasible to think that a doe group could be 1 to 2 miles away right now from where they were last year when acorns were a bust…..If you take the measuring tool on Good Earth and stretch it out to two miles from some of those mountains it really reaches out there into the “valleys” for a ways…..That goes from one side of Roach’s cove to the other……

My bigger point I’m really making here is the amount of variance that’s likely occurring from year to year on who and where doe killing numbers are getting influenced……For most folks up there its likely that its just swinging back and forth between neighbors year to year……The “group” management is likely having far more influence than the individual in many cases…..No matter what you do this year you are at the mercy of others the next.....The acorn situation is amplifying that effect

Yep , get ready to hear this, "there's too many acorns this year , I can't find 'em."

There’s probably a little truth in that……..

If we looked at the Roach’s Cove area on Google Earth for an example…..you have Garner Ridge on the west and Inglis Point on the east with “hollows” on either side and open bottomland for several miles out in front…..I’m assuming those two mountains are likely filled with acorns right now……Imagine how many different doe groups have their home ranges that include some area of the bottoms and then one of those two mountain sides…..You likely have numerous doe groups with different bottomland home ranges that converge and overlap each other on the same mountain side during heavy acorn years……One group could come from Roach’s Cove and another from Inglis Hollow and both converge on Garner Ridge as part of both of their home ranges……

So….if you have all of these doe groups converging on those two mountain sides then it should create competition amongst them……That however is depending on how many deer there are converging compared to the available food…..It should be sort of an eyeball test as to the overall population level…..If the bottoms seem really void of deer right now then you probably don’t have a lot of competition occurring for acorns in the mountains… …..Depending on where someone hunts it very well be that they “cant find them” right now……

On camera's , yeah. Most people are focusing their attention on fields and other gun huntable food sources, getting ready for rifle season and are / will be scratching their heads. But any bowhunter worth his salt would already have a lock on, or climber on those acorns and be wearing em out.

Could it affect harvest numbers ? I don't know. Maybe ? But bowhunters, for the most part, adjust to the acorn drop right now, quick, and in a hurry.

The old killers that learned to hunt without cameras and corn can find 'em and kill 'em.

There is one large land owner between me and 2 dogs. My land is all bottoms. The reason I have so many deer is a lot of the surrounding land owners let beavers ruin there property . Sorry CNC it must be my Hogwaler blood. Beaver trapping has been wide open so I have not hunted much

Man leave them beavers alone.......

Hey Danny, you have any hogs ?

Yep.

The problem is my knees and hips won't let me hunt like I once did.

In the words of Slick Willie, " I feel your pain."

We had some hogs last year. 3 or 4 got killed. Have not had any pictures this year. Most were on the hunting club up behind the Moody Brick

I keep hearing about the abundant acorn crop. I’m really not seeing that at my house or hunting land. I’m just seeing typical amounts of acorns. My live oaks seem to having an off year. Last year the crop was unbelievable.

Every property I set foot on has the most acorns I’ve ever seen. I just looked over several hundred acres of a new property in Franklin Co today and the entire forest floor was solid acorns. Been that way everywhere, even in Illinois. I’ve never seen anything like it.

No you cut the timber lol. Ain’t none of this worth more than a couple hundred grand lol.

You are right it can be fluid. What I’m saying is there are a lot of reasons it is fluid. Some of those reasons we may know, some we may not. I try to give whatever change we’ve decided to make longer than one or two seasons is all I’m saying. I like 5. That’s not to say that if there is overwhelming proof that what you are doing is really bad for your goals that you can’t change it. But most of the time you need more than a couple of samples to understand if your change is working.

Here’s an example. We had a guy in our club that was sitting on a powerline hunting. The food plot across the river on someone else’s property had a spinner feeder on it. He saw a good mature buck in the plot eating at the feeder. Next year we all bought spinners for each plot on our 2500 acre club. He was pushing this idea. That year no one saw a mature buck, or got a pic of a mature buck eating at a spinner feeder. So they got rid of them. Abandoned the idea and wasted the money spent on them. Our bucks won’t eat at them was the consensus. But I had pics of bucks eating out of them at a buddy’s club right up the road. I talked them into committing to using them for 5 years. Now we have mature bucks trying to spin the feeder with their nose and eat all the corn in 3 days lol. Sometimes you have to give the plan a few years to see the results. Or lack there of.

That’s all I’m saying.

I believe it. Everyone is saying the same thing. Last year was like that for me, especially the live oaks. It looked like someone brought in a dump truck.

I thought I was crazy I was seeing so many acorns and deer sign in em. I’ll be glad when they gone.