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

You’re correct they will change some……but one of the reasons for going ahead and posting them from the very beginning is so that you see the pattern develop very early on that will typically just carry through the season……When people critique the numbers for not being precise enough in the end you can point back to where we saw the “trend” develop back in bow season…..You’ll be able to look back and see that we knew early on if it was up or down….all that happened through the season was just a little more honing in on exactly how much up or down……That’s how it usually plays out anyways…… The places that are already up 3-6% and growing are the ones to watch…..That’s where early sampling points to the most “change” occurring right now…..The question is how much that grows between now and Feb 10…..Do we end up +20 percent???..... +30???.......or does it just peter out……This first week it pretty much doubled in south Alabama…..

It would be interesting to see if Etowah Co. which is split into zone A and zone C will have increased or decreased numbers. If I was a betting man, I'd say it doesn't fluctuate more than 3 to 4 percent either way.

Etowah is coming off of a peak doe harvest last season…..They are -1.6 on the buck map right now and +0.4 on the doe map……I wonder if bow hunters arent just taking advantage of the opportunities that are presenting themselves in some of these counties…….Meaning that if they arent seeing a buck to shoot then they sling one at a doe instead…..Lack of buck opportunities may be driving an increase in doe harvest to an extent and why you see some of the numbers you do…..Here’s the doe trend line…..873 is last season.....Is the population growing or are y'all just shooting more does??

Etowah .....873..... 633..... 597 .....532..... 590

In eastern etowah its growing.

It very well may be……I wonder how many years it would take most counties before the harvest “crashed” if you up the annual doe harvest 40-50% like Etowah did last year……Meaning how many seasons of elevated harvest does their need to be before calling it a new stable “norm” line??

Covington Co is a good example of what I’m talking about…..They’ve seriously increased doe harvest over the last five years and are on pace for the same 2200 ish amount this year.....maybe even more….That would be three years in a row way over what they were shooting……I would think after three seasons you would be getting real close to being able to say that they indeed had room to shoot more……If they didn’t have the extra to shoot then you would expect that it has to be about ready to crash…….

Covington .....2216..... 2224 .....1730 .....1634..... 1392

The reason Marshall and Jackson are behind on doe harvest now is because I haven’t started hunting yet. I e got 3-4 more afternoons of bean picking left.

Ah yeah!

We helped increase Choctaw county. 😂. We didn’t bow hunt last season but this year a club member and myself decided to take advantage of the cooler weather. It isn’t going to change the amount of does we plan to kill but it is putting them on the board earlier.

Here is the video of mine. I made a poor shot and the camera wasn’t all the way in the holder so the shot impact wasn’t on camera but the result was an easy track job. 😂

I guess I should add another option for doe harvest increasing and stabilizing other than just herd growth…….It could be that you weren’t shooting enough to begin with…..The herd size hasn’t changed, you’ve just increased your harvest and the herd was big enough to sustain the increase

Trend lines basically have one of three options……they’re either running stable……trending up…..or trending down……and if its one of the last two options then those up or down trends should eventually stabilize at a new “normal” line that’s either higher or lower than the previous stable line when the change began…..For example if you whack out a large portion of the does then the trend line should increase during the time of the killing followed by a decrease to a new normal line that forms below the original one before the slaughter began……Some general pattern like the one below……If the herd could withstand the increase then the new normal would form above the old line around the peak or just below....generally speaking anyways

CNC i see you have been in the farmer and neighbor thread. Did you realize like I been telling you every body has a different situation. What would you do if you were the neighbor and the farmer said you better shoot them or i am going to have to. I am that neighbor

I would stop shooting does and then I would get with all the neighbors and encourage them to do the same thing…..The farmer is going to do what is in his best interest and so I have to do what is in mine…..I doubt the farmer is really worried about a “happy medium”…..He wants them all shot

Convince me why that isnt the best option for the interest of the “hunter” in that scenario…….The truth of the matter is that “the farmer” (generally speaking) doesn’t truly care about the interest of the hunter and is really only wanting them to help accomplish what is in the farmer’s best interest…..for the hunter to be additive mortality and suppress herds to as low of a level as possible…..The farmer isnt really after a middle ground…..He’s going to shoot them no matter what…..My strategy would be to ban together with the neighbors to make them have to shoot so many that they looked for a different solution to the problem.....and if not they could do be the ones to do herd management while I buck hunt

CNC you aren't paying attention to me.I said my farmer was going to shoot them if we don't. So we can better control what gets shot

I am paying attention......you asked me what would I do......I would buck hunt and let the farmer shoot whatever he's gonna shoot.....

The farmer will hurt you worse with indiscriminate night shooting than if you can appease the farmer with controlled targeted reduction. I’ve been in this situation.

I guess it depends on how much land you have…..I’ve seen this real world situation occurring and have given this some thought already due to it…..Let’s say we have a 10K acre hunting plantation bordered by several hundred acres of big ag fields that grow crops and have depredation permits….And lets say that on the other side of those big ag fields is another big hunting plantation that’s 9K acres and these two plantations have got a bunch of ag sandwiched between them…..Is the farmer in any position to tell the hunting plantations what they better do or he’ll shoot the deer??........What’s the farmer gonna do if those two plantations just decide they don’t want to shoot does anymore?? Who really has “control” in that situation??

The farmer , if he truly has crop depredation . Least they are in Jackson Co.

The deer have the control

But they don't know it.

I'm not familiar with depredation permits and what they allow you to shoot, but what's to keep the farmer from shooting those bucks you want to hunt?