Those darn South Alabama Lamar County hunters
Well…..the delineations are really based more on groupings of “like” counties as it concerns the deer and land dynamics and not really so much about whether we want to cut hairs on it actually being “south Alabama”……For our purposes its in our southern zone.....and more specifically the western sub-group
Speaking of that western subgroup…….
Something I find interesting is if you look at all of those counties on the last round of maps…..whether it’s the buck map or the doe map….. the majority of those counties are within 1-5% on both maps.....basically meaning “no change” just like they’ve been running for years now……However, there arrrrre a couple of those counties in the far north of that subgroup that are showing decreases of 10-12%......I know, I know…..there’s more deer there than I can ever imagine so maybe its nothing……but……. maybe those counties are seeing a little bit more change than just what the naked eye has yet to detect…..Lets not jump to any conclusions just yet on that one because those counties do show a little more annual variation than the others……but maybe we’ll stick it in our back pockets and revisit it at the end of the season …….Maybe its just acorns.
Here's a thought. Lots of those green counties in SW bama have large unbroken acreage and a large chunk of it is timber company owned. With TC lease prices exploding over the past 3-5 yrs, could it be that the people leasing that property has changed. Used to be a ton of 1200-4000 acre clubs in those areas with 20-40 or more members, that hunted them hard and killed a bunch of deer, and had held those leases for 30 or 40 yrs. As prices increased, they turned loose the leases and they were picked up by big money groups that were more management and trophy management minded and where you did have 20-40 guys hunting and shooting "deer", you now have 4-10 guys hunting the same acreage and selectively shooting only "specific deer". Could also be why they numbers have not dropped off as much. The smaller groups on larger acreages are now acting as nurseries and annually restocking the smaller surrounding properties around them so it counter acts the corn, cameras, unlimited does, etc, at least to some extent.
