A shorter season and lower bag limit in places like Kansas has been mentioned in comparison to Alabama. Then, deer hunters compare the "quality" of bucks in Alabama to Kansas and say Alabama is inferior because we kill too many, too young so we need a shorter season and lower bag limit.....like Kansas has. What no one ever mentions or looks at is that Kansas has 69,870 square miles of farmland (7078 square miles being soybeans) compared to Alabama's 13,437 square miles of farmland (562.5 square miles being soybeans). Then you look at Kansas having a deer population of 8-9 per square mile vs Alabama's 25 deer per square mile. If you look at the number of deer vs the acreage of nutrition in each state, it's a no brainer as to why the deer are different there. Yes, Kansas has a much shorter season......because they have a third of the deer we do. If we had a season like theirs, what would our population look like in a few years?
Comparing Alabama to places like Kansas and wanting our deer hunting to be the same is like me wanting the duck hunting to be the same here as it is in Canada. No matter what you do, it will never happen because the circumstances are not the same.
Driveby, I think this is where my position is misunderstood. I’m not comparing all of those things. You’re 100% correct about the land dynamics and population differences. You mentioned comparing “quality” of bucks and I agree that is foolish too. My point is that no matter the ag percentage or census differences, you can absolutely accomplish more comparable age structure in the state’s deer herd, albeit through much different season regs.
Just wanted to clear that up and anyway I think Pwyse has convinced me it’s a moot point. A desire to manage intensively will have to be through other alternatives.
