Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Aldeer General Forum A trip back to the good old days of aldeer.com

I've been going through threads all the way back to 2004 and it's mind boggling as to what has taken place here in the last few years. Back then, it wasn't just a website. It lived. It breathed. And it had a presence. That presence is gone. G.O.N.E. Gone. The bunch from back then were a band of brothers. We helped each other any way we could. Sometimes it meant a couple of hours, or more, on the road but it was what we did. We drank big beer and suffered the next day or 2 but whatever the objective, it got done. We didn't text. We called. If we did text, it said "call me". The pictures that I'm seeing from back then make me realize just how much better it was then and how ashamed some of the old crowd would be. Mangler, Hoyt, Packrat, Perch and others who have passed on and the ones who have walked away wouldn't piss on what's left here. Something happened here that has brought on a craving for attention and the need to be the smartest man in the room at gigabit speed. It has become a competition for finding the worst news first and no matter what good is found, there's a race to find the bad in it. If The Exorcist were a website, this would be it. Back in the day, we had a few attention whores, a couple are biological brothers and a couple just drifting through but they didn't compare to the obsession of a current few.

When I look at the pictures from the first Fishing Tournament and those that followed, the Cedar Creek hunt, spur of the moment meet ups for a burger, the night we drank Crawmama's out of beer and they went and bought more beer...... TWICE that night, the last time any of us saw Boone (Hoyt and the boat paddle), meet ups for divvying up mass quantities of fertilizer/seed/Trophy Rock or just meeting up for a burger and beer. We all cared about each other and our families. A few still do but the majority disconnect is real.

I miss perch jerkers emails.

The old days were the best!

Well said, Wiley. Well said.

As one of those that has been around a while.........I agree with you.

When this place first started we had a chat room. The chat room was way more popular for us than the forum ever was. I miss a lot of the good guys we used to have here. It is a different place and time, I agree.

I have thought about Boone many times over the years. Wonder what ever became of him?

I was at the Cedar Creek hunt too. So was Shaw. I'll never ever forget it. He got sick on the way home, after eating at the shrimp boil, there at the hunt. I pulled over on the highway and that boy puked his guts out. Found out later that he was allergic to shrimp.

We used to all meet up for the Toys for Tots dinner with our donations from the drives we had here.

My, how things have changed.

Of course I haven't been around from the early days, but I'm not a green horn either. Yes, this place has changed a fair amount since I became addicted to aldeer around 2011 or so. I will say this though, and it's 100% truth. Every single one of the men I have met in person from aldeer seem to be stand up, honorable, give you the shirt off thier backs kind of guys. In 2024 when my house burned, there was I don't know how many of you fellows that stepped up and offered help. I was offered everything from a place to for me and my family to stay, a rifle to hunt with so I didn't have to miss a season, tree work, clothes, a freezer and food to fill it, lots of prayers, help with new construction, money, legal advice, and the list goes on and on. Fortunatly I was in a position to mostly pull myself up. There may be a few keyboard warriors here, but there's still some exceptional men and women here also. I have a feeling that there are a good many others that will tell you the same thing.

I dug into the old PMs the other day looking for when I bought my little 5hp Yamaha from jlbuc and ran across a Hey Goober from perch. Good times.

Forget where we were in Shelby county eating but one of the Marines from toys for tots told me how much we were appreciated and how they counted on us. That got to me right there.

Been around since 2003. Been some great times.

I agree somewhat. Several that have left the site only left because they couldn't stand any challenge to their imagined authority. Some left because they thought they could bully and harass others and they got banned. The attention whoring is definitely on the rise here but it's just the new age of social media. The folks that are constantly trying to convince others they are living the dream are some of the most miserable people you'll ever meet in real life. In my experience folks that have really great lives don't have time to constantly post about it because they are too busy actually living it. Then you have some that think their opinion is just too good not to share it with the rest of us that are walking around being wrong all day. Currently it seems folks have let a politician that doesn't give a rats ass if they ever breathe another breath devide them from folks on the other side that are convinced that same politician is Satan himself. I'm of the opinion he isn't important enough for me to get too worked up about either way and I'm certainly not going to base my like or dislike for someone on how they feel about a worthless politician. I mostly tune all those folks out and just spot check the stuff that interest me. Still plenty of decent folks here but most are too busy with life to sweat any of this stuff too much.

definitely more wankers...

Don’t forget the gay dove shoots.

The “Good ole days” will always be remembered as the best times of our lives, whether on here or anywhere. Good folks now days are getting hard to find-very hard to find. I really appreciate all the folks on here and the fun they bring to me just reading about their misadventures.

Thanks Wiley for all you are! A great one. B

The dove shoot deal should have been the ban hammer for several @$$holes on here. Daniel went out of his way to make a nice hunt for people he didnt really know. Some chickenshit MF’er decided to advertise it as a gay dove shoot and pissed DW off to the nth degree. Obviously DW took offense in a way that wasn’t intended but also several bitch ass members on here could t let it go either and kept piling on and making him madder and madder. That was the turning point for me. I had organized a couple of eat and greets previous to that. Had no desire to do another one after that fiasco.

DW is a good guy as best I can tell and was run off by little bitches who took sides and happened to be moderators. Several of them should be ashamed of themselves but I guarantee you they see no wrong in what they did

Tell people all the time “self awareness comes to some men later in life than others and to some it never does”

I’m SURE I remember that deal incorrectly and some of the guilty parties will be along directly to tell me how wrong I was and how saintly they are and were. I don’t have the time or inclination to search it all back up but you know who you are and you’re all guilty of running off a good guy for no reason

Robert D.,

Social psychologists and sociologists would call that the mob mentality and it happens all the time, especially on social media. Humans are going to human. People are going to pile on.

What I find interesting more than anything about this place is the level of moral superiority some folks have. It is truly impressive.

I still like to visit here and post stuff that I find interesting, funny, uplifting and even sometimes concerning.

Wasn’t this the same group that were known as the “minions” that grouped up and harassed others on here??....Maybe I remember it wrong…..

I’m sure some of the participants are/were the same. I think the mods ran off some of the “minions” permanently. It was more of the same aforementioned mob mentality and I didn’t follow it closely enough to remember anything.

Heck they even harp on throw and mow guys. Even the beaver killers that keep destroying big buck habitat

Been around a while. Buddy you just have to move on. I am sure my ancestors said same thing.

27 years is a real damn long time for an internet message board. Things change, folks come and go and new folks show up and come and go and so on. This crowd has always kept pretty much on the same path because we have made a point to keep it that way. It never makes a profit and we have always resisted corporate takeovers. Sometimes a big time advertiser like Academy would come along and we would take their money. But then they would demand that we ban folks for talking bad about Obama. Outback and Wiley were one of those guys who said mean things about Obama, which were deserved. Instead of taking the money and keeping the popular advertiser we told Academy to pound sand and dropped them.
Despite the irritations with the current political and social media climate things are still on that same path. Divisions like to be created by folks who make a practice of doing so, that is apparent across all social media platforms these days. The cancel culture of the Obama years caused a crap ton of problems, and its coming back again though differently and its AI driven.
Fortunately Aldeer is shielded against intelligence of all forms and we should still be here putting along until the censorship police find another way to come after us.