Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum What Can We Do As Hunters In Alabama To Make Our State a Trophy Whitetail State

Matt Brock hit the nail on the head. Let everyone hunt the way they want to. My idea of a trophy and yours may not be the same. If I want to dog hunt and have plenty of land to do it then leave me alone. If you want to go sit over a pile of corn then go do it. You do your thing and I'll do mine.

Some mid-west states have a $10k fine for road hunting and spotlighting. I'm betting they don't have the numbers we have.

This ^^^^. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Lower your expectations.

Matt's got it, good post.
As far as DMP I used to be in it just to get doe tags before we went to 2 a day. I don't need to pay the DCNR to hold my hand, let me and others manage our land through good education.

First and foremost, it would take everyone to be on board to hunt ethically across the board. Most of us on here prolly do hunt "by the book" and try to manage the places we hunt to the best we can. But then again the avg bama hunter probably doesn't give a rip with staying on top of the newest info, and or take interest in how others statewide are doing. They only care about what they have done, or maybe those on their hunting "click" I got the opportunity to go hunting on several leases this year as a guest. On each one of them, I was the exception to their rules, I could shoot any buck but a spike and or i could take a doe. The lease hunters had to hunt 6 or better. One group of guys I met on here wanted to taake me hunting badly, but this year they had instituted a NO DOE policy, and felt it would be unfair to allow me to come hunt a doe when none of the hunters who PAID for the lease could. I totally respect this level of management. Hopefully next season I will get invited to come shoot a bug buck off their place. Another I noticed, those with lots of deer, always said they had many, but they were small. The one lease told me, we don't have "herds" of deer. but the deer we do have are good mature deer for the most part. Surprisingly, it was this lease that had aall the guys seeing deer and passing on them as a group for better results next year. Guess over all I am long windedly saying it starts with the individual, and hopfully his example will be followed.

This is laughable!!!!! NOBODY WANTS "we as hunters" to do anything everybody that like to complain that Alabama ain't like Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, ad nauseum just want the State to MANDATE ON ALL some arbitrary political BS because a person can't just enjoy hunting if it not like the 30 minute clips on TV in States from States like..... Oh never mind breath is just being wasted.

I have said that all along!! If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, then go to the other side of the fence!

There are a lot of people that already travel to those states to hunt. I am pretty sure very few people can just up and move for the sole purpose of deer hunting.

I would say that a lot of those states kill just as high percentage of young deer as is killed in Alabama and have poachers just like they do here. The difference is they have corn and soybeans growing in very fertile soil and we have pine trees growing in very marginal soil. There deer have very few places to hide and ours have very few places they can be seen. The results of this is they have larger bucks for every age class that are easier to see. The only way to change this would be to replace all the pine trees in AL with corn and soybeans. Which is never going to happen so I guess there is not a whole lot we can do to drastically increase the number of B&C deer that are killed each year in AL. I do think you could increase the age structure in places in the state with education and trigger control, but only to a certain extent because a lot of people don't care about that they just like killing stuff whether it be young bucks or 10 does each season and that is fine I just don't want to hunt with them or near them if I can help it.

I remember those days very well Barry. Back before Jimmy Carter put all of the farmer's out of business. The black belt produced some mighty fine bucks and soybeans.

I have NO interest in turning AL into a Trophy State. If you want trophies, manage YOUR land for it or travel to another State that you deem to be Trophy State. leave AL as is is, a GREAT State to hunt in.

Build a 12' Fence around Alabama and change the name of this website to MsDeer.

They should add a $25/inch penalty in addition to the fines now imposed for road/night hunting.

That could also help pay salaries for more Wardens

Absolutely true. Hunters in the Midwestern states kill about the same percentage of yearling bucks as hunters in most of the Southeast states, and hunters in some of the notorious "trophy" states kill quite bit higher percentage of yearlings (in Ohio, 50+% of the kill is yearlings).




And that's the Final Answer. TN hunters actually killing more mature bucks per square mile than KY hunters, yet KY hunters are loading up the B&C recordbook and TN hunters are not. What's the difference? Soil and habitat quality.

I think if the money that was spent in Hale County stocking deer had of been put into feeders providing top quality deer feed thruout the area it would have made a more significant result to the deer antler size increase. Of course it would take a few years to make a difference.

So why does our state not raise all the fees equal to most other states ex. license , our of state license , poaching fees etc.
Seems like it would take alot of stress of State Employees and increase their salaries because they dont make a whole lot for the situations they get put in sometimes .

I guess I am surprised this is still in question. There is only so many ways this can be said.

AL is NEVER going to be equal to a mid-western state. The best we can do is manage each area based on its own merit (Real Data). Have a tangible tagging system that can be checked and enforced easily. Make it so CEO's don't have a harder time than they do already and deer hunt.

If yall really want big deer. Buy all the timber land, cut down all the pines, take years to build up the soil and grow corn and beans

Ding.