Alabama Deer Hunting

The Top Tips to Keep Game on Your Land
By Dustin Mizell

As hunters, we all know that competition is a big part of hunting anywhere in Alabama. Privileges like not having to buy tags and being able to kill two deer a day encourage many people to hunt in the state. That fact almost guarantees that the owner of that rural land next to yours is either a hunter or leases his land to hunters. Those who hunt your neighbor’s land could kill deer of any size—and a lot of them, which would drastically affect the herds that come to your land. Here are a few ways to keep game in your area even if you have a large or small amount of land.

Bring Them In
The best way to keep various game coming to your land instead of your neighbor’s is to give them what your neighbor doesn’t: a good supply and variety of food. Food plots are a must, and you need a lot of them on the land you’re going to hunt. A good rule of thumb is to allocate about two percent of your land to food plots. Even using just one percent of the land for plots will make a difference. But spread out the plots evenly and try to keep them away from property lines and roads. Many people plant just oats on their green fields. You need to do better. Plant oats mixed with wheat, winter peas, clover and chicory. The field will be more enticing and more nutritious for the game. For birds, millet and chufas are a must, especially for quail and turkey. Japanese millet will bring in the ducks. Try to set your self apart by having healthier food plots in ways like poisoning weeds before you plant, making soil samples, and adding lime and fertilizer if needed. An area with more and better food sources will hold many more deer and they will be bigger and healthier in every way. The wildlife is proven to live much longer lives and bucks that are better fed do not have antler down grade nearly as bad. When it comes to preparing your land, the best tip I can offer is: you can’t do too much!

Management Never Ends
It is very important to wildlife to have nutrition and incentive year round. Many people do not bother planting in the summer so this will greatly set you apart by getting the deer on your property first because you have the only food around. Planting year round will also greatly improve wildlife nutrition by giving them special nutrients they cannot always find in the woods especially for deer during antler growth. Some warm season planting ideas are peas, soybeans, lablab, and sunflowers for birds. An improvement will surly be noticed during dove and deer bow season if year round planting is carried out. If for some reason you are not able to plant year round at least try to set up as many feeders as possible and keep them full. Corn is a very good attractant but has little nutritional so a good tip is to buy cracked corn and put it in a trough so what nutrients it does have get in their system better and it is easier for all types of wildlife to eat.

Trees Make a Difference

One of the main changes in the natural landscape of Alabama is the recent abundance of pine trees. They say before to long the black belt will no longer exist because soybeans are being replaced with pine trees. A Pine tree gives almost zero nutrition to any animal and can cut off other growth if planted densely. The only good things I can think of about pines is that they keep raptors away from quail and turkey because raptors depend on hardwoods for nesting and pines are easy to climb with a tree climber but I still get sap all over me. I know pines are what keep the money coming in from the land but there are things you can do. If you do not want to save areas for food plots at least plant in those spots where the bugs kill the pines or other areas where pines will not grow though few. Try to thin out your pines for the sake of wildlife this will open the canopy providing undergrowth with food and cover for wildlife. The best option I think is to look into how Alabama is encouraging the planting of hardwoods by paying tree farmers to plant hardwoods but still allowing more pines than hardwoods to be planted this way the land owner, the state, and the wildlife all win. Any type of fruit bearing trees greatly attract and enhance wildlife so spread them out over your land to keep the wildlife coming in and usually provide an advantage over your neighbor but remember to plant them in tree pipes so the deer will let them get started.

Help Them Wash it Down
No matter how much land or food is available you will not have wildlife without water. Make sure your land has a pond, creek, spring, or river easily accessible to any part. Look into making ponds if water is not available this could make the difference between you and your neighbor. Having plentiful water supplies year round will cause your land to support more wildlife, give you a much better dove season, and of course you will not have ducks at all without it.

Give Them a Home
A proven key to keeping any type of wildlife on your property is to ensure that they have a safe home to go to. Make sure to leave a section of land that has thick cover with lots of undergrowth and small trees. Without a bedding or nesting area of safety no animals will stay on your property for very long because there is no place to hide. Failing to utilize thick cover in small sections spread across the land will force the wildlife to go to the neighbor’s land regardless of how enticing yours is. I personally hate that this must be done because the terrain is very hard to get through and they always have a place to hide but that is why it is so important to them. Some people set aside a natural area in the middle of their property and never hunt or go into the area at all to let wildlife know there is a safe place on their land and it has had some success for them. Controlled burning is a good way to start new growth, but be sure to leave plenty of thick cover for quail and other animals to hide in while the new growth matures. If you have a small piece of land that is thick next to say a crop field utilize this and cut them off because they need what you have even if it looks useless to humans.

Eliminate Competition
This may surprise some of you but deer and livestock do not get along. Cows and hogs are the main concern because they are so destructive to the natural habitat. Cows are fenced in so everything in that fence of nutritional value will be consumed completely causing that land to be almost useless to any type of wildlife. Pastures with fescue, Bermuda, and bahia grass provide almost no nutrition or habitat at all for any kind of Alabama wildlife. Hogs are feral and spreading fast in Alabama so if you do not have hogs you probably will have them soon and a short time later you will have too many of them. One hog can eat as much as three deer in a day. You will see how easily a group of hogs can root up and destroy your expensive and well-maintained food plots in a short amount of time. One sow can have up to ten piglets twice a year so getting rid of them is not easy. The first step is to shoot all you see but this will not help much. To really make a difference try trapping and hunting hogs with dogs to increase success. Hogs can be hunted year round in Alabama so add some pork to the freezer by hunting them in the off season in your year round fields. Limit stray dogs from hassling deer, and house cats can kill many game birds each year. Trap them along with natural predators such as coyotes, bobcats, and foxes. Having these types of competition and disturbance on your property will send all wildlife fleeing to your neighbors.

Take More and Get More
Another thing that will surprise some of you is that Alabama has an extreme overpopulation of does. If a hunter kills one third of the does on his property the following year he will have the same amount of does, so shoot more. Killing does will limit competition with other deer providing more food for the remaining her and clearing room for more deer to come in. A healthy doe will produce twice the number of fawns as a doe in poor health. So having more does does not mean you will always have more bucks. When choosing a doe to harvest shoot an older doe because they will soon get smart and be very hard to harvest. Plus, they consume much more food than younger does and have the possibility of not having as much or any young at all with increasing age. When harvesting a doe always remember to shoot one with a fawn this will ensure that the fawn will always stay in the area because the mother will not run it off. Nine out of ten bucks that are orphaned never leave the place where they were born. Having fewer does on your land will improve your rut substantially; the bucks have to get out and hunt for does, improving your chances of the bucks crossing paths with you. With Alabama’s late rut at the end of the season, you will need as much rut action as you can get, as early in the season as possible. As far as other animals go do the best you can to distinguish and harvest male birds. Doing so could help numbers out a good bit also bring in more males because of the female selection, and yes even let that bearded hen turkey go it will help you out in the long run. Shoot sow hogs first this will lower hog numbers faster and the meat is much better eating.

What You Can Do
Following these tips will make a difference, even if you follow only one or two of them. But be patient. Improving a deer herd is a slow process. Don’t lose faith. Stay with it as many years as you can. If you do a few of the things I’ve suggested and do them over an extended period of time, and the situation doesn’t get better, the only suggestion I can make is to look for more land or different land. There are some lands in Alabama that just won’t support some types of game, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Always remember to select the mature bucks to harvest and it will pay off. Give all of these methods time because improving a white tail deer herd is a slow process, so do not loose faith and stay with it for as many years as you can. Make an effort to shoot culls with a specific definition of what a cull is. Explain this to guests who hunt your land. Genetics is a key factor in growing better game. That four-and-a-half-year-old four-point will probably always be a four-point. And so will his son. So take him out. Bagging more and better game is the pay-off for proper land management, especially in Alabama. Good luck in the competition with your neighbor!