Judging from the number of deer reported through the Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries (WFF) Division’s Game Check system and the number of trophy bucks posted on social media, Chris Cook thinks this is the best deer season our state has had in quite a while.
Cook, the WFF’s Deer Program Coordinator, said numerous factors are likely involved in the increase in harvest numbers as well as the quality of the bucks harvested.
Alabama’s three-buck limit has been in place for more than a decade, which could be one of the reasons for the big bucks, but Cook said that is difficult to quantify. Hunters are allowed to take one male deer (bare antlers visible above natural hairline) per day and three per hunter during all combined seasons. One of the three must have at least four antler points 1 inch or longer on one antler (except for Barbour County). A point is defined as an antler projection of at least 1 inch in length from base to tip. Main beam tip shall be counted as a point regardless of length. Barbour County requires all bucks to have at least three points on one side to be legal except during the statewide special youth season, when any antlered buck can be harvested.
“It’s hard to track and determine what you can attribute exactly to the three-buck limit because of the way data was collected before that,” Cook said. “We used the mail survey, and before the three-buck limit one of the questions was how many bucks you killed. If they killed 20, that’s what they put down. After the three-buck limit, nobody was going to put down they killed more than the limit.
“But I also think people started to be a little more selective. So we can’t attribute it
