Mulberry Fork Wildlife Management Area 2021 - 2022 Season

2021 - 2022 Alabama Whitetail Deer Hunting Season

Central Alabama

Mulberry Fork Wildlife Management Area 

Finally, I'm back in Sweet Home Alabama and hunting whitetails on public land. I've moved around the southeast for work and recently found my way back to Birmingham, I lived in Florida/Lower Alabama (the LA of the South), Texas, Louisiana and Georgia before returning home which the residency verification for my resident hunting license a difficult task. I spent weeks emailing and calling Alabama's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources before eventually verifying my residency and receiving the "all-clear" just before bow season. I spent most of the 2021 - 2022 deer season at Mulberry Fork Wildlife Management Area near the Black Warrior River. The Mulberry Fork hunting lease is active for 94 years and includes 33,000 acres of prime hunting land in Tuscaloosa, Walker and Jefferson counties.  

October 30th, 2021

Big Creek Trail 

This was my first scouting trip of the season and my first time on the management area in almost 10 years. I was lost for several hours before I found some of my old hunting spots. I was scouting an old road bed near Big Creek and walked past a yearling doe that looked at me like she had never seen a human being before. Unfortunately. I didn't carry my bow with me on my first trip so she evaded the freezer that day.

October 31st, 2021

Shoal Creek Deer Trail

After spotting one deer and refamiliarizing myself with the property I set our for my second trip and I brought my bow this time. I was scouting and oak flat and walking down a deer trail as slowly and as quietly as I could. Then I heard a noise about 80 yards away and I had spooked a deer off of his bed and he was moving down the trail towards me. I froze after I saw the deer stop behind a tree and his main beams were sticking out on either side. I drew my bow because he couldn't see me and he took a few more steps down the trail and started running once he saw me at 30 yards. I had one shot but it would have been an reflex so I made the ethical decision to keep my arrow and hunt they buck another day.

November 6th, 2021

Short Creek

I tried a new area of the property this afternoon and decided the sit near a food plot because I ran out of time to scout. I positioned myself on the ground and behind a pine tree so that I could peak around the tree and have visibility of the two main deer trails going into the field. I had no expectations of seeing any deer in the food plot since the acorn harvest was so good this year but a family group stepped into the field around 4pm which included a 1.5 year old spike, 1.5 year old doe and a yearling button buck. It's always fun to hunt deer on the ground with a bow like the native Americans did it!

November 20th, 2021

One Shot Trail

Dad and I finally made it to a Mulberry gun hunt! We spent some time scouting One Shot Trail before settling into what would be an unproductive afternoon hunt. The moon was almost full so the deer activity had shifted to nocturnal movement. Dad sat in some leaf litter and got bit by a brown recluse on his back. He still had a sore several weeks later but, thankfully, no major medical complications. He's fully committed to sitting in a camp chair from now on!

December 4th-5th, 2021

Short Creek

I recently bought two game cameras to help scout Mulberry's 35,000 acres. My first location was a game trail near Shoal Creek. I had several doe moving in and out of an oak bottom feeding area near daylight and dusk. I also saw a small buck feeding in #2 food plot about 30 minutes before dark. The small spike was broadside and 20 yards and would have been a nice addition to my freezer if he was a legal deer.

December 12th, 2021

Old Taylor's Ferry Road

I found several scrapes and rubs near a food plot on Big Oaks Road and it looked like there was significant buck activity in the area. I put my game camera on a scrape near a food plot and downloaded the pictures after the morning hunt. It rained most of the day on Saturday, December 11th so we expected the deer to move on Sunday morning. The deer didn't move Sunday morning but I got a picture of a great buck. The afternoon hunt proved to be one of the best hunts of the 2021-2022 season. Most of the bucks on the property checked their scrapes at 4pm and Jonathan shot a 7 point buck near the back of shoal creek. I saw this nice 8 point come check a scrape but he never left his trail which wound through a section of thick pine.

January 3rd, 2022

Shoal Creek Deer Trail 

It's not very often that you get a chance to hunt in the snow in Alabama but today was that day. I went to one of my favorite morning locations near shoal creek. It's a deer trail that runs up a ridge where three hardwood bottoms intersect. Those hardwoods bottoms are a popular spot for overnight feeding and the deer use that deer trail to filter back to their bedding area in the morning. The temperature was 33 °F just before dawn. I was fortunate that the temperature hadn't dropped any lower because there would have been ice on the roads and bridges and I wouldn't  have been able to access the management area. I slipped on my Sitka Fanatic gear and got ready for a cold morning sit. I noticed that there were icicles frozen sideways on the tree so you could almost visualize the exact direction of the north wind. I sat for a few hours and I could feel the cold creeping up my legs and down my forearms signaling the end of my hunt. I drove around the property looking for sign of any deer activity and realized that the higher elevation rides had much more snow and ice accumulation that some of the surrounding pine thickets and hardwood bottoms. I saw a few deer that day and they were all cruising pine ridges where there was no snow accumulation. The pine ridges had the appearance of being the coziest place in the woods that day.

January 30th, 2022

Theron Wilcut Road

Mulberry Fork Management Area is primarily used to harvest timber which creates a unique habitat for whitetail deer. Most of the property is clear cut, planted pines or mature timber that's waiting to be cut. This results in thousands of acres of thick river property where the deer can hide for entire seasons without needing to move more than 50 yards between feeding areas and bedding areas. This makes late season hunting especially productive because most of the natural food sources are depleted by February and the deer have to use the food plot. This doesn't mean that they have to use them during daylight hours though. I saw five deer this afternoon moving towards a food plot at 5:20pm which was 5 minutes after sunset and 25 minutes before the end of legal hunting light.