Finding Success While Hunting Public Property

Central Alabama

Mulberry Fork Wildlife Management Area

Hunting public management are in Alabama is very challenging. Most of the hunting property in the state is personally owned and leased. Majority of hunters can’t afford to pay the high fees of a hunting lease and resort to hunting publicly managed properties. Most public management areas are severely over hunted and lack the proper management to grow trophy animals. Mulberry Fork Wildlife Management Area is an exception because it has a unique strategy for managing its deer population on its 35,000 acres. The state only permits bow hunting on this property with the exception of a few days where gun hunting is allowed. These gun hunts attract hunters from all over the state to try their luck on a low pressure, public hunting property. I have had decent success during one of these gun hunts and here is the story.  

November 25, 2011

We had an entire hunting party in the woods this morning. Jonathan, one of his family members, Jake, and I all went on the November 25th gun hunt this morning. I took Jake to one of my favorite hunting spots on the management area called one shot. I shot a 98 pound button buck at 7:00 AM. My 270 caliber Winchester Ballistic Silvertip did its work on the animal and he did not take another step after the shot rang through the woods. Jake was hunting close to me so I went and guided him for the rest of the morning. I was able to put him on a doe walking through a hardwood bottom shortly after killed my deer. He managed to make a great shot on one of the branches but not the deer.

Jonathan's girlfriend, now wife, let us bring her dad and brother along with us for the hunt. No one saw any deer except Jake and myself. We took my deer back to Whitney's house and processed it for the meat. The hunt continued that afternoon at a different part of the management area. This marks one of the best days that I have had hunting on the Mulberry Fork property. Jonathan and I split up on the same hunting spot and Jonathan was able to kill a big, cow-horn spike right before dark. It is a rare day to shoot a double on public property but we were able to pull it off. The success we had today was due to a combination of preparation and opportunity. We spent countless hours scouting this property, finding the best hunting spots and mapping the deer activity. We also spent countless hours in the deer stand waiting for shot opportunities on these deer.

Commitment to the Outdoors

Tuskegee, Alabama

Every outdoorsman that takes on the adventure of college enjoys the challenge of finding time to stay outdoors. For me, this was a very hard challenge. There were limited ways to fish and even less public property to hunt. Towards the end of my college years, I found the time to check out the local public hunting property at the Tuskegee National Forest. Here are a few of my stories from the Tuskegee National Forest. I was not able to take a deer or turkey on the property but I had several encounters with both.

November 6, 2011

After an unsuccessful start to my bow season back home I decided to begin hunting at the Tuskegee National Forest. The conception of any hunting strategy for an unfamiliar property begins with scouting and studying. While I was scouting the new property I was able to find a couple of fresh deer scrapes.

November 10, 2011

I decided to go back to the creek bottom where I found the fresh scrape a few days earlier. I got in the woods around 3:15 PM and the deer trail that I was hunting was so heavily used that it smelled of deer. The leaves were still wet from a rainstorm the night before and provided ideal conditions for a ground stalk. I moved east, up the creek bottom and spotted three doe. One of the deer spotted me and quickly ran through the leaf litter making no noise. I stood there motionless watching the remaining deer quickly work into the thick underbrush and out of sight. 

November 11, 2011

I went back to the creek bottom at the national forest this afternoon after school. I backtracked the doe that I saw yesterday which led me to an area of the national forest that I had not yet explored. I found an area where there was high grass creating a boundary between a swamp and a strip of hardwoods. This swamp was heavily traveled and I thought I could easily spot deer moving out of the swamp and into the strip of hardwoods at this location. I found a nice 60 yard shooting lane and began my hunt. At 5:00 PM it was too dark for a shot but I had a deer working in on me through the high grass. My ScentLok clothing allowed the deer to get within 30 yards when I had to leave. I stood up and the deer ran then stopped and looked back. I took one more step, the deer blew once and bounced out of hearing distance.

November 17, 2011

I went down to what became my favorite creek bottom this afternoon. We had a pretty bad storm yesterday afternoon and it brought colder weather with it. I thought with the falling temperature that the deer would move. I was wrong. The large temperature change brought high winds with it. The wind was swirling in the bottom all afternoon. I was fortunate to have it blowing in my face most of the time. Unfortunately, the high winds had the deer in the their beds all afternoon. I was able to spot a flock of turkeys on my hike out.

Hunting public land can be challenging and requires a commitment to the outdoors in order to become successful. 

Quality Deer Management

Sylvan Springs, Alabama

I had the privilege of managing a small hunting property back in 2009. It was a small property near highway 269 which is close the home where I was raised. This property was owned by a local land owner, R. B. Stevens, and an old family relationship granted my best friend and myself the opportunity to manage the property. We started managing the property by scouting, photographing the deer herd and building food plots. This small, 40 acre plot of land was under tremendous hunting pressure as you can see from the aerial photo. There were four neighboring food plots that were all within a half mile of our land.

October 1, 2011

Jonathan, and I planted two fields to attract deer to our land. We decided to plant one of the fields this year with BioLogic's Full Draw. The purpose of the Full Draw product was to attract deer from the nearby over-hunted lease property. The Full Draw product is a blend of New Zealand brassicas, clover, wheat and special grains. This seed blend is designed to attract deer in the early season and provide nourishment for deer in the late winter months. We thought if we could establish an early season pattern that it would pay off with deer activity all season.

The small, concealed food plots along with the attractiveness of the Full Draw brought deer to our property throughout deer season. We had consistent sightings of several doe, a big 6 and a mature 4-point. The second picture summarizes what would eventually be the reason that we quit managing the property. This deer herd showed very little movement during the day and our food plots turned out to be the perfect spot for the majority of their late night activity. We used several different trail cameras over the years and we were never able to beat the affordability and performance of the Stealth Cam. 

Both the big 6 and the mature 4-point made it through the 2009-2010 season and we were able to track some of the antler development into the next season. One observation that we made in the 2009-2010 season was that the deer activity slowed down when the food plots became overgrown. 

In 2011, we were not able to get any good pictures of the bucks we saw in previous years. We observed that the bucks preferred the back field due to the cover it provided. The front field provided less cover and we were only able to get pictures of the more trusting doe herd. I compiled all of the pictures that we collected from the Stealth Cam and analyzed the deer activity. We found that 77% of our deer activity was occurring at night. This was due to the tremendous hunting pressure that was on this deer population. Of the 47 camera events, we were only able to capture 1 picture of a buck during daytime hours. This shows the importance of quality deer management and what hunting pressure can do to your deer activity. We stopped managing the property after the 2011 season.

Offshore Beginnings: Snapper Fishing in the Gulf

July 19, 2008

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Zeke's Lady

My first offshore fishing trip! My dad, my brother, Joseph, and my best friend, Jonathan, made the trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama and booked our first offshore fishing trip on the marina's group fishing boat, Zeke's Lady. We were nervous and full of Dramamine when we started the trip before dawn. We caught several red snapper that day and we were addicted to the offshore fishing experience when we made it back to the dock. We decided to make it a tradition to take at least one offshore fishing trip every year - usually during our annual family beach vacation.

Hometown Trophy

December 17, 2006

Sylvan Springs, Alabama

December is my favorite month of the year; December is the month of my birthday, Christmas and the first rut for the southeastern deer herd. December 2006 was a special month because I was able to land an incredible hunting opportunity for my dad, my Jonathan, and myself. I got a weekend pass to a hunting property that had just been became available for public hunting. Needless to say, the deer population on this property was not under any hunting pressure which is rare for Alabama. 

The hunt started well before daylight as my dad woke me up. Dad was always the first person awake. He would usually wake me up at least fifteen minutes before my alarm and I never knew why. We would then spend the next fifteen minutes putting on our hunting gear, making sure we had ammunition for our rifles and checking the weather. This was normally all completed in silence because we didn't want to wake anyone in the house. We stood there waiting in the driveway until we could hear Jonathan’s truck roaring down the highway towards our house. Our morning ride consisted of strategizing where the best hunting locations would be based on the weather and our scouting information. We didn't have much scouting information because the property had never been open to public hunting before this season. In this type of hunting situation we always preferred to hunt pieces of the property that offered the most visibility. We all three sat on different power lines in the morning with no luck. We all three met back around 10 AM and decided to go scout one last piece of the property for an afternoon hunt. We crept down an overgrown red dirt road that led to a ridge where we could oversee the northern property line. Who knew, as soon as we reached the vantage point we spotted three doe. I quickly knelt down and let Jonathan use my shoulder as a gun rest so he could take a shot at one of the deer. The deer spotted us and darted into the woods before he could make the shot.

I decided to hunt this location in the afternoon because I thought the doe activity in the morning may be promising for some buck activity in the afternoon. Jonathan had to work that afternoon and dad decided to stay home. I went back to the same ridge that we had found that morning and set up my chair where I could see most of the valley below. This ridge funneled and amplified all of the sounds coming out surrounding woods. This land feature made if very easy to hear the leaves crunching as the deer moved through the surrounding hardwoods.  

It was a hot day in December and I was sitting in the direct sunlight – perfect for an afternoon nap. So I dozed in and out and then I finally fell completely asleep only to be woken up by a crashing noise. The ridge had funneled the sound of a large buck crashing through the brush at 300 yards which was enough to wake me from my afternoon nap. The buck worked across the power line and I only had a few seconds to judge the large rack and flip my chair to make a shooting rest. The buck’s nose was touching the tree line by the time I was able to put the cross hairs on his shoulder. I knew I didn’t have much time so I squeezed the trigger and the deer instantly disappeared. I listened for a few minutes and never heard anything - not a sound. I called my dad and told him I had put a shot on the biggest deer I had ever seen. He told me he was on his way to come help me find the deer and I left to go search the valley for the monster.

I came to the place where I thought the deer was standing when I shot. To my surprise, there was no blood – not one drop. I searched the area and began sweating in the December heat. I sat down in the middle of a kudzu patch and tried to think of how to find this deer. I decided to search the area where I thought the deer would be if he was injured. There was a dense creek bottom inside the tree line not far from where the deer was standing when I made the shot. I walked the creek bottom and noticed the rack lying beside the creek. The deer hadn’t made it 20 yards before he collapsed! I safely ensured that the deer was dead and inspected the body for the kill shot. The rifle bullet had entered his rib cage and splintered on one of his bones leaving no exit wound, a very small entry wound and no blood trail. This deer was enormous. He was a very traditional, typical 8-point. 

Dad arrived and we starting pulling the deer up the ridge towards the truck. We made it about half way up the ridge when we realized there was no way that the two of us could pull this 200 pound animal up this bluff by ourselves. We made a call to my granddad and he brought my brother to help. The four of us were able to drag the deer to the top of the ridge with the help of a winch. 

My mom had several pictures of the deer developed for my birthday the following day. It took several months to have a local taxidermist complete the mount for the deer. It turned out the be a great, hometown trophy and has stayed on my wall until this day. I took the mount to Birmingham's Deer and Turkey Expo the following year and put it in the big buck completion. The deer scored 136 Boone and Crockett and won a prize for “Big 8” in the youth category. I will never forget this hunt or the people that were involved. 

Largemouth on the River

April 15, 2006
Sylvan Springs, Alabama

Warrior River 

The Black Warrior River runs through Alabama's black belt and is a fishing destination for many residents of central Alabama. The river is named after an Indian chief named Tuskaloosa. His name means "Black Warrior" in Muskogean. There are several species of game fish in the Warrior river including Largemouth Bass, Striped Bass, Spotted Bass, Bluegill and various species of catfish. This river is special to me because this is where I learned to fish. I've spent countless days on the banks of this river casting a rod and even more days navigating the tributaries on fishing boats. One day especially stands out to me.

It was early spring, when the bass start making their beds and laying their eggs. This is one of the few times in the year that you can spot large bass in shallow water. I was at one of my favorite fishing spots casting my favorite lures in the freshly made beds when I had a huge female bass swallow my bait. I didn't have to fight the bass long before I knew I had a good one on the line. I caught a nice 7 lb. 11 oz. Largemouth Bass. I had the fish mounted on a piece of driftwood that I found in the river.

Archer’s Delight

October 25, 2005

Sylvan Springs, Alabama

This was one of my most memorable hunts. I hunted from the ground, which is my favorite style because its the most engaging. I was dressed in full camo (except for my orange hat that I wore to get to my stand). I crouched down beside an early season green field and waited for the action to start. Admittingly, I had dozed off in the afternoon sun when a familiar leaf crunch caught my attention. It takes years spent in the woods to understand the difference between how birds sound fluttering in the leaves, the intermittent sound of a squirrel splashing in the leaves as he moves tree-to-tree and the sound of a deer trot. Deer typically make a the splashing sound of a squirrel but it's usually at a constant pace. Before I could determine whether the leaves were squirrels playing near me, I saw this small buck standing 20 yards in front on me having his afternoon dinner. I slowly moved to a crouched position and left an arrow fly. Then nothing happened. The deer didn't move and I saw the fletching sticking out of the ground beneath his belly. The deer was so close that my closest pin wasn't close enough. I knocked another arrow and this time I looked down the shaft of the arrow and thought to myself that this had better work. I let the second arrow fly and heard a hard thump right after. The deer bolted into the woods and almost jumped over me in his pursuit to leave the area. I trailed him for about a hundred yards before I found my first bow hunting trophy. This isn't the biggest deer that I had killed but it's so rewarding to have a successful hunt with a primitive weapon like a bow.