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Here in Alabama, deer season starts on 15 October for bow hunting. Gun season starts in mid-November. The season ends the last day of January.

My in-laws own 400 acres of mountain land. We've taken 11 deer this year and the place is still covered in deer. In one location, about as big as a football field, we saw 14 deer this last weekend. It's a major crossing area where several deer trails converge. I took my first deer there this weekend.

The main reason for the lack of new growth described in this article is the lack of logging. Mature trees with their thick canopy prevent the emergence of new growth. Selective logging to thin the mature trees so that sunlight will reach the forest floor allowing for the new growth to emerge. It's also good for the deer since there will be more new growth for them as well. We've also planted 10 acres of food plots.

The selective logging also leaves a lot of tree tops which the deer use for food sources and cover. It's not uncommon to find fawns hidden in the tree tops left from the logging.

Those with private land can manage their property to provide a better forest and increased wildlife if the environmentalists nazis will keep out of the way.

Take a drive past any Forest Preserve in the Chicago area and you will see the bottoms of tree branches clipped evenly at about six feet above the ground, And nothing, not even a small shrub, below the branches.

I stopped by a friend's small meat processing place Sunday to pick up some vacuum sealed Hot Sticks (Summer Sausage) for another friend's kid in Iraq. He told me that the number of deer he's processed and has hanging in the locker totals over a thousand so far this deer season in Southwestern Illinois. And this is farming country, 35 miles from the Mississippi and downtown St. Louis.

Thirty years ago in Illinois the 30,000 deer tags were handed out by lottery. Bucks only. Deer Hunting was allowed in a few particular counties, maybe 20 out of 102. If you saw anything of deer, it was their tracks in the fields. Now they've overrun all the woodlots, the count of dead deer along any interstate and US highways is astronomical and the population just keeps growing. They can't be killed fast enough to stabilize the herd.