On my flight back from PA on Wednesday, I bought a Field and Stream magazine and it said in there that in Alabama a local could shoot 200 deer if he/she got the right permits and such. Is this true or was it a tongue in cheek exaggeration?

If true, what is the largest number of deer that any of you know of someone shooting in a year? That just sounds outrageous to me. What would someone do with those many deer?

I don't know if its true, possibly so. I suppose in a real heavily deer populated area that needs extreme thinning, maybe its needed. In my area or state if anyone kills 200 deer, he will be strung out to dry by other hunters.

I knew some hunters that killed a lot of deer on property owned by the same landowner I hunt on, but in a different area on different acreage a few miles away. The next season they hardly saw a deer and decided to "try" to hunt in my area. No way! The landowner told them they could hunt their acreage he allowed them on or don't hunt!!!

I have never counted the days in the season to see what the totally yearly bag limit is for deer. In 3/4 of the state of Alabama we can harvest two deer a day (1 buck and 1 doe or 2 does). Bow season began October 15 and gun season began November 20 and continues until January 31. So you do the math with two deer a day from October 15 - January 31 and this will give you the legal bag limit for a season for the majority of Alabama. I know of guys who regularly take 20 plus deer a year but have never personally known anyone who took over 100 in a year. The buck to doe ratio is so out of whack here that it is not even funny. I think eventually we are going to have to go to tags for bucks and only issue 3 or 4 per person and still have a liberal doe harvest to make any real improvements but that is another issue in itself.

Well, F&S was right then. I come up with a total of 106 days (X 2) and you get 212 allowable deer with gun and bow. Of course, a person would not have a job, or life, if he got out there that much.

or a wife!!

Big Deal! In Maryland, in certain deer management areas, the limit on does is "unlimited". There is one guy from Maryland on this board who claims to have killed 209 deer this year and that was a couple of weeks ago!

OK, so I'll ask you, if you know- What the hell is he going to do with 209 deer? All books and such that I have read says that you should only store frozen venison for 6-8 months, maximum. Even if they are small deer, he couldn't possibly eat all of those himself. Maybe he has a large family and a lot of friends to give them to.

Hey Steve F.in MD my dad is bigger then your dad. Lighten up.

Most folks just simply give the deer to the Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry program that this (MD) and some surrounding states are involved in. Simply pay $10 to the butcher shop to skin it and then give the meat to them to cut up and donate. I think they charge a small fee to the FHFH program to do this. None goes to waste. I'm pretty sure it started in MD and has spread to others. Check out the web site and I'm not affiliated in any way.

Here's a link. http://www.fhfh.org/cgi-bin/index.asp

CPT Ray,
It was tounge in cheek...guess I should have made that clear.

BY23856,
He has a walk in cooler and donates all the deer he does not eat to the FHFH program.

As you can probably tell Maryland has too many people developing too much habitat and the deer are the losers.