After tabling a variety of proposed changes, Alabama’s Conservation Advisory Board is recommending that the gun deer season within the state be extended until February 10th.
The extended season is will not include any closed period during the month of December, but is dependent on the passing of another proposed change.
In addition to the extended season, the Board is recommending the mandatory reporting of turkey and deer harvests using the state’s Game Check system, which has been voluntary for the past three years.
This new system allows hunters to report harvests via the Outdoor Alabama app on iPhone and Android devices, online reporting using their website or via a toll-free voice response call.
“What we’re trying to do is make the outdoors experience a little nicer with this app,” Commissioner N. Gunter Guy Jr. said. “Some of you don’t have smartphones, but the way the industry is going, you’re probably going to have one sooner or later.”
The extended season has come on the heels of countless numbers of Alabama hunters who wish to have the ability to gun hunt whitetails when they are fully in the rut.
“This wasn’t arbitrarily picked out,” Commissioner Guy said. “We’ve heard from the public, and we’ve listened to the public that they don’t think they’re getting to hunt the rut. With our Wildlife Section and everybody involved, we have data and field studies about when the rut occurs in Alabama. We have good information that we have a comfort level with, that we can extend the season and won’t hurt the resource. We spent a lot of time on this.”
Additional proposals include a reduction in the daily bag limit of unantlered deer in a northern portion of the state, establishing an open season for raccoon and opossum as well as extending squirrel and rabbit seasons statewide.
Image: By Clinton & Charles Robertson from RAF Lakenheath, UK & San Marcos, TX, USA & UK (Whitetail Deer Uploaded by Jacopo Werther) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
