Alabama State record?

[Guest tigrz2000]

Here's the only story I've found so for...it looks like its legit this is from the local paper..Mike Bolton is a well known outdoor writer here in Alabama

Outdoors columnist Mike Bolton

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Patience gets Anderson buck to remember

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Troy's Dax Anderson has apparently broken the Alabama record for a bow-taken buck with his impressive 13-point buck in Bullock County. Anderson's big buck teaches us two very important lessons.

The first is that Alabama has a wonderful system that allows individual landowners and hunters who lease land to determine what constitutes good deer hunting. If a landowner or leasing hunter is content with taking four- and six-point bucks, he can do that. If he is someone like Anderson who wants to grow gigantic deer, he can do that too.

Few hunters in Alabama are willing to go years without taking a buck, to continually pass up big bucks for the chance to take a big buck like Anderson's. No one should be forced to hunt like that because a few hunters believe that is the way it should be done.

Some hunters are pushing hard for antler restrictions and buck limits because they believe everyone should believe as they do. I hope they don't succeed in forcing their beliefs on all Alabama deer hunters.

The second lesson is the importance of good deer management and what that is. On the very day that Anderson took his potential state-record buck, he passed up a buck that he believes would have scored 140 Boone & Crockett points. How many deer hunters in Alabama would have done that?

Anderson's big buck is a lesson in the patience that makes good deer management. He has known about the big buck for three years and until this year had never hunted the deer. He allowed the deer to reach seven years of age, which is right in the range of the deer's prime.

Hunters often argue that good deer management costs a lot of money and say they can't afford it. Granted, Anderson didn't take his buck on land void of good food. He plants a variety of food plots including clover and turnip greens. But of the three ingredients that make for a trophy buck - age, nutrition and genetics - age is the most important, Anderson insists. Not pulling the trigger is free.

I'll be the first to say that I do not have the patience Anderson has. In more than three decades of deer hunting, I have become very selective, however. Eight points outside the ears is my bare minimum these days. I do take some people hunting - kids and adults on their first deer hunt - and allow them to take four points and six points. I think it is a wonderful system that allows that.

What also tickles me is that the buck that will apparently become a state bow record didn't come from a fenced piece of land. Anderson's buck shows a fence isn't necessary to produce great bucks.

I have few qualms about high fences. That goes back to my strong belief that individuals should be able to determine what constitutes a good deer hunting experience.

But had Anderson's buck come from high-fence property, there would be outcries that the buck should not be considered a state record. I think I agree.

The wonderful news is that Dax Anderson is not some outlaw with a bad reputation. He took the biggest deer ever in Alabama with a bow thanks to good deer management. He was not inside a high fence.

That is the way record deer should be. Mike Bolton's outdoors column appears every Sunday. Write him at [email protected]

[huntn4bucks]

Re: Alabama State record?

Just saw the other post. That's quite a deer.

[rockefeller66]

Re: Alabama State record?

i seen that, that deer is huge!

[hoyt_hunter]

Re: Alabama State record?

the thing in a giant