"We've got close to 3,000 acres in 25 different management blocks that are burned on a rotation," he said. "We burn the even numbered blocks and then the odd numbers. It's creating a mosaic of early successional habitat."

Gardner pointed out that although some "old school" wildlife managers are not on board with growing season burns yet, the National Wild Turkey Federation now endorses the management technique.

The Forest Service hopes to thin and burn some 19,000 acres of woodlands over the next five to 10 years, so the number of management blocks available for hunting will grow over the next several seasons.

"When you have a real thick stand of timber, there's not a lot in there for animals to feed on," Gardner explained. "Getting sunlight to the ground produces more vegetative browse for the deer and in turn boosts insect production for turkey and quail poults."

Another change the managers are talking about making on the national forest is increasing the opportunities for hunters to take animals of either sex. The WMA managers have been doing that, and Gardner said the Forest Service would likely need to make some changes eventually, too.

NOT SO MUCH PRESSURE
Choccolocco, Hollins and the national forest areas outside of those WMAs do get hunted, but the pressure is nothing like it was a couple of decades back, according to District 2 supervising wildlife biologist Keith McCutcheon.

"We have 50,000 acres at Choccolocco and 29,400 at Hollins," he said. "So we're talking about big areas."

In fact, few of the state's WMAs get the hunting pressure today that they got just 15 years ago.

"The reason is the deer herd has expanded so much," the biologist said. "If you have a small piece of property out in the country, you've got deer on it today. Years ago, the state management areas were the only places that had deer, and that's why people hunted there so much."

There are not "wall-to-wall hunters" on the WMAs today like there were back in the mid-1970s.

"There's room for a few more people," he said. "Choccolocco used to get 1,500 to 2,000 people on an average opening day. We're probably looking at half of that now. All total, we get about 4,600 people on the WMAs for the year. We used to get that on two hunts. There's a lot more room than most people think."

McCutcheon shares Liles and Gardner's enthusiasm for the work underway now at Choccolocco.

"The habitat initiatives are creating a dependable food supply for the deer," he said. "It's going to add up to better survival from year to year, even in the years when we have a mast failure. We have multiple habitats for the deer now. They're not totally dependent on the acorns."

Like the other biologists, McCutcheon advises hunters to look for the areas where the pine thinning and burning has happened.

"Deer are edge animals anyway," he observed. "If you can find where some of the upland habitat meets the managed stuff, you're going to find deer."

ON THE WMAs
Choccolocco consistently ranks near the top in Alabama for WMAs in terms of the number of deer harvested. Hollins is usually a little further down the list but always in the top half of WMAs for deer numbers.

Last season, Choccolocco hunters took 322 deer -- 223 on gun hunts, 68 on archery hunts and 31 with primitive weapons.

On Hollins last year, gun hunters took 94 deer, archery hunters took 76 and primitive weapons hunters took 14 for a total of 184 whitetails.

Also, there are more hunting opportunities on the WMAs now than ever before.

Choccolocco hosts a seven-day gun hunt in November; a two-day gun hunt, five-day primitive weapons hunt and seven-day gun hunt in December; and a four-day gun hunt in January. Those add up to 25 days of firearms hunting on the WMA over the course of the season.