Archery season

Digest, printed pp. 34, 56

• Long bows, compound bows and crossbows, in conformance with Rule 220-2-.03.

• Any firearm for deer during the preliminary archery-only season — a handgun may be carried for personal protection.
• A light source attached to a bow capable of casting a beam forward (a laser sight is not one).

Special muzzleloader and air rifle season

Digest, printed p. 34

• Muzzle-loading long guns and handguns, .40 calibre or larger.
• Pre-charged pneumatic air guns, .30 calibre or larger.
• Pre-charged pneumatic arrow-shooting rifles with a broadhead at least 7/8 inch across and two sharpened edges.
• Long bows, compound bows and crossbows.

• Night vision or thermal equipment.

Gun deer season (and the youth hunt)

Digest, printed pp. 34, 56

• Rifles with centrefire, mushrooming ammunition.
• Pre-charged pneumatic air guns, .30 calibre or larger, and arrow-shooting air rifles with a 7/8-inch, two-edged broadhead.
• Shotguns 10 gauge or smaller with buckshot, slugs or a single round ball.
• Muzzle-loading long guns and handguns .40 calibre or larger.
• Long bows, compound bows and crossbows.
• Handguns with centrefire, mushrooming ammunition.

• Fully automatic firearms.
• A light source attached to a gun capable of casting a beam forward.
• Night vision or thermal equipment.

Legal Shooting Hours

Digest, printed pp. 20, 29, 52

"Legal hunting hours for deer are 30 minutes before official sunrise time until 30 minutes after official sunset time." Dog deer hunting on U.S. Forest Service land in Calhoun, Clay and Talladega counties stops at 2 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays.

Fluorescent Orange

Digest, printed p. 33

An outer garment above the waist with at least 144 square inches of hunter orange or fluorescent pink, or a full-size hunter orange or fluorescent pink hat or cap. "During dates and in areas open by regulation to gun deer season, including youth deer season and muzzleloader deer season, all persons hunting any wildlife species" — archers included — except foxes, raccoons and opossums at night, turkey and migratory birds. Not required in a stand twelve feet or more above the ground, in an enclosed box stand, in an enclosed vehicle, or walking no more than twenty feet directly between an enclosed vehicle and a stand. It must be solid colour visible from any angle; camo orange and camo pink are not legal.

Sundays

Digest, which prints no Sunday exception for deer (pp. 20-34, 52, 56)

Alabama prints no Sunday restriction on deer hunting: every season runs on each day it is open.

Bag limits

Digest, printed pp. 20, 29

• Antlered bucks — a deer with one or more antlers visible above the natural hairline: one a day, three in all combined seasons.
• One of the three must have at least four antler points an inch or longer on one antler. A point is a projection at least an inch long; the main beam tip counts regardless of length.
• Barbour County: every antlered buck must have at least three points on one side, except on the youth hunt dates.
• Unantlered deer in the gun, muzzleloader and air rifle, archery and youth seasons: in Zones A, B, D, E and the CMZ, two a day, or one unantlered and one antlered buck. In Zone C, one unantlered and one antlered buck a day.
• In the CWD Management Zone, two unantlered deer a day on private land in gun season — not on WMAs, community hunting areas or open permit–public land.
• WMA bonus bucks, on the dates printed on the WMA permits, do not count against the three. In the CMZ one bonus buck per bonus date on specified WMAs.
• Killing an unantlered deer outside an unantlered season is illegal. Digest, printed p. 56.

Dog deer hunting

Digest, printed pp. 28, 52

Prohibited except by special permit from the Department: Baldwin; Chambers; Choctaw (south of AL 10 and west of AL 17 and north of County Roads 18 and 14 to the Mississippi line); Colbert (west of US 43); Coosa; Covington (north of US 84); part of Elmore round Lake Jordan; Geneva; Henry; part of Macon; Marengo; Monroe; Pickens (north of US 82); Talladega (inside the Talladega National Forest); Tallapoosa; and Wilcox. Landowners in Chambers and Coosa may hunt with dogs on their own property without a permit.

Stalk hunting only, no dogs: Bibb; part of Perry; Butler (south of AL 106 and east of I-65); Cherokee; Chilton; Cleburne; part of Coffee; parts of Crenshaw; part of Dale; DeKalb; part of Elmore; part of Fayette; Franklin; parts of Hale and Perry; the part of Pickens, Greene and Tuscaloosa bounded by Pickens County Road 63 and the Romulus Road; Houston; Jackson; Lamar; Lauderdale; Lawrence; Limestone; Madison; Marion; Marshall; Morgan; Randolph; Tuscaloosa (north of US 82); and Winston (east of AL 5 from the Walker line to Natural Bridge, and north of US 278).

No dog deer hunting on open permit–public land, except U.S. Forest Service land in Calhoun, Clay and Talladega counties.

Bait

Digest, printed pp. 20, 42, 56

• Hunting deer by the aid of bait needs a Bait Privilege License on top of the hunting licence — every age, no exemptions.
• It is lawful only on private land outside the CWD Management Zone.

• Hunting with the aid of bait on any public land — WMAs, SOAs, USFWS, USFS, TVA and Corps of Engineers land — or on public or private land inside the CWD Management Zone.
• Without a Bait Privilege License, hunting an area within ten days of bait or feed having been there.

Land and permission

Digest, printed pp. 20, 52, 56

Privately owned and leased land is land not open to the general public. Open permit–public land is governmentally owned land, or timber and utility company land, open for public hunting and not in a WMA.

Hunting on another person's land needs their written permission in possession, unless accompanied by the landowner or as their guest.

• Hunting or shooting a centrefire rifle, slugs, shot larger than No. 4 or a .40 muzzleloader within 50 yards of the right-of-way of a public road, highway or railroad, or from or across one.
• Hunting within 100 yards of a dwelling without the owner's or lessee's permission.
• Taking a deer from the public waters of the state.

Digest, printed p. 16

Every deer must be reported within 48 hours of the harvest, or before transferring possession to anyone else.

• Before moving the deer, record the date and type of animal on a paper harvest record or in the Outdoor AL app
• Report it to Game Check: in the Outdoor AL app (which counts as reporting it), online at outdooralabama.com/gamecheck, or by phone
• Have ready the date, method, type of animal, county, public or private land, and a hunting licence number, H.E.L.P. number or CID
• On paper, write the Game Check confirmation number on the harvest record

Digest, printed pp. 20, 26, 29, 52

Chronic wasting disease has been found in north-west Alabama, and the CWD Management Zone is Lauderdale and Colbert counties and the whole of Franklin — a High-Risk Zone taking in Lauderdale, Colbert and the north-west of Franklin, and a Buffer Zone over the rest of Franklin.

• Bait is prohibited on public and private land alike inside the CMZ.
• Two unantlered deer may be taken a day on private land in gun season.
• CWD sampling, transport and disposal of carcasses and heads, and feeding are governed by Chronic Wasting Disease Management Zone Rule 220-2-.167, which the digest refers to rather than prints; read it before moving a deer out of the zone.
• Deer or elk carcasses may not be brought into Alabama from any other state unless deboned, with antlers and skull plate cleaned. Digest, printed p. 52.

• Deer zone lines are roads, rivers and county lines, and no agency publishes them as polygons. The boundary this app draws is built from the Census county polygons and the published centrelines of the roads and rivers the digest names — US 80, the Alabama River, I-65, I-85, AL 169, US 431, AL 26, Russell County Roads 65, 4 and 49, US 82, AL 10, Henry County Roads 57 and 99, Ross Clark Circle, US 231, US 280, I-20, AL 21, US 278, AL 24, AL 157, Cullman County Road 1114, Helicon Road, Winston County Roads 41 and 93, the Sipsey Fork, AL 69, I-59, US 11, AL 5, AL 13, AL 195 and the Tennessee River. It agrees with ADCNR's printed zone map at every one of the 148 places the map could be read, but it is a reading of a sentence rather than a file from the department. Check the map on printed p. 22 if a pin lands within sight of one of those roads.
• Where the description and the printed map disagree, the description wins. Three places: the digest prints "US Hwy. 69" for the road from the Sipsey Fork to Cullman, which is Alabama 69 (US 69 does not enter the state); Zone E's "north along AL 21 to AL 9 in Piedmont, north along AL 9 to US 278" is the same ground as AL 21 to US 278, because both meet US 278 in town; and the ground north of Haleyville between AL 13 and AL 195 is Zone C by both Zone C's and Zone D's descriptions, though the map shades the Winston County end of it green.
• Where the Tennessee River is a county line — Madison, Limestone and Lauderdale on the north bank against Marshall, Morgan and Lawrence on the south — the zone line is drawn on the Census county line rather than on a river centreline, which is what makes Lauderdale whole, as the CWD zone's own description says. Through Marshall County, where the river is inside the county, it is the river.
• Zone D's own description says "west along Helicon Road" where Zone C's says "south"; it is the same road between the same two corners.
• Private land and open permit–public land run different tables, and they are separate seasons here. Wildlife Management Areas print their own seasons and bag limits on each area's permit and none of that is in this app.
• Dog deer hunting is shown in every zone, but is prohibited or stalk-only in all or part of about forty counties, several of them split along roads this app does not draw. Read the county list on the rules screen before hunting with dogs.
• Barbour County's three-points-a-side antler restriction is a county rule, and Barbour is cut by Zones A, B and E; the rule is on the rules screen and in the buck limit rather than on a zone.
• Russell County and the Chattahoochee side of it keep Eastern time in practice while the state is on Central. Legal hours are computed from the sun at the pin, so they are right either way; the clock shown runs an hour behind a Phenix City watch.
• ADCNR's Alabama Rut Map spreads peak rut from 10 November to 8 February in patches that follow the mid-century restocking, not latitude. The rut meter carries one date, 16 January — the midpoint of the 9-24 January band, which covers the most ground — and a pin in the early or late patches can be two months from it. Read the department's own map for the ground you hunt.

Game Check

800-888-7690, outdooralabama.com/gamecheck, or the Outdoor AL app

Buy a licence

1-888-848-6887, or outdooralabama.com

Report live deer being moved

GAMEWATCH, (800) 272-4263

District 1 (north-west)

Tanner, (256) 353-2634

District 2 (north-east)

Jacksonville, (256) 435-5422

District 3 (west central)

Northport, (205) 339-5716

District 4 (south-east)

Enterprise, (334) 347-9467

District 5 (south-west)

Spanish Fort, (251) 626-5153