Ive hunted in a bunch of states (but not Alabama), as well as different areas within many of them. What Ive found most consistently is that hunters in every area think their deer are unique. What Ive seen says otherwise. Of course there’s variation, every area has its own differences and difficulties, in addition to differences between individual deer. But for the most part they’ve all acted really similarly. Of course Alabama is different than Maine or New York or Ohio or Virginia or Florida. And hunters in every area have their own culture and expectations and ways they hunt, and for the most part ALL of them think their deer are the hardest to hunt, and their way is the best and only way to hunt them. Frankly Im skeptical that the deer act very differently from one place to another because I simply havent seen it. In general Ive always seen that the deer are pretty similar and react relatively predictably to different terrain, habitat, seasonality and pressure. If anything what Ive seen is that the deer are the constant, and its up to us hunters to read how they are using different habitat and best adjust to that. The “whitetail industrial complex” (ie the monotonous and ubiquitous midwest treestand-hunting, deer-farming industry that overwhelmingly dominates WT deer hunting media and drives sales for said industry) has people believing that deer are these mystical creatures that are unapproachable unless you do X, Y and Z precisely as directed. Most of that seems like first class horse hooey to me based on what I SEE, because what I see is that people can be successful hunters in a wide variety of ways, almost anywhere. Some hunting techniques may up your odds (ie “be more appropriate”) in a 500,000 acre Wilderness area that has 1-2 deer per square mile, zero ag, zero logging, very little concentrated food sources, unlimited bedding and essentially zero pressure for literally days of walking. Other techniques may work better in areas with higher density of deer, concentrated food sources like ag, clearcuts, hard or soft mast, concentrated bedding or travel routes, etc. AND, lots of areas are somewhere in between or have elements of both, and imo it makes perfect sense to be flexible and adapt your approach to the specific situation. But they all work, and the most successful hunters I know are the ones who can read a situation and adapt their approach in the moment.
I am not the worlds best hunter, but in doing this for a long time the one biggest thing Ive learned is that if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail, and that results in some less than elegant carpentry.
