Growing up, I remember my Dad talking about the “Good Ol’ Days” of quail hunting. He spoke fondly of the days when he could leave his house on foot at daylight and hunt all the way from Cypress to Grand Ridge and back. He told of shooting limits of birds and never having to shoot singles, just covey rises. He would always end these stories with “Them were the Good Ol’ Days.”
The days when land owners welcomed hunters as long as they took care of the land. The days before posted signs and locked gates. The days when permission to hunt a piece of land only cost a mess of fish or a few dressed quail. The Good Ol’ Days.
I was thinking about this Sunday afternoon as I sit in my ladder stand overlooking a pile of corn close to home. I thought about all that has changed with hunting...and some things that are the same. I remember my Dad always saying he stopped quail hunting because I liked deer hunting better. The truth is, I never had a chance to quail hunt much. The Good Ol’ Days of quail hunting were winding down just as I got old enough to start tagging along. Even as a kid, I knew this, and I knew the real reason my Dad stopped quail hunting. The Good Ol’ Days were over.
When we started deer hunting in earnest, I was 7 years old. My first year deer hunting, I hunted with a Harrington and Richardson single shot .410 with slugs. I saw exactly zero deer that year despite nearly freezing to death several times. The next year, I graduated to a .20 gauge barrel for my H&R single shot. I took my first deer that year, one of the 4 deer I saw. Those first few years, we hunted a mix of public and private land. Rarely did we see many deer and bucks were even more rare. Still, my Dad managed to scratch out a buck and I a doe for those first few years.
I’m not sure what happened in the late 80’s and early 90’s but, the deer population in our part of Florida exploded. We began to see deer where deer had never been. More and more deer were getting killed on the highways. We began to harvest multiple deer each year on both public and private land. But, it wasn’t just us. Everyone seemed to be taking lots of deer. Most bucks were small spikes or four points. Occasionally someone would harvest a good eight point and word would spread like wildfire through Jackson County. Eventually, the news of the giant buck would make the newspaper.
When I started deer hunting, bucks had to have one hard horn at least an inch long to be considered legal. A few years later, it was changed to five inches. People began to let small bucks walk. More doe days were implemented. These two initiatives eventually led to the average size of bucks harvested increasing from small spikes and four points to six points and small eights. In my home Zone in Florida currently a buck has to have three points on one side to be considered legal. Now, bucks that would have made the front page of the Sports Section of the Jackson County Floridan are considered youngsters and allowed to grow another year.
As I sat watching the squirrels steal my corn one Sunday evening, it occurred to me that THESE are the Good Ol’ Days of deer hunting in the Florida Panhandle. We have more deer and more opportunity to hunt now than ever before. We have thousands of acres of public land that have been under buck management for several years and offer a chance at a true trophy buck while also allowing the chance to take a smaller buck for the freezer. We have ample antlerless days on private lands and antlerless permits on many public areas.
For all of this I am thankful. We should all be thankful because, just like my Dad’s Good Ol’ Days of quail hunting, it could all come to an end. Our huge deer herd combined with a corn pile behind every bush is a recipe for disaster for the deer of Northwest Florida. A communicable disease such as Chronic Wasting Disease would spread through our deer herd like wildfire and the Good Ol’ Days would be over.
