Alabama Hunting

[Charles Philpot]

Thinking about taking a hunting trip week after Christmas, any good state land or public hunting in Alabama?

[AlabamaSwamper]

What kind of hunting? I'm assuming rabbit but want to be sure.

[Charles Philpot]

Rabbit

[AlabamaSwamper]

Just about any WMA with 3-8 year old clearcuts will have rabbits. It'll be thick pines and your dogs will need to be deer broke but you'll find rabbits just about on any of them.

North Alabama has some great WMA's.

Sam R Murphy
Freedom Hills
Lauderdale

Plenty of land (20k-40k acres)

Check and make sure they are NOT having gun deer hunts those days. Any other day you are good to go.

Stay away from the smaller WMA's along the rivers. They look awesome (agriculture and hedgerows, ect) and you can find pockets of rabbits but they get pounded from day 1. The bigger WMA's get almost no pressure. Most people don't trust their dogs enough to put them in there.

Not sure about south Alabama, although I imagine it can't be a whole lot different. On the ones I mentioned, you can cover 100,000 acres and not see another rabbit hunter most days.

[Charles Philpot]

Thanks for the info.

[Buckshot101]

AlabamaSwamper, I have a question about Freedom Hills - since season ended yesterday, we drove over to Freedom Hills yesterday to run on the last day of season -- my question is, is it normal for all the gates to be locked up? Only gate open was one near the Coon Dog Cemetery and the one down the road from the range that ties to a CR?

[AlabamaSwamper]

THere are several roads that are always locked. Especially in the sections that are hardwoods.

Truck Trail 22 should have been open. Just past the cemetary (coming from HWY 247) on the right. Real long road.

Just about any road that can be rabbit hunted should have been open. Like I said, many stay closed but most of those have no rabbit hunting out them anyway.

[Buckshot101]

Yea that was the one that open and the one by the range. Right down at the end of Coon Dog Cemetery Rd almost across from the archery range, we walked in and ran them and parked at the gate ( there was one of the BIrd Viewing signs at thate location). We only had to deal with 15 minutes of the storm thank goodness.