Deer Hunting on the Mississippi/Alabama Border

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm not a purist. I like to hunt anything, anytime, anywhere with anybody. The more different kinds of hunting I can do in a day, the happier I am. This season I've found my ultimate playground -- the Tenn-Tom Hunting Lodge located just outside Pickensville, Alabama, on the Tenn-Tom Waterway. This fine lodge offers duck hunting in the morning and deer hunting in the afternoon. Or, you can duck or deer hunt all day. But I prefer to shoot quacks at daylight and bag whitetails in the afternoon. This week we'll introduce you to the people and the hunting on the Alabama/Mississippi border along the Tenn-Tom Waterway that creates river navigation from the port of Mobile, Alabama, into the Great Lakes region.

The evening I arrived at the Tenn-Tom Lodge near Pickensville, Alabama, Richard East of Jacksonville, Alabama, just had bagged a really nice 8-point buck. He arrived at the lodge at 11:00 a.m. on that day, unpacked his gear and sat on a greenfield by 1:00 p.m. According to East, "At 2:30 p.m. I started seeing deer. I saw four does and next a nice 8-point buck stepped out. The buck, which stood only about 40 yards from me, stayed in the field for about 1 1/2-hours. Then other bucks moved into the field, and at one time I had four racked bucks feeding in front of me. I looked to my right and spotted another 8-point buck hugging the wood line and feeding on the edge of the field. I saw two shooter bucks in my field and watched both of them make scrapes at the same time on opposite sides of the field. The two bucks ran at each other, and I thought they might fight. However, they backed off and begin to feed again. The first 8-point bedded-down in the middle of my field, and the second bedded-down on the edge of the field. The second 8-point didn't have as wide a rack as I wanted, so I waited a while before I decided to take the shot."

Tenn-Tom Hunting Lodge owner Hugh Snoddy and lodge manager Kenneth Crimm sit on the greenfields during the season to try and determine which bucks are frequenting the fields and what their customers can expect to see when they hunt at the Tenn-Tom Lodge. But Crimm admits they'd never seen the buck before in their fields that East eventually took. "When the rut begins, bucks move in from other areas to breed the does attracted to our greenfields," Crimm said. "Even though we think we know how many bucks we have on each field during the rut, we often will have a surprise buck arrive."

"Too, this past year was strange," Snoddy recalled. "With the drought we experienced in the South, the nut trees held their acorns longer, and our section of the country didn't have nuts on the ground until after Thanksgiving. Our rut here usually occurs from December 20th until February or March. Luckily we can hunt until January; we have excellent late- season deer hunting and waterfowling. After many states in the North close their deer seasons, we often will have six to eight more weeks to hunt here at our lodge. And that late-season deer hunt falls right in middle of prime time for ducks.

"At our lodge we can scout our greenfields from 1/2-mile or more away without having to actually go to the greenfield. We can get on a ridge and use binoculars to see the types and kinds of bucks that come into our greenfields. Then we can rest our fields for a week or more and still know how many bucks we have coming into the field without putting human odor in any field."

Generally you can bowhunt deer at the Tenn-Tom Lodge from mid-October through January 31st. Gun deer hunting usually begins mid-November and also runs through January 31st. Black-powder hunters can use their black-powder rifles during the gun deer season.

For more information on the Tenn-Tom Hunting Lodge, write the Tenn-Tom Hunting Lodge, 16234 Buggs Ferry Road, Macon, Mississippi, 39341; or, call owner Hugh Snoddy at (662) 726-9909 or lodge manager Kenneth Crimm at (205) 662-3382.

Tomorrow: Duck Hunting in Flooded Timber