By DAVID RAINER, Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR)
With the availability of large tracts of land diminishing at a rapid rate, the Alabama DCNR’s Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries (WFF) Division and the Forever Wild Land Trust have teamed up to step outside the proverbial box to provide additional hunting opportunities in the state.
The new concept in this combined effort is to purchase smaller tracts using Pittman-Robertson and Forever Wild funding and develop those properties as special opportunity areas (SOAs) that are managed differently than the traditional wildlife management areas (WMAs).
“Honestly, the new SOA program is based on running a hunting lodge, giving people the opportunity for a quality hunt at an affordable price,” said WFF Director Chuck Sykes. “That’s the premise of it, and that’s my background. It’s sort of on the lines of going out west. If you apply for an elk tag, you have to pick which unit you want to hunt and what dates you want to go. It’s a selective process, and they only put so many people in any area so the resource is protected and people have a quality hunt. We’re just offering a different type of quality hunting.
“Being able to put together 15,000 to 20,000 acres these days is not going to happen, so we had to change our model for public hunting. We’re looking at under-served areas of the state like Dallas, Wilcox, Marengo, Choctaw and Russell counties.”
The new SOAs that will be available for the upcoming hunting seasons are the 6,500-acre Cedar Creek SOA in Dallas County, the 4,500-acre Uchee Creek SOA in Russell County and the 400-acre Crow Creek SOA in Jackson County. The Fred T. Stimpson SOA, a 5,400-acre tract in Clarke County that had been open for youth hunts and limited adult archery deer hunts have transitioned to this hunting mode to assist in reducing deer densities on the area.
Those SOAs will be divided into hunt units, and the successful applicants will be assigned to those specific units for specific dates.