First I see there are many WMAs. Are these areas one must draw to hunt? If so, are non-residents able to participate in those lotteries?
Is there quite a lot of public hunting aside from those WMAs? Is it heavily hunted? Anybody here hunt the month of January or February at all on public land?
I hunt Mississippi but it's a lot like Alabama in most ways, the hunting and laws are similar.
I personally wouldn't bother hunting public land in Mississippi or Alabama. I've done it before and killed a couple of deer that way, but the reward for the effort didn't stack up. It's overhunted and mostly poorly managed for deer. Private land is definitely the way to go down here. I'm sure there are some exceptions and someone will pipe in with a great buck killed on public land in AL or MS, but for the most part they're few and far between.
I hadn't heard of the academy hunts but those sound like a great option. There are a lot of lodges in the black belt region that offer good hunting with good accommodations for reasonable prices and those would probably be my first choice if I didn't already know someone with access to good hunting property. Don't let anyone tell you that MS & AL don't have good deer, every year my taxidermist will take in deer that make the Boone & Crockett book.
