Are there any studies that track the exact estrous timing of individual does from year to year as well as the timing of their female offspring?.....I’m wondering how much variation occurs from year to year with a single individual as well as how closely her offspring follow suit……Also, is the timing genetically coded at birth in the offspring or is it effected later on by a dominant female going into heat the way females of other species effect the timing of each other’s cycles?

My wife and two sister in laws and a niece synced up. Christmas been kinda ruff this year.

lol

It is an interesting question

I have my assumptions about it but knowing for sure would give you a lot of insight to why we see some of things we do with the rut now…….I mean just take for example if we imagined that at one of those restocking locations on the map you posted we released two does……One from Clarke Co with a late Jan estrous date and one from Sumter with an early Jan estrous date……If we fast forward 20….30…..40 years……what we see occurring has a lot to do with the success or lack of with each one of those original two family trees……Did one die out and one make it?.....Did they both make it and populate equally?....Was one much more successful than the other?

I think that’s basically what we had happen with the restocking and how the rut could be manipulated by which lineages we are randomly killing more or less of in any one area or if nature choose a winner/loser through environmental factors……I would imagine that folks in southwest Alabama see a very consistent rut date because they are evenly stocked with the original lines that have always existed in that area……. while the rest of the state has areas where multiple different stocking sources we released into the same areas and created the potential for a mixed up hodge podge that could have varying proportions of each lineage…..and because of that things will always have the potential to fluctuate slightly from year to year in some individual locations.

You also have the possibility for there to be large restocked areas that filled in from one stocking source (such as areas with only circles on your map) but eventually as you move outward those pure stocking areas begin to run into the mixed hodge podge areas. There’s potential for there to be a lot of variation from one area to another for how things “shook out” with those original doe lineages as they reproduced and filled in the landscape.

That’s my guess anyways………..

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I agree with you on this one. The Different lineages seemed to be more noticeable In our lease 15 or so years ago before our hunters shot off all the deer with better genetics though…. The older guys called em “hill deer” and said every year, a couple 200+ lb deer would be taken. Can’t say whether or not they rutted earlier but I’ve seen pics and they used to kill some whoppers.
We hunt right on the Monroe/wilcox county line.

To kinda further illustrate how I think we’re just 75-100 years down the road on different doe “family trees”……I suspect that there may have been a few native deer that still existed in the area circled on the map below that had a mid to late Dec estrous date……I think that once a halt was put on killing deer these few that were left over acted as a stocking source of their own and started repopulating…..eventually merging and mixing with the late Jan restockings that were introduced further out…..While most areas around here see the majority of the does coming into heat Jan 19-Feb 5……Sampling as well as hunter observation shows some does being bred Dec 15-30 in areas like Midway, Uchee, and Salem.

If our assumption is true about a doe fawn inheriting her estrous date from mom then its not really possible for those Dec does we see now to have just morphed out of the late Jan restockings…..but rather they would be descendants of original Dec lines……You also don’t see these Dec breeders in all the other surrounding late Jan restocking areas which would suggest they arent just some kind of normal variants that are occurring….They’re just descendants of the OG’s…..Houston Co along the river is probably another area with them as well as NE Jackson Co….It would be hard to produce a map that showed what is truly occurring as you move across the landscape because of all the small nuances…..Even within the area I circled you have some spots where a few strays are seen hot in Dec like Midway and Uchee while another area seems to have a majority late Dec rut like in Salem. I think its just a heavier density of Dec descendants

I think there’s a lot of layers to fully understanding what we see today and this is just part of what is playing into that……Its all revolving around doe lines though

Now of course this is hypothetical but just to demonstrate how there is the potential for us to change things……..Within that circle I drew there are only so many or “X” amount of Dec doe descendants…..its not an infinite number……let’s say maybe its 5,000 dec does that exist within that area…..Its big enough that they continue to perpetuate themselves and their future lines.

But now lets say that moving forward all the hunters in that area agree to shoot any and every doe they see being chased in Dec but never one in late Jan…..Conceptually it would then be possible for us to get rid of those Dec lines and influence the timing of the rut for the area. Of course that’s a hypothetical extreme but I use it as an example to show the potential for what we’re doing as hunters to be impacting these dynamics that are at play. Our randomness in shooting does probably holds it all pretty stable from year to year but its still fluent just the same. Its also possible that some type of environmental factor could throw it into flux in these areas if for instance we had some kind of summer weather events that heavily impacted the survival of fawns dropped from Dec bred does but didn’t the late Jan ones….

This is why I think we should continue restocking the state using high fence does in order to improve the quality of the hunting….It’s apparent that some lineages produce offspring with better potential…..They should have repopulated the whole state with better stock to begin with like Georgia did.

Expansion pressure is another factor at play in this doe game that could change what we see over time……Doe groups don’t really disperse like bucks…..The only thing that really moves does around is social conflict over resources…..So for instance if you had a doe living on a property with plenty of food and cover and the herd is kept well below carrying capacity…..then you’re likely gonna have her great, great, great, great …..a bunch of greats…..granddaughter still living on the same land decades later……

It's only when populations grow and competition for resources ramps up that these lineages begin to push outward and “move”……I pointed out an example awhile back about how January doe lineages to the west of Bankhead had pushed east due to this expansion pressure and changed what some were seeing there. There is the potential for this to happen in many areas if some doe populations are rapidly reproducing and expanding while others are heavily shot and held in check. There is definitely the potential for us to influence these things

This ^^^^ is also how highways play into the equation……They help to curtail expansion pressure when hunters and coyotes don’t control the populations…..which in turn help to keep some these doe lineages contained within bubbles.....Again, there's lots of layers as to the "why" things are happening the way they do

Matt is gonna say that there’s nothing wrong with those late Jan deer and their genetics are just fine……but I would point out that right out of the gate most of them are out of place…..they also seem to just be a smaller bodied deer with less antler potential…..If we went back and created a rut date map of the original deer you would likely see a smooth transition from south to north….lower elevation to higher……going from late Jan/early Feb in extreme southwest Alabama to early/mid/late December in the south eastern, central, and northern counties…….The late Jan rut that we restocked the majority of the state with only occurred naturally in a small corner of the state. Its out of place and out of synch in most areas…..Nature had selected for a December rut for most counties which points to what we have now being less than optimal. That’s why I’d suggest that we start turning loose quality doe lines from Texas where they have a December rut date

Just out of curiosity, where did the majority of the late January rutting deer come from? On the map you posted, it looks like it says Clarke county?

Looks like a big portion of the restocking came from Clarke and Marengo……I wonder where the “other Alabama sources” came from??....Don’t get me wrong, its not to say that those deer don’t have the potential to get big…….Its just when look at some bucks and compare them to others, there’s just something different going on that’s noticeable. I remember the first few times I went over into Georgia tracking deer for folks, you could just see a difference……They appeared to be bigger bodied deer with framier racks. I’m sure its no different with the Bankhead deer and other areas with different strains.

I searched that map because I started asking some questions from which I had always had assumptions. I hunted Waterloo in the 80s to about 10 years ago. Those deer are Wisconsin deer I’d always heard. Couldn’t understand why they rutted around Christmas instead of the week of thanksgiving like when I hunted Wisconsin. Some asked on FB about the rut there and a retired bio made a comment about the other stocking which as later so it then made sense.

I was in a big club and our rut had always been around Christmas. I’ve heard lately the rut has moved into the more traditional time frame of January 20th. What happened. Maybe your theory works into that. I’d always assumed the deer swam the river and we had the Wisconsin strain. The I saw the map and bingo same time frame we had as the source that was restocked from. I’ve note really cared to pursue deer hunting for 7 or so years now. Still enjoy learning and being intrigued by them. Just lost the fire. What I saw in Wisconsin versus what I see here kinda did me in.

Anyways I’m gonna try and follow this one. It has potential

The Wisconsin doe lines must have gotten killed out of the area and overtaken by the other restockings……I predict that Bankhead will one day see the same thing happen.


Folks have always said that doing any further restocking now wouldn’t matter because those genetics would quickly be “diluted down”….. but I don’t think that’s an accurate depiction of how things would play out…..You very well could still release some does from other strains and have them make an impact……It all depends on how successful they are at staying alive and reproducing their future lines. I meany hypothetically speaking we could take a big plantation and go in and just hammer the does off of it for a couple years……then start turning loose a different strain of does with tags in their ears while continuing to shoot the others and get a pretty good foot hold going as long as those outlier fawns that dropped survived. They would be no different than the stray Dec estrous does around Midway for example. They arent being diluted down by breeding…..their female lineage is either surviving or it aint.

I’ve tried to tell people for years this but no one wanted to listen. Interesting enough, if you look at the Bankhead area it’s marked with the Michigan source, but also the Clarke and Marengo deer. That’s not the only map of the restocking floating around either and I wonder just how well it was kept up with. At one time I had a map showing the corner of pike,
Montgomery and bullock being sourced by a Texas deer. If you know anything about the history of that area and the potential it made sense.

I feel your pain.