Y'all hear anything about them moving that line on up the map this year

?

When is the Board meeting

Really?

I am going to assume he means the extra 10 days of deer season in parts of south Bama....I think they need to as some places I hunt the rut was just coming in the last couple of the season.

The split in Henry County boggles my mind. Deer had even started on the east side when season went out

Why not just change it state wide? I think the season could totally be moved back ten days, it wont hurt the bow hunters I wouldn't think and I bow hunt! October 25th to Feb. 10th??

The only think it hurts where I hunt at, is by October 25 most of the white oaks where we hunt are already almost all dropped, other than that I like the extra time.

The 2nd Saturday of January (9th) where I hunt we killed 18 racked bucks, all of which were 8pts or better, 5 were over 130". (This is all absolutely true, and verifiable. Federal DMP has all that info recorded) You hear that???...18 in one day, many of which were large/mature. EVERYBODY came in that evening talking about the chasing they saw. Furthermore, there had been some scattered chasing since Christmas up until that weekend of the 9th/10th.

The next weekend was cold as a tater. Then again the last weekend was cold too. Only a few people reported seeing a small buck or two trailing a doe.

Guess what everybody said?????? "We're gonna miss the rut boys, won't happen till the first few days of February, they're just getting kicked off!" To which I said, "WHAT?????"

See my point? Everybody is SOOO convinced the rut happens in February that they couldn't see what happened. The rut started about Christmas and peaked on Jan 9/10. A few stragglers cycled in late the next couple of weekends, or maybe it was 2nd cyclers from late December. There probably is a 2nd stronger cycle happening about right now.

The rut where I hunt is roughly Christmas through the 9th or 10th of January also but I feel like the extra days in Feb. could help. I will hunt either way though so it really doesn't matter. Sad part is I have a buddy I hunt with a lot around Samantha and his deer never started chasing until the last weekend of season. The HWY 80 line helped but isn't the best thing that ever happened just my opinion.

So why do you want the whole state to run into Feb. if your rut is right around the first of the year?

I'd give up the first 10 days in December to hunt the first 10 days in February but it has nothing to do with the rut. I was just sitting here thinking I'd kinda like to go deer hunting Wednesday evening when the wind finally lays down.

Now I can deal with that!

Of course, there are some folks who believe because we had hot weather in November and December that "the rut" didn't happen this year.

Nope, no rut. No baybee deers this autumn. All the does didn't go into heat and the bucks didn't get no pootietang. Too hot, no rut.

Now Clem you know that deer don't do it when it gets over 70...They don't like to sweat when they make love....

Even stranger, Clem, is the fact that my whole life, our deer have started breeding at the exact same time. And, they did it again this year. You can probably search the archives and find some old post from years ago where I said that they will start rubbing and scraping hard about Jan 9-10, cruising hard about Jan 16-17 and breeding around Jan 21-22. It has always been that way. And, unless there is some strange influx of outside genetics, they will probably always do so.
And, it does not matter how many does you shoot!

My uneducated guess (speaking of Clarke County) is you can + or - two weeks from Jan. 20th. Sometimes it seems earlier, sometimes it seems later. I DO think weather can influence it SOME.

I don't think weather influences the rut I do believe it influences deer movement and that is the difference when it is cold deer have to eat more than when its not therefore you see more deer... just my .02!

WOW! That's impressive... I must ask tho, on how much property, did this occur on?

20000 Thousand acres of federal land would be my guess...

Our rut is chrism at till around the 10 of jan. Leave my damn season alone.

The biologist will go out and shoot some does, pregnant does, take them back to the la;b and examine the fawns to see when they were conceived. If they find most were concieved in early Feb., they will probably extend the season.

"IF" they did move the line up,how far up do they go with it??

We allowed a biologist to take 10 does from our lease about 5 years ago for this study. Our lease is in Randolph County. They found that 9/10 were conceived +/- 5 days of Jan 15th. The lone doe that was bred late had a conception date of either Jan 30 or 31 I believe.

This year, we started seeing tons of scrapes and rubs around Christmas. A week later, the scrapes dried up. A week after that, we started seeing chasing. We saw good chasing until the last week of the season. The last week of the season, the bucks we saw were by themselves hitting plots and feeding.

I saw chasing in Henry county just after Christmas through the first of the year, shorterville area

They just give up the guns; you can still bow hunt down there, correct? That was my understanding; I'm orig from Dale Co.

Gun and bow season is closed in Jackson Co. and it's up there, not down.

Sorry, thought we were talking Zone B