I hunt a couple miles from you and I don’t think we necessarily have two different “ruts”. I think its all part of the same rutting cycle. I think what happens is that our does start coming into estrous around Christmas to New Year’s. You’ll see some chasing but the intensity isn’t really there because there are so many does to go around. I believe the intense rutting activity that’s seen toward the end of Jan and first of Feb is the second estrous cycle of the does that didn’t get bred the first time. It’s so intense because the buck to doe ratio has been greatly reduced. Its possible that there are actually more bucks than estrous does at that time.
To take even a step farther…..I think maybe the reason our rut kicks off around Christmas is due to dispersing bucks immigrating in from down closer to the river and bringing the gene from their mama to have an earlier estrous cycle into our local gene pool. I think we are in the dead middle of the buffer zone where the November rut along the river and the typical mid January rut intermingle. If you move one way or the other east or west, you get more influence from one or the other. For example, the closer you move east toward the river, then the more dispersing bucks you’re going to pick up from “river” deer and the less dispersing bucks you’re going to have from the January rutting deer farther to the west. Visa versa as you move west, you will get many more dispersing young bucks from the January rutting deer and less river deer. The end result in this transition zone we see that goes from a November rut to a January rut all within about 10 miles.
All of that is just a guess though. Hope you get your members. I'll vouch for the quality of the area as well.
