The rut in my experience is usually the last week of January and into February, but we are seeing a lot more scrapes pretty early this year. Is anyone else seeing the same in Barbour county?

It just completely depends on what part of the county you are in. That county has deer that rut as early as November......some that rut in late December and some that rut in late January. Depending on where you are located, you could see a rut at any of those times. Its kind of a screwy area.

I think buck dispersal makes it even screwier. Lets say that a buck down in the refuge is born to a doe that goes into estrous during Nov......When he disperses, does he take that "gene" with him and pass it on to his offspring? Will his doe offspring go into estrous a little early? If so, then that means you should get a buffer effect extending out how ever far the average young buck disperses (3-5 miles??) and diluting as it runs into the other deer with different estrous timing. Just rambling on but it makes me wonder if we could ever hope to have a compressed rut with so many different tendencies of when does go into estrous in the area

I have several tracts in Barbour County that i hunt. One is about 12 miles south of the Russell County line that butts up to Cowikee Creek on Lake Eufaula. I noticed bucks chasing does hard around November 10th and 3 nice bucks were killed between the youth hunt on the 16th and one i shot on opening morning of gun season, all chasing does. Saturday morning, 11 does and two bucks fed on the same field and neither buck paid any attention to the does. Every year i watch bucks chase does during bow season on this property. The other two tracts are west of Eufaula and both places every year are rut heavy when season ends. It's crazy that these deer are separated by maybe 20 miles as the crow flies but have such different patterns.

Yeah I hunt in Eufaula and we never seen bucks chasing until the last week of January and sometimes not until season is over.

Our property has cowikkee creek running right through it on the Russell county line and already seen many young bucks chasing; big ones should be starting soon. Also see heavy chasing into January every year as well.

I've hunted several properties in that area, all with a little different rut timing. When I was a teenager, I was in a club in Russell Co up close to the high school. The deer there were in rut during November. It seems like all around that area and even into the Pittsview area and farther south along the river, you find the November rutting. The farther west you get from the river it seems like the rut gets later and later until you get to about as far west as the management area and you're back into the late January rut.

Were there still deer herds left around the river back when restocking occurred?

My place up in the north of the county butts up to the refuge and the deer on that place are pretty much on the same schedule as the deer in Georgia. The rut is done up there. But the deer on the other places haven't shown anything, and like Chaser says, they may not until the season is over.