Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Russell County/Hurtsboro Rut

Been hunting Uchee, AL my whole life. About 7 miles from Hurtsboro. Curious on when everyone believes the peak rut is in this area. I feel like it changes every year.

I hunted at Fort Mitchell along Uchee creek and along the west side of hwy 165 and across from Lawson airfield from about 1999 until around 2010 or 11. I couldn't tell you how many times I saw chasing before Rifle season opened. Opening week and on through Thanksgiving weekend was when you wanted to be there. By the end of November it was about wound down. December was dead except for a little bit of a second wave around Christmas. I shot a doe in the middle of January one time that had twin 7 or 8 inch long fawns in her.

If you are where I think you are, the peak is going to be last couple of days of January and the first bit of February.

That’s a very interesting area that I think would be cool to do some more intensive studying of exactly what’s taking place…..I’ve personally hunted and tracked for folks all over that area and here’s what I’ve gathered from it…….

From Seale to the Eufuala everything to the east of 431 has a late November rut……They have been wide open already…….Now if you were to draw a north south line running from Spring Hill in north Barbour Co through the Hatchechubee/Hurtsboro area then you are going to get most everything to the west of that line having a mid-late January rut……..The really interesting spot is the area that is between that line and 431……That’s where the two distinct rut dates are overlapping and you’re getting some kind of transition zone……..I used to hunt a good friend of mine’s family land just to the east of Spring Hill and we had a mid January rut though it was common for someone to always see something happening late December before the main rutting activity kicked off…….It’s interesting to me how all of this stays fairly stable year after year……I figure it all has to hinge around the genetics of the doe populations because they don’t disperse like bucks do……

Slayinbucks......what kind of rut do y'all see??

For the 11 years I hunted there it was always between January 3rd and 9th.

I never remember seeing much chasing the last 2 weeks of the season.

I was just sitting here looking at the map and there's really about an 8 mile wide corridor in there that is a distinct transition zone.....It's actually no more than the width of two big hunting clubs right in there......

Here's what I’ve scratched my head at trying to figure out and I think I may have an answer for it now………You hear people talking about seeing the November rut and you hear people talking about the January rut but then you get some people seeing activity in December and things like WDGfarms is talking about with it seeming like breeding dates are changing, etc…….

Here’s what I think is happening……I don’t think there’s a third distinct rut that’s happening …….There’s two populations at play here overlapping……But even though we say we have a November rut or a January rut……we’re actually talking about a several week time frame that is shaped like a bell curve on a graph…….Here at my place I have a distinct peak rut that occurs from about Jan 20-28…….However, you still have a good many of the does popping off into estrous for a week on either side of that peak date and even still you have a few extreme outliers and anomalies that occur at dates even farther out…..I’ve seen a hot doe on Jan 9 for example and as late as Feb 6….

Sooo…….when you take this and spread it out over not only the January rut but also a November rut…..AND you throw in a second rut for the November one that would occur in late Dec……then what you end up with is the possibility for a doe to be popping off hot throughout a loooong time frame……What you perceive to be happening is very likely just a matter of where you happen to be sitting on any given day.

Anywhere from mid/late Dec through New Years day +/-- a day or 2. You're correct about the 'line' that is 431. They were wide open Thanksgiving week East of 431. I consider our place to be right in that 'transition zone'. To our west a couple miles,they don't see chasing til mid to late Jan.

You’re correct…….you are the transition zone…….I track a good bit for another club that pretty much starts on y’alls east side and runs all the way to 431……The whole transition occurs in the width of y’alls clubs

The really interesting part about this is how these two different populations maintain their distinct rut dates over time in a pretty stable manner……What is occurring would suggest to me that you could take a doe group from the November rut area and transplant them into the January rut area and that particular doe line would retain that November rut and not get “diluted” down as it gets described…..What would be more likely to happen is that the line is killed out or dies out……but I think every female that came from that line would hold the original breeding date regardless of the buck that came along and bred her. If this weren’t the case then in our scenario were talking about above you would get dispersing bucks taking that trait farther and farther out from this transition corridor……..Within that corridor I think you would have to have individual doe groups that are each retaining their original genetic trait for estrous timing…..If mama is a January estrous doe then daughter is too…..That’s the hypothesis anyways.

Hunted the Lake Harding Area for several years and it seemed we never had a wide open Rut. We'd have a rut around Thanksgiving and a few does come in late and have some chasing in January. Craziest hunting I've ever experienced. My take on it is the genetics are blended with some GA deer and some AL genetics as well. The disappointing thing is you never had an all out rut across the property it was isolated to a few does at a time.

I’ve been hunting a mile from the river and about 5 miles from 431 for 25 years. The primary rut is the same as it was 25 years ago but the mix has certainly occurred to a degree. We can now have a spattering of estrous does from October 10 to as late as December 25th. A buck in December will be 45-50# less weight than October.

Thanks for the info CNC! I think you’re 100% right. Our land is about 3 miles from Hatchechubee. Our land is split into sections around the area and it seems one section the rut starts at the end of December through the first two weeks of January. Most of our land is about 5 miles away from this section and it seems like the rut starts around Jan 7th and goes until about Jan 10th. It’s just so weird how areas so close together have such different ruts. All I know is from after Christmas to the end of January I want to be in a stand because I just never know what will happen

Form my own experiences and from talking with a few friends that hunted around Seale and another guy I worked with that hunted just NE of there, I think you are spot on in your assessment of the area. Now if the State would come to the same conclusion their rut maps would make much more sense. They say their data is from fetus collection but I have saw and heard enough information contradicting theirs that I have always doubted that they had taken enough samples in some areas to realize any accuracy.

Here’s a question about the way they report their data……they are showing the “average conception date” for the deer they record for an area……….To illustrate the potential problem I can take and add up 10,10,10,10,10, and 10 and come up with the average of 10…….However, I can also take 2…18…2…18…2…18…and come up with the average of 10…….In the first example 10 is an accurate assessment of each individual data point……in the second example its not…….In other word you could take a late November conception date and “average it” with a late January conception date and come up with an average of late Dec/early January when in reality neither deer were bred in that time frame.

I don’t know that this is what is happening with their data but just pointing out the possibility that some of it could be a little misleading in that sense for areas like we’re talking about. Also any deer that was sampled and counted that was bred on a second rut cycle would skew the average in this same manner.

You know looking at the restocking map and the sites where they show releases from…..assuming that’s a fairly complete list…..there weren’t any restocking efforts in Russell Co…..If I had to guess I would bet the reason why is because there were still deer populations existing along the river……So when the reigns were pulled back on deer killing and populations started expanding……you probably had expansion coming off the river that took years to merge with the stocking efforts....Just a guess but I'd bet that's how we have arrived where we are today with it

In talking hunting history with folks who have been there since the 40’s, CNC’s assessment seems spot on. Those deer have always had a early rut. Even when the population was very low. Maybe deer that swam the river years ago and self established?? At any rate, The states change of firearm season was spot on as I believe their conception date information was as well. I’m more toward the center of that population and still see a low number of does that are way earlier or later. They may not be (probably aren’t) of another rut population mixed in, but simple variability. There are certainly fringe areas where populations are mixed and that just is what it is. Fetal conception dates are most likely all over the calendar with no definitive median.

If you think about how bucks and does behave then it almost certainly points to everything about the rut timing hinging on the females in the population and is not affected by the males…….

Let’s make an example to show what I’m talking about……Let’s say you have a buck fawn born on the east side of the county in the November rut zone……as a yearling he disperses 4-5 miles and takes up residence more toward the central part of the county where he lives and breeds does…..now his sons that are born they disperse too as yearlings and they relocate another 4-5 miles from this location....some to the north and some farther west……This is not to mention the possibility and likelihood that some of these bucks roamed another 2 or 3 miles during the rut……This process over time would not result in a fairly clean, stable distribution of rut timing like we have now……By this time you would have the trait for November rut timing scattered all over Russell and surrounding counties……..

The only way for it to work out like its doing is for the whole shebang to hinge around individual doe groups and the line of females that extend from them……Doe groups do not disperse and relocate and they generally don’t move around a lot period….For a population of females to expand their range is gonna be a slow process that occurs as populations reach carrying capacity and the fringes move out a little farther and a little farther………until in our case they suddenly expand into another population coming from the opposite direction…..and there its stops and intermingles over time……everything still hinging on the doe groups though......it almost has to be the case.

Something really interesting about this area to consider is that it has been an evolving process that has been playing out over the last 50-75 years and it still is in some respects…..

The way in which these populations merged would have not be on any kind of a clean line and as hunter management started coming back into play the very manner in which different properties have shot does and which ones got shot would all cause this “transition zone” to run a little farther east to west in some areas than others…….and this interplay between the two would most definitely still be at play and a constantly slightly changing line that wiggles around.

Hypothetically speaking we could run a high fence down the side of 431 and then go in and take out all the does to the west of that line back for lets say 10 miles…….then put up another long north south run of high fence back around Hurtsboro and take our original one down…..this would over time create a shift of the November rut all the way back to our new fence in Hurtsboro as the river population filled back in that hole…….Now, that’s a far fetched hypothetical but it does represent the back and forth intermingling that is really going on to a lesser degree in this area as hunters and other factors take out does and others fill back in within this transition zone……..431 itself is probably now helping to maintain that boundary to some degree as it likely represents a natural boundary for many, many doe groups…..Instead of being a high fence it likely acts more like a restrictor plate on any doe immigration back and forth……There’s actually a little bit of natural selection at play here that favors the doe groups that don’t cross back and forth across 431 or any major highway if you see what I’m saying…..Does that make a habit of making routine trips back and forth across major highways don’t last long……that alone would create a defined line where any movement of that trait from doe groups in the east would be bottlenecked down and minimized.

To take this highway theory we’re talking about a step farther……This could be and is likely a concept that’s playing itself out in other places as well if there are areas where major highways begin to isolate different doe populations from one another that may differ slightly or develop differences over time with rut timing…..You have to think that with any of these populations like Bankhead or around Cleburne Co……Nothwest Alabama there is an intermingling line with all of them and major highway or major rivers would be very likely places for “lines to be drawn”….if not now then over time as the populations continue to evolve and change. Interstate highways would likely be even more impactful in this manner in the potential to isolate doe populations from each other…….Where this could likely have the highest potential is in areas where major highways and interstates pinch the population between the highway/interstate and a major river…..This really has the potential to isolate the doe population in that area