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.
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.
