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

Below is a little bit of a visual aid to represent an example of how a doe population would grow toward the fringes in an outward expansion like in our scenario…….What I think we may be fooled by is looking at that main highway or interstate and saying ….. ”Man, deer will cross that no problem and do all the time”……..Yes, that’s true to a degree……however, when we’re talking specifically about doe groups and the outward growth of the female population on the fringes…….it’s not gonna happen in a manner where one day a bunch of does cross over into a new world and never return….embarking off on an adventure to populate new grounds……No, in reality what is gonna happen is you’re gonna have this doe population grow toward the main highway until the ones on the fringe begin to include the highway as part of their home range and routine…..At some point you will have some that take it a step farther and start to venture back and forth across the highway using both sides as the population grows…..As soon as that happens though, the ones on the fringe that begin this back and forth routine get taken out by vehicles …….This in turn would severely impact the outward expansion of that doe population……This is very likely why 431 caused such a distinct line…..the very fact that the northern part was a big 4 lane long before the southern part may have even been a part of what impacted which areas had more westward expansion of the river deer.

So again I’m not saying that the highways, interstates, and rivers are complete walls like high fences but rather like restrictor plates at Talladega but likely heavily choking down doe group movement…….If you can imagine now what it would look like in this scenario if you zoom out to 30,000 feet…….What you would get would be different “pockets” or islands of doe populations that sustained the herd in that area through the females within that pocket and very few from outside the pocket……..If we take this scenario and simulate it out through time to the point we call it “Evolution”….what you would get would be more and more confined and repeating characteristics of the does within that pocket as if they were isolated from each other