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

So……to take this even a little farther. Someone could definitely still restock an area with new genetics and have an impact…..I don’t think this idea that it would be “diluted down” holds true across the board…….What would matter the most is that you picked the right spot to do it. For example, Parker Island would be the best place to illustrate this……It’s completely surrounded by a major river so free movement back and forth of doe groups is restricted relatively speaking and probably doesnt happen a whole lot……Kill all or as many does off the island as possible and then introduce the new doe lines and without doubt those doe lines would impact the island moving forward……Even if you didn’t kill off all the other does the ones you introduce and their female descendants should still retain whatever rut timing they had originally……I imagine that rut timing is not the only trait that you would be isolating……….I think in some form or fashion this is how some areas see a lot of real similar rack characteristic play out over and over……..isolated doe populations……….I used a literal island as an example because this same thing could be done in other areas too where major roads and natural barrier create a pocket or “island” of land where a doe population could be introduced and isolated. I think its definitely false to think that any restocking would just be “diluted”…..I don’t think it happens that way.

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

Here’s the same concept at play in a different area…..I’m not as familiar with this area but I bet things are playing out much the same with their being an isolated doe population with the “fringes” and intermingling zones being the main highways……In this situation you likely also have habitat fragmentation playing a role in helping keep the doe population isolated. Is anyone familiar with Bankhead and where the November rut area transitions?......I’m betting its along the highways and where the habitat is fragmented……This concept could play out at different scales and when you start looking at how "lines are drawn" in this manner across the landscape then you can begin to identify a lot of areas where this same concept could repeat in some manner

We’re just south of Hurtsboro in Barbour co and out rut usually is about first 10-12 days of January.

Back to the original scenario with Russell Co……and I’ll even expand it out a little to illustrate……But this is probably how the deer populations ought to be looked at and studied to look at the rut…..…..these areas have to the potential to isolate doe groups in the manner talked about above…..It will be to varying degrees in different areas due to habitat type and fragmentation also playing a role. Within each one of these pockets though road mortality is going to heavily isolate doe movement back and forth. I think if you want to form a really accurate rut map over time then you sample each pocket individually and see what’s happening within that pocket. I don’t know that this would hold true but it would seem like this would give you a situation where you have more variation on the fringes and more conformity toward to center but it may not play out that way. Again though there could smaller isolated areas......Tuskegee National forest laying in between the Interstate 85 and hwy 80 is a prime looking spot for this to play out.

What should happen over time now that things are chopped up in this manner is that if you were to have a variable within one of these “isolated” populations that started to favor the fawn survival of certain doe fawns over the others it would cause the potential for that population to carry that trait more and more moving forward. There may be nothing within each one of these pockets that influences which doe fawns survive and which ones don’t moving forward but there is the potential for it to and it is along these lines where populations have the potential to differentiate from one another. Scale this down to a true 5,000 acre “pocket” divide by major boundaries and you have the potential to sho nuff have something special…..In theory you ought to be able to go into a place like that and low grade the buck population for a few years and gradually change the quality of the doe population within that pocket…..People say you cant do this but they also use the “King Ranch” as their example of why things like this wont work. That would be an apples to oranges comparison though because it’s the exact opposite of an isolated pocket……it’s a virtual ocean.