Originally Posted by Mbrock
Originally Posted by abolt300
Here's an honest question for Matt, based somewhat on CNC's question above. Will deer do like humans from the sense that if you throw 75 women in a sorority house and they are living in close proximity to each other 24/7, within 12 months most will be cycling at pretty much the same time of the month. Would the deer from different stocking dates slowly synchronize with the predominate estrous date for the majority of the native herd, in the area in which they are stocked (assuming that the stocked deer make up a non-significant minority of the overall resident doe population at time of stocking)?

That’s tough to answer. I’m not sure anything concrete has been determined. I can give you my observations. Bankhead for example, for 65-70 years had a very unique breeding season 30-60 days ahead of any native populations around. The populations were not allowed to interbreed simply due to the expansive area between them and native deer. In the late 80s and 90s they tried to kill as many of the native deer as possible and restock with Sumter co deer. Hundreds of them. Over time, the breeding dates have become a commingling of November to January. It’s really a mess. In areas outside Bankhead it would appear does have adopted a syncing of the two populations, with dates ranging in the mid to late December range. The farther you get from Bankhead the dates go to normal native AL ranges, being late December to mid January. The large assumption, is that local populations have adapted their peak breeding times over centuries, and are genetically programmed to come into estrus in sync. When you mix populations, you have the entire range of possibilities. Most restocking efforts were on such a small scale you don’t see much influence from the stocking source any longer. Native deer did what native deer do and naturally expanded back into areas they had been extirpated. Small scale releases scattered in a shotgun pattern over large geographic areas didn’t really accomplish much. Large scale releases did.


Why did game and fish try to kill off all the native deer? Seems counter productive to me.


"Why do you ask"?

Too many people spend money they don't have , on things they don't need, to impress people they don't know.