Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum The Rut

Would you bet the farm on that??

50 does is a literal drop in the genetic bucket. Even assuming original transplants live 7 or 8 years, you will dilute that early estrus out of the equation within a couple generations. And then you would do what? Spend another quarter million to do it over again?

Personally, too hot for me down South to enjoy a November rut, so I would never be interested in doing it. But to play along, I suppose I would try to create a little coop in the area and sprinkle a few does here there. Shotgun approach.

Individual doe estrous dates do not get “diluted”…….They and they're female offspring either live or die

That's one way but I think we could make it even better.......Think of the huntability factor and how we could set it up in our favor even more.....

I understand that original individual doe estrus isn’t changed. I disagree that future doe fawn estrus won’t eventually trend towards mean after breeding by native deer.

This is proven science now…….…The bucks don’t have any part in determining the estrous dates of doe fawns…..Its completely inherited from the mother….. Its how you have Nov ruts and Jan ruts just a few miles apart……Its completely being determined by the doe herds

I’d need to see the science you reference, as opposed to isolated landscape pockets that have simply maintained a prevalence of outside buck/doe stockings. My mind could be changed, it just doesn’t seem genetically logical to me that the doe controls 100% of that coding.

It was conducted at Miss St about 4-5 years ago by a guy that works for Missouri Dept of Conservation now.....I believe it was his graduate work........I'll see if I can find it again

How would that work?......Put those parameters into a simulation and how does it play out if bucks somehow pass on an estrous date??.....What is the buck passing on?....His mother’s estrous date??....An average of mom and dad??.....What does the landscape look like after you run that simulation for 50 years with bucks roaming and dispersing?

This is what originally clued me into what was going on as I traveled around tracking and learning more about individual properties a mile apart and then another one a mile down the road and another a mile from that one, etc……I started realizing that there’s only one way for it to be possible to see what we see playing out on the landscape……then ol’ boy at Miss St proved it……Its funny how you don’t ever hear much about it though

Fence it?

Yep.....well, at least some of it.....

If you were really trying to select for early estrous does, you could also refrain from shooting any does until Jan/Feb and then only shooting them if a buck was showing interest. You would assume most of those would fall in the late estrous bucket. Just doesn't seem very realistic at all though.

Why don't you go ahead and clue us in on your theory?

Here’s what I’d do…….I’d fence in a couple hundred acres but only on 3 sides…..The 4th side would be our big 80 acre lake….We’ll shoot out any does within our fence and release our 50 Nov does inside the fence where we feed them and keep them happy until they go into heat…..Then we just wait for all the bucks in the area to start swimming the lake into the enclosure and literally shoot the best ones in the area like fish in a barrel……

The problem with that though is that such a setup would be blatantly obvious from a satellite image like Google Earth and it would only be a matter of time before someone randomly ran across it and said hmmmmm…….and if that somebody was to happen to be the game warden we’d be screwed……so we need a different plan.

Let’s scrap the fence idea even though it would work better and lets instead just mark our Nov does somehow so we can identify them without having to use ear tags…..Maybe split their ears or cut some notches in them….Something that we would recognize but anyone else would look right over as having happened naturally…..Then we release them and shoot any that don’t have notched ears for the next couple seasons so it allows our new doe strain to establish a little mini herd of does on our place with an early out of synch rut from the rest of the area. That would probably be the best way to do it and not get caught……

You just need to keep those pesky fetal study guys from ever scooping any up around the neighborhood that eventually expand or move to other properties and wonder hmmmmmm…..whats up with that??.....The best way to do it where you still had plausible deniability would be to do it just down the road from an area that already had Nov does…..Maybe like 10 miles outside of Bankhead or something of that nature…..That way it didn’t stick out like a sore thumb like it would in Clarke or Monroe Co etc…..

Again though…..completely hypothetical and unrealistic right??

No possible way you could ever stumble across such a place 😂

QDMA printed a book The History of whitetail deer in the USA 1878-2004. Deer from Michigan and North Carolina were stocked in Clark, Lawrence, Wilcox, Butler, Jefferson, Bibb, Calhoun, Cleburne county. Deer from Texas and Georgia were sent to DeKalb, Marion, Randolph, Bibb, Coosa and Covington counties. 3176 deer from 7 states Georgia-43 Michigan-122 North Carolina-178 Texas 26 Wisconsin- 20. 1926-1998

That about sums it up. 😂

Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction......

So now lets go deeper down that hole……..

This concept is basically the same thing that’s occurring naturally in areas all over the state due to our crazy restocking we did back in the day……A good example would Redstone Arsenal in Madison Co……The main rut there is in Jan but during the fetal study they picked up some stray Nov does that have moved in at some point from the west…..So basically you have the same thing occurring as if we dropped in our 50 Nov does like the previous totally hypothetical scenario we discussed…..

With that being the case and knowing its already occurring in many places……Why not continue the restocking of Nov does into other areas??.....They’re likely a better fit in many areas than the late Jan ones that were originally restocked…..I think a case could be made that the herd is likely healthier in areas where there are mixed lineages that greatly reduce the buck to doe ratio on the first rut cycle……The experts will say oh no that's a horrible idea but the places that I know where its happening "naturally" sure don’t seem to be having issues with good hunting or quality deer…..just sayin......I put naturally in quotes because in reality its occurring because of how we released deer to begin with