I've got the numbers. I can't post every release in the state. PM what releases you want to know.

interesting Thanks...great post

Apparently some folks used to like to talk about this stuff more than they do now… ….I agree with BSK that natural selection should take effect and choose breeding dates for the best fawn survival within each isolated pocket…….However, that does not mean that in every situation that there WILL be some overriding factor having that much ifluence……Without any influence of this type to alter the breeding patterns then you would get deer continuing to follow the original stocking breeding dates because there would be nothing to change it…….This gives you the possibility of both situations happening where some area may be changed through natural selection and others not. At this point in the game I would think coyotes would be the major factor impacting fawn survival across the board and their presence should have a tendency to choose for conformity…..Meaning that the most likely fawns to live are the ones who hit the ground during peak fawning and the more likely ones to be taken out are the outliers born when there are few fawns. Coyotes should help to tighten the breeding dates within an isolated pocket through natural selection.

Damn, this thread was from 2016.

Something else when it comes to the idea of natural selection having an impact over time that shouldn’t go overlooked is that the major highways are heavily “selecting” for certain doe groups……..They are heavily selecting for does that don’t use both sides of the highway as a home range……Not just a little bit either but 365 days out of the year non-stop its selecting for this. This is not to mention the tendency deer have to use major edges like this as boundaries……Overtime this really sets up a situation of isolating doe populations and then just like BSK said you have the potential for natural selection within each isolated population to effect breeding dates

2013

One of the dates says from 2013

This is how this concept should be playing out over time though this is just a guess. I used the extreme examples of two populations overlapping with distinct differences which we definitely do have playing out across the state……but there is also likely places where differences have or are forming but it may not be so pronounced…..like one side peaking Jan 10-18 and the other Jan 20-28 for example. It would be challenging for a hunter in one of these situations to make a good assessment based solely off of what he is seeing while hunting.

...Got me too...

Damn y'all are awful jumpy..... ...... I wasnt trying to "get" anybody.......I was looking for the restocking map and came across the old discussion.....What I'm talking about falls right in line with it and gives a very good possible explanation for what we see across the state


Sure do miss Ol' BSK being around......

WGDfarm23……..Here’s an illustration of why I think you see what you do in your area…….If you look at the restocking map there was heavy restocking done to the northwest…….Once upon a time these restocking merged and overlapped with the river deer and caused this area of variance like in the illustration above to likely run right through where you hunt……You have to believe that as time has gone on these major highways have had more and more influence over isolating doe populations…….Just imagine how much more highway traffic we have these days than 50 years ago……What I think likely happened in your situation is that it has basically isolated you within a bunch of variance and there is no overriding environmental factor to change and alter that. This whole "square" may see a great deal of variance

There’s some aspect of this that seems like physics to me in that there are “laws” of sorts at play here and when you look at what we know about how things are playing out then there are some things that you can deduce from that as having to be true in order for it to unfold a this way……One of the main “laws” in this that I think HAS to be true is that the female lineages are solely dictating rut timing….

Another thing we need to consider is that the idea of “diluting down” these rut timing traits is completely false. That is not at all how evolution works…….These traits either die out or get killed out but they don’t get diluted……

Now look at this map the state has put out and the area we are talking about…….Just at first glance looking at this you would think that there are multiple ruts in this area……What I think you are really looking at there with that shading is actually the variance in the sampling really similar to the drawing I made…..remember they are showing the “average" conception date…….The reason the map gets redder around the river is because the sampling data is likely more conformed or tighter…….If you look at how all these populations are playing out across the state with that dart board type pattern of buffering…….I think this is the same concept that is likely playing out on various scales and in a LOT more in depth manner around the state than what the DCNR has mapped……They’ve collected enough data though to see the pattern forming. I think the reality is that you could break it down into isolated subsets like I’ve shown that are delineated by major roads, rivers, and habitat fragmentation……keeping in mind that there may be subtle variations between two areas of isolation but you should still get this same dart board type gis buffering pattern that moves from conformity in the center to higher variability on the fringes.

Isn't your map/sketch upside down?

If that road is U.S. Hghy 431 wouldn't the November be on the right and January rut on the left??




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Correct but I was really just creating a generalized example.......

To give you an idea of how the map probably should look……Look on the last map I posted at the green dot they drew in Macon Co……Keep in mind now that the state can only do so much sampling…..They see though in there data enough difference to distinguish this area from brown…..What is probably playing out realistically on the ground is that the green area should extend to these major highways with a buffer of higher variance around the edges if there is any differences around it. That green area is actually larger than they show it….. These buffer zones aren’t just breaking randomly in the woods somewhere…..It would only make sense that any intermingling “buffer zones” would be around a major roads, rivers, or major habitat breaks. Now break the state down into all the isolated subsets and sample them and you would have an accurate picture…..it would be quite the mosaic.

I would be interested if MBrock has a condensed set of data from the releases that he can post in its entirety now considering there has been 8 years between these posts.

He's probably busy shopping for a new dress......

Here’s something else that should hold true as it concerns natural selection selecting for rut dates and the idea of “dilution” being false……..Let’s use our green area of Macon Co I highlighted above as our example……Let’s say we hypothetically take 25 does out of Bankhead Forest all with tight November breeding dates and we transplant them into the center of our green Macon Co area. So next year that is going to give us most of our fawns in the green area dropping at the end of August but we also have the ones from our transplanted 25 that drop in late June……Now to show how natural selection would impact this and not "dilution"......I'm just making this up but lets just say that coyotes drop their pups around the end of July and after having their pups they heavily increase hunting for new fawns to feed their pups…….So fawn predation after they have their pups is much, much higher than before…….In this scenario natural selection would start choosing for a higher survival rate of the female offspring of the 25 we transplanted that are born in late June and their November rut timing would begin to grow outward from the epicenter of the release area in a slow replacement process. Now, lets just say that this difference in coyote predation didn’t exist…..again I just made this situation up to represent an environmental influence……but if there was nothing to differentiate fawn survival like this then what would likely happen would be that the Nov estrous does would remain very isolated and their lines eventually may die out because their few fawns would be such outliers when they dropped and the only ones on the ground at the time.

Interesting map. Thanks for sharing.