Waiting on CNC to chime in with his dissertation...

I’m trying to figure out where everyone is coming up with the thought process that things became “diluted”, or how does that work?

Throw a Whamo in th' Mix--------Mr. Stimpson from Southwest Alabama built a Compound for Deer....Brought in from Michigan. HE gave MANY to th' state for Re-Stocking.

My guess would be that those Michigan restockings in southwest Alabama all died out probably due to not acclimating well to the environment in some form or fashion..... None of the sampling shows estrous outliers for those areas

Does the State just use the Insurance Companies DATA collected on the increase in vehicle vs deer killed to set the peak rut?

Does the State just use the Insurance Companies DATA collected on the increase in vehicle vs deer killed to set the peak rut?

Nothing is really diluted. Most of AL was either restocked with AL deer (mostly Sumter, Marengo and Clarke counties) OR sources from several other states, some of which include Wisconsin, Michigan and several other sources with very small numbers. The majority of restocking took place on a very small scale, with single or double digit releases. Those populations were likely, supported by the evidence, overcome by natural expansion of our own native deer. After all, released deer don’t usually stay where they are released. They move, and in some cases over one hundred miles. The Bankhead population remained geographically isolated for so long, that the natural expansion of native southern deer did not reach them until much more recently. There were also 101 of those deer released initially in 1925 and 1926, resulting in a population that has retained the genetic similarities of their stocking source for 98 years. I don’t know how long that will last, but there’s been a tremendous increase in deer populations around Bankhead over the last 30 years, mostly from natural expansion of native deer. Right now, in 2024, most of the state has native deer that originated from populations in AL, with few exceptions. Lauderdale Co, Lawrence and Winston counties, Tuscaloosa, Bibb and Hale counties, the area around Chocolocco, and Russell county have some influences from other sources with earlier breeding dates. Other than that, most deer in AL are from AL. It’ll be interesting to see if these populations come closer to an AL average conception, or have two distinct conception periods, which is what they seem to have now. Even on Bankhead, there’s not a mixing of breeding dates. There’s deer that come into estrous in November and early December, and others later. If the two were influencing one another, it would make sense that the earlier breeders would start coming into estrous later and the later does coming into estrous earlier, but that’s not the case.

Since this has been brought up, I've had an interest in this subject for quite sometime(specifically in Bankhead) and I was hoping you could clarify a few things for me?

1. Were you the biologist over Black Warrior when the the breeding date study was done?
2. How and where were the does/fetuses collected?
3. Did the study have any direct or indirect effects on the rules, seasons and bag limits shortly after the study? If so how?

So yall harvested the deer yourselves, interesting.
What was the sample size do you remember?
Also what is the procedure for aging a fetus? What I mean is; what features or indicators do biologist look for too get age and how accurately can it be done?

Is this type of study documentation availiable to the public?

I know my questions may seem odd but I've personally seen chasing out there from Oct. all the way into Jan...It has always intrigued me how the genetics haven't been diluted more over the past 100 years....However It does seem like I've noticed the peak rut activity creeping to a later period over the past 10 years or so but maybe that's just hunter or observation bias as biologist like to call it...idk. What's your thoughts on that?