Are there any areas of Jackson Co that are chasing right now?

I’m in Paint Rock Valley. Our is usually the Teen days of January.

In-laws live just north of the line. Christmas week is usually theirs.

The data we collected for years was in January. Exact timing varied across the county but January was the primary month.

What about around Bridgeport?

Should be a little earlier up near Bridgeport.

Should be about a week away for some chasing to begin in central Jackson, Hytop and upper PRV areas . Peak breeding for those areas is very early Jan.

I forgot I had the conception date study data saved…….For Jackson Co I'm showing 6 locations where samples were taken….These were the earliest breeding dates sampled for each location

Bridgeport……Dec 21
Gulf Coon Tract…..Dec 14
Hales Cove – Jones…..Jan 3
Waterfowl WMA…… Dec 20
Letson Point……Dec 22
TVA Belfonte……..Dec 11

The reason I was asking is because if there were native deer still left in the area when restocking happened they should have had a mid to late Dec rut date……If that’s the case then the way it looks is that they most likely existed around the river in the northeast corner…..If you look at the Jones tract they sampled 152 does and their earliest outlier was Jan 3…….That kinda leads me to believe that those mid December does in the other areas didn’t come from the same stocking source.....Some of those other locations like the GC tract only had like 5-10 does sampled and were already picking up mid Dec does.....

If there was a pocket of native deer left along the river then that would make sense why you see the Dec does being sampled in the locations the study shows…..If a pocket of does along the river began to expand into a bigger population, it likely wouldn’t grow outwardly in a perfect circle…..It would be more likely that they would expand their population up and down the river corridor first.

I’m on Sand Mt. we have some rut activity going on right now . If you draw a line up from Hollywood or Belfonte our location is about there .

Yep. Native north AL deer are December breeders. Much of the stocking sources were January breeders. Although peak breeding takes place in January in the majority of the county, it’s still not uncommon to have a percentage of does come into estrous in December. It really gets messy near Red Stone where native deer from north of the river and introduced deer from south AL have 30-50 days between rut timing.

I’ve lived 54 years between Bridgeport and Stevenson and that data is very accurate. Yes they are chasing and Dec 15-Christmas is prime time.

My experience is early January but I haven’t hunted much up there in December and am not surprised at all to learn there’s a lot of December action. I got an eight point a few years ago that was completely worn out from what I discerned as constant chasing, fighting and breeding

There are native genes in Central Jackson Co. along the river per Chris Cook. He told me that himself . They showed up on Bellefonte studies, he said I should have them on my place. I don't think they were found anywhere else .
Keep in mind, CNC 's dates show the earliest dates recorded, the full study chart should should show peak breeding week to 10 days later. Those dates are not at the top of the Bell Curve for peak breeding in areas I'm familiar with. We must remember , young bucks chasing and peak breeding period is two totally different things. The bulk of fawns hit the ground in Central Jackson, upper Skyline and upper PRV the third week of July. Doing the math , that's a good indicator of when peak breeding is .
IMO, the bulk of Jackson Co's crazy breeding stems from the 3 or 4 locations they were stocked from plus at least one area does in fact have native genes. I would also believe extreme North Jackson got some influence from TN deer. It all makes for good discussion , but that's bout it.
In Jackson County, all this thinking could make a fellers brain hurt. Just use the Raw Hide method ' don't try and understand em, just rope em, throw em and brand em.'

Didn't the Jones farm restocking animals come from a different area in LA than Skyline and North Sand Mt? Also Skyline had at least two deer releases and I can't remember if both groups originated from the same location. Like I said up stream ,I'll make yer head hurt .

The Jones farm should be a release from Marengo Co……There was another release from Marengo somewhere on the north end of Paint Rock Valley……There was a Clarke Co release about 10 miles to the east of that…….and then a Sumter Co release just south of the river near Flatrock……

The Marengo and Sumter deer are probably going to have early January rut dates……the Clarke Co will have late January rut dates and the native deer along the river will have mid to late Dec dates assuming that all of those releases reproduced successfully……I would bet that most of your native does on the north side of the river are between the river and hwy 72…..Just like I was drawing out the map in the other thread on “the rut in some areas”…..you’re going to have places where these different stockings merged together

Something to keep in mind about those locations that are showing Dec dates is that they only sampled a handful of deer on most of them….like 5-10 deer…….Had they sampled 150 like on the Jones farm you would have likely gotten some earlier outliers and a better idea of what the bell curve actually looks like…..The data above may have Dec 20 as the earliest date but it may actually be like Dec 10 or something…..I would imagine those are all the same native stock

The corridor between the TN river and Hwy 72 from Scottsboro to the State line is only 2 - 5 miles wide. I feel safe in saying those genes are North of 72 and South of the river on Sand Mt.
Why the interest in pre, peak breeding ? It's all relative to peak breeding anyway.

It ought to look something similar to the map below just depending on how far those native deer expanded down the river to the south before merging with the Jones farm releases…..We also need a little better idea of what happened to those Jan does near Flat rock……They may not have made it or that area could be a blend of native does and early Jan Marengo does…..It seems like the further you go south of the river into Dekalb Co the earlier the rut gets…..

That early Jan green area probably keeps going on into Marshall Co too although they also released some late Jan does from Clarke Co in there as well that will muddy the waters a little….It looks like those were released on the Guntersville State Park so they may have remained fairly isolated only expanding out toward south sauty and that area….That area probably has a mix of early and late Jan does

There probably are some to the north of 72 but I'm assuming that it took a long time for the river corridor to expand past their carrying capacity to start causing those deer to push out of the river bottom.....The other releases probably merged with them before they had a chance to do so......

We could probably make a real rut map using the data available along with Aldeer member observations……You can see that this one they put out has a long ways to go in order to show what’s really occurring…..This was only beginning to scratch the surface………You can see how Jackson Co is probably a good bit different than what they’re showing……