Another 15 miles north into Tn they have traditional November rut. The dividing line is state line north into Tn. Where 24 cuts thru Marion county TN is pretty close to dividing line.

The interstate very well may be the dividing line…….

Speaking of interstates and talking about how far the native river deer might have gone south……Just looking at the fetal study data if you keep going south past Coach then you have does from Sequoya Caverns with mid to late December conception dates too….Interstate 59 is probably the dividing line of where those deer ran into the south Alabama restockings……

The fetal study data in Lebanon (Dekalb Co) which is close to a south Alabama release location between Ft Payne and Collinsville….. shows mid Jan conception dates……I’m guessing that those native river deer expanded out across the mountain at least to Sequoya caverns and eventually merged with those south Alabama restockings in Dekalb Co……Habitat would have been a big factor in that expansion route across the mountain

Well........ just going by the observations and the fetal study data……the mid to late December area should look kinda like that now…..Heck, I think I was pretty close to begin with…..The stars are fetal study locations that show mid Dec conception dates along with Ridgstalker’s and Coach’s personal observations.......Where ever Johnny Creek is at in Dekalb Co also had a mid Dec doe sampled….

At some location down there to the southwest they are going to merge with the Jan restockings in Dekalb Co and at Guntersville State Park….The blue line may be pushing up further north into those coves above Scottsboro as well…. You may have some overlapping and intermingling up in there……Letson point actually has a Dec 22 doe in the study but they only had five deer sampled so its hard to know for sure at what rate any Dec river does may have pushed back that far up into those coves….. A lot of this is where you get those stories of a guy seeing a doe being chased way ahead of when they are suppose to be chasing

Still gotta account for what happened to those Sumter Co deer released on the south side of the river east of Stevenson….Like I said before, that river corridor may have a combination of both native Dec does and restocked Jan does…..Those fetal study locations along the river also show their latest samples as being Jan 26, Jan 25 and Jan 23…..Those could be second cycle Dec does or they could be the primary estrous dates for some Jan releases……I’m gonna say you probably got a mixture of both in there to some degree……..native and Sumpter does……We need to sample about 100-150 up and down the river to see what the ratio looks like though…….

2dogs here’s the part that I think you’re probably not getting…….respectfully.

If we go down there to Marengo or Clarke or Sumpter Co where those Jackson Co stockings came from….those deer have one pure rut with all the does across a large area being on the same bell curve……So for example if we sampled does in Clarke Co you would find them all having a late Jan rut with the bell curve running from Jan 19 to Feb 6…..and you would have some degree of a few stray outliers that occurred that would be like Jan 12….Feb 11…. etc……If we sample enough of those deer we can establish a pretty good graph of their estrous dates…..

Now if we take those deer and restock them into a different area then we would expect to find the same range when we sampled them later on…..However, if we start sampling and we suddenly find does showing up at Belafonte and the Coon Gulf Tract with Dec 15 conception dates and Dec 18….etc…..then we have to start thinking that those deer didn’t come from our south Alabama restocks because we’ve already established that those does don’t have outliers that far out……If you look at the fetal study data for Clarke, Marengo, and Sumpter counties…..there are ZERO outliers that occur any earlier than the first week of Jan out of over 200 samples……If they’re breeding in December then they likely didn’t come from those south Alabama sources....The Jones property at Hales Cove has taken over 150 samples and show the earliest outlier at Jan 3......Those are south Alabama deer....they're not the same does as along the river with Dec dates