Here’s another area that I think likely had some native deer left with a Dec rut ……



I’ve talked to a Houston Co hunter who told me about native deer that were left there along the river and Dec was their rut date……You can see it still represented by the grey area in Houston Co on the state produced rut map….



I think it was just more pockets of the same natives that gives you the grey area represented in Barbour and Russell…..it probably should keep going on up into Lee……A lot of this area I circled ^^^^, especially the bottom 2/3’s, has your typical Jan rut as you would expect…… but if you look at the fetal samples that were taken from the area you have early outlier Dec does showing up all over the area…..

Allison Grant Property 6 samples….Dec 11 earliest conception
Alan Lane Property 7 samples…..Dec 25…..
Indian Creek 20 samples …..Dec 10……
Enon……8 samples….. Dec 27……..
Bickerstaff Plantation…. 43 samples Dec 18……
Rutherford….5 samples……Dec 5……
Mead……45 samples….Dec 10
Dudley…..5 samples……Dec 5

as well as others…..and its likely with Enon and the Alan Lane property that if you just did more sampling you would pick up some earlier Dec activity than what they are showing……I could put stars on the map above for the location where these samples were taken and it would basically fill up the circle……..Again, the earliest outlier out of all Clarke Co deer sampled where pretty much all of the restocking releases came from is Jan 12…….Those Dec outliers are not the Clarke Co does that were released in the surrounding areas……..

It seems like there’s some pockets in there where these native deer likely still existed when restocking occurred that still have a little higher concentration of them than other properties that just see a few stray anomalies…… It seems most pronounced in the northern end where I suspect the best pocket of native deer still existed……That seems to be a primary rut in that area…..Other areas like around Midway have a Jan rut but the hunters say “Oh yeah, we see a little chasing around Christmas sometimes too”…..

I’ve hunted several properties within this circle as well and have seen it first hand……It was like “Hey, I know our rut isnt until later in Jan but what’s up with that doe Ralphie seen getting chased on Dec 25th??”……I think those are descendants of native does that were left…..This is basically the same concept repeated as the one we talked about in Jackson Co and why I feel pretty confident that those deer are native descendants too…….

To take it a step further…..I think a lot of the “brown” area on the state rut map covering the southeastern counties like Bullock, Barbour, Pike, south Macon and probably on down into Dale and Henry…..is actually a little misleading……That area is dominated by Clarke Co does with a mid to late Jan rut but when you mix in Dec outliers into the numbers it brings the “average” down so its represented as brown when it probably really isnt.

You actually don’t start getting into the true early Jan “brown” area until you get into northern Macon above the interstate and on up toward Lake Martin where those Sumter and Marengo releases occurred……There were some Clarke Co releases in that area as well but the early Jan rut seems more pronounced as you move up into areas like Northern Elmore Co around Eclectic and Central etc...……Either last year or year before I got a whole wad of calls all in a row from that same area in early Jan with bucks chasing…..It’s likely that this area to the north of the interstate has early and late Jan does mixed and does are coming into heat all month long……just with a higher percentage on the front end of Jan……You really don’t see that same early Jan rut activity south of the interstate where only Clarke Co does were released

Eddie is that you in a CNC costume?

😂

A big chunk of chilton cnty has the dec 25-Jan 8 rut but it’s shown as Jan 9 on. I can tell you for a fact the map has holes in it.

Id love to to know where they pulled the samples in elmore. I know its got to be pretty close to me .

The holes are where data has never been collected.

I’m in SE AL, 3.5 miles from Columbia/Chattahoochee. Fawns start dropping here around July 4th. Bigger bucks are on camera searching right now. Smaller bucks still together. I’ve always said the rut happens the last 2 weeks of December with does being cleaned up through January

According to the restocking map Chilton Co didn’t have any release sites……There’s actually a pretty good size hole there extending into multiple counties around Chilton where no restocking occurred……It may have been that there was native deer left around the Coosa River as well……I think there was likely a reason why the folks who did the restocking chose the areas they did and didn’t……. and the places where there are big holes or gaps without restocking sources are probably your most likely places where some native deer could have still existed

I bet back when there were native deer across the whole landscape the only area with a true late Jan rut was just the southwest corner……If you wanted to make a map of what the rut probably looked like for native deer then around that southwest corner you would have had a brown strip that was “X” amount of miles wide that arced around the southwest corner from northern Sumpter/Perry through about Autauga/Lowndes or so around and down to Coffee/Geneva area….then everything east and north of that the rut moved back into late Dec and kept gradually moving back until by the time you got to 2dogs in Jackson Co with the native river deer it was mid Dec……

Those folks down there in the extreme southwestern counties like Baldwin and Mobile had a legitimate gripe about their rut not peaking until early Feb after the old season closed…….You probably really need to add one more layer to the states rut map down there where the peak of the rut is the first week of Feb

Send a PM to Whildbill......I think he may have sampled those.....