Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Alabama Rut - 3 Month Irregular Rut Mapped & Explained

If a doe in heat walks a few hours from the one small red zone into the grey zone, does she not get serviced? If she does get serviced and gives birth to two does, does the mother or father determine when they when they will go into estrous? Damn my head hurts.

I think this is why it remains so disjointed. Does have small home ranges, bucks roam. Sure, some deer will swim across deep and wide rivers, but I'd think most does never find a reason to do so. Hence the Tennessee, Tombigbee, and Chatahoochee rivers pretty well contain the state's does. Then on smaller levels all you ever have is some blending on the edges of doe populations, with the geographic cores of those initial restocks being very, very slow to grow if it all.

Not a biologist but I'd think that accounts for most of the weirdness. Their really is no explanation outside of that down here when on one side of the Chatahoochee they rut in November and on the other side in January.

You’re welcome Mirage, glad to help out 😉. Strangely all my local friends consider deer just ‘goats with antlers,’ and don’t mind us shooting a couple now and then. When it comes to turkeys though, it’s hands off!

Thats for sure.

This has the most sense of any of the statements I've read...the first thing I thought was this guy has feather for brains...I'm really only familiar with DeKalb mostly and the rut is ALWAYS ear the end of season which is 2/10! Different strain of deer for sure....ymmv

I have hunted in Alabama all my life; and the variance in the rut is interesting here. I now hunt in Wilcox county; green area. I just hunted 5 days 1/18-1/22 and the rut is wide open; will typically continue into Feb. Probably 40 buck sightings in 40 hours on stand; chasing, tending, cruising, grunting. Cold and windy conditions; for the most part.
I used to hunt a WMA on the Shelby/Bibb county line near my home and rut is mid-December. Only slightly to the east and 80 miles south of my Wilcox camp.
This one had been tending a doe for 2 days.

Hunted the 15th thru the 19th this year. They were chasing but not as hard as previous years. This one came out for a snack at 3pm and stayed close to the treeline for 5 minutes and was on edge the whole time. I killed one 3 years ago same place and a half hour later who was chasing . Go figure

Oldelkhunter, Nice buck! You may have been a couple days early. I just got home from West Butler Co. It's really ramped up there the past few days. A lot of bucks seen, but none interested in eating. They are up and moving good for our area. I killed one this morning that had been chasing hard. I'll be back up there in a few days. Should be good from here on out!

Thank You, yeah I had the feeling that they were about to kick in overdrive and they had cooler weather then we had for sure.

Add on to this topic.....

I'm in the northeast corner of the state. Things usually start up around Christmas to mid-January here. This past Wednesday night 3/4, driving home, I clipped a young buck crossing a highway....he appeared to be chasing a doe. I can't say for sure but the doe crossed first running and he was right behind her.

Same morning my father watched a "monster" (and he's not one to exaggerate) buck chasing 2 does on his land. He said he watched the buck chasing for ~5 minutes across pastures. It was enough time for him to go get bino's and call my mom in to watch as well.

I watched the local group of does that frequent my land off and on through the season. I kept waiting to see some chasing. In February they still had this years fawns by their side....usually once it starts the young ones get driven off momma and we see the young ones wondering looking a bit lost. We've often seen young ones hanging out with our goats when they get separated. At any rate, we never saw it this year and at the end of the season 4 does still had this years fawns by their side (2 had twins).

I'm guessing it's due to a very uneven ratio of bucks to does in the area. Everyone hunts and very few of the local people will pass up a buck regardless of it's size if they see one by chance.....many of them will never shoot a doe. It really wouldn't stand out that much to me if it appeared to be one buck chasing a single doe that was missed the first couple of rounds but 2 different bucks chasing (or appearing to be chasing) really caught my attention.

+1. I agree. The map is retry accurate from my exerience in hunting several different counties in the state.

Alabama bucks are fuqked up, I think they've had the Corona for years and we just didn't know it.

Interesting! Thanks for the report.

I've seen 2 coues bucks over 90" rutting does hard here in southern AZ still in the past few weeks, one as few as 3 days ago.

Not Alabama but figure it's be cool to mention on this thread...

Our rut was weird this year and I'm convinced there were more does bred during the second and even third cycles this year rather than the first....

I concur. I have hunted 2 large properties in the past 20 years about 40 miles apart in the same county and it is tough to pinpoint the rut. I have seen some rutted up late December and early February. Friends that live on the property see them chasing well into February.

Excuse me for finding a huge bit of humor here...

It has been long established a single factor has more to do with rut timing than anything else. Anyone trying to put hard dates on a calendar as rut times is clueless, period.

Unbred does will go back into rut one or two times, at least, if they fail to breed the first round.

Amazingly, the timing for these "ruts" is very regular and reliable.

I have zero doubt the map has found a difference in rut timing, but rounding off errors and anecdotal weighting of evidence has created a joke.

Have a lot of respect for you and your experience. Unfortunately, this posts shows your lack of experience hunting in Alabama. Deer do in fact rut at different time frames here. Northern part of the state is Late November / early December. Lower Ala can can be late Jan/early Feb. Several different areas in the state with different ruts. Been deer hunting for around 40 years and have seen it repeatedly.

The know it all Alaskan knows more about properties we've all been hunting for 30+ years than we do. Ever been to Alabama? I forget, we're all ignorant down here. Thanks SD for educating us.

You just flat don't know what you're talking about.

Our turkey season started today, and I will guarantee you that somewhere over the next few weeks I will see a buck chasing a doe somewhere on one of the different places I hUnt here in Alabama. It happens every year. I hunt at least 3 different ruts here within a 100 miles of each other, two different ruts about 6 weeks apart within 35 miles of each other.

What an absolute-phu*king-gift to be an expert at, and on, everything.