Found a brand new buck rub, just made...

[stiab]

Deer season ended here in NC on Jan 1, and with the warm weather it has been a good time to do some scouting in the woods around my house where I deer hunt. I was very surprised on Monday (Jan 7) to find a new deer rub on a hardwood about the diameter of a tennis ball. There are plenty of rubs around from earlier in the season, but this one was new with shiny moist wood, and the small pieces of bark and dust still clinging to the tree that you can brush off with your finger. We had two inches of rain back on Dec 30 that would have washed all that small stuff off, so the rub had to be made about the 1st week of Jan. This seems strange to me for this late in the year [deer year, not calendar year ], what do you think?

 

[Selfdfenz]

I had a warden once tell me fawns are born in NC every month of the year. While I didn't believe it at first, thinking back over the years I've seen fawns of all sizes throughout the year here in NC. Especially when I had horses and was out on horse pack day in and out.

If deer are born at different times of the year why couldn't other elements of their physiology vary?

S-

 

[Zeke/PA]

My Buddy and I found three fresh rubs and a bunch of scrapes while hunting in Maryland on Saturday Jan.5.
The game people tell us that the rut while waning is not over just yet.
The claim is that female fawns born in early spring 2007 are now sexually mature and "in heat".
Hence a fawn born in July or later is a possibility.
Zeke

 

[stiab]

I've seen fawns of all sizes throughout the year here in NC

I think you may be right. I saw more deer activity in the last two weeks of Dec than at any other time in our gun season (mid-Oct to year end), and I was out there most of the time. I know there were first year deer with gray/brown coats in Oct when a friend in the Raleigh city limits was sending me trail camp pics of spotted fawns in his back yard. It causes me to question a lot of the conventional deer hunting wisdom I have read and heard over the years.

 

[oklahoma caveman]

also any does that were not bred the first time come back in a month later i think. the time may vary as im not sure on that. but around here it does cause a "secondary rut". usually in mid december to the first of january. i have found scrapes on christmas day that were extremely fresh

 

[Selfdfenz]

When I was a kid the seasons were better defined. It used to be colder and we had lots of snow during the winter here in the 50's and 60's but snow is a little on the rare side these days. Freezing rain we got however.
We now have some pretty warmish weather more than a few days in the winter. Today is an example. El Nino or El Nina [can't remember which] is impacting our rainfall in NC of that I'm sure. I'm no man-is-the-reason-for- global-warming believer and surely photo period, nutrition and other factors may have an impact on rut but these temperature and weather changes probably flatten out the peak. Who knows, maybe NCWRC will stretch the season.

I agree on the game cam comments. Some probably do use their's successfully to pattern deer they later harvest but it doesnt work that way for me. What it does work very well for is find out about all kinds of critters that live where I hunt and come up on the back porch I was not aware of. Just this year alone I could see three sets of fawns that were all very different size-wise. A couple that showed up in the evening at the feeders during open season were just little trinkets they were so small.

Best

S-