late rut last year in va questions
 

just out of curiosity have any of you here in va seen or noticed fresh born fawns lately. i was talking to a guy that works for the vdgif and he told me that last year we had a real late second rut due to the warm january and that there would be alot of late fawns this year and on the farm we were coyote huntin the other night and we saw a set of twins that were tiny and still doing the lay down thing and could barely move. they were healthy but still in that mode where they dont have their runnin legs yet. and a couple weeks ago we saw another small fry. and i was wondering if anyone else noticed the same things

RE: late rut last year in va questions
 

yeah I have seen quite a few of them myself over the last month

RE: late rut last year in va questions
 

Sounds like there may be an over population of does in the area. In 6 or 8 months those doe fawns will breed and the cycle will be even more messed up. At least that is what seems to have happened in our area. Now it is common to see little fawns even in Nov or Dec.

RE: late rut last year in va questions
 

That's pretty common where i hunt as well. If they are real late(young) they probably won't cycle this year. We harvest lots of does off of our piece to try to balance it out. A doe can come into heat and not get pregnant and usually shewill continue to cycle about every 30 days til she takes.

RE: late rut last year in va questions
 

i dont think its an over population problem cause we use our dmap damage tags every year and we also take alot of does with our regular tags and i bring people out to take care of does and have been for about 5 years hard and heavy now and the ratio on the farm seems to be good but alot of weird things have been going on this year such as this is the first year weve had coyotes and bears and we have already lost 6 calves now this year to the yotes. and we have already killed 14 this year. but these fawns are tiny tiny guys. they still have the baby hair. real thick and bushy. it beats all ive seen. but last night while on yote patrol we had about 60 deer under the lights in about 4 hours. it was crazy. and from what we could tell the ration was pretty good if i were to guess id say it was like 5 to 1 which is incredible for fauqier county considering ive heard of the average being like 15 to 1. i dont know what to say. weird stuff goin on

RE: late rut last year in va questions
 

Noticed some similar things here in the piedmont area too. We were seeing bucks with headgear later in the year as well. I know in the area I hunt there are definatelytoo many doe. On the lease I'm in, we do our part and take several doe each season. The problem lies with the areas surrounding us....some of these guys absolutely refuse to take a doebuthave no problem shooting a spike.[:@] Just does not make sense to me.

RE: late rut last year in va questions
 

your by orange huh? i used to hunt there and there are way too many does

RE: late rut last year in va questions
 

Hunted the western part of the state last year and the yotes were a real threat. One kid there had killed 65 that year. At 25 bucks a head he was doing pretty good.:DSaw 2 in the back of a pickup opening day of rifle season. One sheep farmer gave it up after loosing 2 herds. I didn't think the rut was that late. A couple weeks maybe. You guys just have a lot of game. I hate to ever say that there areto many deer but there are parts of the state that seem to have some over population problems.

RE: late rut last year in va questions
 

I've lived & hunted in Fauquier most of my life, have always seen a few doe have a late cycle. Maybe more of those fawns are surviving because of the mild winters that we have been having.

I think the coyotes are here to stay, maybe they can thin out some of the fox's, since we can't hunt them in Fauquier.

RE: late rut last year in va questions
 

I think VA DGIF is going to make an open season for coyote year round on public land, starting next year or maybe even this year.