Edit: In Dickson, The Wild Turkey, Biology and Management, it is noted that while juvenile wild turkeys are not as fertile, this may be related to the presence of ADULT gobblers in the population. The lack of adults gobblers may allow a high percent of the juveniles to become sexually capable. Dickson notes that domestic juvenile gobblers are FULLY capable of breeding all the hens in a population and there is documentation of successful restocking using only hens and wild JUVENILE gobblers! Also documented was the servicing of up to 20 females by one juvenile gobbler indicating that very few males are necessary for maintaining the breeding of a population of hens.
My brother raises some 3/4 wild turkeys, rios. This past spring because he tom died, he was down to just one jake to do the breeding. I reminded him of what Williams wrote about the 28% viable sperm, and he was pleased to tell me that Williams was wrong because his jake was frequently breeding both of his hens.
As it tuned out, his hens laid a bunch of eggs, but not one egg was fertile.
Reducing the limit would simply be a scapegoat for lack of willpower to address the real problems with a turkey population. Got to be able to say your doing something to satisfy dull hunters.
Could be. But if I were in charge of making the hunting regs, there's enough uncertainty in all this to keep all options on the table and not assume too much.
But assuming 5% of hens in AL don't get bred from overkill of gobblers and not enough fertile jakes to take up the slack, how many poults would that cost AL every year? Assuming 300,000 turkeys in AL, and 2/3 being hens, that would be 10,000 hens unbred or unfertilized. Might be better off dropping the spring gobbler limit to 3 birds and opening up a two week long state-wide hen season instead.
That may be the case out west and in low population density areas, but AL does not qualify for either of those. I said it earlier in this thread and I'll say it again, I bet less than 5% of hens in AL go unbred in a spring.
I bet it is even lower than that - more like 1% in Alabama and it's not for a lack of available males.
I guess there is no way of knowing what the number really is.
But speaking of out west, I have a friend that actually caught a wild hen (in a wilderness area) that squatted for him. He was prospecting an area and a hen answered. The hen came right up to him and squatted. He stooped down and acted like he was strutting and she let him come right up to him.
Here's a photo of a squatting hen doing the same thing at an arheological dig.
None of us can know for sure how many hens do or don't get fertilized in any wild population. Seems like there are opportunities for studies out there. I think it sure would be useful to know that kind of data, but I don't know how they'd control a study like that.
