Originally Posted By: Matt Brock

Originally Posted By: crenshawco


I'm still of firm belief that hunters harvesting gobblers has basically zero effect on turkey populations. Nesting success is far more important in my opinion and that is controlled by factors such as weather, predators, and habitat. There's not much that can be done about the weather, but the other two factors can be managed to an extent.

I did the daily hunter survey this year and recorded all of my hunts, but did not receive the email for this survey. I hope that it helps the state biologists make good decisions for the management of the state's population. I just hope that they remember that our 5 bird limit has been around for years and we continue to boast one of the largest turkey populations in the nation. With that being said, I don't see how they could justify reducing the limit.


Nest success can be negatively impacted if gobblers are harvested too soon. Personally, I think we have biological reasoning to shift some of the northern counties in the state back. North AL birds are still in winter flocks when south AL has already gone through spring green up and hens have already started nesting.

One thing to consider about the 5 bird limit. I'm not saying I'm for or against it. I'm in favor of allowing the take of as many as possible without losing hunter satisfaction or negatively impacting the resource. Heck I wish we could kill 10 a season. But obviously that's not very wise. We have more turkey hunters now than we did when the 5 bird limit started. We estimate fewer turkeys. Poult recruitment is declining statewide. If gobblers are being harvested before peak breeding by more hunters in a declining population I invite any of you to help me understand how that's not a negative scenario that will continue the decline. 5 birds may have been fine until we reached a certain threshold, and it may not be sustainable. These are some of the questions we have to answer and it is not easy. I think I've read or discussed nearly every mortality/survival, nest success, habitat use paper ever written on turkeys in the south. Some of these questions we can hopefully answer through the current research.


Matt, give us some actual numbers of percentage of hunters who kill a limit, until then discussing a limit reduction is pointless. Specifically with no way to enforce it. Habitat, predators, and possible disease are a much bigger issue to me, until the state presents some actual harvest data and kills per hunter. Until then, dropping the limit is simply a feel good mechanism