Come on with it Matt, we need to hear it.

Southwood, there are several theories floating around, none of which do I really subscribe to yet. I think it's a combination of two late winter snow storms, spring arriving 7-10 days later than normal, and it has rained 5-6 days a week for the last several weeks. I personally have a hard time understanding how those factors could result in what so many people have seen, not only in AL, but several other SE states as well.

My primary property that usually produces 4-6 dead birds every season, I have not heard or seen a single gobbler on all year. Not one. I had 7-9 long beards on camera in winter. I've only seen two hens on that property. This same scenario is being repeated in nearly every county statewide. I've been asked by multiple hunters if I think we have lost them to disease. I don't think so. Turkeys were everywhere in the winter. If turkeys died on a large population level in large areas you'd find their remains.

In my opinion some environmental factor has told turkeys it's a good idea to keep quiet this year and break their normal routine. I finally killed my first bird of the year Wednesday morning. I was about to go insane. I've only sat down and called to one bird all year.

Once again, thanks for the insight. Hopefully this year will be just an anomoly. I personally plan on throwing out 40lbs of scratch feed and cracked corn and running a couple cameras after the season and take an inventory to see how many birds are really hanging around.

Gobbling was definitely down for me this year but I still saw a lot of birds and had some great hunts. A lot of people in my area reported a poor hatch last year but we held a huge winter flock of birds and had a ton of little ones too. I also saw several swarms of jakes running around so next year looks promising.

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.

This is EXACTLY what happened in TN in 2006 and 2007..... We are still trying to figure out what happens to them. They went silent becuase they died.

Yek, so you are saying that several years ago people reported the same thing in areas of TN, and the birds have still not recovered?

Yep, I went from having hundreds of birds on the places I hunt to having a handful in a couple years. I'm not exaggerating the hundreds either. There was a gobbling bird on every ridge. It happened on all of my properties in the 2 counties I hunted at the time, which was about 5000 acres at the time. I have great habitat, food, low predators, and never found the first carcass. I've been to several meetings with the state where they were asking the public for help. They are still setting up at check stations and getting samples even this year. They didn't leave or someone else would have them, they died and haven't rebounded any where I'm at. There is a 4 county area in southern middle TN where it happened and it has also happened in the north alabama counties that border those TN counties.

Matt, on a statewide level, how would you rate the nesting success over the past 2 or 3 years?

Same question to you Brandon in the years leading up to the decline in your area

I wonder if closing hunting after noon or shortening the season would make a difference in nest success. I know this year, I have not found a nest, but last year, I found 2 before April 14th, and found 3, 2 seasons ago after April 15th. I haven't been in the woods more than once a week since the first 8 days because of work, but nobody I hunt with has found a nest either. Also, we have almost 5,000 acres, and have only seen 1 jake all season. This past August and September we saw young birds everywhere when filling up deer feeders, but they just vanished. It's very strange.

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.

On our property we saw very few turkeys during deer season. We usually see them every hunt. Spring rolls around and the turkeys are still not there. We went from a great population to very few.

We don't really monitor nest success. We do a statewide poult recruitment survey in the summer to get a poult:hen ratio. It's declining statewide. South AL is still holding pretty close to 2 poults:hen. We like to see it at that level or higher. Other areas of the state are seeing less than 1.5 poults:hen. That is not very good. And it appears a significant percentage of hens are either not nesting at all or losing their first nest and not attempting a second. The radiotelemetry and gps study should help us understand nest success better.

That's good info Matt, thanks. I haven't ever really hunted the northern 1/3 of the state so I have very little input or knowledge of what's going on up there. I hear the complaints and struggles here on aldeer from folks up there but I just haven't seen it where I hunt at all. I guess I have somewhat of a narrow scope of things.

I would like to see them go to the TN dates for the season. Give the turkeys the month of March to get the bulk of their breeding done and then hunt them til the middle of May.

I relate it a lot to habitat management , predators , mother nature . Personally I have heard birds every hunt in 3 different counties and seen a large amount of birds , I also witnessed coyotes surrounding a gobbler on the roost gobbling his head off. Never seen anything like it as a result it took 3 hours to settle him down and get him in gun range .

Birds can be seasonal on your properties in the fall they live on your place in the spring there on your neighbors fresh burn or clover plots .

Blessed, you're correct. Turkeys winter and spring ranges can be more than 15 miles apart. But I've talked to numerous individuals this year who hold turkeys in the spring that are not this year. I would include myself in that category. We have done more planting and management for turkeys than ever before. We have fewer turkeys than ever before. It's not normal to go from killing multiple turkeys on a property to there being no physical evidence of their existence.

Where I hunt, I'm pretty sure the birds are still there, just not as vocal for some reason.

I hunt two properties in Monroe County. One is 1200 acres that I've hunted for 6 springs. Never have had more than a handful of turkeys on it, usually good for 1 or 2 turkeys. I've not heard a gobble on it, saw one this spring. No sign at all. The other is 5500 acres of some of the best turkey hunting/population I've been a part of over the same time frame. Not unusual to hear 5-6 birds from a good vantage point. Very little hunting pressure on it so only 10 or so shot on it a year. Always tons of birds all over it. And they gobbled good. This year only one section of the property has had any real gobbling(about 800 acres of it), and very little sign. Also, the turkeys that do gobble don't start gobbling until good daylight. Just FYI for thought from my part of the world, haha.