Since the predator thread turned into a discussion of this, I'd sure like for someone to enlighten me as to how a lower spring gobbler limit is gonna actually increase the overall turkey population? And also some real facts as to how a later season is gonna help?

What I have learned at Auburn and thru personal experience is that it takes very few gobblers to breed the hens. Gobbler said there is research of a single gobbler breeding more than 20 hens in one day. I was surprised that one gobbler could accomplish that, but gobbler don't lie. So how can killing some of the gobblers before all of the hens are bred make any difference in the population? Research has shown that a hen needs to be bred only once to remain fertile for the season, so what is the issue? The only way that more gobblers will result in higher reproduction is if you have a place where all the gobblers are killed before all the hens are bred. I am sure that doesn't happen in any place I hunt in AL because I always hear gobbling until the end of the season and after. It just defies common sense to me.

In all my classes at Auburn, and all the meetings and such that I've been to, I've never heard any Auburn professor express concern that there are not enough gobblers to breed the hens. This seems to me to be an idea that is completely out-of-state in its origin. Maybe there are places in the USA where this is a problem, but I just can't believe its a problem here. If there is evidence to the contrary, somebody please present it and I will shut up.

I have not read any of the recent research on the timing of breeding in AL, but my experience leads me to believe that most of it occurs early in the spring. I've read countless articles that tell how a gobbler roosts close to his hens, flies down and then breeds them all, then is ready to go looking for more later in the day. I call baloney on this.

I've been in the position many times to see a gobbler interact with the hens that are roosted close by early in the morning. While magazines may tell us he breeds them all, I can count on one hand the number of times I've watched a gobbler actually breed a hen. Their normal behavior during turkey season is to fly down, strut for the hens, and be ignored. He will follow them wherever they go, but actually scoring doesn't happen that often. The few times that I've actually seen it happen has always been the first week of the season, and it was always just one hen who was willing. I've talked to wildlife biologists in AL that told me they haven't observed actual breeding many times either.

I've read accounts of people in Yankee Land that have big flocks of turkeys that spend the winter on their farms. The turkeys stay there because its the only place not covered with snow. These people often observe breeding taking place, and often multiple hens in the same morning. I'm suspecting most of our breeding takes place before the season when the turkeys are still bunched up. Assumptions like this can lead to conclusions like thinking the gobblers sit on the eggs, so I invite anyone to present evidence that proves this wrong. One thing I feel sure about - actual breeding is relatively rare, and the research that says a hen needs to be bred only once is almost certainly correct.

So how is a lower limit, shorter season, or later season gonna affect reproduction in any way? Hey, we gotta talk about something next 7 weeks.

7 weeks? That depressing.

Hoping for a robust discussion with Matt and Night Hunter (or any other biologist - State or not) on this one!! My position is clear!

I side with Poor Country Preacher on this. I have been a keen observer of turkeys for all of my adult life. Maybe too keen as I have seen gobblers breed hens more times than I can count. The earliest I have seen a hen bred in south MS is Feb. 26th. Most of the other instances have been in the first two weeks of March when they were still grouped up. I'm sure some breeding takes place later than that as Lovett Williams noted a tendency for hens to visit gobblers when renesting after loosing their first clutch. I also once flushed a hen from a nest in a watermelon field on July 4th but I suspect those eggs were adled because of the heat. She was probably young because gallinaceous birds are coded to not continue to waste energy laying eggs when environmental conditons aren't conducive to success. Why do our migratory birds fly over the gulf in March? They are trying to get the reproduction process started as soon as possible. Turkey hens feel that same urge. I would think that hens bred in late April have poorer success than those bred early but I don't know if the data to support that has been collected.

Unfortunately, wildlife management can become politicized. Politicized science has a very poor track record. It brought us eugenics, Naziism, the "crisis" of global warming and a whole host of stupid and expensive laws and regulations. On the whole, wildlife science has a much better track record over the last 50 years. I hope that it can remain detached from emotion and be data driven. Let's certainly not throw the baby out with the bath water. Mega trends trump micro trends.

Poorcountrypreacher,

I can't speak for yours or anyone else's area in regards to population issues. I can positively speak for the area on North Alabama that I live and hunt in. We no longer have birds.

Limestone county has only had a season since 97 or 98 and only the northern half of the county has an season. It started out with a 10 day season and quickly was expanded to 30 days. The turkey population was just not strong enough here to handle thirty days when couples with two or three bad hatch years in a row back around 2005-2009 area. Then some form or avian disease struck us and southern TN in 2010. I am told that the recommendation to reduce the season in Limestone Co has been made by the state. I honestly don't know it it's enough at this point to correct the problem. I. applaud them for trying to do something.

As for the breeding issue. I'm no biologist but I am a long time dyed in the wool turkey nut. My personal thoughts are that if the hens are sitting on the neat and not going to the gobbler to breed everyday then you know every seed that was available that year has been sewn. That issue may not be as important to the population in Coosa Co but it's huge when you are dealing with the hand some areas have been delt.

I wish this crap we are dealing with up here on nobody. It's depressing and nothing but heartbreak to know that I can't hunt where I live no matter how much dirt I have access to. I have to get in my truck and drive a three hour round trip to even get close to gibbling bird.

Calhoun, that's a really good post. I am curious as to why you have spent so much time around turkeys in Feb-early March? Was this a research project? As a hunter, I go to great lengths to avoid even being around the turkeys that time of year; don't wanta spook them before the season. I sure agree on the politicization of wildlife mgt; wish I could see an end to it but I think it will just get worse.

Yelka280, I sure hate to read about the decline of turkeys in north AL. I think a shorter season is the only practical way to reduce the harvest, and if that needs to be done, it looks the dcnr is doing it correctly for now. I sure hope things improve for you guys.

Does a shorter season with the same limit of 5 really help things? There are a bunch of folks in this part of the state that manage to kill 5 in 30 days. Obviously if there are no turkeys to kill it doesn't matter how long or short the season is.

Actually, I think the number of hunters that kill a limit is running around 2%. The season limit is a moot point when it comes to limiting harvest. And we all know that without tags most of the hunters that can kill more than 5 will do it anyway.

But most people won't hunt out of season. Shorten the season and you limit the harvest. That's what AL has been doing all of my life and it seems to work to me. A shorter season means fewer hens being killed by hunters, either accidentally or on purpose. This happens a lot more than most realize, and is probably the primary benefit to the flock for a shorter season.

I was on an out-of-state hunt this season and one of the other hunters came in with a hen. He shot at a gobbler and killed a hen instead. This guy was all torn up about it, but it doesn't bother some folks.

I can't make a biological case to adjust the season or lower the limit.

I do have a pretty solid handle on hunter behavior. It is correct to say that a very small percentage of hunters kill a limit. Let's group the honest guys that stop at 5 and the ones that don't, together for this discussion. Together, they make up a small percentage of those that attempt to hunt at some point during a season. If the limit was 3, the guys killing 15 would still kill 15. And unfortunately, I believe a decent group of the current "honest" limit killers, would have a hard time stopping at 3. Then once they start killing over the limit, why stop at 5?

There's more to the whole discussion, but I don't think dropping the limit from 5 to 3 would change the state's overall harvest. I actually believe it is very short sighted to think it would make a difference in harvest numbers.

Even if biological evidence supported lowering male harvest could increase poult production - lowering the limit wouldn't really be the answer anyway.

Furthermore, if you could prove lowering the limit or starting the season later would help, then last year should have been a case study for that. Last season, for the majority, the weather was bad early, causing early harvest and overall harvest to be down. If that is the answer to poult production, there should have been a huge difference last Spring in poult numbers. But I didn't see it.

We saw an average to slightly above average hatch with what very few birds we have left in Limestone Co but that's only based on what I have seen and others are reporting to have seen over the summer and through sightings of poults during deer season. That statement is not backed by collected data or surveys by game and fish.

Killing an annual limit each year is not hard for a seasoned turkey nut if the birds are there. The hard part is being big enough and respectful enough to the sport to not kill every bird on your property and de bird an area that takes years to rebound. It take a whole bunch of man to listen to a lone bird left on a farm gobble his head off and the hunter just walk away and say your arse is mine next year.

I'm an not in favor of shortening the season or decreasing limits, but thinking very simplistic if less birds are killed there will be more to hunt next year. This would be accomplished by lowering the limit, and/or shortening the season. If we killed all the gobblers each spring we would only have jakes to hunt each season.

It MAY be accomplished by a VERY short season. Population increases will NOT ultimately be accomplished by lowering the limit.

Concerning the lone bird left on a farm at the end of April. Killing him the last day of season and killing him the first day of next season won't have any affect on increasing the overall turkey population. I agreed with most of what you said, but not that.

Just a caveat for y'all to think about in this discussion (and relevant to the "lone gobbler on a property". Turkeys have spring ranges in the deep southeast (verified by radio-telemetry data) in the 1,000 - 5,000 acre range. If you have good hearing and can hear a gobbler gobble approximately 1/2 mile away, that is about 500 acres in a circle. Also, as we all know, NEVER do all the turkeys gobble on a given morning and often none. Food for thought.

How long did it take for the gobbler to return, if he did, to his normal area, according to the data?

We still have birds breeding up here on the line on the last day of season some years. Some years all the hens are going to the nest at fly down by the April 20th.

Poor Country Preacher...I'm just a long term amateur. I spend all the time I can with the turkeys trying to learn something new. I learned early on how to be low impact hunting on small wood lots. The worst thing you could do was flush one over the landline. I've gotten pretty good at slipping around turkeys plus you really develop that skill when your objective is not always to shoot one. Of course, when the season opens, it's war.

A shortened season is a statistical case and not a biological one in my opinion. Consider the ultimate statistical case that I have ever seen. I have turkey hunted a couple of times on the White Mountain Apache tribal lands in Arizona. It is one million acres, they sell 50 tags to non residents per year. Every where you go on the land, one of their game wardens is with you. The natives only buy about 25 tags per year. They will put you under the jail if you're caught messing around on the reservation. They guide guys to about ten 400" elk every fall. It is the prettiest place on earth and covered with turkeys. There are drainages where you can't drop a BB on the ground without it landing on a turkey track. That's what you get when there are only 100 turkeys killed per one million acres.

We'll never have that but it's a mighty nice place to visit.

I have seen new poults here at the beginning of July. That would put beginning of incubation early June and egg laying through May/June

My question is, how many guys really limit on turkeys every year? I mean some do sure, but limiting out on turkeys don't do anything to the over all numbers...I think it's a few number of guys that do that.