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.