I have to agree with PCP,I have hunted,and killed turkeys in Alabama since the mid 80s,and to say our system is not working is complete hog wash!I do know that turkeys are cyclical,some years are far better than others.I also know that I have taken or had the opportunity to take a limit every year.
Here in the Tennessee valley where I have done the majority of my turkey hunting in Alabama,there are plenty of birds.One problem with some properties is as I have said before,folks are hunting,and killing to many birds out of the same flock.
I will never be convinced especially with a computer model,that lowering the limit is going to increase the population by more than 1 or 2 birds a year.
Habitat management,and predator control is the greatest influence on our population.I hope the powers that be look closer at this before changing anything.

Amen. I just want to say that My feelings are not based on the fact that I limit out either...Cause I don't limit out lol.

If I were governor of Alabama I'd take all the money and resources being spent by the state on Turkey research and give every penny of it to PCP to use as he sees fit. He's had turkeys figured out for years.

Create habitat
Trap varmints
Don't ever shoot girls.

It's not that hard to figure out.

Yal are delusional

How is habitat a controllable variable? Do some of you own a timber company and plan to change harvest practices? Do you have some pull with the state? Enough to get it to actually manage the property it owns for turkey habitat?

Please tell me how we as individuals are actually going to better turkey habitat?

As far as protecting hens goes, ummm.. they are already as protected as they can be. Illegal to harvest one... ever.. under any circumstances.

AND Predators? Any predator harvest or control you as an individual can do will be purely superficial. Unless you are a professional trapper and have 10 months out of the year to dedicate to it, predator control isn't a real thing. Every hunter I know shoots every coyote, bobcat, fox they see, and we still have a predator issue.

Well, just joining in after a long day of trying to save deer and turkey from extinction after the doctor visit.

Matt has covered it pretty well and I am not on the turkey committee so he knows the voodoo model a little better for the turkey side of things.

I will add that Matt and I do site visits as our jobs. We can relate to the strong differences across the state and even counties. What you guys have to remember is we are looking at the big picture. For all game, not just turkey. Turkeys have shown a sharp declines in some areas. We follow up on those reports with site visits and habitat evaluations when possible to see if there are common themes. There is not a single part of this process that we take lightly.

It will never happen. Take for example NW AL, if every farmer didn't plow every single square inch of tillable land and leave some field edges and hedge rows for nesting cover we might start getting somewhere.

And I would be fine with that. Issue is... the state is never going to do those 1st 2.

Not sure I get exactly what you are getting at bit let me try and sum up how you come across. Individuals can't change anything and shouldn't try and the government should help with more stringent regulation?

That's something individuals do. Who needs the state to do things for them.
Were you at the Bernie sanders rally?

How is the state going to change the habitat and predator dynamics? That's a landowner issue.

TDD, this is in response to your post because I feel like it was directed at me based off of your wording.

1) Habitat is absolutely a controllable variable whether you hunt leased land or land you own. There are countless land improvements that can be made to encourage and support growth in turkey populations. Examples you requested - burning, planting food sources, leaving nesting areas.

2) Hens are protected in AL, but many states including some of our neighbors, allow hen harvest.

3) Predators are an extremely controllable factor IMO, especially nest predators. Shooting every predator you see is about as effective on predator populations as a limit reduction or season shortening would be on turkey populations in AL. It takes a dedicated effort to trap, but it can be extremely effective. Coons are about as easy to catch as it gets, and I would bet they are the top predator to turkwy populations.

Again, it all boils down to turkwy sex and their role in reproductivity. Saving gobblers may sound great, but you may save 2 per hunter MAX. That is an insignificant savings. Provide hens with the best opportunity to have nesting success and you are looking at saving 8-12 poults. Those kind of numbers can actually make a difference in populations

So since the State cannot control habitat, cannot control predation, and cannot control the weather, we get a limit reduction which will do NOTHING to help the population. Now if there is a limit reduction and we stack up 3 good breeding seasons in a row with good weather and there are lots of turkeys, why do I think the gullible public will equate that with the limit reduction

A good question was asked earlier that if reducing the limit would equate to an increase in gobblers then where are those extra gobblers. We reduced the limit a decade ago, still waiting for the corresponding population increase!

There are plenty of options for the state to encourage landowners to do both of the above. Create programs like CRP or WRP to reward landowners for bettering their habitat. Offer a bounty on predators. Easy enough?

All I know is there are parts of Alabama that has a serious issues other than the season length or the number of gobblers being harvested. For the state not to consider loss of habitat, disease and predators is foolish.

I've been hunting a 4000 acre property for 5 season as the sole primary turkey hunter. This is a family owned property of close to 10,000 acres. This area use to be loaded with turkeys. I saw the very tail end of a good population the first year I hunted this property. There has never been more than 5 gobblers killed off the 4000 acres I hunt over the past 5 years. In the past 3 years it's been 2 or 3. I went from seeing 30 to 40 hens in winter flocks the first few years to only seeing 3 to 5 hens in most recent years. I know for a fact those hens where not killed by mistaken identity but they sure vanished over a few years time.

Just looking through some articles from some of the decades old research Matt and lack of nest initiation wasn't that uncommon back then either. Seems the old guys might have seen some similar results

Hillestad (1973) noted that of 5 hens radiotracked
in 1968, only one was known to nest. However,
on the same site in 1969, nest initiation was
100% (5 of 5) for adults and 60% (3 of 5) for yearlings.
On a different Alabama site, Everett et al. (1980)
found an initial nesting rate of 88% (29 of 33) for adult
hens, whereas 85% (11 of 13) of the yearlings attempted
to nest.

Lower rates were reported in Mississippi,
where overall initial nest initiation rates during
1984–1995 averaged 72% (Miller et al. 1998b).

In a south Florida study, the Osceola subspecies
(M. g. osceola) exhibited a relatively low rate of nest
initiation, with nests discovered for only 59% (202 of
345) of monitored hens (Williams and Austin 1988).

For the Osceola subspecies, Williams and
Austin (1988) found a relatively low renest initiation
rate of only 28% (26 of 93). Similar results were found
for eastern wild turkeys in Alabama, where only 22%
(3 of 13) adults and 0.0% (0 of 4) yearlings attempted
to renest (Everett et al. 1980) and in Mississippi (Miller
et al. 1998b) where renest initiation rates averaged
only 34%.

Easy. Give landowners incentive to improve turkey habitat on private lands and pay trappers to get the varmints back in check on public lands.

Now seriously..... Doesn't that make a little more sense than "open the season later so we don't accidently shoot hens in winter flocks"

No it's not easy enough. There are PLENTY of OPTIONS, yes. But my point is that the state is not going to do any of that.

A very large portion of the state is owned by the state itself, and Timber companies. We have no control in what either does. If you hunt on leased timber company land or state land (I'd be willing to be more way than 50% of the hunters do), there is virtually nothing you can do to better habitat. Sure the private land owners could do their own managing and habitat farming, but at the end of the day, very few people care enough about turkeys to put in that kind of effort for them.

It makes more sense, but that's not going to happen. They aren't going to spend that money.

Yal are talking about and living in the lands of fairy tales, unicorns and pixie dust. This stuff aint happening on a state budget. Come back to earth.

Looking over a couple of the article citations you have given these comments are relevant:

Effects of Variable Spring Harvest Regimes on
Annual Survival and Recovery Rates of Male
Wild Turkeys in Southeast Louisiana

Study only addressed male turkeys. Of course if you kill more their mortality is higher. Does not adress population declines, nesting success, poult recruitment, etc.

Wild Turkey Nesting Ecology in the Lower
Coastal Plain of South Carolina

interesting article on reproductive chronology but irrelevant to gobbler limits re population dynamics

Relationships of Gobbler Population Size to
Harvest Characteristics on a Public Hunting
Area in Mississippi

Same interesting but irrelevant to gobbler harvests and the population dynamics.

Specifically regarding these five articles, could you provide a complete citation or send me to somewhere I could read them? By the way, they look decades old!



I did find one similar but it was completely another computer model predicting lower/higher populations based on season dates. Complete theory.