I still stand by that a 3 bird limit with an an accurate way to document and tag harvest is the way to help the overall population.
Getting back to the subject of this thread, explain how saving 2,000 gobblers out of the harvest each year would "help the overall population". Understanding that the population would be 2,000 more out of a population of 400,000. What difference would 2,000 make out of 400,000 (one HALF of one percent more!!!) Would these extra gobblers "help the population" increase somehow?
The premise the State is presenting is that we are having a decline in numbers (as are ALL turkey States) caused by lowered reproduction and poult recruitment. Factors responsible for this are speculatied (correctly in my opinion) to be weather, predators and habitat changes. So PCP posed the question as to HOW lowering the harvest of adult gobblers will change this reproduction problem? I heard one of the CAB members discuss this same issue: We are having a decline, It is caused by lowered reproduction factors and the reasons for lowered reproduction are weather, predators and habitat, therefore we want to limit harvest of adult gobblers!! Makes NO sense to me!
This is what I see as the problem. You want to help turkeys..kill those dang predators whenever you can. Im pretty sure most hens are getting bred somehow...so restricting the harvest of male birds would have very negligible results IMO.
