I think state wide is overkill. Like I have said in earlier posts. I hope the rest of you don't ever have to deal with what is going on here. I love to travel and hunt birds all over the country but with two young kids and being a business owner I can't pick up and leave for days at a time. I want birds around my area like the rest of you enjoy.

If you look at the counties having problems there are common links. Limestone,Morgan, Lawrence, Lauderdale,Lawrence, and Culman counties have all had seasons established in portions of the county within the past 20 years. Limestone,Morgan,Lauderdale,Lawrence have all got large areas of the county that have NO season currently.

If you look at the counties around these listed above you will see a significant difference in population. Jackson,Madison,Colbert ,Franklin, Winston, Blount, Marshall, portions of Lawrence around Bankhead, portions of Lauderdale from Florence west all have large blocks of continuous timber with openings. The counties seeing problems are primarily large blocks of open land with patches of timber.

The common landscape is piece of the puzzle concerning the loss of birds.Southern TN counties that are bordering is to the north have experienced the exact problem. TWRA says it Chicken litter that has not been pasteurized before it was spread for fertilizer.
I personally agree with there findings. The first place we started seeing problems was on farms that were using litter strait from the chicken house. We Killed birds in these areas in 2010 that had meat hanging off of legs and jelly like sores on their head and body.

One of The large poultry companies in Alabama is right up the road to the north. They have a biologist that is a turkey killing machine and he is in full agreement that the birds were hit by black head and avian pox. If they contract either they will not survive. It's a 100% mortality.

That was a mouth full to say but necessary to explain my position. What birds are around Limestone are trying to make a comeback but they need a little protection for a few years. Our first season was in either 97 or 98 and I can tell you with 100% certainty that many of the birds in small portion of the county that they opened for a 5 day season were hatched in an incubator by a handful of turkey hunters that were sick of driving an hour to hunt everyday.. We have only had three stocking efforts from the state in Limestone co to my knowledge. A couple in the early 80s and one into the southern portion of the county back in the mid to late 90s that still does not have an open season.

There are a hand full of people in Limestone co that can say they have a bird on their property in the spring. A couple of them are on this forum and they are the minority. I have said before here that we have extremely small parcel land ownership in this area. When I can go to one of my farms and no joke here hunters calling from 7 different properties from one hilltop it has to be a drastic change here or it won't work.