Give you a good 2 situation example. Met with a client we have been working with for 10 years plus. Fixed up a few thousand acres of IP pine plantation land to become a wildlife haven near Union Springs. We typically burn in April (sometimes May) on a 3 year rotation. Want it a little late to better control the bushes and saplings in the pines and NOT burn in hardwood. Burning after green up keeps fire out of hardwoods usually and does an immensely better job of sapling hardwood control. Burning in the growing season also does a much better job of stimulating native grasses and forbs/legumes. Winter burns SUCK at controlling sapling hardwood. The "manager" was complaining about burning late and burning up nests. Bear in mind most of the uplands are excellent grassy nesting cover (maybe 2/3 of the place) and the sections we plan on burning (maybe 1/5 of the place) are getting rough and loaded with fuel - NOT the best nesting cover. My simple question to him was are there more or less turkeys on the place than when we started our burn program - his simple answer was WAY more, more than there have been in 30 years he has hunted it.

Second scenario, met with a landowner last week about setting up a burning program. The section he wanted to burn was thinned 3 years ago and burned 2 years ago, maybe 200 acres. He wanted to burn it all. The rest of the property was heavy canopy mixed pine/hardwood and thick pine plantation or 1 year old plantation. I told him there was no way I would recommend burning all of the nesting cover on his place during the middle of nesting season or he would burn up all the nests on the place. Different scenario, therefore different recommendations. He agreed to let us burn the thick pine plantation that will be thinned this summer and then burn the thinned pine next spring BEFORE nesting season. Again, it's not as simple as "destroying nests is bad or it isn't" unless you have a simplistic concept of wildlife management and only understand the fundamentals.