Any of you old timers concerned about how warm the weather has been this year in relation to all of the early gobbling reports. Seen lots of pics over last month and a half with henned up gobblers strutting. Just wondering if any of you have seen this before.

Idk but I'm hoping they'll have busted up by then. One place I listened at today had henned up birds, but then I saw 7 gobblers grouped together in the field in front of my place. Who knows....

The Toms I've seen this weekend were still grouped up...

Oh somebody will pipe up with a smart little answer for you...guarantee it.

I have wondered the same thing, myself.

No idea if the weather might get em going earlier.

This question is thrown around every year it seems. I do not think it will make any difference as length of the days is the main factor in breeding. Will they gobble and strut some when the weather is pretty and warm? Absolutely, but they will not be "gobbled out", as people like to say, when the season rolls around. Just my opinion.

Length of day / hours of daylight has a control of the hens breeding/nesting. Warm weather is a factor I would think, we all see that. But, I feel like the length of daylight is the real key. A good example would be Osceola hens far south in Florida. They don't have a winter really, but they know when to nest every year.

Same concept with chickens and providing light in winter to increase egg production.

Well, someone beat me to it. I was trying to google a cool word for "length of daylight hours".

Length of days is obviously the biggest factor but ground temperature plays a part for turkeys too. I normally don't say this but I think things will begin to happen a little earlier this year.

Photoperiod

Had 6 gobblers together alone on camera last week. But most of y'all know plenty more about turkeys than me

Yep the hens will be nesting and the boar toms will be gobbled out. Might as well just skip turkey season and just fish.

Hens are programmed to use photoperiod to give their offspring the best chance of survival. Otherwise they would be laying eggs that could be addled by freezing temps or hatching poults that have no bugs and seeds to eat.

For years, I have thought that the gobblers seen strutting in the presence of hens this time of year are the oldest and most sexually advanced ones. The groups of longbeards you see right now are two year olds. But that is just an opinion and only based on observation and rumination.

I do hope they get going early this year though since I'll be out of country during the last week of April.

I can't wait until the end of the season when Game Check can tell us exactly when they were doing the breeding, how the weather influenced them and what age structure did the majority of the breeding.


That is why we are doing it right?

On a new piece of land this year but we usually see the boars start first, then the pig boar toms seem to heat up first few weeks of the season. The jakes, well they are alway unpredictable, lol!

Ok..I cant freaking help myself..I just HAVE to ask...WTH is a "PIG BOAR TOM". Kind of redundant..but Im sure youll explain..

I'm seeing about the same activity I've seen for the last
10 years or so on game cams.

Some gobblers with hens and some still in groups.
They will normally start breaking up and staking
out an area in the next 2 weeks.

We just call our biggest toms "pig boar toms". A normal tom, like a 3 year old we think needs a year or 2 to be worth harvesting we call a "boar tom". It's silly we know, but we just know what works for us

^^

I checked my cams Sunday and in one field I have a group of 5 toms one day, 2 strutting toms with a non stutter, a jake and 5 hens the next day and on the next day a flock of 15 hens with no gobbler around. So your guess is as good as mine. The only thing im sure of is im gonna be in that field with a 12 year old stone cold killer come youth weekend!