Y’all may remember I emailed Chuck about the CAB moving the turkey opener to the 3rd Saturday in March a while back. I posted his response here. I followed up and emailed him back a couple weeks ago and asked him some more questions regarding the Auburn turkey study and if he had the information on how many hunters killed limits last year since they are discussing lowering the limit. I have been critical of Chuck but I have to say I am impressed that the director has taken the time to email me back personally several times. He emailed me today and told me that the Auburn study will wrap up this fall and they will be discussing possible alternatives then. He also sent me an attachment which details the 2017 and 2018 harvest data. This is the while whale that PCP has been asking to see for years.

In 2017 123 hunters killed 5 turkeys which was 2.42% of the reported harvest.
In 2018 178 hunters killed 5 turkeys which was 3.21% of the reported harvest.

So what I take from that is changing limit won't affect numbers much...less that 200 birds on past results if the limit changes by 1...

Wow, you did get the white whale.

So the numbers are about what I expected - reducing the limit to 3 would "save" less than 400 turkeys per year. And it really would be a lot less than that; most of those guys would just carry a shooter. We are talking about a very insignificant number of turkeys.

Also, this is one area where the GC numbers are absolutely correct. If a hunter won't report his kills at all, then he surely won't be worried about a limit. I think that tptb are just worried about perception. It isn't PC now days to have a generous limit.

What is “IVR Data”?

So now y'all trust GC numbers?

How can they cite Game Check data as evidence for any decision, when they told us just last week that they estimate participation at only about 30%.....

I'm not exactly following what he presented. I don't understand how he got from the 5,549 figure to total harvest of 9,570 in 2017, then 5,087 to total harvest of 9,103 in 2018. Either way 178/9,570 = 1.85% in 2017 and 123/9,103 = 1.35% in 2018. That's the actual percentage of total harvest caused by the 5th bird based off of how I am reading those numbers.

The people you really have to worry about aren't the ones who report their 5 birds on game check. It's the ones who kill 15-25 birds a season and don't report any of them. And trust me they exist. I have known several people over the years that have done it.

Yes and no. I trust that the numbers we are looking at are 100% accurate based on those who reported their harvest. I also think that even if GC compliance is only 30%, those percentages of folks who killed 1-5 birds wouldn’t change very much even if compliance was 100%.

Preliminary results form the Auburn study show that a later season opening and a reduced limit would allow more hens to be bred. I’m not smart enough to know if that’s true or not but I’ll read the study when they release it.

For this. Think about it - the guys who won't report their turkeys are already ignoring the law. Do you think a single one of them would now pay attention to a limit reduction? Why would they?

I have often said that GC shows us the LEGAL harvest, and I don't see any reason to doubt their numbers. I believe that their estimate on compliance is probably high, but if it is right it tells us that 70% of the harvest is illegal. Reducing the limit will have zero effect on those who already ignore the rules.

I expect they will eventually do it anyway. DCNR folks in other states look down on AL and our guys take it personally.

I don’t follow the numbers either. I’m not sure what “IVR” is either.

I don't think GC is worth anything and the way it came about was even worse. That said, as one who has been very critical of Chuck I do appreciate his response to you. I believe he would garner more respect if he would admit his faults and have an open discussion about things.

I will be interested in reading the study results too, and I strongly suspect that the later season idea is more a theory than fact. SC reached that conclusion from their study, but they didn't have any real evidence.

Common sense would say that if you have only one gobbler in an area and someone kills him before he breeds the hens it will be bad for the flock. They have always managed that in the past by having a later and shorter season in those places. Seems to me that is the reasonable approach.

The way I heard it presented was the reasoning behind pushing back the season to the 3rd Saturday in March is that a lot, if not most, of the hens get bred in late February and 1st 3 weeks in March. After that, breeding still occurs but a lot of hens have already been bred. As I understood it, lowering the limit to 3 birds will have no effect on the future population as most of the gobblers have already bred hens by the time the season opens. If they get killed, they just won't be available for breeding next year. It wouldn't surprise me if they moved the season back to March 20th like it was for many years but keep the limit at 5. Roughly 93% of reported harvest are the hunters killing 1-3 birds with only 3% reported killing the limit. The biggest threat to turkey population are not hunters. It has been and always will be habitat destruction and predators.

Dr. B

The numbers presented are a little confusing. The numbers that southwood posted are frequency percentages. Basically in 2018, 3.21% of hunters that reported turkey kills, killed a limit. The actual percentage of turkeys killed by people that limited out relative to the total number killed was 9.23%.

Thanks for posting that; I jumped the gun on my figures. How about walking us through how you determined that?

Pcp. The numbers listed are not how many turkeys the guys who killed 5 took. It’s how many hunters killed 5,4,3, etc. so 178 hunters actually took 890 birds.

Thanks, I finally realized I was so excited at seeing the white whale that I jumped the gun on on what it actually said. I would edit it, but too many people have seen it.

I vaguely remember studying frequency % over 40 years ago, but I don't remember anything about how to apply it. Someone give us a quick lesson. Can you figure how many made up #4 and 5 in bag limits?

Just a guess, but I'd say 222+123 = 345. 345 represents 3.8% of total harvest.

I believe this is correct:

222 took 4 = 888

123 took 5 = 615

Total harvest = 8266

Hunters who took 4 or more birds were 6.78% of the successful hunters who used game check.
They accounted for 18% of the total game check harvest.