Ben how much land do you hunt and what do you do every year to help grow/sustain your turkey population?
I am going to give you an example of how I have transformed a 750 acre tract of property from a mediocre turkey property into a jam up property by doing a few things. This property is not very far from you either. It also consist of typical Alabama property and not 750 acers of manicured hardwoods.Trapping coons/coyotes for starters, I live to far away but I got the deer hunters which live close by to wage war on the coons/coyotes. I invest a lot of money in white/red clover which I provide to the deer hunters free of charge and they plant the plots during the fall. I buy and plant at least 3 to 4 acres of chufa every year on this property. Lastly I manage my trigger finger! I am 6 years into leasing the sole turkey rights on this property and the population has grown with each year. I average any where from 10 to 12 mature gobblers and have seen at least 6 jakes and as many as 12 annually for the past 5 years. My partner and I take no more than 5 birds off this property every spring. We could kill a limit each year off this place if we choose to do so. The amount of jakes we have each year could handle any breeding the mature birds did not take care. It is our choice to leave some mature birds and finish out our limits on other properties. Do I think leaving the mature birds makes a difference, no I do not. If that was the case I should see 15 to 20 gobblers instead of the consistent numbers I have seen. There are several factors that come into play. My #1 factor is the amount of acreage. I know several of those mature birds range off of my lease never to be seen again. You will also have natural mortality or predator kills every year to some degree. You will also have poor hatches along with a lot more variables that lead to turkey population decline on certain years. We has game keepers can help by buy doing things we can control which are mentioned above. Those are just a few basic things most land owners/lease holders can do that help.
It takes extra money, effort and some self imposed restrictions to ensure I have turkeys to hunt each spring. I don't need the state to limit my opportunities to hunt in my home state. What would be helpful is if the state would encourage more trapping and predator hunting. If would also be helpful to publish information/guidance on how land owners and lease holders could improve their properties to promote a better turkey population. I get emails all the time from the Alabama DNR and very little is useful to me. They need to use this avenue to help promote and educate folks that otherwise are to lazy to ask/look for the help or simply don't know where to start to find the information. I did not learn what I know today overnight and I sure wish I had the knowledge I know now at my finger tips much earlier.
I have never seen a state or federal mandated plan work out as intended. I'm sure there are many success stories out there, but I have never seen one. What I have seen and agree with PCP here, is the freedom the state has given land owners/lease holders to manage their property for better wildlife. This is encouraged by the length of our season and generous bag limits. Take that away and I have the same fear as many do have here, that land owners/lease holders will do less and it be determinantal to population.
Squeaky yes we trap hogs, coyotes, coons. We have 3 people that hunt and none of them have ever killed a limit off the place in 25 years. The past 5 years we have not killed a 5 bird limit between the three of us in any season We have feeders out year round, about 300 acres of our 1200 is agriculture land farmed by a member here corn soybean or cotton though normally cotton. Before that is was a cattle farm. We plant clover with all our our food plots and plant clover in any openings we have like loading docs etc. We plant plant fields with only grains like sorghum and millet that we leave standing all winter then bush hog in the spring. We have tried chufas but hogs destroyed them but dont bother the grains as much. We have planted pines ranging from 3 years old to 25 year old stands. We burn stands of pines on a rotation. I would say the set up we have is picture perfect Turkey habitat. We have swamps and hill sides with beautiful hardwood timber, river bottoms, oak flats etc. It used to be covered up. Bit I am not co cerned about our property I have watched some heavily managed places up to 5000 acres basically have populations cut to nearly 0 where for the last 25 years turkeys were absolutely everywhere. Is there any data that shows a population decline in the last decade in Alabama or is it just on the 6 or 8 properties I have been privileged to hunt?
