I appreciate the response and truly believe in the beginning the intentions were pure to some degree. However, it’s not worked the way you thought and that is apparent. It wasn’t anti-hunters or big city liberals that would take away our hunting opportunity and specifically public land hunting opportunities …….it was our very own. Men have been traveling the country for years hunting turkeys and keeping it under their hat. Turkey hunting is secretive by nature (or was). Now I’m not sure we can undo what’s been done. I know statistically we can look at license sales and specifically non-resident license sales since the rise of pinhoti project and thp the connections is easily made… the data is also clear to game managers around the country.
Again, correlation. Not causation. There are many factors at play here. I will accept some of the blame. But I will not apologize for motivating or creating more turkey hunters. Another viewpoint, the increase in turkey hunters will save our opportunities. Turkey numbers once upon a time were thought to be, "mission accomplished, they'll take care of themselves from here on out." The current environment says that belief was a mistake. Our invigorated crowd has pushed turkeys to the top of the species in which agencies and wildlife professionals will funnel their attentions. And it's very likely that the mistakes of the past may never happen again.
To address your other mention that I though was interesting concerning the "secrecy" of turkey hunting. Many point to the likes of Tom Kelly, Gene Nunnery, among others in telling the tales of old turkey hunting. Thank goodness these gentlemen had the foresight to realize without the distribution of the knowledge and understanding they acquired over lifetimes of hunting- the potential for that hunting to withstand the test of time was bleak. They used pen and paper which we have now replaced with keyboards. They used the social media of their era to administer the principles and traditions that should govern turkey hunting. How could one that kills turkeys, speaks lightly and recruits no one be productive for our sport? That should be viewed as pure selfishness. I'm thankful the before mention authors were not of that crowd.
Again, this response is not intended to challenge or attack. I'm providing my stance regardless of how skewed some may feel my intentions are.
