Everything I have read in regards to burning during the nesting season pretty much agrees that the positives outweigh the negatives. The habitat improvements outweigh risk of nest loss. The NWTF article I read the other day said that up to 75% of hens that have a nest lost to fire will re-nest.

Early growing season burns do a much better job of reducing hardwood competition in pine stands than dormant season burning. As a forester who is an avid turkey hunter and does a lot of burning I have done a lot or reading and research on the subject. We also have a lot of landowners ask about it. It seems like most biologist agree that keeping your burn blocks 100-150 acres or less in size in a good idea. The smaller the better for quail and turkey. We try to checkerboard everything on a 2-3 year rotation.

https://kawx.org/kawx-news/435165
http://ncforestservice.gov/publications/FireBreedingBirdsBooklet-small.pdf

Some key points from my readings:
-hens have the ability to re-nest
-if you are burning in 3 year average rough, the stands due for burning are least likely to be suitable nesting habitat and therefore less likely for nest loss to burning. They would prefer something that was burned the previous year
-burning in pine stands after bud break creates higher quality habitat than dormant season burning when you are using burning alone, without herbicides.

I had an avid turkey hunter sending my private messages a few years ago accusing me of being part of the problem for decline in the turkey population. Since then, I have tried to educate myself the best I can in the subject. I would not do anything that knowingly has a negative impacts on the wild turkey.
*disclaimer-I'm a just a forester that loves to turkey hunt, not a biologist

I know hens can and do renest. I’m sure I missed it in the article you posted, but did it say the success rate between the first nest compared to the other aforementioned renests?

I'll try to do some digging and see if there is any research between first nest and re-nest success rates.

NOT burning is worse for the wild turkey than burning throughout the growing season. I haven't found anything from a notable biologist that says otherwise. I'm not advocating for 1,000 acre burns like the Forest Service does in the National Forest. I'm talking smaller burn blocks on a 2-3 year interval.

I think you’ll start to see a shift in that thinking, as well.

As a burner, Forester and Wildlife Biologist, here's my opinion on burning and timing. As a rule, burning the woods is beneficial for turkeys and burning some is better than burning nothing.
Burning keeps the understory in good shape for turkeys to nest, raise broods and move about safely. Areas that are regularly burned typically have good broomstraw understories that are good nesting cover in the years they are not burned, especially 2 or 3 years after the last fire. Areas burned in the spring are good insect production areas, therefore good brood habitat the summer they are burned. The open nature of a burned woodland is also attractive to turkeys because they can see well through the woods and spot predators.
When we have a block, say, of 3 year rough broomstraw with some scattered shrubby cover in a pine stand that the landowner wants burned, we are highly aware that it is good nesting cover and we typically wont burn it between mid April and mid May (peak incubation period). If I burned it in early April, I might burn up a nest that was being laid into but the hen is highly likely to renest. If it is burned in early may after a few weeks of incubation, it is a much more significant loss. She will still probably renest but it will be late and she has wasted valuable and risky incubation time. In areas that potentially hold nests and we are burning in Early April, research has indicated (and our experience show it to be true) that most nests are near an edge, often in the transition with a hardwood drain where the fire will often not burn the nest or go around the thicket. Researchers have found that some nests still hatched after a cool fire went over them but most nests in a burn block were never burned. We have flushed hens from nests occasionally from a nest and in that case we protect it so that fire does not get to it. We have had great success with this and most have hatched. If we hold off because a site is in peak nesting season and great nesting cover, we will burn in later May or June and still get good burn results. The only concern here is flightless poults and we hope that they are 1) not in this thick cover and 2) the fire is moving slow enough to allow the hen to lead the poults to the nearest drain. We don't encounter flightless poults often but I did come up on my partner once running around in the grass bent over and I asked him what he was doing. He said he was catching poults and moving them to the side we weren't burning! The hen was right there.
Size matters but not usually on most private lands. Burn blocks less than 200 acres or so are best and closer to 100 is probably best. Occasionally large landowners and, certainly, public lands will burn large blocks in the hundreds or thousands of acres and there is no doubt this is detrimental to turkeys and other wildlife. Size of burn blocks should be based on animal size and home range. Quail blocks should be 10, 20 acres or so since their home ranges are 100-300 acres. Turkey blocks should be less than 200 acres since their home ranges are 1,000-2,000 acres. Research has also shown that they are reluctant to travel more than 250 yds from the edge into a large burn and use decreases at about 100 yds. With that rule, a 500 acre burn can still be useful if it is less than about 3-400 yds wide but much longer.

Now he’s infected the turkey forum! Go away

I agree……That’s exactly what the density map suggests……The counties that arent even burning much at all have better turkey populations than the ones who are heavily burning but constantly impacting egg production with the late timing of it…..…The negative impacts are outweighing the positive if we use "doing nothing" as an experimental control….…or rather the data suggests that it is better not to burn at all than burn at the wrong time.

Here’s there the thing though…..there’s no need for anyone to nut up and make it about ego and being right…..yada…..yada…….I don’t think anyone is suggesting for folks to stop burning…..What is being suggested is to see if folks can adjust the timing of said burns to still accomplish the same goals without disturbing nesting season. For example, quail plantations burn Oct-Jan…..Commercial pine stands needing hardwood control……June/July……. I think if that could be done then you would find that the turkey populations in these heavy burn counties would surpass the ones that arent burning once again.

I'll try to do some digging and see if there is any research between first nest and re-nest success rates.

Here are the results of 3 studies I found.
one study had 74 1st attempts, 21 2nd nest attempts and 2 3rd attempts. Hatching rates were 34%, 65% and and 0% for 1st, 2nd and 3rd attempts respectively
next had 31 1st, 29 2nd and 7 3rd attempts with 15%, 20% and 0% hatching respectively
last had 33 1st and 4 2nd attempts with 64% and 25% hatching respectively.

Although the later nesting attempts had very low sample sizes, the 2nd attempts fared well, 3rd not so much.

[/quote]

What caused the failure of the first nesting?

What caused the failure of the first nesting?