When is too late to burn in the spring??......Will it bother the turkeys if they are already breeding??

They don't start breeding till April man....

Heck naw it won’t bother them. Turkeys love fire. They’re almost always the first animals back in an area after the fire goes thru. I’ve killed a pile of birds grubbing on ground that was too hot to sit on and still smoking.

X3

So are y’all saying that it doesn’t matter how late you burn???….There aren’t any negative impacts to nesting or breeding by burning after it greens up??

I saw a couple strutting two days ago.....If they're strutting does that mean they're already breeding???

Was just joking cuz the date changes 😀

Common sense and logic says it does impact nesting. However, most are done on a small enough scale that folks don’t notice it.

Burn baby burn til the 1st egg hits the nest. 🔥

Fire ants do more damage to the turkey population than controlled burns. IMO

I agree…….I think we ARE noticing it though because of the totality of all the burns combined in some areas. Barbour Co Management Area is something like 22,000 acres…..they burn……The landowners bordering the management area that own several thousand acres……they burn…….The landowner that borders them that owns another thoudsand…..he burns too…..Pa-Ko plantation that borders him is another 5K I believe……they burn……It borders Midway Plantation which is 4,500 acres…..they burn it……Enon Plantation 4,500 …..yep they burn…….Sehoy 5,000……they burn……The Swift Property 7,000 acres…..it gets burned…..Down Under Plantation another 2500 it gets burned…..and so on and so forth for a lot of total acres across Bullock, Russell, Macon, North Barbour……If we look at this on a landscape scale…..Which “stands” or squares are likely drawing in the turkeys to nest in??....It's likely the areas that get burned right??

What I’m getting at here is that some folks are gonna look at the acres being burned compared to the total acreage and say that its not a significant amount but I’d argue that it most definitely is when your baiting in all the turkeys on the landscape to nest in these burn tracts and then you run fire through them at the last minute during spring.

Are all areas of the state having turkey issues??

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

Good information Michael…….A couple of things I would want to know a little more detail about with that……What are the egg production rates for the first time nesters that arent disturbed versus ones that have to renest?? Wouldn’t the same concept hold true here that it does with fawn drop in that the most successful situation is one with the most narrow time frame for births??.....Meaning that the more strung out it becomes the more the overall success rate goes down??

Another thing I’d make sure folks keep in mind here is that when looking at the data it would appear that we are talking about likely causing impacts of 10-30% which doesn’t really appear to be a chitload until it puts you over the “too much” threshold and causes a deficit and gradual decline to start occurring.

I’m not sure exactly how the late fire is causing issues but I think if you will look at the density data and the areas that are having the most issues with turkey fluctuations and declines you’ll see that there is a strong correlation between those counties and the ones that burn the most. Also, having worked in chicken houses growing up I’ve seen that birds can be real finicky when it comes to egg production and the things that can throw it off……They like homeostasis......I dont think the disruption to the process has to be as severe as just destroying nests in order to have a 10-30% impact on production or success rates. This is the very reason chickens are grown in houses where all the variables can be tightly controlled for max egg production.

What about if folks burned for hardwood control in June/July??

And the point is? The area surrounding Barbour all the way to Union Springs is Alabama's quail plantation belt and, if I had to choose, my favorite area to turkey hunt. This area consistently has more turkeys than any area in central Alabama that I know of. One of the landowners bordering Barbour is 5,000 acres and we burn on it every year, sometimes in April, May and June. It is a GREAT turkey place. Lets say Barbour is 22K, 5 K on our guys, 1 K on another, Pako at 5K, Midway is 8 K, Swift is almost 8K, Cowikee Flats at 6.6 K, Kowikee Creek at 3.5K, Rutherford farms at 4K, Enon complex at 13K and Sehoy complex at 13K, Creekstand at 5K, Roba timber at 5K, Detsata at 2K, Breeland at 4K, Peachburg at 4K, Wynncreek at about 6K, in addition to the Sedgefield complex at 13 K. This does not include the multiple hundreds to 1500 acre tracts scattered throughout this area that manage similarly. This makes about 130,000 acres at the low end that manages PRIMARILY FOR WILDLIFE with open pine stands, hardwood drains and regular burning. Seems like paradise to me!! They certainly don't "draw" turkeys into nesting habitat to burn it in the last minute. Most of these places are larger than the average turkeys home range so they manage their own turkey populations. They also burn on both a rotation and, mostly, in blocks in the tens, occasionally hundred acres. so a good interspersion of burned and unburned. They often vary season with some early burns and some later. Some areas of burn every 2 years, some every 3 or 4 years. The area you are talking about is not the area that is complaining about turkey decline. Burning in this area isn't the problem with turkeys, rather lack of burning in the rest of the state is.

One thing I can guarantee is that after doing this for nearly 40 years, the places that we burn regularly (even with growing season fire) ALWAYS have more turkeys than those that don't burn or burn very little. These are the places that are wondering what this "turkey decline" fuss is all about.

The turkey hunting data from the Game Check numbers do not agree…..The production output for the counties we are talking about are less than many of the other ones around the state and they also show the heaviest fluctuations in output.

This is from the second article you posted Michael…..Isnt this pointing to exactly what I’m saying??

For decades, prescribed fires (Fig. 2) needed to main tain open pinewoods were applied early in the calendar year when cooler temperatures and steady winds prevailed. More recently, some land managers have shifted to burning later in the year – sometimes as late as August -- because research suggests this may have been the time of year when Mother Nature liked to burn.

Some evidence supporting this approach lies in the prolific flowering responses that dominant plants exhibit when fires are conducted after late April in areas with natives forbs and grasses (Fig. 3). Additional evidence comes from the burn scars found on ancient pine stumps (Huffman 2006). These scars recorded fire events prior to extensive European settlement and suggested the fires burning from 1670-1830 occurred later in the calendar year. Finally, wildfires ignited by lightning in Florida from 1995-2001 (Freeman 2004) took place nearly exclusively from May to August, not February to April.



This thinking in the next paragraph seems flawed to me…..Let’s take all of the quail plantations and such we mentioned previously…..All that habitat is what it is already…..Where is this 5% gain in habitat improvement occurring when you’re just rotating squares??.....There isn’t one, only the 15% reduction.


Lightning-season burns destroy some nests and obviously have a direct effect on nesting activity, but, unlike the other threats that nesting birds face, lightning-season fires provide clear benefits thathave the potential to offset losses in a big way. For example, if lightning-season burns provide a 5% increase in the survival of adults and juveniles as a result of habitat improvements, these increases could offset a 15% reduction in nest productivity attributable to burning.

By this logic, the area north and just south of the Tennessee river, Extreme southeast (farmland around dothan) and extreme southwest (south mobile and baldwin counties) burn the most since these are the lowest density areas according the the DCNR turkey density map.
Apparently Cherokee and Dekalb counties and the area along the river in Monroe and Clarke county are the highest. According to the map, the area in Macon, Bullock, Russel and Barbour have high densities..... go figure.

The map shows the density in a manner that is 1 bird killed for every "X" amount of acres.....For example in Jackson Co there was one bird killed for every 961 acres......In Russell there was 1 bird killed per every 3308. Those are actually some of the lower densities when looking at the county averages. If you look you see that the lowest population outputs are the areas where the most burning occurs.

This is the wildfire map for a couple days ago basically showing us where most of the controlled burns are happening.....Overlay this onto the density map I just posted.