That's great info......I adjusted my squiggly lines....The fire peaks would have been opposite. I think you answered your own question with the last one Gobbler.....May and June would be the best time to burn a portion of it with secondary burns during the true dormant season.....I think we make the wrong assumption that this is bad for the young turkeys.....Again though we're talking about slow low intensity burns and not big grass head fires.

The stuff about Mississippi wildfires from 1990-2006 does not apply to what we're talking about here. Most wildfires these days are caused by humans.....We're talking about naturally occurring spot fires being lit by lightening.

Show me the data that says "fire peaks would have been opposite".

Here is one and it indicates that April May and June are the greatest probability of a lightning strike set fire



.

My point about the Indians is that they likely recognized that natural fires could start up in late summer/early fall and burn for weeks if no rain came…..so there was a large window of time within which to get it done.... I also imagine that these areas that they burned during this fall and winter time period revolved around numerous planned hunts…..So the fact that they may be burning late winter in some story was likely a two fold purpose.

I believe that nature meant for there to be pauses in the burning regime to allow ground nesters to reproduce. I think there is likely a critical time period for turkeys of something like 6-7 weeks when fire is meant to be suppressed….. I think due to the turkeys breeding earlier and deer season being pushed back into Feb we have gone from barely bumping up against this critical threshold to likely burning thousands of acres right in the middle of it. I think its likely these heavy burn counties in the southern part of the state where most of the perceived decline is happening. I bet there is a survey somewhere asking this

I’ll add this too just for fun but I grew up as a kid hunting in Paint Rock Valley in Jackson Co in the late 80’s and early 90’s…….I get it and understand what “a lot of turkeys” looks like. It was nothing back then to head up through the valley toward Hollytree and Estillfork and look out into the fields and see groups of 50…..75…..sometimes 100+ turkeys. We didn’t really have a ton of deer but there were damn turkeys all over the place. It was just a normal thing to see a group of a dozen gobblers or twenty/thirty hens coming off the river into the big crop fields while you were deer hunting. I wish I could go back now to be able and appreciate some of those turkey hunts better…..I remember one morning specifically when I was about 13 hunting with my uncle down in the bottoms along the Paint Rock River. As it started breaking daylight you could hear turkeys gobbling EVERYWHERE!!!!….. They were all over the sides of both mountains and along the creek…. with gobbles echoing up and down the valley all around you….. ….it was nuts…..I’ve never experienced anything like that since those days…..


I live in Macon Co now in amongst all of this big wig plantation land and have for the last 16 years…..I drive these roads all the time and I spend the majority of hunting season tracking deer and riding buggies in and out of all the very same properties around here Gobbler is talking about when he quoted those 130,000 acres …There's very few I havent been on......I’ve gotten to know some of the landowners well and have seen what folks consider good and bad around here….I’m not giving these opinions as someone who has never set foot on any of it …..Yeah, sure there’s turkeys here and there and in some years I’m sure its above average…….. but it aint nothing like what “a lot of turkeys” looks like in comparison to some other places and they sure aint just running around everywhere out here. ….For there to be a huge chunk of prime habitat in this area being burned in the neighborhood of several hundred thousand acres…….the fields sure aint just overflowing with turkeys. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I saw a really big drove in a field of 25-30 turkeys and I’ve never seen anything like the droves I saw growing up in Jackson Co.

Let me ask y'all this question.......If May is the peak of natural lightening set fires, then why would we assume that is the wrong time to burn for turkeys and quail??.....Is their a design flaw??

The problem seems multi-faceted…... a combination of several factors……JMO but to fix it I say…..

1) Make decoys illegal
2) Create a way to incentivize trapping
3) Encourage the inexperienced folks to burn earlier…..Educate the prescribed burn managers more on conducting May/June burns

I am personally good with #1, but I have never seen any evidence that it would make any difference in poult production. The state spent 5 years, millions of dollars, took away thousands of man hours of hunting opportunities, and lost the Scotch WMA for the purpose of finding any sliver of evidence that early gobbler harvest was hurting populations. And they knew that they couldn't find anything on well managed private land, so the did the entire study on hard hunted, non-managed public land. And they found........ Nothing. Not a single fact to use to justify the restrictions they wanted. They had to say that they did it on "the opinion of experts." And we all know who the Expert is - if anyone else on the committee had disagreed they would have found themselves working in a place like Siberia.

I don't know of but 2 ways to accomplish #2. One would be to bring back fur in women's fashion, and that will be difficult. The other that would work would be to have a long season with a 5 bird limit to encourage people to manage for turkeys. That actually worked for about 75 years.

I don't get #3. Every amateur I know burns in late winter.

The caveat to that is May is actually a VERY easy month to burn if the fuel dries up. May is for amateurs, Feb is for pro's

I am personally good with #1, but I have never seen any evidence that it would make any difference in poult production. .

I don't know of but 2 ways to accomplish #2. One would be to bring back fur in women's fashion, and that will be difficult. The other that would work would be to have a long season with a 5 bird limit to encourage people to manage for turkeys. That actually worked for about 75 years.

The other that would work would be to have a long season with a 5 bird limit to encourage people to manage for turkeys. That actually worked for about 75 years.

The best thing we can do for the turkey is to provide habitat so that the hens can hide their nests and the poults can hide from predators. That is the limiting factor for turkey populations. If a lot of the poults can survive until they can fly, then you will have a lot of turkeys. Adult turkeys have habitat that they prefer, but they can survive most anywhere. A lot of people look at mature hardwoods and tell you they have great turkey habitat, but if that's all they have, they don't. You gotta produce the poults if you wanna have turkeys. I think it's that simple.

Spring gobbler hunting has almost nothing to do with it, and never will.

I am personally good with #1, but I have never seen any evidence that it would make any difference in poult production. The state spent 5 years, millions of dollars, took away thousands of man hours of hunting opportunities, and lost the Scotch WMA for the purpose of finding any sliver of evidence that early gobbler harvest was hurting populations. And they knew that they couldn't find anything on well managed private land, so the did the entire study on hard hunted, non-managed public land. And they found........ Nothing. Not a single fact to use to justify the restrictions they wanted. They had to say that they did it on "the opinion of experts." And we all know who the Expert is - if anyone else on the committee had disagreed they would have found themselves working in a place like Siberia.

I don't know of but 2 ways to accomplish #2. One would be to bring back fur in women's fashion, and that will be difficult. The other that would work would be to have a long season with a 5 bird limit to encourage people to manage for turkeys. That actually worked for about 75 years.

I don't get #3. Every amateur I know burns in late winter.

I thought the reason the Scotch WMA was lost due to the state taking the feds out there to look for the Black Pine Snake without informing the owners.

I’m sure Squeaky is glad they did, it allowed several folks to pick up some nice properties. 😜

I completely agree with this concept PCP......Out of curiosity, how long was turkey seasons back then??

The caveat to that is May is actually a VERY easy month to burn if the fuel dries up. Feb and March is, as we have discussed, windy, low hum and dry fuels and the fire WANTS to be on the neighbors, preferably 2 neighbors over. Its a nightmare to manage. May is flowers and sunshine Fuels are greening up, fires move slower and a simple road that has been driven on is an easy firebreak. Hardwood drains are also excellent and easy firebreaks. May is for amateurs, Feb is for pro's