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.