That seems like the time it would do the most good. I'm all for controlling predator populations, but the last thing I want to see is another government controlled program. It would take a whole lot of manpower for the dcnr to manage something like that, and you gotta know that it would turn into a fiasco with all sorts of cheating. Let the landowners and lease holders hunt their turkeys and they will voluntarily do whatever is needed to grow them. Put more restrictions on it and a lot more people are going to give up. The average aldeer poster is to the right of Ronald Reagan politically, but the same folks seem happy to embrace more government when it involves deer or turkeys. I long for the old days - signing your license was the only paperwork needed.

PCP you’re correct about the state control but to offer a incentive would be ok
I’m a huge proponent of trapping for increasing our game population and as you said it really needs to be a self motivational thing to do it
I’ve personally seen the results of trapping increase deer and turkey populations on several properties
It’s work and takes a minimum of 3 years to see a major change but it can be done

I don't doubt for a second that decoys being legalized resulted in more gobblers being killed. But what has never been proven is that it results in fewer poults. One gobbler can breed 20 hens, in a day! How many does it take to breed the hens? Not very many.

Decoys might result in fewer gobblers in the late season, resulting in poorer hunting, especially on public land that is hunted hard. I've always said that the state should manage the WMAs as they see fit. Forcing those same rules onto private land that doesn't need it is what becomes counter productive.

It's very normal to see groups of 4 to 7 longbeards back together the last week of April where I hunt. They aren't gobbling and it's pretty obvious that the breeding season is over. I don't want to hunt those turkeys in May. Whatever might limit turkey population in those areas, it isn't a gobbler shortage.

The burr that got in my bonnet was this insinuating that the area around Barbour, Macon, Bullock, some of the finest game lands in the state were having turkey declines because they burned too much or at the wrong time. That and the bogus maps that came with it indicating, countywide, how populations in those areas were off.



I would say the majority of amateurs burn in feb/mar because that is the traditional time and folks say winter burns are easier (folks talk about how hot and hard to control growing seasons burns are - generally wrong).. No doubt it is easier to LIGHT a fire in Feb/Mar vs May but they are MUCH harder to control and keep in the lines. I think May is MUCH easier but it does come with complications - nesting season and poults.

As always, your posts are full of good information

That was my understanding too. Plus, returning to a "natural" fire regime/timing.

It does work for turkeys for sure cause our numbers are growing and we kill every coon and possum the dogs tree at the house. You rarely see coon tracks anymore so our nest predators are thin. If only there was a season on flying cats we would make some better progress.

Well edited Especially like denzel

Semo and PCP.... I’ll add this to try and help explain how I look at these things…..If we were all looking at a sky scraper and noticed it was leaning and we called in the best engineers in the world to try to assess the issues……What would be one of the first things they would likely want to look at?? The blueprints from the person that built it, correct?

I say that because I read one of Semo's comments in another post that seemed to really be hacking on the idea of a holistic approach. I believe there’s a lot of difference between someone who is trying to save the speckled tree salamander who has no perspective on game species taking a priority versus someone who is looking to nature to simply better understand how we can improve our processes. All of the stuff about soil improvements stems from the same idea of looking at how soil is supposed to function naturally and trying to recreate the same soil building concepts. I believe its the same with turkeys and when to burn or better yet, when not to burn....nature gives us the answers if we are able to look and see them. I don’t see it as a hippy dippy granola crunching way of thinking and I don’t think its wise to start labeling it like such.

PCP…..I also agree completely with you about the trapping and predators and understand exactly where you’re coming from when you say…..”Now don’t get me wrong and think I’m trying to tell people not to trap, or that it doesn’t do any good etc”…….There is no end to the amount of coons we can take out and doing so only makes them produce more. If we are going to do anything about them we need our efforts to be more refined and focused in this day and age where this isn’t a fur trade anymore. We have the ability to still make an impact on the situation even though we are taking out less coons if we find a way to get the efforts focused into the right time frame.

I know several folks frowned on this idea but since they have already reduced the limit down to 4 birds…..one way of creating a new trapping incentive would be to allow hunters to earn a 5th bird by turning in 10 coon tails from Feb 11 – May 8…….Going by the % of folks who currently shoot a 5th bird that would account for a minimum of 21,000 coons being taken out during the right time and would basically pay back that 5th bird through increased production. Just ensuring that the folks who are blasting the most birds are also doing their part to help create new ones….I’m sure you would also get other hunters (your 3 and 4 bird killers) participating to earn a 5th bird that never end up shooting it..which would increase the amount of coons being taken during this time frame because of the new incentive. If you had 30K-40K or more coons being taken out during this critical time period I believe it would help make a pretty substantial difference versus just having these same numbers spread out over the entire year.

PCP……You could probably go back and use the racoon trapping data combined with the turkey harvest data to show that every “X” amount of coons taken out results in an additional “Y” amount of gobblers added and prove this to be worth it…..but I’ll take that last post a step farther and say that you could even make it a situation where 25 fresh coon tails got you a 6th gobbler and it make sense……..This would likely result in us taking out 50K-75K coons during that critical time period….Without a fur trade these are the only ways in which I can see us effecting trapping to any significant amount

What year were the regs on coons changed to "no closed season"???

Man y'all are putting out some great ideas to help turkey populations. The predators can do some damage quickly .

Someone help me figure out exactly what this ratio of coons per gobbler produced is…….Because, for example, let’s say that it’s determined that for every 25 coons taken out there are 2 extra gobblers produced…..If that’s the case, then to me it would make sense all day long to have an incentive program that just says 10 coon tails gets you a fifth gobbler and then every 25 coon tails past that gets you an additional tag……Take advantage of male competitiveness…..What I think you would have happen here would be that a lot of guys would go out and trap 100 coons just so they could say that they had 8 tags……so the next guy would trap 125 just so he could say he had 9……Most of these bonus tags will likely go unfilled and even the ones that don’t are paying to replace that gobbler plus add an additional one back.

Would there be any issues with vacuum sealing the coon tails and mailing them in???

You know the thing about it is with this……Iffin were killing the majority of the gobblers each year already like the legalization of decoys data suggests……then to a large extent it really doesn’t matter how many tags we issue any one individual person……There are only so many gobblers to kill each year and when they are gone, they’re gone. The question of..... "Do we continue to legalize decoys?" ......is a lot a matter of..... “Do you want to have any excess gobblers or not??”……I say we are better off making decoys illegal and having the excess. The perception of the turkey population looks much better to everyone and it also provides the additional birds to give people that incentive for trapping coons and gaining the additional “tags”

I think a system like this would give folks less of a leg to stand on when bitchin about how many turkeys they are allowed to kill…..If someone wants to kill more, then go out and trap coons and get as many tags as you want to.......1 tag for every 25 coon tails.....or whatever we figure out to be the right ratio.....

Maybe. I am just skeptical of any real proof of that direct relationship and sure don't want the state to administer a program like that. I think giving the turkeys a place to hide from the coons is way more effective at producing poults than trying to catch all the coons can ever be.

You have also gotta consider that there are a whole bunch of hunters who would rather have the coons than the turkeys, and they will bitterly fight against any plan to put a bounty on them.

I know everyone wants more turkeys and I do too, but I am convinced that there are only 3 ways to increase turkey populations. The first way is to improve the habitat. The second way is to improve the habitat. The third way is to improve the habitat.

^^^^
Exactly

Here's the reason I mention this about the no closed season……Let’s just assume for a moments that our ratio of 25 coons to 2 gobblers is pretty close to accurate……So we are telling the hunter, we will give you an additional tag for however many 25 you want trap because you are producing twice what you are taking out with your trapping efforts…….If we break this down though and we look at this by month we will find that trapping efforts are not equivalent month to month…..In other words in our 25 coon scenario……. every 25 coons taken out in March would likely produce something like 3.2 gobblers……where as 25 coons taken out in July would produce 0.3 gobblers due to the timing……The coons taken out prior to nesting season are going to have a much higher impact…..

This is why I say we probably actually messed up by going to a “no closed season” on coons because we arent killing any more coons because of it and our efforts are much more spread out during inefficient times. Now folks will have a much harder time trying to understand "why" if we try to go back.....