It's obvious that Quality Coon Management is not part of some people's plans.

LET COONS GO SO THEY CAN GROW!

Damn, y'all. Be good conservationists so the trophy hunters can enjoy their one hit list coon a season.

At one of my trap spots in Chambers County....I have already caught 7 so far this spring. They seem to CRAVE the Chocolate Covered Cherries I put in the tube!!

Snakes too they are egg eaters!

With the new season length and bag limit being enacted this year here is a pretty interesting comparison at the halfway point of the season......This is the amount of turkey killed this year so far compared to ALL of last season.....Many counties in south Alabama are already approaching or exceeding last year's totals while much of the state from B'ham north still has a lot of catching up to do in the latter half of the season. What the heck is going on up there in Ol' High Jackson??? They must just now be getting warmed up good.....

Also, today is gonna end up being the slowest day for kills all season to this point as kills are starting to peter out this week......

Here’s a theory for why those numbers may be playing out the way they are…..Let me say upfront that these northern counties may very well catch up by the end of the season…..But iffin they don’t and the later start impacts the northern half of the state more than the southern half….. this is why I think that may be……

Counties in the northern half of the state, like Jackson for example, have been getting to hunt more of the “pre-rut” in the past than the southern half….a time period when the gobblers are more vulnerable and not yet henned up as much……The southern half hasn’t been getting to hunt this pre-rut in the past because it likely occurred the week or two before season opened and they didn’t get to hunt it this year either……so their numbers in comparison to last season arent effected as much…….The northern half has went from getting to hunt that pre-rut time period though to now they missed out on it as well……so they’re numbers have declined as a result……Again though, we’ll see how it plays out over the next three weeks to see if they catch up before making that call.

Or they are not burning enough

Jackson Co killed almost twice as many gobblers last year as Macon, Bullock, and Russell counties combined……Again, twice as many as those 3 counties combined…..I figure those rock filled ridges with closed canopy cover must be offering them some pretty good nesting spots. Also, I’d bet the overall predator count in Jackson Co is much less than the mice filled grass prairies of the other three counties. That doesn’t mean to stop burning but it may be WAY more imperative to trap in those places if you want higher populations of turkeys.

Caught and weighed my second coon this morning. Another male weighing nearly the exact same as the first one at 9.06 lbs……I figure that these are the two year old class of males.

Yea 9 pound coon is cull material

I’ve only ever caught one that was just holy chit bigger than anything else I’ve ever caught. I don’t know what he weighed for certain but he looked like a little grizzly bear. That’s how much different he looked compared to the other coons….I bet he was 50lbs if he weighed an ounce…..Probably the biggest coon in 4 counties………..He was so big that I didn’t even kill him……I named him Leroy Brown and I brought him back home and turnt him lose in the swamp behind the house…..The way I figgered it, Ol’ Leroy would whup and run off every coon for miles around and it would be better than any trapping I could ever do.

So that’s what I did and it worked out good for years with Ol’ Leroy a whoopin and a runnin off every other coon around……Then one afternoon some ol boys from Mississippi pulled up at the neighbors house with a dog box on the back of their truck with an old coon hound just a bawling and raising all kinds of cane inside of it…..I went over there and asked the feller who wust a drivin…..”Now just what are y’all a aimin to do here??”……He said…..”I heard there was the biggest coon in south Alabama running this swamp and me my dog Hi Ball are about to go in there and get him…..I just laughed at him because I’d seen Leroy whoop a whole pack of coyotes one afternoon whilst I was a deer hunting and I knew that one old coon hound wouldn’t even scare Leroy. I told him…..”You go right ahead mister…..As a matter of fact I think I may tag along with you just to watch”……..So that’s what we did

To be continued……..

Back to that last map and how the start dates are affecting things......If that holds true then this might make sense to do so that everyone is a little more apples to apples with each other.......

It's the weather. Its been terrible.

I agree that we've had some bad storm fronts roll through but its been equally bad for everyone across the board from north to south.....

Yea it's funny how I actually have a chance of killing a turkey when the wind ain't blowing 15mph with gusts in the 30s.
That's been this entire week. Can't even drop a pin on a distant gobb in those conditions, just gotta get lucky and be right on em. I know I ain't the only one in the same boat. Hopefully tomorrow is a somewhat calm morning, will be the first we had in a while.

The last two days have been pretty nice weather but yesterday was the lowest kill total of any day this season and it looks like today is gonna be about the same, maybe even a little slower.....It'll be interesting to see what happens from here until the end of the season because from a numbers standpoint it looks like the faucet is being turned off. Going by the past data collected there should be a slight spike in kills again before its over

Chuck you remember we got shafted in the North. Anyways I expect a big change in your hypothetical graphs in the morning.

What just happened to north Alabama has been the same thing that has likely been happening in the southern part of the state already. I believe it's Turkey247 that has been saying that for awhile.....that they're getting shafted out to f getting to hunt the best time period

Here is the accompanying graph...........