Originally Posted by poorcountrypreacher
Originally Posted by cartervj
Originally Posted by poorcountrypreacher


Carter, if you saw a flock of 72 this past season that sounds like you have a great population. And after all these years maybe that is sustainable. I saw that many in a flock in Perry county back in the 60s. It was right after the turkey population took off after restocking, and they were in a big pasture near the Cahaba river. I've not seen that since, and we've never had a flock like that on our place.

The largest winter flock seen on our land was just a couple of years ago, and it was maybe 50 birds. My neighbors have really whacked the timber around us since then, so I would expect our population to start trending down. The habitat won't be the same, and no turkey lives his life only on our land.

Originally Posted by crenshawco
I really don't know how you could complain about a lack of birds when you are seeing a flock of 70+. The biggest flock I've ever seen around here is probably 40, and I've always felt like I've had plenty of birds to hunt.


This is the first time in years to see a winter flock of this size. Past two years have been good hatches

The entire area of the map I shared is still down. Nothing that big or half that size seen elsewhere. Like I mentioned we’d see 300 birds in a 4 mile stretch back in the late 90s right before season I’ve always felt they migrated towards that bottom.

There’s hope, yea. We still are down overall compared to. It has been mentioned we were expiring a boom during those early years I started.

Other areas are still down at down.

In decent habitat what would be considered good kill rate per acreage. 1 gobbler in every
1500 acres decent or terrible?


I don't know the rate to be considered good, but one per 1500 acres sounds kinda light to me. Season before last we killed them on one property at a rate of 225 per 1500 acres. That maybe was too much as it dropped off this year to a rate of only 75 per 1500 acres.

Those are accurate numbers, but I will admit that I have read the book, "How to Lie with Statistics." smile

On a more realistic note, we have averaged around 4 longbeards per season on a 400 acre tract in Perry county. We've killed as many as 6 several times, and have also put up some zeros.


Carter, if you're hunting ag land, it's really not a fair comparable to us LA hunters. I'm hunting very little ag land with the exception of a couple of hay fields and cow pastures. I'd say 1 bird to 100 acres is a realistic expectation with decent habitat. When you're talking about 100+ acre ag field, that kills the bird per acre average quick