I use to be able to kill 20-30 a year at the house just by waiting on my curs to tree them when they get out every night. We may kill 10-12 a year now. I could kill 20 in a couple of nights at the club turning them out on the corn piles. 30-40 wouldn’t be tuff for me in a year some would be a lot more difficult.

There may actually be more possums taken out than that......I've always caught them at about a 1:1 ratio with coons when I've trapped but other folks may have different results

I’m just telling you what I could have done. Nothing more. I believe the coon population is out of control and some serious thinning is needed.

In the majority of the state I agree. We probably have 30-40 on our 500 acre lease. That’s a lot and does major damage to a nesting season.

I'm not doubting you guys on the coon numbers you see, but I can tell you that we don't have anything like that on our place. I started trapping as a kid with my dad and grandfather back in the early 70s and just can't help but looking for critter sign when out on the farm. I don't see any more sign now than I did back then. The last time I set out traps a few years ago I think I caught 6 coons, along with various other varmints. That was running around 30 traps for 5 nights. I don't think I could catch 20 coons there if I kept out traps the whole season.

Of course, I don't feed deer and the coons have no reason to congregate on our place. Could it be that the corn is attracting the coons from a wide area around you?

CNC, if you are gonna dream, why not make the dream bigger? Why not include other management practices in the plan to earn an earlier turkey season? How about anyone who conducts a prescribed burn on 20 acres or more also qualifies? Let the landowner or leaseholder list a helper for every 20 acres so that folks not in a club or who don't own land could still participate? There will already be some documentation of the burns with the burn permits, so this would be an easier job for the dcnr than collecting coon tails.

You gotta know that there is no chance of getting any of this approved unless Chuck gets something out of the deal. Documenting either practice and issuing the permits would mean extra work for them, so it's gotta have a fee tied to it. The question is, how much would it have to be for the dcnr to consider it and would that be an amount that hunters would be willing to pay?

I don't know what it would take, but they have decided that an alligator is worth $250. Would an earlier week of turkey season be worth that? I don't know; a lot of people are enjoying the early season without paying anything. I guess you could also use that as a selling point - they would not only get the $250, but could also write a bunch of tickets for folks that hunt early without getting the permit.

You need a catchy name for it too. Maybe call it the Early Season Turkey Privilege License.

I think that what gobbler is mentioned would be better. Put fire on the ground and create habitat.

Then again there seems to be a bitterness about growing seasons burns so I give up.

What about……….”Special Opportunity Bird”……..stick with the theme they already have going……

Not that I think we need to have any more fees but there’s already the $25 fur trapping fee that is in place……Anyone that was getting paid to trap or getting paid for tails would have to buy one under the current setup

What's the plan to make that happen?

Let me ask you this question PCP……….Let’s just say hypothetically that the DCNR would actually implement such and let folks start a week early for 20 coons………What percentage of turkey hunters do you think would participate??

So best I could tell you would need about 9% of the turkey hunters to participate to get to 100,000 coons right? I guess that would be doable. I wouldn’t think you would get much more participation than that. I couldn’t find any info on the estimated Coon poplulation in Alabama. Any idea?

The info I found said 72,000 turkey hunters though that seems like a lot. You would need 5,000 hunters to participate to equal 100,000 coons and however many possums that got you for free.

As far as the total coon population……I think it would be tough to put a real number on that…..If you wanted something to measure to determine if the incentive was successful then monitoring any change in the avg nesting success rate over the next 5 or so years may be the easiest way.

From the things I’ve read I believe avg nesting success rates are around 25% give or take……of course fluctuating from year to year…….with coons typically ranking #1 for nest predation. If you increased that to an average of 30%........how much would that impact the turkey population over the next 5-10 years??

Y'all going to keep talking about all these raccoon population explosions and trapping, and before long there will be a BanditCheck and new permit privilege fee.

It wouldn’t help our area at all. We already trap so it would actually have the potential to hurt our population due to the extra week of hunting.

My research said 60k turkey hunters in 2021 but that was the only number I found in my quick look. I’m guessing most of those are not dedicated turkey hunters. Getting 5k hunters to trap 20 coons might be a stretch. I’m gonna trap my 20 and sell the other 40-50 to cover my cost and time for trapping. 😂

Like any "government incentive" program, I am probably against it. Just goes against my grain to have the government spending my $$ to get someone to do what they should be doing anyway. I used to be on several committees in reference to these incentive programs. I slowly got dis invited over time because I was always to one who asked "shouldn't the first question we ask is not HOW we do this program but SHOULD we do this program"?

Since CNC didn't like my first estimate, lets be conservative. Again, there is 23,000,000 acres of forest land in AL. Lets take a lower estimate of a coon per 15 acres. That's 1,533,333 coons. Killing 100,000 would be 6.5% of the coons - still a drop in the bucket.

That would be 43 coons per sq mile for every sq mile……….PCP said he caught 6 last time he trapped. You’re using numbers from studies done in farming country…….but lets go with your estimate anyways……If coons are responsible for 30% of nest mortality which is a low end estimate…..some studies show them as high as 50%.......and you take out 6.5% of the coon population……Then that would equate to a roughly 2% increase in average nesting success rate…….Let’s say we take 1000 hens that would give us an extra 20 successful nests……If we say that each nest had 10 eggs then that would produce an extra 200 birds per 1000 hens……. This doesn’t even take into account the fact we’ve likely taken out just as many possums with the incentive.

I’d still like to see more Prescribed Burn Associations set up. We need one in SW AL

I honestly have no idea now. Twenty years ago I thought I knew what was going on in the state, but now I don't have a clue. I think a very high % of the people interested enough to do it are already hunting early. And they are paying nothing and enjoying more without any competition. I don't think any of them will participate.

I don't believe there are that many hunters with the land and opportunity to catch 20 coons. I don't believe I could do it. Or maybe the only way I could would be to start feeding corn and draw a bunch in. I might give it a try, but feel sure I would fall short. I'd be all over it if I could qualify by prescribed burning and would be glad to help get others qualified too.


I think there is zero chance of getting it done without a hefty fee involved. You have gotta make it appeal to Chuck, and money is only thing that will do that. Maybe you can think of other ways to qualify besides burning or coons. The more money it will raise, the more likely it will work. Offer him a chance to make a lot of money and he might listen.

That works on paper CNC, but just because the coons don’t kill the nests, doesn’t mean that those nest will be successful. It would definitely help, but those aren’t real world results. The reduction in coons will result in less nests raised by coons, but that doesn’t mean the poults will survive.
I know that killing coons helps. I’ve seen the results. But you will still lose some of those poults to other things.

I don’t think we need a government incentive to trap, nor do I think we need a government incentive to manage property for timber production. Many of the NRCS programs are detrimental to turkey and wildlife production in general. Clear cut, establish fire breaks, burn, spray chemicals to suppress growth of anything that would compete with pines until they get established, plant pines close enough together that they shade out all undergrowth after just a few years. Let the landowner pay for trapping, burning and timber establishment if that’s what they want. Take the government out of the equation and there’ll be turkeys and timber scattered all over the state instead of thousands of acres of monoculture pine desert. Trapping helps, burning helps, thinning helps, food plots help as well as other things, but it needs to be done on a voluntary basis. I’m surprised no one has mentioned the huge increase in the last 20 years in the spreading of chicken litter on farm and pasture land across the state. Maybe we could get the government to incentivize Alabama farmers for not using chicken litter or force them to sell it to other states.

I agree……..What seems to happen is that avian predators have years where they have an abundance of primary prey (rodents) associated with heavier rain totals that results in less predation on turkey poults…….These are the years where additional nest success would have a greater impact. You would have to look at it at least over a 5 year time span.