I actually remember that from my high school biology. Didn’t remember the exact number of years, but the cycle for sure.

It just doesn’t work that way PCP…..Female coons are typically in their dens with babies during the time period when hens are nesting….. ….Yearling coons are out wandering around on their own at this time…..They’re not learning a behavior from mom that’s getting passed down…..They’re simply opportunistically scavenging the landscape. The amount of scavenging they do in the uplands a lot depends on the productivity of the watershed and the amount to which riparian food resources are being exploited by the coon populations…..Poor watershed quality combined with over populated coons results in more upland scavenging.

You could be right, but that wasn't my opinion on the intentional hunting during nesting season. That was in one of the research reports I read a while back. Sorry, but I don't remember which one. They described the coons moving into upland areas during the nesting season to look for turkey nests. How widespread this is, I have no idea. Something seems to be happening most everywhere turkeys are stocked in order to get a 20 year decline in so many different places.

I would think that would be the coons just returning to where they successfully found food in the past….Maybe there are some rotten egg smells drawing them in after a few hens have been run off their nests. It just doesn’t take coons 20 years to adapt to a changing food source…..Put up a corn feeder and see how long it takes them to find it and figure out how to turn that little spinner…….

I would think that the 20 year time period would be something to do with the amount of time it takes the turkeys to max out the population growth that the land itself can sustain. There may be a lot of turkey food out there but it isnt unlimited and the higher the turkey population grows, the more food gets exploited. If we look at it from the point of restocking moving forward…….turkey number 10,000 isnt going to have the same availability of resources as did turkey number 10…….At some point the unlimited quantity and quality of resources (food and space) available to each turkey starts decreasing from what it was originally. That’s an inevitable truth.

I guess something else to consider too is turkey age……How long will a turkey live if there isnt heavy predation on adult birds??......10 years??.........What I’m getting at here is that at some point after restocking you’re going to start running into a time threshold where the old ones start dying annually and thus increasing the annual mortality rate compared to birth rate. For those first 10 years you don’t have many turkeys dying of “old age issues”……That upward growth line on the chart would have no choice but to flatten out more at this point in time.

Alright follow me here for a minute PCP and I may have an idea where the 20 years comes from……Let’s stick with the 10 year life span for our turkeys……I’m betting that isnt too far off from reality…..Again, keep in mind I’m talking about the life span back when there weren’t coyotes on the landscape to prey on adult birds…….

So let’s say we restock some turkeys in an area…..You’re going to have your first hatching of young turkeys that year……In 10 years time what’s left of the turkeys from that first hatching are going to hit our 10 year life span threshold at which time you will start getting your first turkeys dying of an age related issue…..So now instead of just having adult turkeys being added each year, you have these old ones hitting the age threshold and their numbers being subtracted off the end.

However, remember that this first group of turkeys hitting the 10 year age threshold are just going to be a small group that hatched from our initial release birds…..Next year though the group of birds hitting that age limit will be much larger and so on and so forth…..Each subsequent year that follows…..years 11…12…13…14…..15….etc……is going to see a larger and larger amount of birds hitting that old age threshold because back in the beginning our population was growing and growing in years 1….2….3….4……5……….Are you still following me??

Ok now, at some point down the road…..I’m gonna say about 20 years……the number of adult turkeys hitting the old age limit (and dying from other causes) starts getting closer and closer to equaling the number of new poults being added…..In other words, deaths are equaling births and you get the population growth curve leveling out. Again, this was before the predation on adult birds we have now with hunters and coyotes added into the mix. These days you probably don’t even have many birds past 4-5 years old or something of that nature.

I think it may also help to look a simple diagram and think about how things would play out spatially……Looking at the diagram below lets say we turn our 10 turkeys loose in the very middle…..Our 10 turkeys are going to quickly turn into 100 turkeys and then 200 turkeys etc…….As this happens those turkeys arent going to just keep piling up within the smallest 1000 acre circle…..they are going to start spreading outwardly and it will happen as they start using up the resources of food and space……They’ll keep moving out into the areas of unoccupied resources

So if we ask the question….”When did growth stop?”…. ….It would really be a matter of when does the population reach a point that there isnt any more room to “spread out”??.....I think that’s when you’re density dependent factors are going to kick in and growth rates start dropping due to things such as hens having to nest in poorer secondary locations, etc…… Eventually that’s combined with the previously talked about increased death rates from age limits and things level off.

You also kinda have to define an area of which to ask that question about growth…For example lets say we take the 10,000 acre circle as the area we define to measure at any given release spot…..I could see where it would take about 20 years to saturate the space in the middle and population numbers level off…..

I’m presenting it that way because if we go back to one release spot after another and measure for this growth and leveling off then somebody is measuring a defined area in each spot whether they mean to be or not…..and the first 10K acres or even 100K acres to get filled in by restocking growth is probably going to play out about the same way in every spot whether its Arkansas or Alabama…..You gotta think that most of these release sites were likely chosen due to a decent amount of suitable habitat being available……But that’s why I think they get a fairly consistent 20 year measurement…..Everyone is likely measuring a fairly small epicenter sized area…..If you were able to measure bigger and bigger circles I think you would start finding more and more variation in this timing occurring between areas due to more and more landscape variations and such creeping into the equation.

I appreciate your response and willingness to share, sir! Obviously, you knew what I was thinking.

Honestly, I am clueless (but curious) about whether this phenomenon is a viable explanation for turkey numbers anywhere I have hunted. I haven’t been doing it long enough (started in 2010) to have lived through it, assuming it were viable. However, I am mostly curious specifically as it pertains to the mountain turkeys in Jackson County (which I have spent way more time with than anywhere else). My curiosity stems from dear friends who hunted them hard in the same locales in the late 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s. According to them, I missed the glory days. I certainly believe them too, of course. They talk of turkey numbers in our familiar stomping grounds being borderline stupid. Go and hear 15-20 most anywhere you wanted to go. Run one turkey off and walk away from one that had shut up and was probably coming (they were learning) and walk right around the mountain a few hundred yards to the next hard gobbling one and sit down and start working him. Repeat until one of them got there quick enough to kill him before you messed it up. Obviously, those days are LONG GONE. I have seen ebbs and flows over my 14 years chasing them there, believe when I started was the probably the highest numbers I have seen, hit a bottom out maybe 3 or 4 years ago, and now the hunting has gotten much better again. My experience is not really related to my question, but just thought I would share regardless.

With all that said, is the 20 year phenomenon a potential explanation for why my friends had so many turkeys to hunt back then? I honestly have no idea how long we have had viable populations, if/when there were ever stocking efforts in Jackson County, etc. Hence, my curiosity in a locale dear to me.

And the follow-on question is……what about other locations around Alabama and the southeast? Is the 20 year phenomenon a potential, viable explanation for perceived “declines” elsewhere? In the end, I wish I knew more about the timelines of stocking efforts around the SE.

Yes, there are density dependent factors that influence turkey populations. But, in my experience as a hunter and knowing the same property going back 3 generations. There are only 3 factors that matter. Weather, pressure, and habitat.

I only list habitat because it can be a factor. In Missouri (especially in the southern half) that isn't an issue outside of a few properties.

So,
Don't kill them all
Hope weather doesn't ruin nesting success
no long term ice storms
don't have consecutive (or multiple) years of hard and soft mass failure
Don't plant a monoculture

Controlling predators is helpful but populations can be extremely high without doing that.


In wildlife terms....have high fecundity (abiotic and biotic driven), no adverse stochastic events that increases mortality rates, and don't have additive harvest. The issue in Alabama IMO is that the population is on the wrong side of the growth curve and hunting pressure doesn't help with fecundity. Plus, a ton of the state is in poorly managed pine plantations or agricuture.

What I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around here is the concept is being talked about in a generalized fashion without defining a specific spatial area…… …….It goes back to the last drawing I just posted……If we released some turkeys in a spot then “the population” becomes that growing circle…..If we come back in 20 years the dynamics at the 5 million acre level is not going to be the same as in the 1000 acre epicenter…….The idea has to have some kind of bounds for this reason.

Also you would have take into consideration how many and where are the other “circles” with growing populations and how long does it take for them to merge together with each other…..If you restocked one location in every county at the exact same time then I could see your circles merging together fairly evenly……but I don’t think that’s the way restocking took place was it??......I just don’t see any way around having to define a specific area when saying it takes “twenty years”

Do y'all have any links to any examples where this has been documented??.....I'd just be curious to see how they went about "measuring"

Here's a bit of history on Georgia's restocking.....It looks like they’re using a poult per hen measurements taken from lots of hunter surveys to estimate when peak population growth occurred……estimating that growth rates started dropping around 1996 and populations peaked between 2003 and 2014…….I take it they're using a statewide average....

https://georgiawildlife.com/sites/default/files/wrd/pdf/management/Georgia%27s%20Wild%20Turkey%20Management%20Plan%20final.pdf


Georgia has a long history of successful wild turkey management. The early 1990’s saw
restoration efforts reach their peak. Wild turkey populations were growing rapidly and
productivity indices (poult/hen ratios) were at all-time highs, often over 4 poults/hen statewide.
Most of the restocking effort ended by 1996, and the observed population growth rate appeared
to slow around the same time. Following the theoretical sigmoid growth curve, the population
had reached and surpassed its inflection point, and began to experience lower productivity with
poult/hen ratios between 2-3 poults/hen. Between 2003 and 2014, the population appeared to
reach carrying capacity, productivity averaged 1.5 poults/hen, the population was relatively
stable with some fluctuations, harvest was relatively stable, and hunter numbers were slightly
increasing. The spring of 2015 saw a small dip in harvest followed by a significant harvest
decline in 2016. Productivity between 2012 and 2015 was the lowest four-year period on record.
Many factors impact wild turkey populations, such as habitat quality and quantity, predation,
disease, and weather. All of these are likely contributing to variation in reproduction and
population size. We observed a small increase in reproduction indices in 2016, which may be an
indicator of future improvement.

So now the series of pics below is how I would see that playing out spatially with poults per hen…..”The average” would start dropping as soon as the middle of the circle starts decreasing. It would be easy in the scenario to create a disconnect between the statewide math and how things are actually playing out on the ground in site specific areas. I would think you would be getting a decreasing variability in poults per hen over time and at some point it level off once all the growth started overlapping with other growth…..Is that correct?

So basically if you’re saying that we are “on the backside of a growth curve” then you’re saying that the epicenter area eventually reached a saturation point where a resource became limited and over time the outer rings also grew to reach that point and we are now just fluctuating up and down where that same limiting factor is controlling growth……To me that’s what I understand would be the “backside” of the restocking growth curve

The problem here though is that there has been another variable introduced into the equation…..The time period that everyone is using for poults per hen to max out is the same exact time period when coyotes expanded and filled in the landscape. If coyotes started harassing hens and running them off their nests creating a bunch of unsuccessful nesting attempts compared to pre-yote times……then your poults per hen average would start decreasing as you started counting more hens with no poults and it wouldn’t have anything to do with the original limiting factor that we are assuming was reached……and this is IF we ever reached a point where there was something else shutting down the "math growth" other than it being yotes moving in

That’s been my point of contention. Pressure and habitat is about that can be controlled. There is more burning now than I’ve ever known of. I tried to get to burn our pines back in the 90s but the landowners wouldn’t have it. Nowadays land owners are signing up for cost share all the time. I see more smoke now than I ever have before. I think it’s working too.

The other factor is number of hunters in the woods and constant pressure can’t be good.

I will argue til the day I die that you can kill too many gobblers on a landscape. They’re not just sperm donors there something else for them.

CNC here is something to look at. Talked with a friend about some things he compiled but is going off memory from years ago. Things NW Alabama Colbert and Lauderdale counties

Back in the 60s the season opened March 20.

During the 70s the season was closed and restocked

Reopened in the 80s but on April 8 until the early 90s when it opened on April 1.

See if you can find the actual details. That’s all he could think of and turkeys are not his thing so he’s not jaded.

You like research so have it please.

What does this have to do with the current conversation??

I got a question for you cartervj……..Are you intentionally trying to redirect every conversation back to why its about season dates and hunter impact?.....Maybe it just seems that way. I remember you saying something about being asked to come on here and back up the 3 buck limit back in the day so that’s why I’m kinda skeptical now about why you keep pushing the idea that its gotta be hunters and season dates

History has no relevance?

Yes I was asked by perchjerker and another fellow to come in here from the QDMA forums. My agenda is having an honest discussion which seems to escapes the realm around here. People exaggerate their positions by not being honest about the dates of the past. Why? I started turkey hunting in 92 and til about 08 or so was wild. I’ve seen the population plummet since those days. The sheer number of birds around here was unreal. I thought it was normal but apparently it wasn’t. I was extremely fortunate to be in the right spot at the right time. Southern Tennessee just north northwest of the shoals was very similar. The land where the farm is now was loaded too. It’s just south of the creek and Jerry’s place. The entire creek bottom held lots of birds. I was as ate up with turkeys as anyone has ever been and I’ve killed a few. Closing in on a hundred or so. They just don’t eat at my soul like they used to so I step back and wonder some things.

Like how does hunting them not affect them? I mean if that was true there would be no season and no limits, right?

Today I was spraying fields. I was coming back to the shop and a gobbler and hen were on the edge of the corn. He ran like a bat out of hell while she just eased into the woods. What did he come apart at the seams?
I then cross under the trace and a hen starts easing ahead of me and banks left into the duck hole. I park the sprayer and go to my truck

Here’s what was in the duck hole



I’m hoping things are coming back. I’ve realized maybe we’re just getting back to what normal is and not those fields being full of birds like 150 plus.

I don’t know and read and hear numerous ideas. Like those podcast that keep getting shared and people taking them to be all encompassing when in fact those guys says this is relevant to this study. Folks cherry-picking bothers me, the whole truth in it’s entirety matters.

I’ve watched 40 something years of duck hunting go from being made fun of to being cool to being competitive to the point folks are fighting. Hell I had to pull a pistol on 3 dudes pissed I was in their spot. Had a dude literally sit down 75 yards from me while I was working a bird. He knew full well. I’d never do that. Anyways the hysteria is good and bad. Quality of products developed because of the interest. The monies raised for research and so forth. If they weren’t desired the folks wouldn’t care as much about doing habitat work. I get both sides of the issue.

What I don’t get is folks jumping up and down about trapping yada yada yada yet discount they themselves are a factor. We’re a predator too are we not?

Like the last question I directed at you. Does season timing matter and no I don’t believe in the DG theory in its entirety. I asked you to look into the season dates and ask. Was it causation or correlation. 🤷‍♂️

I also think as more people pursue you have to throttle back to some degree to protect the resource. Just like me coming here to promote buck limits. It worked and we have a better balanced herd around these parts for what I see.


Just for another twist. I started duck hunting in the 3/30 seasons and watched it go 4/40 and now 6/60. Migration patterns have changed and arkie is not what it once was. Causation or correlation? I’m for a 4/40. Folks used to not hunt all day but now it’s a thing.

Alright history then……here’s my assessment of it…..

Once upon time, circa 1970’s, the conditions were just right to restock turkeys……There were no coyotes, people were actively trapping racoons and shooting avian predators……These ideal conditions allowed for rapid growth…..Also at this time there were few turkey hunters so the number of males being shot was fairly moderate which allowed there to be a complete age structure pyramid in place…..Not only was turkey population growth flourishing but there was a lot of gobblers per hunter……

Then, around the late 80’s and early 90’s coyotes began to roll in and over the course of the next decade or more, expand and fill in the landscape…..heavily impacting nesting outside of prime locations and the unchecked growth that was occurring….On top of this fur markets dried up and not only did coon trapping decrease but we’ve since started supplementally feeding their populations…..Along with this raptor populations have continued to climb.

So now these ideal conditions that we started with no longer exist and the populations have constraints put on them…..We’re beginning to decrease to the population levels that those limits have put on us…..In the process of this happening, turkey hunting has become more and more popular which has put more hunters in the woods killing more turkeys…..With the turkey population decreasing and the hunter population increasing…..your gobbler to hunter ratio has changed dramatically from what it was back in the good old days. This complete age structure pyramid has probably been whacked in half and you just don’t have the same primo hunting experience as it used to be.

Now these days, I think limiting the number of gobblers that hunters kill and the number of days they have to hunt them is what the state sees as their only real option to “do something”……Which means that they need to persuade the general hunting public that they should agree with that….So therefore you have some folks who’s only problem or solution to any discussion is going to ALWAYS revolve around how the hunter is “potentially” the problem and limiting the hunter is the solution……..even though hunters are likely one of the smallest holes in the bucket and not the limiting factor preventing growth……

I think the game plan is not to actually grow the turkey population but rather just let people shoot less gobblers so that more make it and give the perception that more have been created……More haven’t really been created, less have just been allowed to be shot. I suppose that this is A solution to improving the hunting experience…….but the problem is that in order to really make any change in this manner, you’re going to have to really reduce the bag limits or season dates to create change……The total number of people killing one turkey matters a lot more right now than the number who are killing four. The real limiting factor to population growth continues to be the predation and disruption on the nesting/brooding process.