Sounds like some big research about to begin on corn and turkeys.......

No no, no. We need to study more about how and when and how many Spring gobblers a poor old redneck shoots - how that will eventually decimate the population - and continue to monkey with limits and seasons. Eventually, at some point, eventually - we will all be forced to understand.

i liked feeding mine oats when i had them to feed . lol

Had a game warden in our loop of friends years ago tell us that feeding turkey was a bad thing. His explanation was that having them come to the location and feed/poop would cause other birds to feed/poop and then lead to excessive disease exposure. Then turkeys would die…. I never thought anything about it bc I never fed/feed them.

If that’s his thought process, I Wonder what his opinion on chicken litter as fertilizer would be.

Makes sense. Nothing in the woods poops around a food source, natural or put there by man. Insert sarcasm toward the GW. lol.

If you havent watched the video the research they will be doing is on how corn feeders effect the coon populations

I could save them a lot of time if they just ask

You need to be able to show proof or its just an assumption.....

A population increase is different than seeing more in one area at a food source.

What was deal about the funding in Florida??.....How is that different than the way studies are funded now?....I dont really know how any of that works.

Cnc , studies for the most part proves nothing . You know that. Lol

I thought the same.. we spread a lot of it and have a nice population increase this season… but most of what we spread has been through a heat but I know since antibiotics have been taken out, it has to be worse than years past..

If the question is "What does a corn feeder do to the local racoon population?", all they need to do is go to one of their old publications. If you look on page 130 of their publication "Biology and Management of the Whitetailed Deer in Alabama", from the OA website, you will see a trough-style feeder with 25+ racoons piled in and around it. I have pictures of my last working feeder being torn up from racoons hanging off of the spinner, breaking it off of the hopper.

Their legislature is allotting a certain amount every year to their turkey research. Vs AL begging the department to fund a project.... which they don't

Perfect illustration as to why we need solid research!

Gobbler,,, I doubt after they spend 2 or 3 years of doing this they find out more than "you" already know . We'll see .

I predict when the findings of this study come out it will be met with a lot of scrutiny and criticism......

Of course it will , some will say see , told you so . Others will ifing it to death .


One thing I wanna know will the study be on year round feeding or just during deer season

Said they were testing both

Good

Well, I encouraged funding it, so I am for a definitive answer to what you already "know". For instance, I know if I feed in a trough feeder, I will see a lot of coons there. What neither you nor I know is does the population increase or is there simply a "draw" from surrounding properties to an easy food source. If there is an increase in the predator population, at what feeder density does it start to occur? If there is a population increase does it depend on the season feeding occurs? Is there a difference in nest and/or poult survival on fed/unfed sites and, if there is, does it depend on feeding density? What is the rate of consumption of aflatoxin tainted corn at feeders by sex-age class and time of year? Anyone can speculate in these answers but no-one can tell me definitively......because there has been NO study to look at it. This study also proposes to monitor gobbling on these sites to see if there are differences and in following years, the study would trap predators to see how that would affect nest and poult survival. On this, again, I assume I know but a solid study would prove my speculation.

I hope they also monitor crop fields, ie. corn fields. Do they act the same as feeding during season only or more like year round feeding or no correlation?

gobbler , adding a food source will help/hurt different critters , all in how you look at it .


i got no problem with funding the study or doing it . it'll give data to point at on paper .

i figure some collage kids will do the leg work and write about it and get a grade , its all good .

be ok with me if they broke it up in different studies . narrow the focus might get better data .

I wonder how they're going to come up with an amount of corn to feed per square mile? ......I would think that would have pretty significant impacts.....Are we going to dispense 1 ton of corn per square mile during deer season or 10 tons??.....I wonder what the average feeding rate is that's occurring amongst hunters?.....This is basically going to determine how much we're "fattening them up" which should impact reproductive rates

nope , wont work that way . difference in , what affect it is having and what affect it could have . might be better to research a place under normal feeding during a year(s) then remove all feeding see what happens . or , feed in a place that has never had feed

further they get away from what is normal the screwed up the research will be . its needs to be done in a way that does not guarantee a out come .


if that makes scenes . lol

I don't know about other clubs, but I would think 1 ton a year would be insignificant. Our club feeds WAY more than that.

The real question will follow the research. IF it's determined that the "corning scenario" we currently are under does negatively impact turkey populations - for whatever reason, is the wild turkey going to be able to put the brakes on the baiting industry and special interests? Will the political and economic backing baiting has now bow to benefit the 2nd favorite hunted species in the state?

That will be a study all to itself...

That's the question........How much are we going to call "normal"??

And that explains why the AL dcnr would not fund a project like this. There are some questions they don't want anyone to ask.

They will be using varying feeder densities (from 1/25 - 1/100 ac) and feed 50 lb corn/feeder/week in each. So at a rate of one feeder/25 acres and 50 lb/week it would equate to .64 tons/week/sq mile. A survey in south Carolina indicated that across the state, an average of 350 lb/week/sq mile was occurring during winter.

That is the double edged sword of research. Do the research so the information is known. Let those who "make the rules" decide how to use it. You might see some researchers lobbying for things like season changes or lower limits for instance based on their research. A good research scientist just collects the data and publishes it. Thats it!

If nest survival and hatch rate percentages have been roughly the same for years, then what do they think they’re gonna prove/disprove with this study? Seems like the study from poult to adulthood survival will be more beneficial. Can’t wait for that one to complete and the info dispensed.

Agreed

We don't know if nest survival and hatch rates in alabama have been the same since there hasn't been any studies in AL on that for years. They can get a handle on whether feeding affects these factors while finding out what the baseline nest and brood survival is. I do agree that knowing what goes on between hatching and inclusion into the adult population would be HUGE.

Would probably need to conduct the experiments on properties with average deer density as well.....I could see the data being skewed if it were conducted on super high density quail plantation land and that info used to represent everyone else...... The higher the deer population the less the coons will get....and vice versa

I'm sure they get it figured out and go from there


Any amount of corn will cause some impact . More corn bigger the impact.


When I was running two spin feeders I was putting out (all I could) about 8 gallons of corn a day. Wasn't nothing left for coons hardly. Course I thinned out the coons during squirrel season.


Cutting timber is what done it my turkey hunting

And more had taken their place from surrounding properties by the time nesting started.

I heard, I believe on the Turkey Science podcast, them talking about how the rates haven’t changed over time. They were referencing more recent studies. My have been referencing studies in adjacent states.

Lol , I hear that a lot. Theyll just get replaced . Though I had more turkeys at that time than two people could limited out on . I ain't talk jakes either.

Come to think of it…….it may actually yield better results to fence out the deer and pigs and only allow the coons to have access to the corn……That way you could better isolate the impact that each pound of corn has on the coon population……If not then when you throw out that 10 lbs of corn…..the coons may get 1 lb of it…..they may get 5 lbs…..they may get 8 lbs…..or they may get none…….Lot of variance there depending on how much the deer eat up. If you just allow the coons to get to it then you could easier attach a rate of change per “unit” of corn if that makes sense……Then you could take that and apply it to people feeding deer and say that for every “X” amount you allow the coons to consume, this is what you can expect…..So if you feed a ton of corn and the coons get 10% of it… or 50% of it,.... or 75% of it…..this is the potential change you could expect. Something kinda like that anyways.

Just think how many it would have been if timed differently.

Yea, I heard that too. There has been little to no turkey research in AL in the last 30 years unfortunately.

That would be awesome. If we could get the State to pony up some money, we might be able to do some more good research!

Actually if you were going to go the route of just trying to feed coons then you could completely change your means of delivery……Instead of using a traditional deer feeder and trying to fence out other critters…..you could put the corn in something that just the coons could get to…..Maybe simply a trough 4 ft high built on a couple 4x4’s.

no idea , but it worked for me .

……or…..or… ….you could take one of those 275 gallon water totes that you see all the time on craigslist and simply cut some holes in the sides of it big enough for coons to crawl in and out of it…..That’d keep your corn dry

lol .

I think the issue is when you artificially increase the number of birds feeding/pooping in a concentrated area the risk increases. Then there's the whole aflatoxin issue.

The more I think about it…..I really don’t know how you could test it any other way without just feeding the coons……There’s just too much potential for variability in simply running a timed deer feeder. You have no idea really how much of the corn is being consumed by the coons so therefore its impossible to make an accurate assessment of any change that may or may not occur……If at the end of the experiment it shows no change, will it be because the coons only got 5% of the feed or did they get 75% and it just not had as significant of an impact as we assumed??....You don’t know…..

You need to feed the coons a known amount of feed and then measure the change…..In reality they are getting some “X” amount anyways…..What I mean is….For every 100 lbs someone feeds they are getting 10 lbs of it…..or 50lbs of it…..or what have you…..That’s a whole different task of estimating the percentage they are consuming and its going to vary…..What we need to know first is basically how much change does a pound of corn create….. or a ton of corn…..or ten tons of corn

Cnc , they just need to keep as normal as they can and get a base line from there. Then any body can ifing it how they want to .

From spot to spot its gonna differ. The main goal i hope is see what affect its having on paper . I pretty much already know from hunting where a place was heavily fed that was coon hunted also .



Buttttt. There were a lot of turkeys there too

Put the corn up in a tree.

Exactly.....Its going to vary from place to place......So what is "normal" when it comes to the amount of feed the coons are consuming?......Is it 30% of the feed??....Higher?.....Lower??

So whatever number you agree with…..let’s say its 30%.....That means that for every 100 lbs of corn we put out we’re assuming the coons are eating 30 lbs of it……So why just assume it and guess on that part??.....Why not just feed the coons a known 30 lbs of corn and measure the change??

See what I’m getting at here…..Why even introduce that layer of uncertainty to the experiment?.....You're just asking for bad results and scrutiny