Originally Posted By: poorcountrypreacher
Originally Posted By: AU_trout_bum


A better discussion would be why don't we have an increase in the per day limit. Lots of people can double in Georgia, and if it was legal here, I could have doubled this year and be sitting at 3 birds instead of 2, if I was counting. If the overall limit is 5, what does it matter when you kill your 5?


You make my point on why a daily limit does far more to protect gobblers than a season limit. If you could kill more than one a day you would have, and so would a whole lot of others. There would be a lot fewer gobblers out there for people to hunt. As it stands now, the season limit has had zero effect on you, and it won't affect most others either. But the daily limit has kept you from killing a gobbler. Would you have really been any happier that day if you had killed 2? smile

People do double up in GA; I've done it myself a few times. Some even triple up. And then they go out the next day and try to do it again, because the season limit is an honor system and lots of them don't have much of that. A guy I hunt with in GA told me about a guy he knows that killed over 30 one season.

The 5 bird season limit in AL is unenforceable, and the GA limit is too. In AL, it has become a goal more than a limit. Your argument seems based on the assumption that you are gonna kill your 5 turkeys, so what difference does it make when you kill them. The fact is that most are not gonna kill 5, but lots of folks would shoot into a flock of gobblers and kill several if they could. That doesn't seem like a wise use of the resource to me.

I have often wondered how many in AL actually killed a limit. That info should be easily available from the Hunter Survey, but they don't publish it. I've written the study leader before and asked, but never got a reply. I've always thought that the number of hunters that kill 5 and then quit shooting them is probably less than 100. It would be interesting to find out.


I don't come anywhere close to my limit, as most hunters do not, except some of the exceptional ones on here. Heck, I'm doing good to get one. Just saying that this year I might have come the closest ever at 3 birds if I could shoot two on the same day. If it's an honor system issue or ethical system issue, the increase in the daily limit won't change me into a nonethical hunter or a nonethical hunter into an ethical one. You either abide by the laws, or you do not.

If I, by some miracle, were to ever kill 5 gobblers in a year, 5 die regardless of whether it's 5 different days or 4 days. So I'm not seeing how there would be fewer gobblers out there for people to hunt by doing it one day at a time.

Again, as for shooting into a flock, people will do that to get a shot at ONE bird! It goes back to you are either an ethical hunter or you are not. I don't see the daily limit changing that. I, for instance, would only take those two birds if it was a scenario like I had earlier this year. I called in two gobblers that were side by side, I could have easily killed both. No other turkeys were around to injure. Instead, I had to wait and get a clean shot on just one. I was tickled as it was to get just one, but a double just seems like a cool thing to be able to do.

Author, Fly Fishing for Redeye Bass: An Adventure Across Southern Waters
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"I do not hunt turkeys because I want to, I hunt them because I have to." - Tom Kelly