Does anyone check these every year? Last year I noticed the numbers going up and then all of a sudden it goes cold turkey. I'm seeing that pattern again this year. Does anyone know how often these numbers are updated?

All the dumb ones get killed early in the season.

The locals around my property thin down the population before the season comes in. Never fails around my place I’ll always have a couple of gobblers hanging around and by the time the season comes in they are gone.

Yep

The numbers work out about the same every year.....Most of the turkeys are killed within the first 10 days or so and then it drops off from there.....There's typically a little secondary spike in action toward the end of April.....

That makes more sense now. I was tracking some public land numbers and noticed a certain county jumped up by one.

Of the ones killed early in the season, and I'm going to publicly state this, because I know it to be true, but BAIT and ground blinds are the reasons early harvest is so high. I used to think turkey baiting only impacted a few places. WRONG. It’s a substantial part of harvest every year. Way the heck more than it should be.

Baiting + blinds + cell camera..So many die wrong.

It’s become an epidemic and it’s infuriating. If I have to get to the point I’m killing turkeys over bait then I hope I never kill another one.

Ban baiting

Baiting is banned during turkey season by law. Just get your club to okay state laws on baiting

Easy said, but hard to enforce.

Amen. It's out of hand terrible this year.

Again - something else I’ve been talking about for a LONG time. Baiting.

I find bait on leased lands I’m managing - everywhere. And I’m not even looking for it. It’s always been more rampant than the average hunter thinks. I’ve been told by adjoining landowners where I hunt - “I’m gonna bait for turkeys and I won’t stop when season comes in, and don’t care who knows it”.

Most day 1 of season, social media posts, are birds killed over bait. That guy, wants to kill something to brag about on social media, period. And he’s using bait to do it.

This is not a recent phenomenon. And when I talked about it years ago - nobody cared. Oh, you are exaggerating, it’s not a widespread big deal. Now, we care? I guess so.

So - can we now get serious about pre-season hunting and the numbers piled up during that time? Can we talk about how detrimental pushing the season back has been in that regard - especially for South AL? About how the early hunting outlaws were giddy as schoolgirls to get 10 more days to themselves. And how many other early hunters it created. We better talk about it and do something. It’s happening more rampant than anyone thinks. Trust me…….again.

So how many tickets have been written for turkey baiting?....Apparently not enough

Folks have sitting on chufa patches bushwhacking turkeys forever. Not fair, but legal.

It’s not the way I’d want to do it, but for chufas to make it to turkey season, you got to plant a lot of them, and they provide benefit for wildlife well before season comes in. A 50 lb bag of Milo isn’t the same.

Me too,,, ill just stop . I've done underhanded on a couple that i didn't want to die of old age but a corn pile is to far .

I tried to report on multiple instances last year and DNR acted like they didn't care.

#1 killed a bird on public that came off private. Craw full of corn. DNR told me it was legal to bait for deer and they'd actually have to catch someone hunting over the bait. Told me plenty of folks had called in about it in that county.

#2 found multiple baited sites on public land opening week. But you about needed a magnifying glass to find the residual bait. DNR said since there really wasn't any bait left on ground, nothing they could do