There is currently a theory among the biologists that hens are more likely to breed with the dominant gobbler than with other gobblers. So if the dominant bird gets killed opening day, then the hens refuse to breed with one of the other gobblers and don't nest that season. That is what I have gathered from reading what I can find. If someone with better understanding wants to correct me, please do.

SC just released a report and that seemed to be what they were saying. The problem I had with it was that their research didn't seem to support their conclusions. Since we can't access the raw data, I can't be certain of that, but the information they released did not support their conclusions. I think the whole idea about the dominant bird is just a theory, and I have seen nothing to make me believe it's real. What I have observed is that when the dominant bird gets killed, another one will immediately become the dominant bird. I've even seen which one was dominant change during the season.

SC was monitoring an unhunted area during their study, and found that they heard about 2 gobbles a day more on that area than the hunted areas. That seemed to be the basis for many of their conclusions. It wasn't surprising that an unhunted area might have more gobbling, but I question whether that means hens are going unbred. They were also monitoring poult production on each area. There was no mention of a higher poult production rate on the unhunted land.

That leads me to believe that the poult numbers must not have been any better, cause you can be sure they would have led with that if it was a lot more. If poult recruitment numbers are the same in totally unhunted land as hunted land, then that completely destroys the theory. Forget about when the gobblers are killed; there were none killed at all, and apparently it didn't make any difference. They still reached the conclusion they apparently wanted to reach.

Face it folks - hunting is under attack everywhere. I know that there are hunters among our biologists who are doing the legwork, but I strongly suspect an anti-hunting bias at the heart of at least some of the current research. We can fight it, or just bend over and take it. Write to your CAB member. I know that we've had some questionable members of it in the past, but I think they are our last line of defense against ultimate government destruction of hunting.