You want your turkey numbers up, start trapping every possum,coon,coyote,bobcat you can catch. I been trapping on 3 different places for 3 years. On one place I was overrun with coyotes, the first week I caught 11 coyotes and caught over 20 coon and possum combined. I trapped it hard in February right before turkey season. I heard more turkey's that spring on that 300 acres than I had combined the first 3 seasons I had the place. I only harvested one bird off the place that year, should have killed more birds but I couldn't seal the deal on a few others. That summer and fall my turkey flocks I normally saw during that time period doubled. Each flock went from 10-20 birds to 30 plus. I continued to trap through the Fall and right up to turkey season. I'm still trapping the place hard and still catching 10-15 coyotes every year plus that many coon and possum. Every year the gobbling has been better and my flock sizes are increasing. I'm no professional trapper and I don't do it for the money, I really enjoy doing it to help the turkey hunting out. I promise if you put the time in to catch some predators and egg eaters it will make a difference on your place for hearing and seeing number of birds on your place.

I hope Aubarn is doing these studies around areas that are being trapped and non-trapped areas to see the difference. I'm sure that they are not but maybe so.
I know this has nothing to do with pushing the start date back but maybe in the future it would help with there biological stand point for pushing it back.