I now live in the quota hunt world being that I live in Florida. I’ve hunted both turkey and ducks on quota and non quota land. The hunting is infinitely better in the quota hunt areas. The quota turkey hunt I went on this year looks exactly like the habitat I hunt in open permit places. It is comparable in size and they don’t do anything different habitat management wise. On the quota hunt I heard at least 12 different birds in 2 days and my buddy and I both killed mature birds. Only 2 weekends are open for this quota and 7 birds were killed off this property. I hunted about 10 days on 3 different open permit wma’s and only heard one gobble and saw 2 hens the entire time. Habitat type is comparable, location is similar, habitat management is the same. The only difference is the amount of hunters they allow and the harvest numbers. If days of the season and killing turkeys isn’t a factor in population why is there such a large difference in the quality of the hunt on quota vs non quota hunts? It makes sense to me at least in what I’ve witnessed that killing less turkeys and hunting less days improves the quality of hunting on WMA’s. It makes since to me that shortening the season and lowering bag limits would clearly improve the population. IMHO I would rather go on 1 great turkey hunt a year than go on 10 where I don’t see or hear anything.
Very valid observation and one I don't think many can dispute. Less hunting pressure (less disturbance) and less harvest coupled with quality habitat will provide more fruitful experiences. I think it's the key observation many have that empowers the desire to reduce season length and bag limits. It gets more complicated when we realize that we must balance the amount of opportunities along with the health of the resource in that, if we aren't allow to turkey hunt but once every 3 years- how many people are going to even continue turkey hunting (very extreme example obviously)? Then if the resource falls in it's significance as a "money-maker" for our agencies, will their challenges be address adequately? I would really like to see opportunity cut as a last resort but no one should be able to disagree with its effectiveness. The real questions that have to be answered (research pending) is whether other options exist to make more turkeys and provide more fruitful opportunities while making minimal changes to opportunity. In other words, I still think we can "have our cake and eat it too."
