Question for Hunting Club Members

How to manage Spring Turkey hunting on your lease. We have 2200 acres with 16 members,of which untill last year only 4 members were turkey hunters. Now there are as many as 10 that want to
Turkey hunt.I am not a turkey hunter , but I am the club President ,and want to try to listen to all members compliants.
One suggestion is that for Turkey hunting privilages you pay extra $200.00 in club dues.
The serious turkey hunters tell me that 10 turkey hunters on 2200 acres is to way to many. I was wondering how some of yall would handle the issue?
Suggestions welcome .
Thanks

CURIOUS on why to raise the rate for turkey hunters.

4 or 5 turkey hunters, at most, on 2200 acres (3 would be even better). Break the property up into four or five 450-550 acre blocks. Limit access to those allowed to turkey hunt, based on membership seniority. If you want to charge more for those that want to turkey hunt, that's fine too but unless you limit the number of hunters to maintain hunt quality, all you'll end up doing is pissing people off.

Because it’s too crowded as is, and they’re getting more use out of the property than deer only folks.

As a turkey hunter, I’d gladly pay more.

Buuuut, this is also why I’m not in a club

ive never turkey hunted but plan on doing so just to see what the hype is all about..

^^^
Yea - what abolt said - 10-12 is complete cluster - 4-5 max

Breaking up in 250 acer areas b good. Usually u hav sign out zones like - stand 1,2,3 an area - stand 4,5,6, an area (if your plots named by number)

Wow - 10 plus on 2200 is cluster waiting to happen

And I thought majestic was gonna be packed this weekend. They expect 40 members on 13k acres

I had a similar situation with 800 acres. For years, me and only one other guy turkey hunted so it wasn't an issue. On the rare occasion when both of us hunted, we just coordinated via text. Well, one year we had a couple new members who wanted to turkey hunt so I just divided the property in to four approximately equal parcels and had people tag out, first come first serve. Except for opening weekend, I don't think we ever had all four of us show up at the same time. We dabbled with the idea of separate dues for non-turkey hunters but it just worked it's way out. We just said all memberships were the same price and had turkey rights but fortunately, not many people ever turkey hunted. We also didn't have many members and when screening new members, I always asked if they turkey hunted much and fortunately most people were honest.

Where is Majestic?

We have im guessing 6-8 members who turkey hunt almost 6k acres. I will try it for the 1st time ever this season.
ITS 1ST COME 1ST SERVE AT OUR PLACE.

Charge an additional fee for turkey hunting. If they are serious turkey hunters they’ll pay it. We keep our place at 1 turkey hunter every 400 acres.

Divide the weeks of turkey season up by assigning each week a "1" or "2".........Put numbers in a hat and have the members draw out a number......5 of them will hunt the "1" weeks and 5 of them will hunt the "2" weeks

SEEING all these replies i may rethink my decision on trying out turkey hunting. Seems more politics involved than deer hunting.... Sheesh!

If there’s not enough turkeys to go around for all to kill one (1) don’t hunt it. Kill all the breeder is not a good idea. 10 gobblers killed on 2200 acres doesn’t sound bad but I wouldn’t do it. If they all kill 1. Some may kill 2.

Everybody is a turkey hunter opening week or if they hear about some hitting the ground. Your dedicated hunters will just have to wait until after then to get serious just like they would in most any club.

Get your certified killers to section the map into huntable units. Turkey hunters pin in and out of turkey units. If reporting harvest do it only to you directly, not a paper log, and keep it secret until after season closes.

This year would have to ride out like it is. The following year you would ask for suggestions in reference to the situation among club members. If they can’t come to an agreement, you as club president would make the final decision. Let the majority take the heat off of you. There’s no good way to do it. You can’t hunt turkeys like you do deer. You may have to only allow 4 or 5 turkey/ deer memberships at added cost, starting from seniority down. You will probably lose a few members.

We have 3,000 acres on our club. I wish we only had 10 turkey hunters. And yes it is a cluster. Can’t get our president to do anything to help. I’m curious to know what works out for you as well.

In more than one club i hav had dickheads sign n middle of nite saying they got there at 4:30 am - i caught both the pricks - they just wanted best spot and in each instance i was there about 4 am 😀 - i waited on the pricks 😀

There will be drama in clubs

We also wont let anyone sign out before 5 am..

For starters, I am not a turkey hunter but have been involved with running a few places. Most of the time we went with a 1:500 ratio and sometimes even more. Just depends on the data.

Get a good calculation of "turkey" acreage. Not all habitat is turkey habitat. After that get a rough idea on what your turkey current population is and how to sustain/grow it. For instance. If you only have 800 acres of the 2200 that is good habitat that holds birds along with an average bird population, then I would say max 2 hunters with a 3 bird limit per membership. Typically these "turkey members" come at an additional price per membership that needs to cover any chufa planting or management practices strictly for turkeys.

Iam very pleased with all the comments and suggestions so far. We know that what we decide to do ,wont help this year ( to close to start of turkey season) ,but we can come up with a good Turkey management plan for next year
and future seasons. Most of our members never expressed an interest in Turkey hunting until last year . Now several want to Turkey hunt .
As for myself ,I love spring time Bass fishing ,( and crappie ) my wife and I will be at Millers Ferry fishing ,and listening for Turkey's Gobbling !
Thank ya'll for your input!

That's a tough call. 1 member/150 acres is plenty for deer hunting. However, that needs to be increased to about 400 acres per turkey hunter. On that amount of acreage I would limit the number to 5 turkey hunters max and no guests unless they are sitting with the member. To keep it fair, I'd start with the members who have been in the longest and work down. Making sure that the member will actually hunt and not just take up a membership for a kid off at school or whatever. In the future, may want to state that turkey memberships are full at the present time. Those folks that want to turkey hunt can pay an extra $300/year. If they ever decide they can't afford the extra, their name goes down the list. Just free-wheeling here.

Was once in a club Looooong ago that had 40 members hunting 10,000 acres in Dallas County. WAY before videos on Turkey hunting....about the only store-bought calls were Lynch Boxes. REAL Turkey hunters made there on Diaphragm single reed calls. Out of the 40 members.....only as I remember only 7 Turkey hunted. We dog Deer hunted mostly only back then and most members were not much about woodsmanship.....nor getting up at 4:00 to go Chase a Lil 18 to 20 pound Bird and get Skunked several times before you killed one. Nobody would hardly reveal ANYTHING about how to Successfully Turkey Hunt. Those Days were the BEST for a Turkey Hunter!!

I’d not want to exceed 4 turkey hunters on 2200 acres with a 2 bird max. 10 is a Dadgum disaster. It’s not about greed. It’s about quality hunting and realistic expectations. If you start hunting more than that on private ground it can get frustrating quick.

First come first serve. If you snooze you loose.

Let the Turkey hunters hash it out.

They'll have them birds educated pretty quick with that many dudes out there

I was in a club in Pickens Co a few years ago. We had about 3000 ac and a decent, not great turkey population. there were a couple of years when we only had 1 or 2 gobbling turkeys. Guess what section every member wanted to hunt. Do this x 10 !!!

Limit your turkey hunting to the 4 original guys. Charge them extra (whatever cost you decide). Put the rest on a waiting list to be the next turkey member if someone gets out.

Let the 4 turkey hunters decide how they manage the turkey hunting. As mentioned, sign out times are only good for those honest people that you won’t have a problem with anyway. There will be those that think they can roost a turkey the night before, or say they roosted one the night before, and they will sign out the night before. It will always be these that take off work early enough on Friday and get to the lease to stake their claim before anyone else gets there. These are the ones that once verified, they need to go.

Once you get 4 that get along, let them work it out.

We are all having an influx of people hunting turkeys which is affecting the turkey hunters, in my world I let them have the first week or two to get it out of their system then come in behind them and kill my limit if I chose to do so. I think the "marketing" of turkey hunting online and on TV has caused this

I divide our lease up into about 8 sections. You can check out 2 at a time. First come first served. I think our earliest sign out time is 4:30.

The problem I see is more about gobblers. I don't know how many I have, but I don't think I have enough for every member to kill one. Perhaps if we killed some, we could pull some off an adjacent property I don't know.

May be off here to suggest this, but if you have 10 guys that SAY they're going to turkey hunt you likely won't have that many ACTUALLY hunt. I'm the president of a club that hunts almost 1800 acres and we have about 8 guys that MIGHT turkey hunt. Of the 8 I'd say one might hunt 10 days of the season, 3-5 might go a few days, and at least 3 won't step foot on the place except for maybe opening day or youth weekend. Wait and see how it plays out before you make too many plans.

You're the president and you're just now figuring this out? First of all, never change rules AFTER money has been accepted for membership. In turkey hunting, you talk about some serious hunters? Turkey hunters are SERIOUS!!! You're just going to have to divide up territories and the members have to sign out for each territory. If a hunter gets goes outside of his signed-out territory, that may be reason for expulsion. If a member wants to change locations, he can either call someone at the sign-out board or travel back to the sign-out board and pick another territory.

Guests are NOOOOO!!!!! But, IF... IF guests are allowed, NEVER will a guest be allowed to hunt his/her own bird and MUST stay within 100 yards of the member.

Rules are rule... not guidelines!!! And, breaking rules should have extreme consequences!

Again, you should have had all this chit figured out BEFORE turkey season. You're the president!

Maybe one or two more exclamation marks would have gotten your point across

I'm curious as to how it's going without any rules this season? I would suspect that it's not getting much hunting pressure by this point of the season.

I've been in several clubs over the years with similar ratios of land and turkey hunters. I thought the best approach was to just be first come first serve without any rules. Members were told to park their vehicle so it could easily be seen and if someone beats you there, go somewhere else. One wise guy parked an old car at his favorite spot and left it there, but everyone soon figured it out and ignored it.

A different club decided to require members to sign in for an area on Saturday, but just go where you wanted during the week. That worked reasonably well.

The bad thing about requiring turkey hunters to sign out an area is that if you don't hear a turkey, you wanna go somewhere else. People will understand that they can't on a crowded club, but if you are the only hunter on a weekday the sign in rule wrecks the hunt, and for no good reason. Most hunters will be respectful of fellow members if they know someone is already in an area. Throw the ones who won't out of the club and keep rules to a minimum would be my advice.

I wouldn't worry about not having enough turkeys for everyone to kill one. If you don't have a lot of turkeys, everyone is not going to kill one. Some will probably kill more than one. No rules will change that, as turkeys are not concerned with fairness.

Good luck figuring it out.

Just keep your dues where they are and do a drawing every year on who get turkey rights for that season. This really should have been planned out ahead of time.

Well, are they in a Hunting club that runs year round or just a club that only runs during deer season?

Are the guys that aren’t going to pay to turkey hunt still gonna have access to check their deer cameras, hang stands or etc during the spring? If so, be ready for the turkey hunters to bitch and moan about that ,too.

IMO, they all either have access to turkey hunt or you need to cut the memberships in half now and double the dues…..which is what I would do anyways.

^^This^^. Are you going to raise dues for squirrel hunters, or dove hunters? If you’re going to do it to the turkey hunters you have to do it for everyone. Easiest thing is cut membership and raise dues.

Our lease is comprised of a lot of land of a main road that's accessed by gas well roads. The sign in system for us is to attach a card via carabineer clip to the lock on the gate when you drive in... if someone pulls up to the gate and sees a card, that spot is taken. This system, however, only works if you've got a lot of roads on the property.

I’d hate to know how many turkey hunters we have on our 3500 acre club. Plus poachers…

Have less total members and charge more $$$.

Put a club limit on birds. I'd go with a 2 bird limit with that many members.
JMO

It's like this.... at a point, the turkey hunter has to police his self. If I was in a club, and I knew anyone other than me turkey hunted, I would choose to just turkey hunt elsewhere (instead of trying to come up with some complicated system to keep ourselves spread apart). Yeah, that's unfortunate (because, after all, it's a HUNTING club), but I know myself well enough to know that I don't play well with others in general, and 101% don't when it comes to turkey hunting. There ain't gonna be a turkey gobbling on every corner of the property, and on any given day there might be one in this area, or that area, or who the heck knows where LOL. So I'm not gonna take a fluke luck chance of driving to the club and not even know if I'll be around a turkey, and I DANG sure ain't gonna stay in my area while one burns the woods up in another area. If I can't go to any turkey I hear, I'm self-electing not to hunt there. It's okay, it really is.

There's just not an answer to the quandry....other than the hunters themselves have to self-elect not to hunt there, or just the personality type who isn't spun up about matters like this.

Whether it's deer, turkey, or any other game the overall plan should be to have plenty for next year. Ever see those that want to shoot them all and leave none for others. It is easy to see how 16 folks on 2200 acres could be too many in some areas of Alabama for deer or turkey. Ask yourself how many turkey do you have and set a limit then on how many to harvest that year and make sure there is not the one hunter taking the limit by himself.

I'm curious as to where you turkey hunt to never have to listen to a gobbling turkey that you can't go to that morning? That happens to me multiple times a season. Many times a turkey is across the property line and too far away to call. There's nothing to do but to look for another one. Other times someone I'm hunting with is on the turkey and I'm sure not gonna go in on him and mess up his hunt

I count 6 mornings this past season that I listened to turkeys gobble and wasn't able to hunt them, and that's pretty normal. I would rather be able to go to any turkey that gobbles, but I don't know of a way to make that happen. Even when I hunted a lot of public land there were times when the turkey would be on the private side.

Frustrating when one is gobbling REALLY well on the ground at about that 250 yard mark but there's a property line between you and him. all you can do is sit up against the tree with paint on it and do your best.

When you put your back on the painted tree, are you facing your way or his way…..😁
Nothing more frustrating than having to turn your back to a bird fired up deep into the joining property.

There is way more politics/ drama to turkey hunting than deer. Turkey hunters CAN be some selfish possessive people and I’ve been around a few that will also get there panties in a wad if someone else is hunting “their” area or isn’t hunting how they think they should.

I understand some of it but some of it I think is silly. Deer hunting is a little more straight forward on how to manage land and people