Hammer meet the nail head right here!!

The new season limit as a club does not effect me as we have a club limit set based off what we feel like our property can support. This is smart and sound management that everyone should be practicing if you truly care about the wildlife on the property you hunt. What the new regulations do for the particular area I hunt is reduce the enjoyment significantly. As I have said on here before, south AL is at a minimum of 2 weeks ahead on spring green up versus central and north AL. This brings out the bugs "bull gnats" to be specific that can be down right miserable for the hunter and turkeys.

Hey Squeak, Chuck would tell you if you can handle the insects , don't hunt.

I would tell his no good worthless butt too man up and meet me at the gate. I'd love to give him the opportunity

It is obvious the best two things we can do for wildlife is habitat management and predator control/trapping. More restrictions is not the answer.

Birds were gobbling yesterday, they don't just gobble out. Im not a fan of government restrictions, but allowing the dominant birds to breed before disrupting the process should help. Last two seasons we didn't harvest a bird on our home farm until April. We have killed just as many turkeys as before, but have had more Jakes each season. We are about to implement a pretty aggressive trapping plan to see what happens.

This meta-analysis describes the issue pretty well I think. A meta-analysis looks at other peer-reviewed articles to try to shed light on a broader issue.
Turkey Season Questions

Interesting line is...

If male turkey abundance is greatly reduced due to high harvest rates, the combination of additive harvest concentrated early in the breeding season could result in an insufficient number of males remaining for copulation with females, thereby violating the
assumption that spring turkey seasons do not impact reproduction. Though this situation is theoretically possible, it is largely uninvestigated. Confounding this issue is that a single breeding male may be able to fertilize eggs for an initial and second nesting attempt (Grigg
1957) which could lessen concern about high harvests of male turkeys early in the breeding season. Clearly, the impact of spring turkey harvests on turkey reproduction remains a considerable knowledge gap in the management of turkey populations.

U can hear a bird gobble in June - I hav heard them gobble in December in snow

Most people in southern half would not say southern half of state is easier in April or the same as March - always been tougher for me - usually your dead period or henned up period where I at is last 10 days or end of March thru part of April. Seems like they stay henned up longer now - maybe due to more hens?? Places where the pressure very low May hav similar success in April or places that only been hunted for handful of years. If u hav better hunting in Aril or same as March - good for u - that not the norm where I at

Regardless if we like it or not - we might as well get used to it cause change is what is coming at us

Reducing the limit almost has to increase the population of gobblers for the next year right? That is assuming people actually stop at the limit. I am not in favor of shortening the season any at all, myself like many others have plenty of obligations that limit how much I can hunt, any shortening of the season further cuts into the possibility of me squeezing in more than a couple hunts.

Id rather see the season go to archery only, no blind or decoys, before id want to lose days of opportunity

This is 100% correct

I still say the hens being bred is the least of my concerns when it comes to the turkeys reproductive process. Sure, they have to be bred to lay eggs but the habitat has to be right in order for the poults to make it to one year olds.