What I’ve been trying to say about all this fanning and gobbler decoy stuff…….. decoys have been legal for a long time in a whole lot of what I refer to as “yankee states”. Those folks don’t care much about turkeys. They have a short season with a late start and a 1 or 2 turkey limit. They go out the first weekend and sit in a tent or on the edge of a pasture where they’ve been seeing a turkey strutting every day for the past 3 weeks and kill their Tom and after that they go right back to concentrating on finding morels or watching re-runs or Babe Winkleman or the In-Fisherman and start planning the coming winter’s ice fishing season. Then people ain’t hurting their turkey population by killing one or 2. Some of them don’t even bother to go. Lots of those folks (I’ve been there numerous times and they have told me) don’t even think turkeys are good to eat because most of those people don’t know how to fry stuff anyway.

Now you have Alabama. Alabama folks are flat out crazy about turkeys and a large percentage of the best turkey hunters in the world reside in Alabama. We’ve seen for years on this very forum every year about this time the Alabama boys go north and make an absolute mess out of turkeys everywhere you can think of north of the Mason Dixon line. Alabama has always been blessed with a long season and liberal limits and lots of turkeys and Alabama people love turkeys and it’s been a beautiful thing for a long time. The difference in Alabama and the yankee states is that decoys used to be illegal in Alabama and nobody never carried them and fanning turkeys hadn’t become a thing yet.
Now fast forward a few years and we’ve got a whole population of people that are crazy about killing turkeys and all the sudden the state gives them 46 days and a liberal limit and now you get to have decoys and a tent and a fan to go with it.
Just exactly what do you think is fixing to happen to the turkey population in Alabama? If you need me to answer this for you just stop reading now and go on and do something else because you probably won’t ever figure it out.

So really that puts our state at a crossroads. We all know we don’t have nearly as many turkeys as we used to. So do we go back to our old way with long seasons and liberal limits and no decoys or do we turn into just another yankee state with a 3 week season and a 2 bird limit and every license holder is issued their official NWTF tent and strutting decoy?
The turkey population cannot possibly sustain both. It’s not possible. So we have to make it known to the folks in Montgomery which way we want it.
I do realize that nest predators is also a huge concern. We now feed corn all winter for deer and make big fat happy coons that just keep making more and more little coon babies that grow up to be egg eaters so that’s another concern we have to address but I feel like the first thing we must do is decide whether we still wanna be Alabama or just another yankee state from a turkey standpoint. I sure hope we can get the old Alabama back.

I have been turkey hunting the same area since 88 and this is my take on the decline of turkey hunting. Our lease had a real good turkey population until the late 90's when the land management changed in one season. We had about 300 acres of ag land taken out of production and planted in long leaf pines and the land around the fields were clear cut. Over the next 10 years most of the place was clear cut, poisoned , and burned. The turkeys just disappeared in a few years. We haven't kill a turkey on our place since 2013. Wildlife in general has suffered.

Habitat = turkeys. If you have it, they will use it. If you don’t, they will go find it. Pines with overgrown understory will only make predators and decent deer cover. Take all the money spent on studies and overpriced researchers and put it into fuel for machinery and burning...the employees are already there and so is the infrastructure. Then create an incentive based program for private and timber companies to burn and plant perennials, like Florida does, and watch the turkey populations flourish. How is that pay to hunt places and private land managed for turkeys can take so many birds every year and still have plenty to hunt? Simple, they make them. You’ll never “save” enough gobblers through regulation to sustain a huntable population.

BINGO. Great post.

Where you at CAB? Someone needs to send this thread to each member of it.

Habitat = turkeys. If you have it, they will use it. If you don’t, they will go find it. Pines with overgrown understory will only make predators and decent deer cover. Take all the money spent on studies and overpriced researchers and put it into fuel for machinery and burning...the employees are already there and so is the infrastructure. Then create an incentive based program for private and timber companies to burn and plant perennials, like Florida does, and watch the turkey populations flourish. How is that pay to hunt places and private land managed for turkeys can take so many birds every year and still have plenty to hunt? Simple, they make them. You’ll never “save” enough gobblers through regulation to sustain a huntable population.

I have a lease with habitat like you describe, non traditional for sure. It has incredible population actually, but right before season a 300ac chunk of private, that our lease borders, burned their whole place. Any guesses where the 8 birds I heard opening morning went? It’s not a mystery or an unsolvable puzzle. My dad bought 60ac that have never had a turkey in the 30yrs he’s lived next to it. Enrolled it into Florida landowner assistance program that cost shares to manage property for wildlife. Clear cut 40 and thinned 20, burned, put in 2 plots of clover and alfalfa. This was second year since, and he’s got a huntable population using his place. 3 gobblers, 6 jakes, 11 hens to be exact. The bare minimum of opening up the understory would be easily achievable, and effective, much more so than any regulation. Especially when regulation only works if you can enforce it, less than 1 possum cop per county aren’t going to change anything. Good habitat negates a lot of predation as well. Coyotes and bobcats are much less efficient in open areas, that leaves opossum and coons which are easy to curb, and avian predators require some imagination. The knee jerk reaction/regulation isn’t going to get us anything except less time to hunt.