You are talking in circles. How can your neighbors continue to kill birds you say don’t exist? If they actually are killing limits and more, your assessment of your population is bad wrong. And if they are actually killing that many, and y’all are not, that’s on you guys. Can’t be both, it’s just not logical.

No I dont care if the neighbor kills 100 if that's the law. I killed 2 this yr cause the kids were with me. I did not kill the only turkey I saw and heard the year before that. Because I wanted him to be alive the next yr. I just dont see the DCNR as evil and trying to steal from us like some here do. I think the state has declined in population for the last decade and if anything they want to try could help that I am all for it.

I have no clue how many 4 of them are killing. I know 1 of them has killed 1 or 2 the past few seasons he used to kill a limit most of the time. The dairy farmer near by says he has not seen a turkey on his farm in years, our ag fields in which we would see groups as large as 60 birds at a time now stay empty for most days during the spring a rambling gobbler stumbles out in them for a few days most seasons.

Maybe I missed it somewhere but is there any scientific data that shows there's a shortage of gobblers that is leading to hens not being bred? Is lack of nesting hens leading to the supposed decline in population of is it loss of habitat? Or both?

Most on here don't think that either. The state wants the turkey population to be good, as do we all. I just want to see a justification for how lowering the limits will help increase poult production, the STATED problem and issue we are having across the southeast. I've been asking that for years and still can't get an answer.

Changes to your season is what's coming. Well then, if you have no problem with a 3 bird limit, no further questions. I couldn't possibly explain it to you in a short narrative, nor do I feel like typing it out.

This is all anyone wants from a wildlife or fisheries department when proposed changes are afoot. Transparency, what the proposed changes might achieve, goals and objectives, and why they are needed.

Thank you for putting this so succinctly.
No politics
No BS
No hidden agendas

There will always be agendas and politics within ALL state wildlife agencies. No changing that now just better start voting for folks that believe the way you do when it comes to conservation.

Sadly, I don't get to vote for the Commissioner, Director, the Chief, either of the assistant chiefs, etc..., nor any of the 10 members of the CAB. They are supposed to listen to their constituency as well as communicate to the constituency what they are proposing and why they are proposing it. As I have noted before, when we had a deer management committee directed to look into buck limits and antler restrictions and report to the CAB, our committee was made up of State biologists, private biologists, landowners, experienced land managers, AWF and QDMA biologists and representatives. We had Auburn hunter surveys looking into the issue and published plenty of articles on the problem and LOTS of potential solutions. We encouraged public input. Doesn't seem the CAB even know there is a turkey committee, despite how limited in scope it is.

One of the great ironies regarding the dcnr over my lifetime is that when we had Democratic governors, and every CAB member was a Democrat, we had a dcnr that operated by limited government principles. In fact, more than any other state, AL turned the actual management of wildlife over to the private landowners and the state did little more than set seasons and establish bag limits that would allow the species to survive.

Now, after many years of Republican governors and CAB members, we are moving towards dcnr management with a lot fewer decisions left to private landowners. The Democrats operated by Republican principles and the Republicans now operate by Democratic principles. Can anyone explain how this has happened?

It's interesting how nobody wants to take ownership in the two motions that were read at the CAB meeting. The way the women that made the motions stumbled through it, no way she wrote them herself.

Yep, she didn't come up with that herself. The other CAB members who voted in favor , probably the one who seconded her motion deserve a look.

Someone post up how the vote went and who seconded.

For anyone interested I am posting a link to a Masters thesis published in May, written but AU graduate student Stephen Zenas that details the first two years of the wild turkey study and their findings. I assume that this is at least a part of the preliminary data the Chuck is referencing regarding potential changes to seasons and bag limits.

Wild Turkey study

That study doesn’t impress me much if they’re going to use it to back regulation changes.. 24% of the adult male turkeys in their study were killed, but they had a 44% annual survival rate. That means that a greater number of turkey (total of 32%) were killed by environmental factors. Sounds like the bigger issue is environmental factors, not hunters.

The paragraph that’s going to bite us in the butt is this one, even though there isn’t much in the study to back it up.

“Although likely to stimulate negative feedback from stakeholders in the short term, making harvest regulations more conservative by reducing the season length or bag limit of the spring turkey season may improve adult male survival. Hunters would experience a reduction in the time they have to hunt, and the number of turkeys they could harvest, but this would increase the number of turkeys available to be hunted. Greater subadult survival facilitated by these harvest regulations may lead to high recruitment into the adult age class and more high-quality hunting opportunities.”

Substitute "deer" for "turkey" in that paragraph and you have almost the exact argument for buck restrictions.

I agree SBS. His thesis clearly states that environmental factors and predation play a much larger role than hunter harvest in turkey mortality. Unless the research proves that hens aren’t getting bred because of early season gobblers being killed by hunters then reducing the limit and shortening the season won’t help the turkey population in the long term at all.

Two totally different biology and breeding systems, although, I am not sure I would make the same argument today as I did then. One is a mammal one a bird. One has a long gestation and gives birth to 1-3 live young months after breeding, one lays and incubates a clutch of eggs of 8-15 on the ground for a month before hatch then attempts to raise them for another couple months. With turkeys, if one nest fails, they will often attempt to lay and incubate another clutch. Deer, one and done. With deer we had good data indicating that there were does that were not being bred in certain areas because of the skewed sex ratios and extended fawn drop, some into September/October in badly skewed populations. We don't have this data with turkeys and I don't believe hens "select" gobblers to breed with the same way does "select" bucks to breed with. This is speculation on my part. We also were starting with an season limit on bucks that was "any buck regardless of size, one a day for the whole season", virtually an open season on bucks with no limit. We are NOT starting there with gobblers. Buck restrictions - turkey restrictions, apples - golf balls.

I still want someone to explain to me why Alabama feels the need to adopt similar season and bag limits as our neighbors to the west? It has done nothing for Georgia’s turkey population so why is going be the magic cure all for this state? They are experiencing the a decline in areas just like we are!!

These proposals are personal agendas and simply a feel good stunt. It will do nothing to improve the turkey population as our neighbors management practices have proven!!

If folks want to see turkey populations thrive again they need to get off their butt and put some work into it. It takes work and effort to make things better. Our society is so geared to instant gratification these days it’s sicking. It takes work/effort to have positive results and the state damn sure knows little about both.

I just took over a lease that was managed by the state and it’s pitiful at how that great resource was managed. Very few food plots and the ones they did plant were pitiful. This state manages many thousands of acres. You want the public to buy into your feel good stunts start with managing the property you control properly before you force your personal agrenda on folks that bust their ass to make a difference on property we manage!!

Well now that's a head scratcher, young lady biologist who is doing the study on Skyline said something much different at the NTWF meeting in Scottsboro. She said we have a good population . No gloom and doom in her speech. Sounds like Ol' Hi-Jackson gonna get screwed again , just like when they screwed with the deer.