He’s not talking about Matt Brock...257wbymag is also Matt

10-4. I had been keeping up with the thread and Matt Brock was the first post of me read. Sorry and thanks

Yea squeaky and our place never had hogs til somebody decided they were hog hunters and pushed em across the river to us. Now we're covered up. We were covered up with turkeys til all the hardwoods got slaughtered on that place and replaced with pines. Turkeys disappeared. It's habitat. The fact that 75% of your side got cut too didn't help y'all. But trust me the turkeys are still on our side just moved down a bit to another farm that still has row crop and hardwoods.

I didn't mean that folks in other states don't grow chufas. In fact, I said I was sure that they were. I just meant that I had never seen one in another state, and I have hunted a bunch of different tracts of land in quite a few states. On the other hand, I've hunted a bunch of tracts of land in AL that did have chufas. Chufas are far from the most important factor in having turkeys, but it is just an indicator of how much turkeys are valued in AL compared to other states.

Has anyone in our dcnr ever wondered why it is that way? AL has good turkey habitat in places, but other states have much better and still don't have the interest in them that we do. I think the primary reason for the difference is the state regulations. A long season with a generous spring limit produces turkey hunting fanatics willing to do most anything to have more turkeys. I know this for a fact; I am one of them. Short seasons with low limits results in most people being uninterested in turkeys, and in some cases, outright hating them.

And it is not lost on me that another state where you can see lots of chufas grown is SC. That just happens to be the other state that historically had a 5 bird limit. Their state dcnr and the nwtf worked together to get their limit reduced a few years back. Reducing the limit won't cause people to immediately give up turkey hunting, but it will gradually change things. People like me won't exist, and by that I mean people willing to spend lots of money on making turkey habitat, and being willing to give up income for it too.

257 you didn't answer my question about the chicken litter. Are y'all discing it into the ground for row crops or broadcasting onto pasture and hayfields?

Sorry man I got distracted. Most is just spread on top of no till ground ahead of corn or cotton planter. Some is worked in but some isn't. Just depends on the farmer

Ok. The reason I asked is because it's spread on pasture and hayfields here and never worked into the soil. I thought maybe if y'all were discing it in it might be making the difference.

I know and have seen first hand that timber harvesting practices are a major factor but have also seen huge as areas ( close to 1,000 acres) that the only changes made were the spreading of untreated chicken litter where the turkey population went from booming to non existent. I'm not saying the turkeys died out but for whatever reason these places went from daily turkey sightings to absolutely no turkeys. Maybe they just don't like the smell but either way I know these places were loaded with turkeys for years then after the litter was used on the fields the turkeys vanished.

I was in a club a while back that was bank managed timber and burned on a 3 year rotation. Without a doubt it was one of the prettiest pieces of property I'd ever seen. 3,000 acres of nothing but pines and sage. The bank ordered the cutting crews to run over and destroy any tree except a pine. No oaks, no dogwoods, no Holly trees, no nothing but pines and sage. Out of that 3,000 acres we might have had turkeys on 500! The only places we had turkeys were along the 2 creeks bordering the property where the timber crews couldn't cut or run over everything!

Bump