The original map has been updated......There were 17 additional birds added for a total of 280 birds taken during the youth hunt. Still none for Washington Co....Them boys must be waiting until next weekend to get on 'em.

What kind of weeds you dance with?

Don’t worry guys. CNC will draw another map and it will all make sense

I will bet anyone a $100 bill 280 birds were killed last weekend in Clarke/ Washington

This man gets it ^^^^^…….I’m curious to see how the harvest rate plays out by the day/week……Will 50% of the harvest occur in the first 10 days??......What % will occur in the final week?.......How might that vary from county to county??

Here is one thing that I feel certain is true and it's impossible to measure - the illegal harvest has already jumped up considerably this season. A lot of people have decided that the system is broken and that they just aren't going to worry about it any longer.

I hear you PCP……If the GC numbers are gonna be what is used now to make decisions about the rules though then I think any spike in outlawing may only backfire and make matters worse. Every bird that is illegally killed and not reported simply makes the numbers look worse and makes the decline continue on paper instead of showing a rebound. It will just give them what they need to reduce the limits on down to 3……If they do that I wouldn’t be surprised to see them go to actual tags as well.

…….and for what its worth, here’s one of my points about the bonus tags for coon tails idea……We seem to fluctuate on annual numbers of hunters around 50K so lets use it for easy math…..If the state issued tags that would be 150K tags with a 3 bird limit or 200K with a 4 bird limit……That’s basically what you have happening this year on the honor system. If you issued bonus tags at a rate of 10 tails per one tag……100K coon tails would equal an additional 10K tags being issued……..So in the end we’re talking about the difference in 200K tags being issued or 210K tags……The latter has 100K coons being taken out though........That's still less tags than the 250K that were issued last year at a 5 bird rate. Maybe I'm wrong but the cost/benefit seems like a no brainer. What happens to the future number of gobblers on the land if 100K coons get taken out??......And when there becomes more gobblers on the land then what will the hunters likely start doing if they have the ability to suddenly start killing 6 or 7 gobblers but they only have 1 bonus tag??.....They’ll start trapping another 10 coons.

The strong majority of turkey hunters in alabama don't kill their limit. I'll bet the average killed is less than 2

It’s crazy what I’m hearing around here from guys. Middle finger to the state. It’s also easier to kill birds before season where they are gobbling strong and responding to calling - which again is farther south as a general rule.

That’s what happens when you put a dicktater (spelled correctly) at the helm. No one respects him. Phuck him.

I would be glad to "make" (not take) that same bet. Probably throw in another 100 birds in Wilcox that were killed last Saturday. Like I said earlier, I know that I heard 3 die Saturday morning in Covington when I was fishing. You can be rest assured that 1000's of hunters hit the woods this past Saturday and killed birds and I'd bet that 90-95% of them did not have a "youth" with them.

I posted this once before but I’m gonna do it again because I think this is one of the most important variables that the long term data tells us……If you look at the years around when decoys were legalized there is a big spike in harvest because of legalizing them…..There was likely an additional 20-25% killed in 2006-2007 due to decoys that didn’t have anything to do with an increase in turkey population. Without decoys that year’s harvest would have most likely been in the 50K’s again with an additional 14K birds left on the landscape. The lack of those extra birds on the landscape is why you see the crash in the two years that follow down the 37K…..We knocked ‘em out.

Nothing has changed since then……Using decoys is still allowing hunters to knock out a very high percentage of the gobblers as a whole each season. This is another one of the points about the trapping incentive……If we are already killing the majority of the yield each year anyways…..then what does it matter if you issue a few more tags???.....

Unless folks have a huge objection to making decoys illegal again that would add 20% back to the mix that got taken away…….It would most like come from the people killing one bird as their success rates would be reduced. Its really a question of how easy do you want to make it for folks to be able to kill one???.....That move alone gives you many more bonus birds for the hard core turkey hunters to have an incentive to go after with the coon tail bounty…..which should build on itself over time.

Just from a betting perspective I’m gonna have to call bullchit on this one….There may be a lot of people talking about it but I bet that the percentage that are actually in the woods carrying a dead turkey is few. If it IS the case that "thousands" of hunters are currently hunting illegally then I would think we should see a big spike in the number of tickets being written for hunting out of season, correct?……Can’t we look that up??

Yeah, I agree with you on that. I have reported every turkey I've killed since they started GC, and I got hunter surveys twice when they were using that system, and always reported my 5. If you wanna cheat the system, report MORE than what you killed, not less.

I have no idea how many are already hunting, but I am very sure that it's higher than ever. A guy at a retail store just told me about a friend of his who already has 3. And the more land folks control, the less likely it is they will get caught.

Exactly PCP…………Here’s what I don’t think folks are getting though about thinking that the State really cares if someone has already killed three……These are not “extra birds” these guys are killing by starting early…..From the State’s standpoint there will only be “X” number of 2 year old and older male turkeys to be killed this year according to the nesting success of past years no matter when they’re killed. In other words, when all is said and done there is still going to be the same amount of birds killed even if that guy has already killed three. The only people they are really cheating and giving the finger to are the folks following the rules.

I hate to do it but CNC youre a DA and dont even realize it. You do realize that 1000's of hunters (2,000 for example) would equate to each county having just 30 hunters in each county, that decided to open the season early and on the old date. I can easily see that. Big spike in tickets??? There are probably less than 50 game wardens in the field checking hunters throughout the state (remember that conservation officers have to split their time between both fishing and hunting in the spring). 50 wardens, patrolling 33 million acres, looking for 2-3 thousand illegal hunters scattered across the acreage in full camo and fully intending not to get caught, while only needing to fire a single shot that the GW could use to pinpoint their location and move in on them, and the GWs success rate will be negligible. CNC, you've got to stay "out of the weeds" and look at the overall big picture. Hint: It's not what you are seeing on chuckie check.

>>>In other words, when all is said and done there is still going to be the same amount of birds killed even if that guy has already killed three.<<<

I don't think your basic assumption behind that idea is true. I have no idea what % of the mature gobblers are harvested every year, but neither does anyone else. And the number varies a lot from place to place. On those large properties in south AL that you have mentioned, it is the landowner who determines how many turkeys they will kill. Some of them have a number in mind and shut it down once they reach the number. I mentioned this in another thread, but have frequently seen groups of longbeards of 4 to 7 back together in the last week of April. Breeding season was over and they survived it. All of the rumours I've heard about people hunting early is happening on large blocks of private land. They may be killing a turkey that a neighbor would have gotten, but he wasn't gonna be killed on public land.

And I don't think you are giving the turkeys enough credit. Back when I hunted public land the pressure was just insane. A turkey would gobble and 4 hunters would be yelping to him. And yet many of them survived. Some just became wild enough that bad luck was the only way he would die. In many places I've noticed that high pressure makes turkeys quit gobbling. What I loved about the Coosa WMA was that many of those turkeys would gobble good up until near the end of the season, but they still didn't get killed. It seemed there was always just as many the next year.

PCP......If someone buys a commercial trapping license then does that make it ok for them to sell coon skins to another individual or does the other individual buying them also need a license of some kind???……Because if they will pass this 10:1 coon bounty then I’ll gladly catch coons for anyone on here who cant find the time to go out and get their bonus tags……$40 per coon……5% back to the forum……

Turkey hunters would be calling about the third week of April like.......


"Ay man!!.....You got any more of them coon tails??"........