Exactly. The bunch we have rarely gets out from under the desk. Most are on their knees anyways.

Lets just think about Moundville area - similar to tallassee and other native high population centers. Moundville had, estimated in it's heyday, 10,000+ natives living there associated with the complex. Walking..... Imagine the impact they had on the local landscape. They couldn't travel terribly far in a day and reports indicate they went "off hunting" to '"hunting grounds". They HAD to because they devastated the local game populations around their population centers. Just like the plains indians using buffalo jumps to kill thousands of buffalo, most of which were wasted, to provide meat for the population. There are vast areas I have seen on maps of early settlers where very few indians lived and were used only for hunting to provide food. So much for "balance". These humans heavily manipulated the habitat and the game populations. The balance was more accidental due to low populations FAR away from population centers. Balance in predator/prey sounds good in a pretty poem.

Gobbler you're forgetting we are predators. Predator control will have to control use too. Makes for a better poem when we are included

I can only speak of what I’ve seen up this way. I bowhunted Lauderdale a NW corner WMA and club back in the late 80s and 90s. No turkey season until mid 90s. Nothing to see 40-50 jake-hen flocks on every hunt. Groups of 10-15 gobblers most of the time. Still a decent population there but not like it was. The season had been closed for close to 25 years before reopening. Colbert had been closed too but opened in the 80s. Would see similar flicks and some much bigger flocks on the western side next to MS. That area is nothing like it was during the 90s.

The biggest changes was timber harvest and flying raptors (cats) as 257 called them. Very efficient hunters they are. Rarely saw a Coopers, now see them all the time along with other hawks.

I’ve been saying I see similar numbers of gobblers but it’s the hen population that has really crashed. Had several landowners say the same thing about the hens. They probably own over 10k and have more than that with land leases. They’re retired and know their land running cameras etc….

I can say I’ve seen more hens this year than in the past. Not huge by any means but an increase. Actually have birds around the farm last year and this year. They’ve been missing for a few years and during the 90s nothing to see almost 200 birds in that area.

Thanks .

If the timber industry and "newly" adopted management practices across the board aren't at the top of your list as the reason for population decline from east Texas to Georgia... You're a damn fool, it's that simple.

I can delve more into this if needed.

Say what you want but CNC is on the right track.

Patiently waiting. Is this class gonna be approved for CE hours?

I don’t know if this is true or not but a buddy sent this to me about timber practices impacting turkey numbers. It’s pretty convincing.

Mash here

Cutting timber as I said before is the worst thing for turkeys IMO

Long as you select cut it you ok , clear cut it turkeys are done

You know I’ve been trying to think of other ways to word this because I’m really not just trying to be a dikhead by saying it but I cant….. Your response is so far out of the realm of anything I said though that I have to assume that your either bullchitting me or you didn’t take the time to comprehend what I said…..I really don’t know of another way to respond than that......For what its worth, here it is again.

CNC, why did you quote the part of your post that gobbler didn’t quote?

I’m confused

Exactly........

The number 1 goal he had in that video (and everybody who likes to blame logging), is to blame “new” timber harvesting practices. While doing so, he openly admitted two things that have been true for years. Turkey are extremely adaptable and can live in many various habitats. And predator control is the number one thing to help turkey. Plus - nobody complained about turkey numbers in the 90’s and 2000’s - and most clearcut conversions had already taken place by that “new” strategy.

It is fun to watch guys talk in a circle, though.

That is his MO



This is what you said



My reply was addressing your "balance" theory. That seems to be in the "realm of what you said" and I think I comprehended and replied just fine. Unless, of course, your were referring to pre 10K years ago before "humans had manipulated the landscape". If so, you should have stated that so I could comprehend.

😂😂😂

Time and money is all it takes

Logging isnt the problem. Clear-cuts aren't the problem. Timber Management Practices are the problem. It's the spraying after the clear cutting has taken place that causes the initial problems. You can defend it til you're blue in the face. We get it. It's your industry. But the fact that you mention circles is funny, because the problem is indeed cyclical. And yes, these practices started being implemented in the late 90s, and early 2000s, but it wasn't until the mid to late 2000s that I would consider them widely adopted. With the percentage of landowners and timber management companies increasing yearly until we were at a point in the mid 2010s when it reached a high adoption rate (probably 85% or higher now with the exception of a few private land owners who manage for wildlife or are too old school to change their ways). It takes time to see a decline. As this new strategy wasn't implemented over night, neither is the decline of the wild turkey. You act like 20 years in the big scheme of things is a long time, when it just simply isn't. Turkeys are adaptive, and your correct, they can live in many different forms of terra. BUT, they cannot live where there isn't any food.

Lets use a 300 acre clear cut as an example:

Timber is cut. New growth sprouts. You have good browse and cover for all animals. From mice to rabbits to turkeys to deer. The clear cut is then sprayed. Everything dies with the exception of some nuisance unwanted grasses and vegetation (i.e. yaupon and broom sage). All of a sudden there is no growth for the animals to forage on. ALL animals, even bugs need plant variety to flourish. Because of the lack of growth, there aren't even any bugs for the birds to eat. So they move. The rodent numbers decline, which equals less food and eliminates easy meals for predators. Predators are then forced to shift food source focus to larger animals that were previously farther down the list simply because they are harder to obtain. Now you have a 300 acre block of barren land in which nothing inhabits and will not inhabit anything for years to come. The larger animals with bigger ranges are forced to move to a new area where their basic needs to survive are met. Subsequently surrounding areas are hit with an influx of more mouths to feed. This puts more pressure on those areas resources. All of a sudden there is a higher food demand. The rodents in that area see an huge increase in predation and predator numbers. It doesn't take long and those predators (i.e foxes, cats and coyotes) have wiped out the easy pray once again (including ALL nesting animals eggs), causing predator food sources to shift once again to larger prey. The vegetation is now being consumed faster than it can grow and the created environment isn't sustainable.

At this point, one of the following two things is guaranteed to happen, and both happen eventually... 1) Animal numbers start to decrease over time (cant live without food, Darwin's law here). OR 2) This new area is clear cut and sprayed, and we start all over at the beginning. Which ends in the same type cycle. As years of this have gone on, it has eventually gotten to a tipping point, so we are actually widely seeing the effects of it now.

You don't have to buy into what I'm saying. But I watched it happen over a 15 year period on 15,000 acres of the most turkey infested ground you could ever hope to set foot on. When the implementation of spraying first started, I could see the writing on the wall. You walk out into a clear cut that they had cut and sprayed and you'd be lucky to see ants on the ground. No bugs, no rodents, no birds even coming into that area because there was nothing to eat. Sure you may see a stray deer track or turkey track travelling through.. but that's it.. You go 500 yards down the road to a clear cut of similar age, that had not been sprayed or tampered with, and the natural forage that was there would hold ALL of the wildlife. Gobs of bugs, birds, rabbits, deer, turkeys and even coyotes. The difference is astonishing and if your honest with yourself you know exactly what I'm talking about.

As a side not: Spraying also completely eliminated the need for burning, which we all know was and is beneficial to wildlife in too many ways to list right now. We also wont get into SMZ reduction.

Yes obviously trapping predators will help. Any mouth you can remove from the landscape will help. BUT, it is my honest opinion that there are NOT MORE predators now than there were 20 years ago. There is simply less food for them, as described above. So they are forced into more travel, more daylight movement which leads to more tracks, sightings and evidence that they are around. Giving the perception that there are more of them. If anything, there are likely less. But, predatory animals are more resilient than prey animals. They dont have anything trying to eat their young or rob their eggs. So yes, in ratio form, there are more predators to prey. And that number is most likely up. But it stems from the issues listed above.

From Atlanta, down to central Florida and to east Texas (with the exception of extreme North AL and North Mississippi), this area is majorly managed for timber harvest. Yes there are some areas of ag mixed in, but it is minute on the large scale of things.

I think most agree that numbers are down overall, across the board, but they are down for different reasons in different areas. While the south's numbers have been on a slow decline. Areas in the Midwest and West have plummeted in a period of 5 years. Why? Well look at the patterns of weather during brooding season in areas like Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and North Texas from about 2014 to 2020... either EXTREME drought or extreme flooding in those areas at least every other year in that period, led to poor poult viability.


Everyone wants to blame hunters, over harvest, and the BS about "killing the dominant gobbler too early". But in reality...in the past 50 years very little of that has actually changed to a degree that could make the kind of effect we are currently seeing.

Teamduckdown what about areas in the mtns where spraying after cutting never occurs? Like many have stated counties such as Jackson the habitat hasn’t changed at all.

I don't live there. It's hard to speak on that. If you notice i intentionally excluded north GA, AL and MS from the post because i have no knowledge of it.
Are we talking Pine or hardwood on these mountains? I'm addressing Pine timber management. Jackson boasts one of the highest numbers for harvest success on game check (not that i buy much into that), are the numbers down significantly?

Hardwoods but our decline is just as bad and in the same time frame. The main reason Jackson is so high we are a big county with around 100,000 acres of public land.