First thing- I've never turkey hunted, but plan to this year.

My new lease has lots of turkeys. I've seen up to 20 in a field at a time and on evening hunts you can hear them fly up to roost. Tracks and crap everywhere.
My question is why can you only shoot gobblers? Every turkey I've seen has been a hen. I've looked at them with binoculars and no jakes/gobblers.

Some states allow it, some don't.

Alabama is one that does not.

To protect the hatch.

The gobblers are around. Some places gobblers will use fields a lot and some they won't. My hunting club has a group of 9 longbeards running together, and I have never seen them nor heard of anyone else seeing them in a field.

When turkey season comes in they will betray their location to you.

Unless their are grade A turds... which the place I hunt has some fitting that description. Makes you wonder if God blessed them with vocal ability.

If the hens have good habitat to nest they will be there in the spring and the gobblers too.

I think the hatch varies alot between years, it has alot to do with the weather, predators, habit, and such. I feel if you kill the hens you are really putting a strain on the population. One gobbler can tend to alot of hens.

Some years are great and some not so much. Get it while the getting is good.

Im no expert on the subject, but gobblers tend to come and go and take the place of each other, not so much on the hens.

Kill one and there will alot of times be another with the same flock of hens within days.

Like everyone has said, if you still have those hens in March, you'll have gobblers too. Protect those hens; they are the future of the flock. The gobbler has only one biological purpose, and by the time the season comes in he will have conducted his business, so he is expendable. The hens are not expendable, and every varmit in the woods wants to kill them and eat them. They don't need human predators too. Just read my signature; it says it all.

Good luck with your season.

Thanks for the replys!!
Ok, so weather, predation, ect have a bigger effect on the hatch then it does on say ~~ does/fawns?

Yes, habitat can play a big role in hatchs, but in my area, predators play the biggest. Get rid of every fox coyote, and bobcat possible. And make sure you put twice as much effort into getting rid of every raccoon in the county. Just my opinion.

I have met a lot of gobblers that would have disagreed with you on this.... If they had survived our meeting Breeding extends into July in some years or with hens that are persistent in renesting. I won't offer my opinion on whether a FEW hens killed in the fall have ANY impact on the reproduction or fall population

No doubt, predation on nests and young, habitat, and weather (in that order) will impact the hatch the most. Weather, WAY more than deer reproduction (does not matter much for deer). Habitat and predation impacts fawn drop most. With turkeys, the annual variance in hens available to nest has little impact

>>>Breeding extends into July in some years or with hens that are persistent in renesting.<<<

Yea, but there is always a gobbler who will survive and be around to handle those late situations. And the jakes can handle it if there isn't - hey, you told me that.

If the biologists do their jobs right, then the hens will already be bred by the time the season comes in. So I figure that the breeding that takes place during the season is purely for recreational purposes.

Im sure the jakes like that.

Technically, very little breeding is done by the time season starts. If a hen was bred on 3/15, she would take @ 2 weeks to lay into a nest then 28 days of incubation. This would have a hatch on the last of season - something I do see but rarely. Average hatch is mid May - late June, leading to the conclusion that peak breeding is mid April - late May, LONG after you have killed the best, most dominant and genetically superior gobblers

I knew sooner or later some of yall QDMA loving doe killers would be wanting to start shooting hen turkeys.