Figured I’d post a little story here. Nothing to start a debate, and I’m going to stick to facts. None of what will be here is my opinion, it’s all what I know to be truth.

I grew up in Southern Mississippi and for the most part lived my life surrounded by woods out the back door. To this day, there have only been a few houses added to this immediate area, and only 3 of which would effect the subject of turkey (2 by which would occupy space where turkeys were, and 1 that would occupy by visual space from a distance of 300 yards or more only).

Layout of the land is 80 acres owned jointly by 2 families, and which this land joins immediately to the north approximately 1800 acres of mixed farmland in 1989 to now pines and fields that are not farmed. All this property joins continuous swampland that stretches over 30k acres and crosses state lines between Ms and La and is know as Bogue Chitto National Wildlife Refuge. Some of the 1800 acres on the west side of what we called the big lake has been developed, so for sake of argument we will say the 1800 is more like 1k acres.

The area behind my house was known for having turkeys, my great grandfather had hunted them with his uncle there all the way back in the 1930’s. I know this because before he passed he gave he his uncle’s caller and told me himself. His uncle is the only member of my family that I know of that hunted them. I’m 1989 there were 2 turkeys gobbling behind the house I grew up in, and these were killed that spring by someone my dad ran hounds with.

To my knowledge, there has not been a turkey gobble in that area since 1989. No gobblers have been spotted, although I have over the years seen flocks of hens at times in the fields only during the late Spring and Summer months. There have been turkeys gobble on and in the area west of Palestine road, but the area that compromised where I lived…the area that had held turkeys through the darkest times of the turkeys, and much of which had been left unchanged in swamp forest that bordered fields with pasture with very little additional human intrusion. This area has to be very near to 3 if not 4K acres.

The changes that took place during the time of the last known turkey to me was the farmland north and east of our home was allowed to grow up and become thick while the rest of the farmland was continued to be managed the same. Coyotes came on the seen around 1983 or so was when my Dad remembered seeing the first one that his foxhounds ran through the bean fields, so they had become a regular presence by the time of 1989. The lack of a mature gobbler after the last 2 were killed that spring, even though hens have been visible at times since then. Katrina destroyed a lot of habitat in 2005.