Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk ALTurkey Talk -- Beards and Spurs March 16th Opening Day

I personally think they should reduce the limit to 3 birds and reduce the buck limits to 2. Only then would we start seeing our wildlife population increase to what it is capable of carrying.

i saw 43 longbeards, 63 or 67 hens and 17 jakes last season in 6 counties...... I'm not buying anything he's selling

New guy coming in throwing haymakers!

I actually have done a fair amount of research. Most all the restocking came when hunters and landowners got together and started working to change things because the state was just sitting on its hands.
If the state would take the money they are using for all this “research” and start a program that encouraged trapping coyotes and varmints we’d have more turkeys here than we knew what to do with.

Don't forget to cut off your location tag in your camera settings as well.

If they move the opening to April like he is threatening, I am hanging up turkey hunting and I'll just get into fishing more (and earlier).

It is too damn hot in April in south Alabama, generally, and the grass is thigh-high already.

I would be more for a reduced bag limit than a later start date.

or you could just take pictures, then screen-shot them at a later date/location and if you want to brag on the innerwebs, make sure you post the screen shots, not the original.

There is currently a theory among the biologists that hens are more likely to breed with the dominant gobbler than with other gobblers. So if the dominant bird gets killed opening day, then the hens refuse to breed with one of the other gobblers and don't nest that season. That is what I have gathered from reading what I can find. If someone with better understanding wants to correct me, please do.

SC just released a report and that seemed to be what they were saying. The problem I had with it was that their research didn't seem to support their conclusions. Since we can't access the raw data, I can't be certain of that, but the information they released did not support their conclusions. I think the whole idea about the dominant bird is just a theory, and I have seen nothing to make me believe it's real. What I have observed is that when the dominant bird gets killed, another one will immediately become the dominant bird. I've even seen which one was dominant change during the season.

SC was monitoring an unhunted area during their study, and found that they heard about 2 gobbles a day more on that area than the hunted areas. That seemed to be the basis for many of their conclusions. It wasn't surprising that an unhunted area might have more gobbling, but I question whether that means hens are going unbred. They were also monitoring poult production on each area. There was no mention of a higher poult production rate on the unhunted land.

That leads me to believe that the poult numbers must not have been any better, cause you can be sure they would have led with that if it was a lot more. If poult recruitment numbers are the same in totally unhunted land as hunted land, then that completely destroys the theory. Forget about when the gobblers are killed; there were none killed at all, and apparently it didn't make any difference. They still reached the conclusion they apparently wanted to reach.

Face it folks - hunting is under attack everywhere. I know that there are hunters among our biologists who are doing the legwork, but I strongly suspect an anti-hunting bias at the heart of at least some of the current research. We can fight it, or just bend over and take it. Write to your CAB member. I know that we've had some questionable members of it in the past, but I think they are our last line of defense against ultimate government destruction of hunting.

Only problem I have with it opening March 15 this far north is that turkeys are still bunched up and I know of a couple instances where there have been 3-4 gobblers (or more) killed the first week over a pile of corn by some bloodthirsty folk.
I’d be ok if the northern part of Alabama’s season kinda mirrored Tennessee’s season. March 25- May 10 or so.
Taking days away just for the heck of it is inexcusable though.

If any changes had to be made they should consider splitting into a north and south zone for starters

I agree Brent. A north and south zone makes sense.

I would not object to splitting the season, but where I hunt it is over by the end of April. Lovettt Williams said that a later hunting season caused more problems with reproduction than an earlier season. He said that hunters would bump hens off their nests and cause some of them to abandon them. And he had genuine research that proved this happens, not a theory about what goes on in the mind of a hen.

I mentioned zones on here years ago and it wasn’t received well. I still think it should be done without question.

Gobblers and bucks = male
Hens and does = female

8th grade health class refresher may be necessary

Same with deer and turkeys some people are just idiots on how many they kill. If there are 50 hens and 3 gobblers some people will kill the only 3 left alive gobblers and wonder why there are no turkeys.

Why you gotta kill some hens to get your hen:gobbler ratio down. ... and cull gobblers

This guy gets it...

That's why we have a rule on our land that we have termed the "age & action improvement" bill.

Basically, we treat turkeys like they're under interrogation. If they gobble, they have basically confessed, therefore they get a pass. No gobble means they're withholding info and get a death sentence.

Additionally, if they strut, they get a pass. No strut= boom.

And, lastly, we have installed a fine system for age structure. A turkey 2.75 years and younger carries a fine of $25/ season that the bird was robbed of experiencing alive. If the bird is 2.5 years old (based on our proprietary advanced aging algorithms), he was robbed of one season and thus the hunter is fined $25.

Conversely, if he is older than 3.5, the money from the fining system begins to work in your favor, and you are credited for each season that bird got to live to the fullest. That funding comes from the underaged bird fine account.

A hunter on our land can who takes a verified 4+ year old bird with under 1" spurs (broken, misshapen, or missing spurs are also deemed culls and fit into this category as well) and under 10" beard (preferred, but subordinate to spur requirement) also qualifies for the QTM credit via a cull clause.

As Whild Bill puts it best, "We just know what works for us."

Times like these, we need a like button.

Since we don’t have one, enjoy your blinking envelope

You want your turkey numbers up, start trapping every possum,coon,coyote,bobcat you can catch. I been trapping on 3 different places for 3 years. On one place I was overrun with coyotes, the first week I caught 11 coyotes and caught over 20 coon and possum combined. I trapped it hard in February right before turkey season. I heard more turkey's that spring on that 300 acres than I had combined the first 3 seasons I had the place. I only harvested one bird off the place that year, should have killed more birds but I couldn't seal the deal on a few others. That summer and fall my turkey flocks I normally saw during that time period doubled. Each flock went from 10-20 birds to 30 plus. I continued to trap through the Fall and right up to turkey season. I'm still trapping the place hard and still catching 10-15 coyotes every year plus that many coon and possum. Every year the gobbling has been better and my flock sizes are increasing. I'm no professional trapper and I don't do it for the money, I really enjoy doing it to help the turkey hunting out. I promise if you put the time in to catch some predators and egg eaters it will make a difference on your place for hearing and seeing number of birds on your place.

I hope Aubarn is doing these studies around areas that are being trapped and non-trapped areas to see the difference. I'm sure that they are not but maybe so.
I know this has nothing to do with pushing the start date back but maybe in the future it would help with there biological stand point for pushing it back.