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CWD isn’t killing 15-25% off any deer herd anywhere

Poor choices by humans in high positions can cause this.

Meanwhile, Tennessee bans putting any fed or mineral out in my County now.

Yet you can literally bait all you want year round across that line on a map. Shows you how much anyone agrees with how to handle CWD.

Only ones being successful handling it is states that’s realized the sky isn’t falling.

And yes kills were down up here. Like most states, it was 75 degrees and raining the whole entire rut up here. It didn’t get remotely cold until late January a full month or more past peak rut up here.

From the Tennessee river to Canada it was the same

I’ve got a theory for what may be causing some of our turkey issues……The turkeys reproductive cycle occurs in synch with spring green up…….This technically started about 2 weeks ago in my area…..We should be doing dormant season burning from October through January with Feb being the absolute latest….I believe that once “green-up” begins, then the later and later you wait to burn, the more you get the vegetation out of synch….Folks may be resetting “green-up” by a month or more the way we do it now and the out of synch vegetation is likely somehow effecting the maternal health of the mothers and the young and their reproductive success.

A couple things I think may have changed to exacerbate this issue are the fact that we pushed deer season back 10 days which means many folks are getting an even later start with their burning as well as the fact that we are in a warming trend with climate change that may actually be moving the turkeys reproductive timing forward by a week or two. I think back when we ended deer season on Jan 31 and spring green up didn’t start until nearly March 1 then we weren’t burning as much past the start of this green-up threshold…..Now, if we were to have a wet Feb where nobody gets to burn right after deer season then it may push large amounts of prescribed burning into March and this may be where we are shooting ourselves in the foot.

It would be interesting to pull the burn permits from that green circled area for the last few years and see when most of them were issued in comparison to the red circle.

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Early high heat killed my early season and good buck sightings were 0. The first few days or first stand sits are my favorites over rut for me. When the heat is bad and if u go during that time - u spook up your spot and miss the great first sit window. My early season was bad due to heat.

I shot nothing in Clarke and hav good bucks on camera now

CNC there is not enough burning on the landscape scale, generally speaking, to impact turkey nesting success. Not enough people burn. I’d argue more need to burn. There’s been a lot of research funding go into burn timing and impacts on wildlife. Growing season fires are still a great tool and useful at improving habitat. A handful of growing season burns in a county has absolutely no impact on the county wide nest success. Actually, if you break down on a smaller scale, properties who are using dormant and growing season fires regularly have better habitat, and usually more turkeys as well. Habitat is key. The size of growing season burns is also important. Having smaller burn units rather than large and vast acreages is much better. It does way more good than harm.

That depends on where you’re located and one of the things that caught my eye…..Take Jackson Co for example….it had very little fluctuation in a good turkey population…..There is also very little burning going on there to play a factor in altering the timing of things…..Where I live there is a chit ton of burning that happens….There’s huge quail plantations and private landowners ripping fire through thousands of acres ……These areas are also the ones with a high fluctuation. There is a pattern to what is happening the same as with the deer and total rainfall map…..You just have to match it up to the variable that is causing the turkey in the same manner.....or rather try to.

Just looking at it from a common sense standpoint…..Is there any reason most people burn in Feb/March other than the fact that its after deer season is over???....If you look at when fire would have likely passed through the landscape naturally it would have most likely occurred during dry periods of Oct and Nov when you have the most potential for something to get started and spread.

Look at Talledega county too with a 30% variation......If I'm not mistaken there is a lot of burning that goes on in that county too with the Talledega National forest

What's up with Morgan county?

I believe you are supposed to game check turkey kills as well.

One thing I find interesting is the effects of temperature and moon phase on deer movement. When I research, they all seem to say that moon phase has zero impact yet I usually see less early morning movement when there is a full moon. The big warm phase in December didn't help my deer sightings either. The south wind forced me to sit in different places than I normally would, which could explain it to a degree I suppose.

People seem to universally say if its warm during deer season, they need to go fishing instead.

Here’s something else I notice about it……Look at the rebound percentages for the counties circled in green…..They are very close to the same amount of fluctuation rate as the ones in the red but in the opposite direction. Wouldn’t there have to be a distinct variable in there causing what we’re seeing??? You have two areas of comparison there to try to find what is different. I suspect it likely happened maybe two years prior to the data we are looking at since it would have been the nesting success of that year effecting the current years hunting success.

They basically dont have a turkey population......or rather they have very few. There was no change in their data......25 turkeys killed both seasons across the whole county

Matt I completely agree with you that fire is an awesome tool for creating turkey habitat…..That’s why I also think that its these very properties that are using fire that are the ones that have the most potential to impact those turkey populations with the use of fire for good and bad. They are likely the ones with the most influence over the populations

Something else to consider here when looking at the +- map…..Dont take the fire theory and try to find a correlation for it in every single county…..You are absolutely right in the fact that there are some counties where “fire” is just not a big variable in the equation……However, those counties are still going to show a plus or minus change on the map….its just being influenced in some way by other factors. I think you have to judge these areas a little apples to oranges from one another. If you'll notice, many of the counties where fire is less of a factor and maybe not even a factor at all....they are showing much smaller variations in change

Ask yourself this question.....If the answer is simply fire then why does the Macon, Bullock, and Russell Co areas look so bad in comparison when they likely burn more acres than any other area of the state???......Shouldnt those counties be top tier with all the fire used??......They should be and probably are at times....but I think drip torch timing may be causing the good to bad cycles and weather may be the culprit influencing that.........just a theory.......I would be curious to see what would happen if we did all of this same burning Oct-Jan

If something as small as a slight temperature variation can influence the turkeys breeding cycle and timing and move it forward……Then how influential do you suppose major fire could be as far as “impact” on that process and its success?? Most folks don’t really give two thoughts to whether or not we send it through there Feb 1 or March 15 as long as we get it burned “this spring”……That’s putting the vegetation through a swing of the pendulum that’s a whole lot greater than just a slight temp change though. I think we would probably be better off burning outside of the turkey’s reproductive period from Oct-Jan.

Within this idea of fire this is another factor I also believe is having an impact…….Many of these properties that are using fire and likely having the most influence over populations are burning big parcels of land out of convenience…..The landowners who own thousands of acres will light off big chunks with each whack…..I get it and I’m not knocking the idea from an efficiency standpoint…..but look at the picture below as if it were a small scale model……..

We have stands A,B, and C…….These stands could be 10 acres each……40………100…..or 500 depending on how big we make the scale……What we are looking at is last summer’s vegetative growth. Now, ideally for the turkey and its needs during this reproductive time we would burn A and C….and we would leave B still standing……Then next year we would rotate and we would burn B and leave A and C standing or something of that nature……..The point here being that the smaller you make these squares the higher your potential goes for max turkey nest production……They need this structure and burn area side by side.....When you get larger and larger with the size of the squares the potential impact decreases.

25 reported turkeys killed. Gotta remember, if participation is bad on chuckie check for deer, I bet it is abysmal for chuckie turkey check.

It looks like hunter behavior changed with turkeys at the same time it did with them enforcing the deer being checked. I think we likely have two solid years of data…..which isn’t enough to establish trend lines but it is enough to accurately show these big 30% swings……Somebody hook a brother up and look up and see when the most burn permits were issued for the green circled counties in 2018 and 2019 and compare that to when the most burn permits werre issued for the red area and tell us what it shows…..Did weather alter when these folks were able to burn in comparison to each other???

That's the key word(s) to remember: "reported killed"

There never will be a system in which every single deer, turkey, elk, moose or whatever is reported. There always will be a +/- percentage.

There's no way in hell only 25 turkeys were killed in two seasons in Morgan. It's damned sure not a great county for them but I don't believe that number is true.

Correct......and as long as that % stays pretty constant from county to county (variance) then the comparison numbers I'm showing will still be accurate.

These numbers don’t have to be 100% exact to produce good usable information. What you can do here for example is take Jackson Co as a representation of what is “good” or “great”……If that is what great turkey hunting looks like then you can use 1 in 800-1200 range as a standard for good when comparing the turkey hunting in the rest of the state to it. Bullock, Macon, and Russell Counties should be hitting in the low 1000’s but I think our variance in the use of fire from year to year is potentially causing big swings

Something else that would be very helpful to be able to look at here is an overall density map for burn permits to see if there is a correlation between the counties with the highest density of permits and the counties showing the most dramatic swings.