Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum State Wide Deer Harvest

Something that I think may be causing a lot of the population trends we are likely seeing with turkeys in these burn counties is the fact that our burning efforts are probably flirting with a “don’t burn after this date” threshold each year. This year the green up switch flipped around Feb 16th or so…..I think you probably have a short window of maybe a week so or after that happens where you don’t really impact things much and then every week that goes by after before you burn you get the vegetation more and more out of synch and the more impact you have on that first hatching especially.



I think what may be causing the crazy fluctuations and gradual trends downward is the fact that this “do not burn after” date is following the same pattern as this graph I posted. On an annual basis it may be early this year and late next year…..AND the trend is that this date is moving forward.....couple that with the fact that we pushed the start date for when most folks burn back 10 days as well with deer season extention. Like I said earlier, a lot of this burning is done in a narrow time frame after deer season ends and exactly when it happens is dictated by the weather. In a nutshell I think what is happening is that this spring burning timing is bouncing back and forth on either side of this moving "do not burn" target from year to year....and gradually hitting on the wrong side of the line more and more....some wet years we may hit WAY on the other side of it......all this the reason for the gradual decline in these areas........In theory anyways......