Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk ALTurkey Talk -- Beards and Spurs Alabama's Turkey population on the decline?

If they declined last year you can't blame me.

One thing I hadn't thought about was the fact that they started bring daylight savings time in before turkey season even opens. That knocked a lot of folks out of getting to go before work, and is something that is bound to have reduced the harvest.

No question that Ivan did a whole lot of habitat destruction in the places it hit. When large areas get clearcut and replanted, its gotta reduce the turkey population. My farm was clearcut in 1977 and replanted in 1979. What made it bad was that thousands of acres around it were cut about the same time. The result was that from 1984 until 1990 there wasn't a turkey killed on our place. As the pines grew up, the turkeys came back.

This pine plantation has turkeys ALL OVER it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUCQyJhtJBg

I don't think harvest numbers have much, if any, correlation to the overall population.
And 3 years worth of data does not a trend make.

What I have noticed, specifically in the last 3 years, is a tremendous rise in the number of hunters using public land.
With greater hunting pressure, the turkeys become extremely hard to kill.
I have hunted turkeys on public lands all my life, and killed a gol-dang bunch of them, but when they are harassed every day of the week they become almost unhuntable.

Couple of things that may factor into the stats. One has been mentioned earlier - the storms do not just seem to hurt the habitat, but it also seems to wipe out birds in those areas as well. Hunted a place a couple of years ago where the population really seemed decimated by tornadoes that had come through in late February.

Two... for whatever reason, the population where I've hunted the past three years has declined. I don't know that I can pin it on one factor - but the fact seems undeniable that I have less birds.

I mentioned this a few years ago, in the NW corner and surrounding areas of MS and Tn the population has declined. I've been mentioning this to my friend that's a biologist, he told me last year that he had heard the same thing from other biologist.

2 years back in TN on a place that has had numerous gobblers, well Primo's crew killed zilch.

The biologist cruise certain areas up here at certain times doing poult counts, another Trace guy counts as well, all declining.

The property i hunt, the Trace splits it right before the big bottoms going into MS. Always had big numbers of birds, now maybe a 1/3 of what we had just 10-15 years ago.

The poult count does look better this year.

bird populations cycle however we had a bigger dip than the norm

carter, I have seen the same thing you have in TN over the last 5 or 6 years. I used to be so eat up with birds that all I had to do is get up in the mornings and I would atleast call some jaeks in and most of the time at least 1 LB. I used to let them walk off if I couldn't see a good thick beard and spurs on them. Now days if it has a 6 inch beard I ground check it.

I remember when Tennessee had their first Turkey season after restocking, mostly from Missouri and for many years gobblers were aplenty and a surge of nimrods to match the turkey growth as well.

Depending on the area you hunt in Tennessee there are plenty of Vol gobblers left,but I think the turkey hunting fad has dropped somewhat and the gobblers will regenerate ,same in Alabama.When you have a good year in a hunting club this year,you'll pay for it next year.You can kill them faster than they can regenerate,that's definite!

I remember back in the early sixties in Bankhead forest,home of the original wild turkey,where they never went extinct,but did in some states, there were plenty of hunters,but there were fewer hunters in Bankhead this past year and only 23 gobblers were checked in on 96,000 prime acres.I killed a few of those 23 gobblers and know the where-bouts of several more for next year.The gobblers are still there in Bankhead Forest but don't gobble much and are weary and smart!I hope turkey hunters remain in decline (LOL) and if gobblers are hunted legally they will always be here,just like the good lord intended.

I know this much. There has been an upsurge of turkey hunters in the past 5 years. Some of them are the "Johnny come lately's" that don't go hard core, but no doubt there are at least 3x as many today as there were just a few years ago.

Dr. B

Big Jack, the turkey in that William Harris picture was carrying a sign that said "plant a tree for me." He wasn't keen on all the trees being cut, but as time has shown the turkeys like the pines too. I find them in our pines much more so than the hardwoods. Certainly diversity is the key.

I don't think there's any decline in the turkey population.

When we first started hunting our club 15 yrs ago you would see droves of 30-40 turkeys every afternoon . This past deer season I might have seen 2-3 while driving around . Whether it is from clearcutting or storm damage I'm not sure , but the one thing that we have an abundance of now is HOGS ! I believe they will be the end of hunting as we know it before long .

William, I believe that was added later. I don't recall seeing that on the picture at the time he put it up. I stopped in almost every afternoon around 1970 and watched him paint and as you know, looked at the artifacs he had recovered from the river, that he liked to show everyone. I went by one time when I had some hunting clients at Hendersons and bought a reproduction of the picture I had watched him paint some 20 or so years earlier. He framed it in a frame made from pecky cypres he had recovered from the river. It hangs over my fireplace in the den here in Pell City.
And BTW, Troy, the guy who has the little "U-pick" farm and farmers supply, on the sight that Williams house was, is his grandson, Park.

old William Harris print I rescued and framed, in my living room.


troy

Cool print.

Hmmm