Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk ALTurkey Talk -- Beards and Spurs The Turkey Numbers '26

I still want to think its revolving heavily around rain totals and temps in April and May though there's more to it than just how much it rains.....The timing and duration of rain events likely matter.....Did it rain for an hour at 11:00 am on a 85 degree day or did it rain off and on all night with lows in the 40's ???.....If you look back though there are a couple of years around 2021-22 where its pretty much a statewide down year......Was that from the really wet spring that occurred a couple years prior in 2019 & 2020??

What I’m guessing has occurred if you look at that last line of maps I posted is that in years where the whole state was down we had something like a REALLY wet spring acting as a limiting factor on everyone or something of that nature……In years since then we have moved back to a drier spring pattern and that limiting factor has been removed allowing SOME areas to boom……Other areas though have still been limited even with the drier spring conditions and are still being constrained by another factor……

Its that whole idea of boom years and why there is varying lengths of time between them…..3-4 years in some areas while 7-8+ in others…… Weather patterns tends to go wet, wet, dry, dry, wet, wet, dry, dry………so that variable is turned on then off then on then off……When its turned off some areas grow while other areas still need more switches turned off to see a boom…..The one thing that is pretty obvious though is that these things are occurring on a big scale with numerous counties grouped together being influenced in the same manner……For example look at 2020 and 2025……You have nearly the exact same grouping of counties flipping from green to red or vice versa …..The only difference really being the very southeastern counties staying reddish orange on both maps…..The rest of the map is pretty much the exact same grouping of counties flip flopped colors…..

I don’t think its necessarily topography but rather the habitat type and land use of the different areas that’s dictating how the weather cycles are effecting things…..That topography map divides it up pretty well into your different subgroups of counties though…..That’s almost a spot on match

I think every turkey hunter should be required to drop a pin and show the location of the harvest…..😅😅
How bout dat?

They already know.....

Not a problem that bird is gone.

2024 has an interesting looking pattern......What caught my eye was the single group of counties in the middle of the state in the red......That looks like basically the Tallapoosa and Coosa River Basins.......



So just out of curiosity I overlayed the Tallapoosa, Coosa, Black Warrior, and Chattahoochee......That fit pretty nicely......I'm guessing that there is an avian predator associated with those river basins that caused that pattern but that's just a guess.......Reckon it was eagles??......I know I see them in Bullock and Macon around the plantation belt

The plot thickens...... ......According to Outdoor Alabama there are no known eagle nesting locations in the lime green counties I filled in.....They also had Macon on there but I know for sure there's at least one there because I've stood underneath it......What kind of movement pattern do eagles have from year to year.....Are they leaving areas like Smith Lake and moving south sometimes or anything to that effect??....Or maybe leaving southwest Alabama moving up river??Do they occasionally have some kind of dispersion happening with excess birds?

A county that really jumps out is Chambers.......Reckon that's just coincidence?......That's gonna suck if one of the main culprits is eagles.....Anybody got anymore of that DDT??

So interesting enough......here is this years map again (2026) with the highlighted counties filled in where there are no know eagle nests......There's that Chambers Co jumping out again being green amongst all the red and orange coincidentally being the only county around without a nest.....Are we looking at annual eagle movement patterns across our state?? I know when I stood under that one's nest in Macon there were bones everywhere....even a couple small deer carcasses



And here we are last year 2025 with Chambers once again jumping out as the only green county with the same pattern.....That's three consecutive years in a row....Keep in mind there are other limiting factors working into the mix with some of these counties from year to year.....just like the one year when the whole state was red....

Eagles suck I been telling yall that. Eagles, bears, gators should all be hunted to the brink of extinction and just keep enough to keep them on the seriously endangered list.

I would think that grouped up flocks of hens in open fields in the winter would be easy targets for an eagle……There’s probably not much of an easier and more efficient food source for them to utilize…….I wonder how many eagles are actually in Alabama now during the winter months?? It wouldn’t take too terribly many across a single county if they were hammering adult turkeys as a food source to have an impact……

I really think that’s what we’re looking at on those recent maps…..If we go back to 2021-22 where the whole state was really down, we had some other variable like a wet spring that was the limiting factor on everyone for a couple years….Wet springs result in wet nesting hens and better scenting conditions for yotes as well more chances for poults to die of hypothermia, etc…..When that variable swung back to dry then it removed that constraint off of some counties and allowed the turkey population to grow…..Other counties though had the limiting factor of eagles kick in and that’s why our maps change the way they do…..These counties need a dry spring PLUS some other factor to line up that gets the eagle pressure off for them to see a growth year……That’s the theory anyways. The 2023 year where southeast Alabama had a great year should have been that year where both things lined up.....Maybe the eagles didnt make it down here that year and the cycle started over with them returning the next.....

There you have it......Its Alabama Power's fault!!!.....

The bad news is if this is true then it’s a pretty gloomy outlook for any change occurring…..at least with this particular constraint……That might be the very reason you never see this theory pick up any steam……If eagles are predating on adult turkeys in open fields during the winter then there’s no “solution” to be discovered and there’s no nesting or brooding habitat to be implemented to solve the problem……You’re just fugged and stuck with the constraint of “eagles”…….I don’t know, maybe you could try an eliminate any open fields and keep 30-50% canopy coverage…….But even so for areas like that Tallapoosa and Coosa River Basin area you will always be constrained by all of the open crop fields along the river that put grouped up winter flocks of turkeys in the open as targets

I had a tom working towards me in a cutover this year when out the blue he freaked out like I’ve never seen and took flight, in the next two seconds while I’m scratching my head wondering wtf is going on, and eagle come bombing down from above.

If the tree line was 10yds farther that eagle would have got that gobbler but he luckily made it to safety. That is up until he come back across the cutover to meet the fate of some tss 30 minutes later.

Here’s last years map (2025) one more time with the rivers over layed……Those river corridors are serving as “flyways” and the variation we’re seeing is dependent on how far south significant numbers of them push each winter and which habitats they choose to utilize…..I think the plantation belt is a main area on their radar as winter feeding grounds and why there’s more consistency in them “migrating” to that area if that’s the correct term for it…See Macon and Bullock in the red....In this particular year we’re looking at it may well just be that there weren’t any eagles that pushed all the way down Tallapoosa/Alabama River “flyway” to Autauga, Dallas, and Wilcox and that’s why we see the variation in those counties compared to areas just to the north around Lake Mitchell, Lake Jordan, etc

I’m not sure how long these winter populations of eagles stick around before flying back if that's how it works but if they are still here when gobblers start their spring routine strutting around out in the open then they may actually be the most vulnerable ones to eagle predation…..And you know its got to make it even worse if eagles are taking out the dominant gobblers in Feb

They’d be wrong if they’re saying there’s no eagles in Lamar co.

I know where a nest WAS, haven’t been there in a while.
I’ve seen them eating road kill in my bottom on 49.
They raise in all that flooded water in Millport too.
It’s a paradise.

So from what I gather eagles were restocked in Alabama in the late 80’s and the first successful nest was recorded in 1991…..and by 2006 they predicted 400 poults had successfully fledged from Alabama nests……and to make a long story short we have still been going through a growth process every since then with the situation continuing to evolve…..Populations around lakes have gotten more dense and likely as a result you’ve had excess begin to push down the riverways and so on and so forth……All of these patterns they are running down the “flyways” are just something that has likely started in the last 20 years and may still be changing.

I say all of that to get the point of…..we probably need to take it with a grain of salt with the “no nesting” counties……From what I’m reading eagle populations have gotten to the point where they arent really even keeping up with it that intensely anymore……Those no nesting counties may just be pointing us to what was the last areas of the landscape that began to get utilized by the expanding population of eagles and the areas they maybe still utilize the least in winter……