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

Would love to know what percentage of kills is actually reported? Maybe 25%?

Something I would guess that the plantation belt probably benefits from and one of the variables they need to line up to trigger a growth year is for them to have a dry summer that keeps all of those first year burn stands from putting on all of that excess growth that we don’t need to occur……The following spring after that dry summer should have more usable interior space in these grass stand for nesting…….That's my guess anyways

The plantation belt is like a 1967 Pontiac GTO that’s engine is out of tune…….It looks like a bad ass muscle car but its really just spitting and sputtering along……Every now again things line up right and it goes VROOOOOOM!!!!........then back to spit….sputter…..sputter….spit……

There’s no doubt that early successional habitat is key and very beneficial to quail, turkey and deer along with a variety of other critters that may or may not play a supporting role.

Meh…….that’s the generalized bull-doodoo version of it…….There’s more complexities to what’s actually occurring with understory structure like I just pointed out with the thick grass…….

You win the understatement of the year my friend.

It’s way higher than that. If 25% of turkeys are reported we have a major problem.

CNC complete bs.

The one thing I hear thrown around a lot is the lack of brood rearing habitat

I’m glad you brought that up because after realizing I had a 6th year of good game check data and went back and added it into the mix on my spreadsheet…….It changed quite a few counties when it comes to the harvest variability……It makes more sense now for counties like Tallapoosa and Talladega……Adding that 6th year into the mix goes back far enough to pick up the last boom for some of those counties.

Tallapoosa ..... 261..... 260..... 250..... 265..... 244..... 393
Talladega .....226..... 244 .....227..... 197..... 233 .....333

Harvest Variability Redo

If you remember on the hen survival video though it doesn’t matter if you have a good place for brooding if half of your hens are being killed during nesting each year and frequently being disturbed and run off the nest……That’s the imbalance that’s plaguing these areas where it’s a sea of thick grass understory…….You’ve got all of this great brooding you’re creating with fresh burns that just occurred a couple months ago but you’re canceling out a lot of the benefit (maybe all the benefit) by it eventually growing up in all of that thick grass understory that inflates the predator population to epic levels as well as the thick structure causing the hens to nest in vulnerable locations near an edge……

One of the big disconnects we have is in thinking that if there are a lot of predators then it must have a silver lining and be good because that means there should be a proportionate amount of prey……The proportionate amount of prey that is dictating the predator population in these grass praries though is rodents at its base…….It has nothing to do with turkeys other than the turkeys having to deal with how dense you make the predators…

Think of 4 turkey killers y’all know. Do 1 in 4 of them report to GC?

I agree that its way over 25%. I call mine in and so does everyone else I know that hunts. Probably over 50% called in. How many of yall really know people that don’t report their birds and kill over the limit? I mean really know them. Not just hear about them.

I know 1, been getting them for decades. Even he is not nearly as mad at them as he used to be but still gonna get a couple limits

I don’t know of anyone and I know a good many turkey hunters

My turkey numbers are definitely down this year. After last season I had 3-4 gobblers and 30+ hens and poults showing up regularly on camera. I’ve had a pic of one gobbler and just a handful of single hens.

I don’t believe they are necessarily all dead, they just aren’t using my land yet for whatever reason. I was really expecting them to be using my clover fields heavily, but that’s not happening.

Maybe this weird acorn year has them off the normal pattern. I am starting to see a lot of grasshoppers and other bugs starting to show up. Maybe that will get them out of the hardwood bottoms and onto my place.

They need to do a video on using cows to manage for turkey habitat

I think I could make a good argument that in the plantation belt its really not a lack of brooding that’s limiting but rather a lack of quality nesting…….Its easy for folks to create good brooding…..you just strike a match in Feb and watch it initially come back in good structure over the next 3-4 months……..The problem comes in with months 5-14…….Its not as easy for folks to control the vegetative growth that ends up getting too thick to be quality nesting structure on a stand level the next spring…..Most of these places are just letting the chips fall where they may and allowing summer rains to dictate the end structure of the understory……..If you have the ability to apply and remove grazers at will though then you can make that structure be what you want it to be every year……You’re helping out the length of that growth cycle by not waiting on once a decade drought to create the structure you want

This is the opposite end of the spectrum from those areas out in Texas and Oklahoma that boom on the good rain years……Those areas have such little rain that it spreads out the plant spacing and makes the whole landscape “usable” space for nesting……nothing is too thick…….The limiting factor is the additional cover and food (bugs) for brooding……those holes in the bucket get plugged with the rain years…….

We are the opposite…..we have too much rain and benefit from drier conditions……..On most years we’re plagued on a landscape level with the majority of stands being all or nothing……plant density is either too thick and tall or its bare and nothing like a hayfield or pasture……There’s a very low percentage of the understory on a landscape level that’s in “just right” conditions for nesting and brooding……AND….. a lot of the areas that are in those conditions quickly grow through them…..

I think one of the reasons southwest Alabama does so well is that in addition to having a lower overall predator density…..the landscape is a complex checkerboard of various age classes of timber from recent clear cuts to 30+ year old stands …….That’s creating a lot of choice when it comes to understory density……Within any 25K acre circle there’s always going to be certain age classes that are hitting just right levels of understory density for hens to move into and use….