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

I’m really curious as to how it is that Chambers Co is getting so lucky…….I kinda think they may just be getting lucky in the way that Lake Wedowee, Lake Martin, and West Point Lake triangulate in some weird way that maybe that area is being passed by for better hunting grounds in the blackbelt and plantation belt……Not sure on that one……I think for some reason though they pass right by Chambers Co without utilizing that space…..

I’m just thinking out loud here but if I had to take an educated guess on what’s driving the bigger picture winter migration patterns of eagles into the southeast it would revolve around the severity of the winters in the north and the cycles occurring there…..where ever the eagles are coming from……Something to that effect is dictating how many migratory eagles move south and how far south they push down the river corridors……

I think we are seeing that cycle reset right here in the years I marked below……..A switch flipped up north with a weather cycle and its why the end of those flyways in the southern half of the state went from WAY down to WAY up…….That all red year was probably a bad spring for weather AND a bad winter for eagles lining up……..Heck, I may have to serve my own self up some of that crow and accept that the vast majority of what is occurring on the map is revolving around the limiting factor of eagles....I still think its probably both......maybe one is just having a more substantial influence year to year across more (most) counties.....

.......or maybe that relief from eagle predation is 2023 came from........

https://gadnrle.org/survey-eagle-nesting-steadfast-south-georgia

"However, he said the dip in the number of successful nests and fledglings may point to avian influenza, which ravaged bald eagles on the coast in 2022. Sargent recorded more empty nests than usual along the lower Chattahoochee River and some southwest Georgia reservoirs this winter."

That's right off the edge of the Tennessee River ^^^^......I bet them son of a guns are hell on half grown poults......

So yeah, if you look at the timeline above again……The avian flu outbreak occurred in 2022-23 and what you see on the 24-26 maps in the years since is the eagle populations rebounding……Its just a guess but I suspect the reason some areas of north Alabama are still in the green is because the rebounding eagle populations in that area are all sticking to the big water right now……That’s where they want to be……The rest of the landscape is secondary hunting grounds…..If can be a little hard to tease out with every single county because even when you remove eagles there are still other limiting factors to kick in and potentially have a negative impact if the switch is turned to “on” that year….

This is actually a pretty big conundrum…….If what I’m looking at is true…..and it soooo appears to be……then eagles are currently the main limiting factor for a big portion of the state……That means that if we are honest about that then folks are eventually gonna scratch their head and say “Well, is any of this stuff I’m doing really making a difference then??”…….and the honest answer will be…..”Well, its helping to draw in the local population to your land but as far as making more turkeys its all a matter of how many the eagles let live”

I don’t know……if you don’t hatch some out and raise some poults then there sure wont be any adults for the eagles to kill….but the reality of what that map is showing says that this is the best we can do in a lot of areas…..Its just like what the Wild Turkey Science Podcast on hen survival said……If something is killing the chit out of your adult birds then at some point it doesn’t matter if you have great nesting and brooding success……You’re being limited by adult survival rates…..This will be something tough to accept even for those most die hard turkey advocates who are genuinely looking for answers because accepting that as the culprit takes a lot of that wind out of the sails of this current movement to promote turkeys…….You almost want to just ignore the reality for the greater good but that would be undermining the integrity of the whole scientific process

According to the articles the avian flu outbreak was March of 2022 – Dec of 2023…….That’s the time period that particular raptor center was reporting the outbreak of sick birds coming into their facility…..Its likely though that the actual outbreak started a little earlier than that and was already occurring before it was detected……. So basically what I’m saying is…..when we look at our 2022 map stuck between the all red 2021 and mostly green 2023……we’re likely looking at the beginnings of that outbreak already in process…….Those southern counties especially the plantation belt are already seeing relief and why they are green in 2022

Another guess too just going by what I’m reading and what the 2022 map is showing…….is that this avian flu outbreak started on the coast and moved inward across the landscape……In early 2022 it hadnt really made it to north Alabama good yet

So what that ^^^^ means then is that what we are looking at is a reflection of eagle predation on adult gobblers during the winter and early spring…….They very well may be predating on hens and half grown poults too but with poult predation you would see at least a 2 year delay on the timeline between the period when the eagle populations plummeted and when the improved hunting started……We’re looking at eagles starting to die in 2021 and hunting immediately improving in the spring of 2022…..It very well may be that eagles are heavily targeting the big shiny strutting birds……

To make it even more confusing…..it may very well be that eagles are mainly targeting the adult male birds and that’s what we see on the harvest maps……meanwhile the actual turkey population levels that depend on hen mortality are hinging on a different limiting factor such as spring weather and yotes….

Keep up now……. I think we bout got it figgered out……

Here’s a weather variable at play……Flooding of the Flint River and stranded fish are caused by lots of rain……..40 eagles flocking to feed on stranded fish in March arent out killing gobblers somewhere else.....Being that 2024 is just on the backside of that avian flu outbreak this flock may represent a fairly substantial percentage of the north Alabama population that year

https://www.al.com/news/2024/03/bald-eagle-bonanza-dozens-of-eagle-flock-to-north-alabama-field.html

Here’s the weather event that caused that flooding…….The problem coming up for north Alabama I believe is that those eagle populations are going to once again grow beyond the bounds of the primary food resources along the major lakes and rivers. Weather patterns will once again swing dry (which it just has) and everyone up there is probably about due for eagles to start branching out into those secondary hunting grounds wreaking havoc on the gobblers again until another flu outbreak sweeps through

Here's 2024's map with a star roughly where those 40 eagles were in that field on March 22

On that same note ^^^^.....Something interesting that I know to personally be the case in the Tallapoosa/Coosa river basin where that one strip of red ia at on the 2024 map above…….. is that its full of big schools of trash fish and a long stretch of the river and its off shoot creeks from Tallassee to the Alabama River below Ft. Toulouse are really shallow and highly prone to be increases and decreases in the water level day to day according to how much they’re turning loose from the dams….

One spring I canoed Chewacla Creek down into where it drains into the Tallapoosa…… For the last several miles before we got where the creek dumped into the river we would go through really shallow stretches then there would be some deeper pools…..then it would go shallow again…..then some deeper holes……Well the water at the time was crystal clear and in almost every one of those deeper holes were schools of 50-60+ fish caught in them that I believe were carp…..We’re talking about good sized fish too……several pounds each…..I estimated that we saw at least 1000 of them minimum that were in those pools at the tail end of the creek…..it was just ridiculous…….That has to be a huge draw for eagles and may very well be the epicenter that’s causing that red strip on the 2024 map

Don’t eagles have some kind of hierarchy system where the dominant ones want to claim good stretches of hunting ground for themselves??.....Reckon that flocking up behavior in 2024 was occurring because the avian flu wrecked the age and dominance structure of the population??.....They may have flocked up around the good feeding grounds I just mentioned as well that year

So I put a star in the area I’m talking about where I know for sure there’s easy pickins for stranded fish and potentially prime hunting grounds for the eagles to concentrate after the avian flu wrecked the territorial structure of the landscape….if that’s indeed what happened……If I were a betting man I betcha that red spot down in Dale Co is another spot where fish are getting trapped along that Choctawhatchee River and making for easy pickins and a hot spot to be claimed…..I’m betting there are also other areas like around the Black Warrior but I think those creeks are probably deeper and not the shallow sandy ones like that we have in the southeastern quadrant……I’m not sure though as I’m not as familiar with that area of the state….



Here are the three other major rain events in March of 2024……Point being that this water had to flow down those watersheds and make them go way up and then back down trapping spring fishes that are running up the creeks…….

Great Horned owls are ruff on mature turkeys on the limb

Correct……though I don’t think that’s what the map is reflecting….Any adult gobblers that great horned owls do take off the limb though is just additive adult mortality so you could just as well lump them together with eagles……I think the main pressure showing on our map though is coming from a rather small eagle population relatively speaking…….I don’t think it takes thousands of eagles to make a big difference because they’re specifically targeting adult gobblers that they easily see strutting and shining out in the open from way up in the sky…..I think 500-1000 eagles statewide in the winter could probably wear out a bunch of the adult gobblers and it may not even take that many……Its just like adding a bunch more turkey hunters to the mix but letting them start as soon as gobblers begin to puff up out in the open in Jan-Feb......And these are some of them real killas....

You know I was thinking about how a state like Florida can have 1500+ breeding pairs of eagles and still have any gobblers make it at all and it’s that theory of them sticking close to major water as long as resources of food and territorial space are available…….There are so many easy water based food resources for eagles to eat in Florida between the oceans and the lakes that they probably don’t have to target harder to catch prey like gobblers very often……I mean I’m sure that some still do but most of those 1500 breeding pairs are probably too busy eating something the tide washed in, etc.......

OMG you are so full of shiit. You apparently need a job. I struggle to even go to my favorite message board with your incessant posting of bullshiit theories for which you have no data to prove. Its just spouting crap. Also you do realize that there is a difference in bald and golden eagles right. Balds are mostly carrion eaters like vultures. Goldens are flat out hunters. Ever seen a publication that shows the quantity of eagle predation on turkeys to justify your statement "Eagles are currently the main limiting factor" for turkeys?

I chastise my daughter all the time that "if it comes into your head it, that doesn't mean it has to come out of your mouth". Same applies to you but with typing!