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

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……

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