Lawrence, Wayne, and giles counties...

Im glad they are raising awareness, thats a good thing. Yall think you have it bad though, Lawrence is like 120 birds over my county on the harvest right now. Giles is 500 birds over! Wayne is 300 over, sounds like a turkey paradise compared to what Im used to.
 
smstone22 said:
Im glad they are raising awareness, thats a good thing. Yall think you have it bad though, Lawrence is like 120 birds over my county on the harvest right now. Giles is 500 birds over! Wayne is 300 over, sounds like a turkey paradise compared to what Im used to.
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I understand what your saying, but the thing is this is not what typical Lawrence, Wayne, and Giles people are used to. I am still thankful that I have turkeys to hunt. I am just worried that the population is spiraling down out of control, and one year I will no longer be able to hunt the wild bird.

I am a dramatic extremeist though. Hopefully and probably this isn't going to happen anytime soon.
 
Oh I understand just putting it into perspective. The people are going to have to start raising awareness just like you all are doing, I think its great, because Im not sure our wildlife agency will really respond to any problems in time to fix anything before it just gets really bad.
 
smstone22 said:
Oh I understand just putting it into perspective. The people are going to have to start raising awareness just like you all are doing, I think its great, because Im not sure our wildlife agency will really respond to any problems in time to fix anything before it just gets really bad.
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Yes I remember reading your thread a few weeks ago about them ignoring your black bear emails or something. I think TWRA does a good job, I am from Alabama and deer/turkey hunting IMO is about 10x better.
I wonder if our opinions will be heard at this upcoming meeting or just pretend to be heard?

I have said I am not a biologist, and many of us are not. But what alot of us are is people that are out there daily observing, and knowing what is happening daily in their respective areas. I don't see how some graduate real biologist could tell us what is wrong or not wrong on our property when they have never been there.
 
smstone22 said:
Im glad they are raising awareness, thats a good thing. Yall think you have it bad though, Lawrence is like 120 birds over my county on the harvest right now. Giles is 500 birds over! Wayne is 300 over, sounds like a turkey paradise compared to what Im used to.
Click to expand...

The thing people dont see when looking at harvest numbers is, the north 1/3 of the counties mentioned are carrying 90-95% of the total harvest leaving the other 5-10% to the rest of the county
 
Rockhound said:
smstone22 said:
Im glad they are raising awareness, thats a good thing. Yall think you have it bad though, Lawrence is like 120 birds over my county on the harvest right now. Giles is 500 birds over! Wayne is 300 over, sounds like a turkey paradise compared to what Im used to.
Click to expand...

The thing people dont see when looking at harvest numbers is, the north 1/3 of the counties mentioned are carrying 90-95% of the total harvest leaving the other 5-10% to the rest of the county
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Yep exactly right. If they do indeed have units, south of 64 will probably be a different unit.
 
Just read the article; thanks for posting. I never considered one possibility that was mentioned. Not enough gobblers to breed all the hens? Never thought of that before...or even heard of it for that matter.

In a sense this might support the lower limit philosophy. Some say reducing the limit doesn't really have an impact, but what if there's only 1 tom per square mile to service scores of hens? Combine 2 poults per hen (of those hens he even gets around to), predation, and a possible load of #6s at some point during the spring.

Food for thought I guess.
 
Jarred525 said:
woodsman, did you see this article this past weekend:

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013 ... _full.html
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Did not, but just now read it. Goes along with several of the things I have already said, and I also have been noticing the downfall for a few years. The only thing I have changed my mind about is harvest limits. Looks to me like bag limit should be lowered. That isn't the only problem though. Something is killing hens, poults, and eggs.
 
woodsman87 said:
Jarred525 said:
woodsman, did you see this article this past weekend:

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013 ... _full.html
Click to expand...

Did not, but just now read it. Goes along with several of the things I have already said, and I also have been noticing the downfall for a few years. The only thing I have changed my mind about is harvest limits. Looks to me like bag limit should be lowered. That isn't the only problem though. Something is killing hens, poults, and eggs.
Click to expand...

Yep something is definitely happening with the hens, poults, and eggs. Where are you from?
 
The only thing I did not agree with in the article was his statement that coyotes did not have an impact.

Just finished checking my trail cams that I had running the entire month of April. Not a lot of turkey pics :(
 
I wish they would get rid of the fall season. Giles, Lawerence, and Wayne are all 3 either sex. Over here in Lincoln its a 6 bird limit, that to me is ridiculous. A few places I hunt are still pretty good, but I have definitely noticed a pretty sharp decline in the last 4 to 5 years in other areas that used to hold pretty good numbers.
 
Rockhound said:
woodsman87 said:
Jarred525 said:
woodsman, did you see this article this past weekend:

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013 ... _full.html
Click to expand...

Did not, but just now read it. Goes along with several of the things I have already said, and I also have been noticing the downfall for a few years. The only thing I have changed my mind about is harvest limits. Looks to me like bag limit should be lowered. That isn't the only problem though. Something is killing hens, poults, and eggs.
Click to expand...

Yep something is definitely happening with the hens, poults, and eggs. Where are you from?
Click to expand...

I live in southern Giles County. Used to be turkey heaven, now about 1 gobbler per 5,000 acres.
 
darn2ten said:
I wish they would get rid of the fall season. Giles, Lawerence, and Wayne are all 3 either sex. Over here in Lincoln its a 6 bird limit, that to me is ridiculous. A few places I hunt are still pretty good, but I have definitely noticed a pretty sharp decline in the last 4 to 5 years in other areas that used to hold pretty good numbers.
Click to expand...

I agree. I like fall turkey hunting, but not as much as spring. They should at least abandon hen shooting all together.
Look at this, I could go to Lincoln county, kill six hens atdaylight, then drive over to Giles, shoot three more, Get on Highway 64 drive west to Lawrenceburg and kill 3 more, and just keep going down the line.
I don't even remember when they started letting people shoot 3-6 hens a day but it seems like it is correlating with all of these problems we are having. I wouildnt doubt in a few years people in Maury and Marshall started seeing decline just like us because hunters are shooting so many hens, just because they can and its legal.
 
I believe the article is right about coyotes. I do not think they are a major problem. I am sure they catch some turkeys. But think about how good at surviving an adult bird is. A coyote would have to get mighty lucky to catch a turkey. I have first hand see a coyote in the same cow pasture with a flock of hens and a strutting gobbler. The Gobbler never broke strut, then hens didn't pay it attention, and the coyote just kind of circled them and then went away. The only turkeys I believe that a coyote, bobcat, or fox could catch are wounded/sick birds, hens sitting on nest, and poults.
The main problem is nest getting animals like skunks, possums, and racoons.
 
I was telling my dad about the meeting and that we needed to go, and he said he heard on the radio it was the 28th. So after some research i found this.
 

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