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Poults Not Seen!

GUNNERX2 said:
I've got 3 hens and 8 poults that visit my yard daily in Robertson county. The young poults are getting pretty big, dang near full grown. A couple of weeks back, there was 5 hens and 21 poults in the back yard in about 3 different age classes.
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Thats great!
 
The vast majority of hens I've seen this summer have had 5+ poults with them. A few have had only 2-3, but even 2-3 is better than the 10 year average I have seen. And, I have yet to see any hen without poults, which in years past, most of the hens didn't have poults at all. The regular flocks I have seen over the past month haven't lost any poults either. Very good hatch and poult survival this year…same number of nest raiders and raptors yet way more poults. The decline across the south was not caused (primarily) because of predators.
 
I've counted about 10 hens on my place.. 1 baby..
was not far from my house the other day and a hen crossed the road with 2 babies.. they were the size of a quail… never seen such a late hatch.. Giles county..
 
Wrangler95 said:
Rode around this afternoon and saw probably 15 hens and not 1 poult!Clay county is where I ride around and turkey hunting is sure not what it was at onetime!In years past the kill was between 600 and 700 per-season to between 100-and 200 these days.
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Any ideas on when these were hatched.
 

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poorhunter said:
The vast majority of hens I've seen this summer have had 5+ poults with them. A few have had only 2-3, but even 2-3 is better than the 10 year average I have seen. And, I have yet to see any hen without poults, which in years past, most of the hens didn't have poults at all. The regular flocks I have seen over the past month haven't lost any poults either. Very good hatch and poult survival this year…same number of nest raiders and raptors yet way more poults. The decline across the south was not caused (primarily) because of predators.
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That's an INSANE hatch! You are in for some good hunting in 2 years.

Mine is still hit or miss and very locale specific. Some places great, and 10 miles away abysmal.
 
gladesman60 said:
seems that would be a late hatch. I assume it was from this hen , I found 2 busted eggs in my driveway about 8 to 10 weeks ago. Guessing she tried again. Very few turkeys in my area so glad to see at least 2 made it this far.
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Not uncommon at all to see new poults end of August. More turkeys breed after June than folks realize.

I'm not sure who started the misconception that turkeys breed in late March/ early April and are 'gobbled out' by mid April, but nothing could be further from the truth.

AVERAGE peak breeding starts 3rd week of April, average nest initiation end of April. Average hatch of initial breeding is mid June, but because so many hens lose their first clutch and renest and hatch a month later, OVERALL average hatch date isn't until early July. There are plenty of poults that hatch early April, and there are plenty that hatch in August.
 
megalomaniac said:
That's an INSANE hatch! You are in for some good hunting in 2 years.

Mine is still hit or miss and very locale specific. Some places great, and 10 miles away abysmal.
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Yeah, I've watched all summer, and it has been universal for pretty much all the hens I have seen. Haven't seen this kind of hatch since the early 90's in my college day when we were doing reintroduction in new places. Now, I do understand that I don't see every hen in my area, but I'd say I've seen more than 20-25 hens since mid August, so it's a pretty good sample of a ten square mile area. We will see what the winter flocks look like which I think will be a better gauge than the poults I see now.
 
megalomaniac said:
That's an INSANE hatch! You are in for some good hunting in 2 years.

Mine is still hit or miss and very locale specific. Some places great, and 10 miles away abysmal.
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I'm seeing the same as @poorhunter . Great hatch and more turkeys I've ever seen over the summer and early fall. We have a group of 50 using our place as well as 2 groups of 5-8 gobblers each. Thankful! 🙏
 
Wrangler95 said:
Rode around this afternoon and saw probably 15 hens and not 1 poult!Clay county is where I ride around and turkey hunting is sure not what it was at onetime!In years past the kill was between 600 and 700 per-season to between 100-and 200 these days.
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I've seen a really decent crop of poults around here on the farm where I work and all over Davidson, Williamson, Dickson, Maury, Hickman counties. Best poult crop in many years
 

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