Setterman":2qckrnsu said:
There is really no benefit to closing the season earlier, if season length is an issue cut it from the front not the back.
It's smarter to drop the limit, eliminate hen killing, and eliminate jake killing.
If Ga really wants to address the decline look at the impacts of legalized baiting for deer. The decline coincided with that becoming legal.
What impacts have trail cams had? Not the cameras obviously, but the bait piles used to funnel game to them? It makes an easy ambush site, and with corn piles in the not humid summer months poison corn could be an issue.
One thing I'd love to see researched is the % of hens that go unfertilized because the dominant gobbler gets killed. In years past, before fanning/strutter decoys! many super dominant birds were virtually unkillable allowing them to breed every hen they gathered. Now those birds are the most susceptible to the fanning/decoys and I wonder what impact that has especially once dominance has been established and the subordinate birds basically hide. Those subordinates at some point won't fire back up even if the dominant bird goes down. So how many hens go unbred resulting in less recruitment?
I would also like to see the research that you state setterman with the new decoy phase.
Setterman,
I know that you are very knowledgeable blessed in wild turkeys, but I have just never seen the dominant vs subordinate gobbler thing you speak of. On more than one occasion, I have took part of, a gobbler being killed without hens and a gobbler with hens on the same day on the same property. Sometimes the one with no hens will be a big 4-5 year old with 1-1/4 spurs, and the gobbler with hens was a measly 3/4" spur two year old.
I know that they fight for dominance, and typically the ones we kill kamikaze style are two year old virgin gobblers, while the ones that stick with hens everyday are your older birds.
Not saying you don't know what your talking about, I just have yet to nail this one down. In my opinion, turkeys are crazy, and very random, and no telling what could happen at any given point of the season at any time of day.