Can anyone tell me what year TN went to a statewide 4-bird spring limit?
Can anyone tell me what year TN went to a statewide 3-bird spring limit (from the prior 2-bird limit)?
Personally, I experienced overall better turkey hunting back when we had a 2-bird limit, but maybe that was just happenstance having more to do with other factors than the turkey limit. I'm attempting to analyze some of those factors, and not just assume it's all about the spring turkey limits.
Year to year, it seems to be a crap shoot, as some years I seem very lucky, while turkey hunting friends seem very unlucky; then other years (like this one so far), I seem very unlucky, while other friends are having a good season, even in the same or nearby areas. A couple friends even limited out with 8 birds during the first 8 days. Other friends believe that couple who killed the 8 essentially killed too many, ruining the hunting for the rest of us on a 3,000-plus-acre tract. So far, this has been one of the worst turkey seasons for me in a long time. I've heard the least gobbling, perhaps ever, relative to the days (and those dates) I've spent hunting. Never mind, I'm absolutely positive there are more turkeys in most of the areas I've been hunting than last year, and I believe more last year than the year prior.
Anyone else finding "feast or famine" on the quality of their turkey hunts, year to year, even counter to there being more turkeys?
When I say "feast or famine", not talking just about "kills", but as much about what is heard and seen.
So far this season, I have not heard much, not seen much, never mind observations immediately pre-season indicated plenty of turkeys, and I've even seen proof of them when I wasn't hunting (from both trail cam pics and direct observation), including 3 longbeards in the immediate area where my two buddies killed their 8 AFTER they quit hunting.
Again, in most of the areas I've been hunting, there appears to be more turkeys this spring than last year, and more last year than the prior year. Never mind, the first week of the 2014 season was one of my best ever, when I and a hunting partner not only together killed 7 longbeards in less than a week, but saw and heard an incredible amount of gobbling and strutting. Basically just the opposite the first couple weeks of this year, and with that same hunting partner, neither of us has killed even a single bird. We have passed up several jakes, and I've chosen not to shoot on a couple longbeards I probably could have killed, but didn't get a good head shot.
Would we be better off with a lower spring limit, or might I just be getting overly influenced by my emotions?
. In 2015 I had 4 jakes running around. Now I don't know how many of the 10 from 2013, and how many from the 4 in 2015 made it, but I do know that this year towards the end of deer season, I had 9 toms regularly on my property and about 19 hens. I knew they would bust up, but it has been good so far. I have heard gobbling on every hunt except 1 this year. I have hunted my property, my brothers in Wilson County, and Priest. The one time I didn't hear gobbling was on my place and they were just quiet, but they were there, because I saw them, they just wouldn't play that day. 
