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What would be your ideal season, rules, and regs. ?

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woodsman04

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Figure we could start a discussion on what everybody else thinks would help.

Here's mine-

Divide state into zones, and probably more than three or four unlike the way deer season is.
Make different seasons and bag limits for each zone.
Make seasons and bag limits off of research, not just, "well it's always been this way."

And monitor poult recruitment during August/September. Poult surveys in June and July are worthless because they are still vulnerable to predation and mortality at this age.

Illegal to shoot hens, bearded or otherwise. (If you can't tell the difference between a hen and gobbler beard or not then you shouldn't turkey hunt. )



If they don't do zones, I think they should maybe go back on the opener about ten to fourteen days, make hens illegal, 3-4 gobbler limit combined spring and fall season.


Oh, and just for laughs and jabs, decoys and tss will be illegal, except for physically handicapped.


One more big one, in my opinion, is the shooting of hens in the fall by bow deer hunters. This gripes my tail, some deer hunter just shooting a turkey because he can, and its legal, out of spite.


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IMO, any changes need to be "practical", simple, easy to enforce.

Just open the season a week later (to allow more breeding before we majorly interfere)
and reduce the limit.

Then eliminate the fall turkey hunting.
 
TheLBLman":2unzfro8 said:
IMO, any changes need to be "practical", simple, easy to enforce.

Just open the season a week later (to allow more breeding before we majorly interfere)
and reduce the limit.

Then eliminate the fall turkey hunting.
Click to expand...

Just for arguments sake, why is eliminating fall turkey hunting such a big deal? I agree hens need to be illegal, but what's wrong with combining the limit.

Biologically, fall hunting is more sound because there are more turkeys to harvest.

Sounds dumb I know, and I'd give up fall turkey hunting before spring, but it's still enjoyable if you get amongst a scattered flock of fall longbeards on a mature hardwood ridge on a pretty fall afternoon.
 
Speaking of fall, anyone remember when you could shoot 15 birds in the fall?


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Agree with LBLman... needs to be simple.

Push season start to Apr 10th, eliminate all hen killing, reduce gobbler limit to 3 for the year (allowing a fall gobbler to be killed during archery), and eliminating jake harvest at all times except for juvies.

If populations continue to decline, eliminate all fall hunting, push season opening back to April14th, end hunting at noon, reduce gobbler limit to 2, and eliminate all decoys. If populations rebound, go back to proposal no 1.

I'd love to see management tailored to a localized level, but I'm not sure that is possible. I'd also love to see spring harvest limits tied to fall recruitment numbers, but again, probably not possible due to the variations in hatches in different areas. I even wouldn't mind hunting closed in those areas where the turkeys have disappeared for a few years to give them a chance to reestablish

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I remember a couple guys that killed 60 each in the fall... back when the quota tags were good for 6 per tag and you could buy the unsold leftover tags and kill more. They bragged about it, but I'm not sure what they did with 120 turkeys. The county wardens weren't happy with it, but it was legal. I suspect some of the local row crop farmers were paying them and that was their incentive
Goodtimekiller":blzlzl9n said:
Speaking of fall, anyone remember when you could shoot 15 birds in the fall?


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Click to expand...

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I would support pushing the season back 1-2 weeks. But I would love to leave the 6 week structue like it is, but prohibit male decoys during the first two weeks. I think that would drastically decrease the kill numbers those two weeks (thus more breeding) and would allow for an apples to apples comparison of kill numbers with decoys vs. kill numbers without.
 
I honestly think if you do nothing but make decoys illegal our turkey population would be a whole lot better.

Hens illegal period!!!

Jakes only to juvi's.

No fall season.

3 bird limit

Push season back to 2nd weekend of April.
 
No fall turkey hunting.
Create zones & applicable limits (that can be changed yearly depending on what the population dictates)
1 to 3 bird limit, depending on what zone you are in.
Open the season 2 or even 3 weeks later
All hunting stops at noon.
 
Open later by a week to ten days. Season can open on a Wednesday, other states do so.

Lower limit to three MAYBE two. I like the idea of zones, but I don't have the confidence in TWRA to do them correctly. I may be wrong about them.

I'm not personally convinced 100% that decoys have caused the decline, but I do NOT think using a male decoy should be allowed since using one makes it too easy for newbies to kill turkeys. I have seen it too many times where someone thinks they're a turkey hunter when all they do is put a decoy out. I've yet to meet anyone who has taken the time to learn how to call turkeys in who did not also learn about turkeys/hunting/woodsmanship/sportsmanship. Small sample, but both have been universal in my experience.

Somehow promote predator killing. This will have the biggest impact, but also the hardest to do in our politically correct society.

These things will help for sure, but our biologists need to also figure out WHY the population has completely died off in certain areas.
 
1. No hens shall be taken
2. Lower spring limit to 2
3. Only one jake
4. Outlaw decoys and fans
5. No shot smaller than #6
6. Use of bait for any reason is outlawed (trail cams bait piles)

You want better hunting do the above. None of which are too crazy or restrictive
 
One thing I would add, is if all turkey hunters started trapping nest raiders and killing other predators it'd make a huge impact as well
 
Setterman":2clswbzt said:
1. No hens shall be taken
2. Lower spring limit to 2
3. Only one jake
4. Outlaw decoys and fans
5. No shot smaller than #6
6. Use of bait for any reason is outlawed (trail cams bait piles)

You want better hunting do the above. None of which are too crazy or restrictive
Click to expand...

x2 I'd probably add moving the season back a couple of weeks and not replacing those lost weeks in May.

I was told by one of the biologists yesterday that there was a recent paper concerning the social structure of turkeys that indicates when the dominate gobbler is killed, that it takes a while for the "social order" to re-set and can interrupt breeding if it happens during the main breeding time. With the way the fans work on the dominate birds, this may go a ways towards explaining some of the breeding/population issues. With the more open terrain in Regions 1 & 2 making the fans and decoys easier to use, perhaps that is why things are declining there faster than in 3 &4.
 
scn":19bgeo9y said:
Setterman":19bgeo9y said:
1. No hens shall be taken
2. Lower spring limit to 2
3. Only one jake
4. Outlaw decoys and fans
5. No shot smaller than #6
6. Use of bait for any reason is outlawed (trail cams bait piles)

You want better hunting do the above. None of which are too crazy or restrictive
Click to expand...

x2 I'd probably add moving the season back a couple of weeks and not replacing those lost weeks in May.

I was told by one of the biologists yesterday that there was a recent paper concerning the social structure of turkeys that indicates when the dominate gobbler is killed, that it takes a while for the "social order" to re-set and can interrupt breeding if it happens during the main breeding time. With the way the fans work on the dominate birds, this may go a ways towards explaining some of the breeding issues. With the more open terrain in Regions 1 & 2 making the fans and decoys easier to use, perhaps that is why things are declining there faster than in 3 &4.
Click to expand...


I knew this in 1992 when we did our study in college...not the fanning, but the social order.
 
scn":c5qea5uu said:
Setterman":c5qea5uu said:
1. No hens shall be taken
2. Lower spring limit to 2
3. Only one jake
4. Outlaw decoys and fans
5. No shot smaller than #6
6. Use of bait for any reason is outlawed (trail cams bait piles)

You want better hunting do the above. None of which are too crazy or restrictive
Click to expand...

x2 I'd probably add moving the season back a couple of weeks and not replacing those lost weeks in May.

I was told by one of the biologists yesterday that there was a recent paper concerning the social structure of turkeys that indicates when the dominate gobbler is killed, that it takes a while for the "social order" to re-set and can interrupt breeding if it happens during the main breeding time. With the way the fans work on the dominate birds, this may go a ways towards explaining some of the breeding/population issues. With the more open terrain in Regions 1 & 2 making the fans and decoys easier to use, perhaps that is why things are declining there faster than in 3 &4.
Click to expand...

Setterman has made that statement for years, and I tend to believe what he has to say about Turkeys.
 
Outlaw male decoys, incentive to trap varmints, open trapping season wide open March 15-august 1 to allow people to trap around beating and poult areas. Offer some sort of incentive for habitat work. My problem is so many people want to gripe about it, but as soon as turkey season ends, they forget and start thinking about fishing and deer.
 
Rockhound":22cvtq5y said:
My problem is so many people want to gripe about it, but as soon as turkey season ends, they forget and start thinking about fishing and deer.
Click to expand...

Yep, you're exactly right, once turkey season ends they forget about them till next season. I'm after the nest raiders all year long and have been for 5+ years and predators too but I'm limited on my time to devote to trapping them seeing how that is the most effective way to reduce the number of them. I do believe my neighbors and I have made a huge impact on the nest raiders and armadillos on our combined 2,000+ acres. It's hard to find a varmint to shoot now and I'm not seeing near the coons and possums on my cameras like I used to.


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I think leave it like it is currently. Anecdotal data means nothing. Just because you personally dont see anything, doesnt mean others arent.

People like me dont have a lot of time to hunt, so things like decoys and blinds might help me get my one bird per year (maybe). Of course i choose to use archery equipment, which is a self handicap.

I just dont want to do anything knee jerk until the numbers are in for the year. It may just be a combination this year of really crap weather and flocks spreading out into new areas.

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I could be on board with about all of those recommendations.

I just wish they could do zones like I said in my first thread. Fall turkey and deer are in zones, why can't they make spring turkey zones too.

I would prefer small zones, but if we got three zones like deer that'd do too.

I wish a lot of things would happen, although they never will. Decoys and htl shot have too much money in it and it'll never be outlawed.

Sadly I think it would come down to wiping the entire country out of turkeys before decoys were prohibited.


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