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Your Thoughts On Season Start Date!

Wrangler95

Wrangler95

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Nov 28, 2002
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Location
Middle Tn
Ive seen lots of hunters who are seeing good numbers of turkeys this past year but some who are not seeing a increase in the population.My county is not seeing a increase at least among hunters that I know.What are your thoughts on the April 15 opening,do you think alot more hens are getting bred with the 2 week delay to opening season?Im for anything that benefits the turkey population,a one gobbler season would be fine with me.Your thoughts!
 
I'm not a fan of the late start. Mainly because it doesn't align with my time off work. Secondly I don't like hunting in hot May either. So my plan is to tag out the first 2 weekends like last year😂. I would be fine with 1 bird if it meant more turkeys in the future. Only down side to that is I could be done for the season in one hunt.
 
Remington700 said:
I'm not a fan of the late start. Mainly because it doesn't align with my time off work. Secondly I don't like hunting in hot May either. So my plan is to tag out the first 2 weekends like last year😂. I would be fine with 1 bird if it meant more turkeys in the future. Only down side to that is I could be done for the season in one hunt.
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I understand work is a problem in getting to hunt as much as you like.I broke my ankle last spring and didnt get to hunt much myself but I heard quite a few gobblers in the middle of May!
 
timberjack86 said:
I hate it, really enjoy early April mornings. Luckily Georgia is open in early April.
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I like to hunt all the month of April myself but If the late start will help the population,Im for it!!My County was great for years but not many turkeys now.I live on a farm and I used to go out in yard at daylight before opening day and heard gobblers all around,not anymore!
 
Wrangler95 said:
I like to hunt all the month of April myself but If the late start will help the population,Im for it!!My County was great for years but not many turkeys now.I live on a farm and I used to go out in yard at daylight before opening day and heard gobblers all around,not anymore!
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I'm still on the fence about it. But it has dramatically decreased out of state hunter pressure during the early season on South Cherokee and that's definitely a win imo.
 
Late start has been proven no benefits in reproductive success. Move it back a week towards the old start date to compromise and be done with it. We have had great hatches the last 3 or 4 years in delayed and Non delayed areas of the state it made no difference. Weather , predators and habit will continue to determine our turkey population.Non residents should not determine our opener just put a quota on them or whatever you need to do.
 

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I prefer the earlier start date if not just for the challenge of trying to pull the gobblers off the hens. Where I hunt, the first week or so is tough, as the gobblers are roosting within a few yards of the hens. I hear lots of everything, and enjoy not knowing which way they are going to go until they actually do. And from there, after the first couple of weeks, I can predict pretty well where the gobblers will spread out to as they run out of local hens to breed and start traveling.
 
Delayed start made for the best hunting I've experienced since prior to 2000.

Mid April was always the best hunting. In fact, when I moved to Mississippi in 1997, only had 2 weeks vacation per year, my week of turkey vacation was the 9 days mid April. I skipped opening 2 weeks because gobblers were so henned up. I did that annually until around 2006 or 7. By then, there were so many turkey hunters most of the birds were dead by mid April, and it just became so much harder to find a bird to work. Because of that, I switched my week of vacation back to opening week. Hunting was much harder, but at least I had birds alive to hunt.

This past opening week in TN was what I grew up on and was spoiled by... intense roost gobbling, and birds that just rushed in to the call. I killed one opening week, got several for friends and kids, passed up 6 or 7 more birds I called in, and intentuonally saved my 2nd tag for Memorial Day weekend, just to see how the hunting would be.

And sure enough, found the tom I hadn't been able to kill that season or the season prior, alone feeding in a food plot at 1pm on Sunday the last day of season, got him fired up, he gobbled, and he came in (although very cautiously) in and out of strut. Good bird, 1.5in spurs.

So, the later opening makes for better hunting opening weekend, and I found birds to be killable with traditional turkey hunting methods at the end of May. Plus memorial day weekend gives me a 3d weekend making it easier to come up from MS and get summer plots planted.

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NOW its over.

Great last weekend, tho didn't get to hunt much doing chores on the farm. I went after my nemesis from last year and this year... the only bird I really wanted to use my 2nd tag on. Got set up 100y away from him yest morn, he gobbled twice, hit the ground with hens. I worked around on them...
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I'm good with the delayed start. I firmly believe that it leads to more successful breeding of the hens. I miss not being out there those two weeks on the hunting end, but am more than willing to sacrifice my hunting "wants" to see if we can stop the major decline in our turkeys across the state.

I'm hearing from across the state that we might have had the best hatch in MANY years. It seems really dumb for the agency to be talking about making a change due to whining hunters.
 
deerfever said:
Move it back a week towards the old start date to compromise and be done with it.
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I'd like to see that idea get a stake driven through its head at the commission. I was positively appalled to see it floated at the last meeting.

Our turkey study is the reason they waited too long to make any changes in the first place, and was likely affected by the insane bounce in participation during the 2020 and 2021 seasons.

I'm not interested in basing our statewide decisions on a study primarily weighed by trends in Lincoln and Giles county, when the rationale for the current delayed start was based on real knowledge of turkey biology, namely by Dr. Mike Chamberlain.
 
scn said:
I'm good with the delayed start. I firmly believe that it leads to more successful breeding of the hens.
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And it's not "just" about more successful breeding.

The April 15th start date SAVES a ton of longbeards from being slaughtered by non-resident hunters who were abusing TN's early start and (until recently) 4-bird limit.

Most of the non-resident hunters coming for TN's early slaughter were avid, highly accomplished turkey hunters; many of the kind who could easily take 4 long-beards in a single week of hunting.

Delaying the season 2 weeks has greatly reduced this slaughter because this particular sub-set of hunters is going to be turkey hunting somewhere the 1st 2 weeks of April, just now not in TN.

The big problem WAS that most states were opening later than TN, so TN was a huge draw to non-resident hunters. It still is, but we're now on a more level playing field with many other turkey-hunting states. As prime example, we were opening 2 weeks earlier than Kentucky, and our spring limit was 4, while KY's was 2. This difference brought a ton of avid, accomplished turkey hunters to Tennessee, killing disproportionately a lot more turkeys than resident TN hunters.

IMO, the TN turkey season now opening mid-April is a much "fairer" date for resident TN turkey hunters. Non-residents are still welcome.
 

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