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Your Thoughts On Season Start Date!

Bell3wv said:
More controversy...look at the date on this picture. If this hen just laid these when I jumped her (if), go back 28 days for the gestation period. They started really early in 2020.
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Your statement implies these are hatching. The picture is not clear, I see eggs, approximately 12, that's 12 to 16 days for a healthy hen, less if more than 1 hen is using the nest. If she was in fact setting, it takes 28 days after the eggs spend approximately 24 hours at or above 99 degrees. These are fully exposed and if she did not return and cover them soon crows would have destroyed the nest.
 
Bell3wv said:
More controversy...look at the date on this picture. If this hen just laid these when I jumped her (if), go back 28 days for the gestation period. They started really early in 2020.
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Not controversy, thats normal. There is a very small percentage of hens that breed in late Feb/ early March. About the equivalent small percentage that breed in late July/ early August. A tiny percentage of early breeders doesn't change the fact that average/ peak breeding doesn't occur until mid April in middle TN
 
knightrider said:
No way your turkeys are done by apri 15th its not happening in Tennessee, not buying it
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You don't have to. I'm not saying they are done. The properties I hunt are awesome last weekend March first two weeks of April after that you can hunt roost gobbling and quiet the rest of the day. Just not fun for me. Will I hunt? Yes. I would much rather hunt first two weeks of April. That's just me.
 
gladesman60 said:
if you dont believe LBL is overrun with hogs then you havent been there lately. If you dont believe those hogs impact the turkey population then you are the ignorant one.
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Feral pigs are a negative on the ongoing turkey population.
But imo, they are not a primary factor at LBL.

The feral pigs are just one of many, many factors going against the turkeys ability to thrive.

Raptor predation is a much larger factor than the pigs.

The quail were essentially gone long before any pigs were on the landscape.
In some respects, quail are like a more fragile population of miniature turkeys.
What happened to them?
 
TheLBLman said:
What happened to them?
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fence to fence spraying, mowing, and planting, plus the disappearance of tens of thousands of small gardens on family farms. i have no doubt that growing populations of feral cats and increased predator numbers from the collapse of fur trapping have their fingerprints on the murder weapon as well.
 
Everyone needs to remember, the delayed season is only a sample of one and a lot of people predicted twra would take credit for the increased turkey population that was occurring due to improved hatches the couple of years before the delayed season. The delayed season has not done much for the improved population yet and it will take time to see if it does.
 
megalomaniac said:
Not controversy, thats normal. There is a very small percentage of hens that breed in late Feb/ early March. About the equivalent small percentage that breed in late July/ early August. A tiny percentage of early breeders doesn't change the fact that average/ peak breeding doesn't occur until mid April in middle TN
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No. I said "if" she just laid them she was breed (gestation period) 28bdays prior. Most likely was early. Hatching would be incubation.
 
Bell3wv said:
No. I said "if" she just laid them she was breed (gestation period) 28bdays prior. Most likely was early. Hatching would be incubation.
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No, sorry but a hen can be fertilized as early as 3 days and certainly within 5 days of laying an egg and it will be viable. Eggs laid as late as 20 days after fertilization likely will not be viable. In general a hen will not be receptive until she is within a week of beginning to lay.
 
Bell3wv said:
No. I said "if" she just laid them she was breed (gestation period) 28bdays prior. Most likely was early. Hatching would be incubation.
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Here's how you figure it....

Assume full clutch of 14 eggs when you bumped her on 4/19. That means she has been setting (incubating) for either 1 day or 27 days at that point. If you assume she was setting for 1 day when you bumped her, that would mean she started laying her first egg approx 15 to 16 days prior.... or around 4/3. Average breeding date prior to initiating nest (laying first egg) is 7 days prior... so figure her first breeding was last week of March.

Now if you assume she was on Day 27 of setting (unlikely, as she probably would not have left the nest during lockdown (day 25 thru 28 of incubation) and you would never have known she was there), using the calculations listed above, she would have bred end of Feb/ beginning of March.

As I said before, it's proven that AVERAGE nest initiation is end of April, 1st week of May, which means AVERAGE breeding is 3rd week of April. The reason for this is because of natural selection. Hens which breed extremely early, lay extremely early, incubate extremely early have poults that hatch extremely early. Poults hatched extremely early have a much harder time surviving as there are fewer insects to feed on, and usually colder temps which they are vulnerable to until they feather out. Mother nature WANTS the poults to hatch out mid to late June... when there's a bazillion insects available to feed on, temps have warmed up, and heavy spring rains have subsided somewhat.
 
Bgoodman30 said:
Yep all this talk kind of goes out the window when we look about what happened in southern middle counties... There is something else there...
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Man it sucks, and it took YEARS before anyone would publicize we had a problem here. But the good news is, our population has probably tripled or quadrupled in the last 4 years. I know what happened 4 years ago but I won't open that can of worms...
 

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