............wish I were seeing poults. :(
This entire summer, I've seen a grand total of TWO poults. They were with 3 or 4 mature hens. I'm seeing some groups of 2 or 4 hens with no poults among them. Seeing more mature toms and last year's jakes than anything else.
Pretty bothersome.
Same here....
That's pretty sad. I've seen a few large groups, one with 3 adult hens with 15 poults, and 2 other groups I couldn't count accurately about that same
size in different locations.
I've also seen some hens with no poults, and a couple with 1 or 2 poults.
I don't spend the time on the road I used since I stopped seeing horses and cattle, but I have seen several groups this year in N Florida. Saw one poult right by itself the other day along the edge of the road. Hopefully momma and brood were in the woodline.
Have a friend spotting them regularly 60 miles to the west of me. I did see some early but have not seen any for some time. Back in mid July we had an extreme hail storm, the kind that beats roof shingles to pieces. I am concerned that hail wiped out a lot of the poults.
Yesterday I seen two groups of turkey, I could not ID all the turkey, only six total turkey. I seen one mature Tom the rest? There were no poults.
Well, I am 55 miles west of the house, didn't take long to find some. The one group I seen yesterday was four Jake's, they were out more visible this morning. (https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20220828/8de1c4deb94d2de985837b5301ad1381.jpg)
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Well, THAT'S a welcome sight !!! Just move 'em a little closer home....... ;D
I have 1 hen with 2 poults hanging around my property. Ive also seen 2 hens with 7 poults a few miles down the road. Ive ridden 750 miles of gravel on my bike since may and that is it. Farmer buddy says he has seen zero.
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I haven't seen any poults this year. We had an early, hot summer. That kept me out of the woods more than usual and kept the birds in the shady woods a bit more I suspect. It's pretty thick where I hunt and if they aren't in the road or on a pipleline when you drive by, you'll never see them. We had a mostly dry early summer which usually means a pretty good hatch.
I saw this group a few days ago. They are basically living in town next to the river where there is a bunch of timber. Last falll there was a group of about 20 hens/poults and another group of 8-9 Gobblers/jakes in the same area.
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52318058005_37438e6020_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2nHaHUR)Resized_20220816_091330 (https://flic.kr/p/2nHaHUR) by K Pete (https://www.flickr.com/photos/152428466@N06/), on Flickr
Those turkeys I seen today are in my wheel house! Big hunting club that I hunt a lot on. Buddy seen more poults up there today as well.
Looking good for the next two springs unless something goes haywire. Those turkeys up there are hard to see too unless they are in a road or on an edge. Pretty thick in most places and the sun was hot today from late morning on.
Pathetic up here, I am really concerned. Ive seen almost as many hit by vehicles than 'on the hoof". More dry hens than even 1 poult. My notes show 13 poults with 7 hens and 37 dry hens, usually in small groups in the 65 square miles I generally hunt. I put a lot of time scouting year round and these numbers are horrifying. I only saw a few jakes last year and 75% were together. I had a few toms around but they were thinned out opening week. I am sure thay 75% of the mature toms on my hunting properties were tagged. The farmer keeps a very good tally and the count was 19/25 toms taken on his properties. 11/34 last year. More pressure and less birds. I hope this isnt a trend. Z
Not good pictures but best I can do setting in the road. Seen another batch that I didn't get a picture of. All three groups in one day. (https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20220907/1d3f5825f5c9b76050a68102842906e2.jpg)(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20220907/98a4aa8ebb21755aa843bdcc49584c3b.jpg)
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Seen this while sanging, was watching for him, I knew he was close by. No issue.
I flipped a rock over walking and woke him up, hard to get good pics when on a unstable rock, moving around, 20 yards from a bear you don't want to take your eye off of.(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20220907/5d3dac7630714a31a38a63bc41616d77.jpg)
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Looks like we have had a pretty good hatch here in North Florida.
I've seen one group of a few hens with 18 poults a few times this summer, about a couple of miles from my house. Then there are 2 hens with 7 poults between them that I've been seeing nearly every day on my property. Other than that I've only seen one group of 3 poults, and I'm on the road fairly often.
Also I have at least 10 hens that I see on a regular basis that have no poults at all. That's distressing.
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I was ranting about a 2.7 million sq ft warehouse that took over a field that held birds in town, back in July I finally saw a single hen with 1 poult. They were in an area that the homeless use, so it was surprising to see them there, so I try to swing thru every day to see if I can see them again, today I was rewarded with a pleasant surprise, spotted 5 birds, pretty sure it was a hen with 4 poults.
I'm in NE Pa and from what I've seen the hatch in my area was better this year than it's been in the last couple years...although it's still not great.
One thing that I've noticed about the 2 flocks that I routinely see around my place is that they haven't lost any poults all summer. If a hen can just get them hatched out, then seems like they stand a pretty good chance.
I also have a nice flock of gobblers (5 long beards and 4 jakes) that I see often and that always puts a big smile on my face.
Quote from: Yoder409 on August 27, 2022, 11:40:31 AM
............wish I were seeing poults. :(
This entire summer, I've seen a grand total of TWO poults. They were with 3 or 4 mature hens. I'm seeing some groups of 2 or 4 hens with no poults among them. Seeing more mature toms and last year's jakes than anything else.
Yep, same here. Have only seen 3 poults with 1 hen and 5 hens with ZERO poults.
And like you we're seeing mature toms and jakes
the local "town "birds are still surviving, moved 1/2 mile near another warehouse project. Found scat Tom & Hen, on site pad a few weeks ago, so been looking, rained yesterday so job was shut down, caught them by the remaining woods.