Turkey hunting forum for turkey hunting tips

Thinking about the turkey hunting and related subjects that are discussed (argued about) the most often. As somebody who has only been on this forum for a couple years, this is what I pick up:

1. TSS or no TSS, taking shots 50+ yards out
2. Reaping
3. Reasons for precieved decline in turkey populations in many eastern states
4. "___ sized TSS shot is equal in knockdown power to ____ sized lead shot"
5. Are some states opening the turkey season too early? Too high a bag limit?
6. What is going on with Arkansas' spring turkey season?
7. Does TSS make the 10 gauge obsolete? Or at best, a waterfowler-only gun? (OK, not the hottest topic, but I shoot a SP-10, so this hits close to home)

I'm not necessarily trying to throw a grenade on the table, just curious if I've missed anything? Thoughts?

Hell ya you missed stuff.....
No decoys
No NWTF
No all day hunting
No youth season
No early archery season
No crow calling
No over calling
No killing bearded hens
No killing jakes
No fall hunting
No blinds
No THP
My favorite. ...."Not looking for anybody honey hole,but can you put a guy on the X "
No field hunting in the Midwest.
No hunting feeders.
No parking on my public land spot.
I was here first and this jerk moved in on me on public.
I only hunt old school BUT sometimes I use a decoy.





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This is just my opinion on certain subjects.

1. No problem with decoys, I will use a hen decoy occasionally situation dependent.
2. Reaping is not for me due to the fact that I hunt public land and I think reaping on public land can be dangerous.
3. TSS is something I can't speak really intelligent on since I have personally never shot it. It seems to be fairly effective from what I have seen and read but I still think 50 yards is to far of a shot for me to take on a turkey regardless of ammo. Like I said just my opinion.
4. I have no problem with the no killing of hens or Jake's. Unless it is a youth hunt, kids should be able to shoot Jake's all day in my opinion.
5. Bag limits I think may be too high in certain areas. From my experience where I hunt they lowered the limit from 4 birds a year to 2 birds a year about 4 years ago and I can say I have noticed an increase in numbers of birds.
6. The NWTF seems to be alright to me. Granted I have only been a member for about 5 years so I have not seen the changes that maybe some of you guys have. I know that some people are really upset with them.
7. Don't own a 10 gauge so really no opinion on the subject. That is a lot of fun for a turkey though.
8. I do think we should allow all day hunting. People work all different schedules and to deprive someone the ability to hunt during legal and safe shooting hours does not help keep people involved in the outdoors. Not does it give that parent or uncle etc. to introduce someone else to the sport if we do that.
9. If I am not mistaken fall hunting was the traditional time to hunt turkeys so if the population is stable and can handle it then allow it to happen. The argument against fall hunting could also be made for spring hunting. We could easily get rid of spring and go to fall only.
10. We should always have a youth season.

  Just my .2 cents on some of these subjects. I am sure that some will disagree with my opinions. But at the end of the day I think we can all agree we want the best for our sport.

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The beauty of our sport is all the options, techniques, styles, equipment, and methods people choose to harvest turkeys. I was not a fan of decoys due to some bad experiences in the big woods in the East where I hunt. The turkeys were hanging up, shying away from them. I found that they work great in farm land areas where there are open fields. I have had great success with them there. Stalking birds can prove dangerous. That's really a subject of personal safety. The TSS, Hevi-shot, higher technology guns and ammo is personal preference. I enjoy experimenting with all the new chokes, guns, and shells. Patterning has become another exciting, (but expensive) part of my pre-season preparation. The "50 yard" dilemma is also a prominent subject in our sport. I like the fact that this forum insists on keeping distance talk less than 40 yards. It is the best image we can maintain. We all strive to bring our birds in to close range so we can cleanly harvest them. They are tough creatures, they can escape poorly placed shots, thus we have a moral obligation to do our best regarding range and shot placement. In summary, the great part of our sport is the options we all have in how we participate. The passion we all share in our own way makes it a special time for us to enjoy the great outdoors.....Be safe...

QuoteI am sure that some will disagree with my opinions. But at the end of the day I think we can all agree we want the best for our sport.

That is a good way of expressing it. We differ in opinions, but at the end of the day we have opinions and concerns because we care about the sport. It's our passion and a place we find solace from the day to day crap of life. When we're set up on an old gobbler our troubles are somewhere else and not even in our minds, we have a temporary reprieve from whatever ails us. Then we mix that passion with society and we get conflict. It's the world we live in, just look around and listen. If I had one wish for all turkey hunters it would simply be, leave life's habits and social justice warfare behind and accept that we all enjoy the same sport, but do it differently. when I walk out the door for a hunt I don't think, " I shouldn't hunt a certain way, because someone somewhere doesn't like it". I do what I am comfortable with and feel safe doing and is legal, I suspect we all do.

I believe the laws are set to maximize the hunting experience for all and still protect the species and let it flourish. Sure some management practices aren't doing what they should and we have the right to ask why, but in large part the game biologist are hunters just like us and doing their best in a system where all their funding comes from political entities and sometimes Best Management Practices are tossed by politicians. The sad part is management often lags behind what is happening in the field, changes are reactive and not proactive.

I think that the debating is largely constructive and just symptomatic of the passion we have for our sport. Sure it occasionally goes off the rails and some get too personal with it, but I don't believe anyone means to hurt anyone here. I think we'd all pitch in and help each other in a bad spot. Venting our frustrations is therapeutic, so I say let's debate, share and grow together. We're kind of like brothers, when together we fight like ill tempered dogs, but let someone pick on our brother and you have both of us to fight.   

Amen my friend.....

Absolutely good stuff eggshell

Wow!  Some really good posts above.  I am impressed with the thoughtful responses.  When I saw the topic, I figured this would go off the rails pretty quickly.  ...but wait,...there's still plenty of time....  :)

This podcast episode with University of Georgia biologist and researcher Mike Chamberlain does a great job of breaking down some hypotheses and facts on the declining numbers. He also gets into whether some states season limits are too liberal, and he and I agree that, yes, some states are allowing too many turkeys and it's because they do not have adequate data on population numbers. They're basing quotas off of guess work. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hunting-public/id1124616529?i=1000473597465

Unfortunately some states are using revenue from permit dollars to determine quotas. We can only hope the biologists are involved in these decisions......

Quote from: ChesterCopperpot on June 12, 2020, 08:09:47 AM
This podcast episode with University of Georgia biologist and researcher Mike Chamberlain does a great job of breaking down some hypotheses and facts on the declining numbers. He also gets into whether some states season limits are too liberal, and he and I agree that, yes, some states are allowing too many turkeys and it's because they do not have adequate data on population numbers. They're basing quotas off of guess work. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hunting-public/id1124616529?i=1000473597465

Dr. Mike Chamberlain is definitely someone worth listening to. You may or may not agree with everything he says, but as you listen keep one thing in mind.He is a passionate and long time turkey hunter. He is definitely not a " pointed headed intellectual " and pure academician.

Honestly I don't have a good answer on the population decline. I stated in my previous post that where I hunt they dropped the limit from 4 birds to 2. I do hunt on a Army post (Fort Campbell, KY). And since they dropped the limit I have seen more birds. Fort Campbell is weird because it sits on the border of 2 states. Roughly half the base is in Kentucky half is in Tennessee. So I meet hunters that hunt Kentucky and Tennessee public and private land. I live in Tennessee about 1 mile or so across the state line. I don't really hear the guys I know from Kentucky complain to much about population decline. But a lot of guys I talk to from Tennessee are seeing a decline in a lot of areas, not all areas but quite a bit. There could be a lot of factors that go into it. Heck it could just be mother nature doing her thing. Kentucky has a 2 bird limit and Tennessee has a 4 bird limit. But starting in the spring of 2021 Tennessee is going to 3 birds so we will see how that works out.

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Quote from: Turkeytider on June 12, 2020, 08:49:28 AM

Quote from: ChesterCopperpot on June 12, 2020, 08:09:47 AM
This podcast episode with University of Georgia biologist and researcher Mike Chamberlain does a great job of breaking down some hypotheses and facts on the declining numbers. He also gets into whether some states season limits are too liberal, and he and I agree that, yes, some states are allowing too many turkeys and it's because they do not have adequate data on population numbers. They're basing quotas off of guess work. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hunting-public/id1124616529?i=1000473597465

Dr. Mike Chamberlain is definitely someone worth listening to. You may or may not agree with everything he says, but as you listen keep one thing in mind.He is a passionate and long time turkey hunter. He is definitely not a " pointed headed intellectual " and pure academician.

Agreed. He's sharp and down to earth and has the same stake in it that those of us on this forum do. I think more than anything else its habitat loss. Poor forest management, or rather a complete lack of forest management in a lot of places. I live in the North Carolina mountains and we're currently going through forest management plans for our largest national forest tracts--plans that should've been completed and implemented a decade ago--but the thing you hear over and over in the public comments is that people don't want to see cuts and they don't want burns. We know why that is. But the thing these people don't realize is that grouse, turkey, deer, everything, they all thrive in disruption. So for us I think it's a combination of two things: 1) mismanagement equating to no management of national forest and the subsequent loss of habitat, particularly nesting habitat in the instance of turkeys; 2) three years of incredibly wet springs that killed off substantial brood.

Lot less farming in small rural area's of counties and more timber harvest the pass several years has also hurt the turkey population. Your coming out of a generation of people who made a living off farming and raising livestock. Just ride out in the county and see the number of old small farm's that are no longer in business. Sure you still have farming in most big farm belt states , but those little old farms is a thing of the past . Habitat and weather play a big part in the turkey decline in my opinion.

Chamberlain talk about the flock dynamics and how breeding works was really amazing,  always thought when you killed a dominant bird the hens would just breed with the next best bird.  What he stated about the hen selecting the most viable bird makes sense.

I saw an example this year of then flock dynamics, we had some crazy cold weather in Illinois opening week, the birds bunched back up and we doubled out of a flock with 5 toms in it.

A couple days later the group was in the same basic area and there was some crazy fights going on, so we obviously disrupted the dynamics and pecking order of that flock!

Predators are a major issue there, the coons were wiped out in the 90s from Distemper and for years you were hard pressed to find one, bird population boomed. Now coons are like rats as well as skunks possum and now a thriving bobcat population, and oh yeah piles of coyotes!

Quote from: rakkin6 on June 12, 2020, 08:52:34 AM
Honestly I don't have a good answer on the population decline. I stated in my previous post that where I hunt they dropped the limit from 4 birds to 2. I do hunt on a Army post (Fort Campbell, KY). And since they dropped the limit I have seen more birds. Fort Campbell is weird because it sits on the border of 2 states. Roughly half the base is in Kentucky half is in Tennessee. So I meet hunters that hunt Kentucky and Tennessee public and private land. I live in Tennessee about 1 mile or so across the state line. I don't really hear the guys I know from Kentucky complain to much about population decline. But a lot of guys I talk to from Tennessee are seeing a decline in a lot of areas, not all areas but quite a bit. There could be a lot of factors that go into it. Heck it could just be mother nature doing her thing. Kentucky has a 2 bird limit and Tennessee has a 4 bird limit. But starting in the spring of 2021 Tennessee is going to 3 birds so we will see how that works out.

Once again, we are wandering off of the general topic of the original post, but what the heck...this specific concept is worth further discussion.  :)

First of all, in well-regulated spring turkey hunting (that is, starting the season AFTER the turkeys have had time to adequately breed), the number of gobblers taken out of the population is irrelevant to the overall turkey population viability.  The overriding factor affecting turkey populations is stable "recruitment" (nesting success and poult survival) over time. 

Simply put, in any declining turkey population, the problem is always going to be linked to successful recruitment OVER TIME.  Specifically, turkey populations generally have up and down cycles,...that is, good reproductive years, and bad reproductive years.  They usually balance out over time.

The problems arise when populations have several (or many) consecutive years without any population recruitment.  When that happens, each spring you hunt that population, the number of gobblers is reduced each year through hunting (and other mortality causes) until there are very few mature gobblers left in the population (hen numbers will likely be following the same path of decline). 

The first symptom of biologically-based problems in a population that spring turkey hunters typically will notice is the consistent decline in gobbling over a period of years.  However, those declines can be a function of hunter success (the removal of more gobblers each spring either due to increased hunter numbers and/or hunter ability/methodology). 

One way of determining if apparent decreases in gobbler numbers is due to a general population decline due to recruitment issues (nesting success) is to decrease spring gobbler hunting in an area that has a concern, which brings us back to the point of your post rakkin6.  What you witnessed (Ft. Campbell) is a function of the number of gobblers removed in your population due to hunting, AND is also indicative of the fact that you are having some level of nesting success there.  That is, if you are seeing an increase in gobbler numbers you have to be having some population recruitment success to see that happen. 

So what does all of this have to do with bag limits and such?  Simply stated, in turkey populations with stable, long-term population recruitment (nesting success), the only thing that bag limits impacts is the QUALITY of the hunting.  Kill more gobblers one spring with high bag limits and you will have fewer gobblers in that population the next spring. ...And that phenomenon (which is not rocket science) is exacerbated in years of poor (or no) population recruitment. 

The bottom line is that, in all turkey populations that have stable, long-term population recruitment, high spring bag limits are only going to impact the QUALITY of the hunting.  The decision on whether to have high or low bag limits is strictly a "social" decision, not a "biological" one.  Those social decisions are (or should be) determined by societal preferences,...that is, what does the majority of the public that utilizes the resource (in our case "hunters") want?...higher bag limits or more gobblers in the woods each spring? 

It is when the problem with turkey population declines becomes a "biological" one that things start to get complicated. First, though, you have to determine if the problem is actually a function of biological problems or just a function of harvest numbers.   

To get things back on topic. I just had a song come to mind and had to give it a listen. "Dinosaur" by Hank William's jr. It pretty well parallels my opinion on modern    " hunters".

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I believe I must have misunderstood the intent of the original post and for that I apologize. If you want one to add to your list of controversial subjects: scope or bead, glass or red dot.

I go with red dot scope, just make sure it has a fresh battery at the begining of the season. I leave it off the while hunting until I am on a bird then I turn it on. Double and triple check it is off when I am done for the day and gun goes into it's case for the ride home. At the end of the season I throw the old battery away. Have not had any issues so far doing it this way. Hopefully it stays like that lol.

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The way people argue on forums and social media, I believe all turkey hunting topics are controversial.

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Lol, the only social media I use is this site. I don't have Facebook, Twitter etc. Glad I don't too it seems like it is a lot of trouble.

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Quote from: Terry on June 12, 2020, 11:48:55 AM
The way people argue on forums and social media, I believe all turkey hunting topics are controversial.

Not so.  The topics are not controversial, only those who disagree with me.  I am right and they are wrong.

I love a forum with awesome opinions .. IS...  anyone listening or do you really not care ..  :TooFunny:

another controversial thing is leasing and loss of access.

Actually in my area I have lost a ton of ground to leasing, but it's almost exclusively deer hunters leasing the ground and a lot don't even  turkey hunt, or they only hunt a couple days. These leases have become seeding grounds. One right across from my house gets no turkey hunting pressure except for an occasional trespasser.  By the third week of season the birds are stacked up on it and they set over there and gobble like they're laughing at you. Good for me because they eventually wander off onto my land. By the end of season I know there was several old longbeards left in the area, I'd see them out in the fields and hear them. I think they knew I was out of tags. One year I would go to the boundary and look out in the field and see at least 4 long beards strutting, I'd throw them a call and they'd just laugh at me. Finally one late morning I hear a gobble and suddenly I realize he's on my ground, I grab the gun and head to the woods, a half hour later he had my tag on him. So this kind of bears out what was said about holdover.

Is a food plot baiting?

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Quote from: Happy on June 12, 2020, 03:49:05 PM
Is a food plot baiting?

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Trying to stir up trouble lol

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" Hey, have you guys ever hunted on __________ in the southeast corner of _________?  I'm looking to take a trip there next spring and would love it if you would put some of your favorite hunting spots out on the internet for the masses..."

:TrainWreck1:

Hey Happy I got a picture of your food plot

Quote from: eggshell on June 12, 2020, 07:04:58 PM
Hey Happy I got a picture of your food plot

With my luck I still couldn't kill one. Me an ol Wiley E coyote have a lot in common

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Quote from: eggshell on June 12, 2020, 03:05:06 PM
another controversial thing is leasing and loss of access.

Ah, yes, this is along the lines of what I was thinking. Thanks for bringing that point up Eggshell, much appreciated!

And I appreciate the other comments as well, thank you all. Yes, the "tell me where should I go?" questions do trip a trigger with many. Of course find that with people looking for deer and elk, as well as morels and huckleberrys.

most of the controversy is just hunters bashing other hunters thinking their way is the best.... pursue your game any legal way you want and you have my support, as long as i have yours doing it my way.

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