Bag restrictions can actually in rare cases work against a population. Game animals seem to do best when they are harvested to the allowable limit. It keeps them in recovery mode. Stock pile too many and you exceed the carrying capacity and nature will cull and correct the imbalance. She usually does it very cruelly by human standards and it's usually an over correction. Her favorite tool is Disease. Over abundance of predators, again from lack of hunting are overzealous killers. I hold a personal opinion that deer baiting has been very bad for our turkeys, it concentrates them and spreads disease. When entire flocks disappear suddenly I am guessing it's disease. My cousins farm has been intensely managed for years and within one year the entire east side flock disappeared (on 980 acres) . Hunting and predators didn't do that. There's a group of deer hunters that bait the neighbors and I wonder if they got some bad corn. Perhaps the avian flue hit them. I heard a veterinarian virologist say avian flue was 100% fatal to turkeys. I know one thing I believe as an absolute, removing one gobbler from a personal bag limit is a joke when it comes to saving turkeys. It's all fluff and propaganda. I done the numbers for Ohio and it came down to Approx. one gobbler per township +/- (23,000 acres) saved. That's a nothing number when it comes to flock preservation. The loud voices cry, "Do something" and the DNR do the most obvious and easiest. The NWTF and TFT are two very loud voices. They don't always get it right. The trouble is high ranking people see a problem in their little honey hole or state region and cry, "The world is ending". It's not ending, but there are localized problems. What happens in Ga. may or may not apply in the northern states.
