Summer thoughts: social media, money, Slams, and other gripes

[eggshell]

I have a buddy who went to Nebraska with like 3 buddies. In 2.5 days they shot like 10 birds because they could. Just make it a 1 bird limit for any nonresident hunter.

Do you realize, you just committed the very sin you named as a problem? Named a state and stats for a state. 10 birds in 2.5 days will indeed be a temptation to many.

[Jimspur]

God made the return key, the spacebarbar and the comma key for good reasons.

Mmmm...I love those spacebarbar's.

[TurkeyReaper69]

I'm not sure if this was discussed but I do think two things would immediately help. 1. YouTubers don't even say what state they are in. That may not sound like a big deal, but I know for a fact that there's a particular state that WILL get hammered in 2022 because of the amount of people who talked about it in 2021. The other thing would be to have a 1 bird limit across every state for any nonresident hunter. The reason I say that is because I have a buddy who went to Nebraska with like 3 buddies. In 2.5 days they shot like 10 birds because they could. Just make it a 1 bird limit for any nonresident hunter. I don't think it's a big deal

1 bird limit? No thanks dude. I'm not here advocating for my opportunity to be taken away. I'm frustrated with the sheer number of traveling turkey hunters now.

Honestly, I think Facebook is more damaging than YouTube. The amount of posts I saw this year in the northeast and Tennessee this year was ungodly. Hell I think the entire states of Arkansas and Alabama was in Maine this year. Not to mention most of these newly acclaimed super slammers or whatever have no intention of ever returning to these states so they'll freely share information with any stranger on the internet.  The cats out of the bag on Nebraska it's glory days have come and gone.

[aclawrence]

I agree with your post also.  I made up the singe season southern slam thread. Honestly it was kind of a joke because it would be the only kind of "slam" I'm going to be able to complete unless something changes. I didn't realize Hushin had jumped into the turkey game. I quit watching those guys a long time ago. I feel bad for western hunters as they have to deal with the same kind of crap that we do, probably even worse than turkey hunters.  There are some YouTube guys I like to watch and I feel like are really good guys who purely love to turkey hunt but have gotten themselves into a weird situation. No matter how pure the original motivations were to teach others about how to turkey hunt "the right way" their channels are causing more pressure to be put on turkeys. Facebook is the worst. I've got a Facebook but I wouldn't care if it just went away all together. Most of the big tech guys are losers anyway.  I appreciate this forum and the like minded guys here who love to turkey hunt. Hope y'all all have a blessed spring in 2022, call some birds right of the limb, and bump into fewer people than the last two years.


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[bwall3220]

I wish I would've found this thread a couple of years ago! I thought I was the only one sick to death of these exact same issues, the pandemic definitely threw gas on the fire too just cause people were off and bored.
I used to be blessed (and cursed) to have to travel a LOT for work, driving all over the country 3 - 4 weeks out of a month....before a wife and kid of course. But one large benefit of all this traveling was I got to hunt lots of states so I got to thinking "I wonder if I could kill a turkey in every state?". I told my close friends of my thought and they laughed, haha...."that's crazy" or "impossible" I heard a lot. Back in the mid 2000's we'd never heard of such a feat, but I thought I could do it over time.
When I stopped traveling for work I was in the upper 20's of states probably but still want to continue so me and my little family will travel to a new area each year and i'll hunt in the morning and vacation the rest of the day with them.
Now it seems like there's somebody behind every tree trying to do what i'm doing but i'm so close now (7 to go) i'm going to finish.
All that being said I don't have a facebook account, and i've never recorded one of my hunts. I'm doing this for me and what started out to be a neat thing to accomplish. It has become very frustrating when doing research for new states or talking to someone in a state that's new and the say "oh you're a state collector" or "chasing 49" cause of all the yahoos doing it for money or fame that have tainted this by making it so popular on youtube and facebook.
I know this thread is old but I liked it a lot and agree with all of your "rants" and felt compelled to add to it. I REALLY liked the one mans idea of 1 bird for non-residents....brilliant! Get your 1 bird and be happy for it!
That's all here, good luck to everyone this spring!

[Turkeybutt]

Thank you for the rant, I enjoyed it. You bring up some interesting gripes and concerns.

[arkrem870]

Social media is one hell of a drug.

[deathfoot]

I REALLY liked the one mans idea of 1 bird for non-residents....brilliant! Get your 1 bird and be happy for it!
That's all here, good luck to everyone this spring!

This. X2. I've never been selfish. Hell I passed up a Jake after traveling all the way across the country to Cali. One bird is good enough for me. And it must be a Longbeard.

Last trip to the black hills, I killed a bird within two hours of arriving. So I just drove to Wyoming the rest of the week.

[btodd00]

I know it's an old thread but since it has been brought up I feel it is pertinent to mention the best slam of them all. The Denny's grand slam.

[TurkeyReaper69]

Saw this thread resurface. I'm the original poster.

I took the liberty this afternoon to reread my original post and the comments that followed.

At first glance I thought "hm things seem to have gotten better since 2021" then I quickly realized, they HAVE NOT. This crap has just become more normalized and we've grown accustomed to the new world of turkey hunting as the years have gone by.

We are a few weeks into this season, public land pressure is at an all time high. Got a report out of Hawaii about record numbers of non resident turkey hunters on public land.

Yesterday I hunted in a southern state where opportunity for the public land hunter has been severely limited due to folks complaining about low bird numbers and pressure. Well the public land I hunted had a record breaking 125+ folks checked in to hunt. At lunch I grabbed some blaze orange out the truck to walk through the woods with due to the fact there were nearly a dozen folks crammed into the small "unit" I was on. Also got checked by game warden he mentioned catching one guy with a sack of bird seed and another who was wearing a go pro filming his hunt...sigh... I ended up harvesting a bird in the afternoon and was forced to head home because of a newly implemented "1 gobbler first 10 day rule". Funny how that only applies to public land, the common man keeps getting boned with each passing season.

Everything I mentioned in my original post still holds true today. Swap out the popular states of yesteryear and replace with new states that have recently been put in the spotlight and it's all still dead on.  crazy thinking about just a few years ago I'd be able to hunt a multitude of states on public ground right now about this time, and that opportunity is just gone. And will it return one day? I'm not sure, once something is taken away from a population it's unlikely to return.

Hold on to your hats folks, there's still plenty of opportunity to lose and hunter satisfaction will continue to decline. I'm just wondering when it will end. Surely at some point we will hit rock bottom and it'll only get better from there. But how far are we from rock bottom? Only time will tell I assume, the worst is yet to come.

[Prospector]

We are by far the greatest predator of the Wild Turkey. We also have initiated the rise in all the other predators with our practices( from timber management, lack of fur trade, feeders, etc). I too lament the crutches making it easier for "anybody" to increase their success...FB, etc helps them revel in it. I feel ya.

[ScottTaulbee]

We are by far the greatest predator of the Wild Turkey. We also have initiated the rise in all the other predators with our practices( from timber management, lack of fur trade, feeders, etc). I too lament the crutches making it easier for "anybody" to increase their success...FB, etc helps them revel in it. I feel ya.

When the whole "predator" debate came along I said the same thing. The human population is the biggest predator that the wild turkey will ever have. From shooting them at 60+ yards, fanning, baiting, feeling the need to kill a limit of turkeys in every state, all the way to making new roads, subdivision, and building shopping centers where 10 years ago there was someone hunting. Do coons and possums and skunks eat eggs?, absolutely they do. But they don't go out hunting them down, they have a core range they travel in and when they happen upon a nest they'll eat it. But it's our fault for the hens having to nest in such poor habitat to begin with. I always get a chuckle out of the guys who say things like " killed my limit in 6 states so far and headed to the next one, hard to find a turkey in x state, more people need to trap nest predators". Or something along those lines, without ever stopping to think that himself and thousands of others are doing the exact same thing. We no doubt have a bigger impact on the turkey population than any natural predator ever has.


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[TurkeyReaper69]

We are by far the greatest predator of the Wild Turkey. We also have initiated the rise in all the other predators with our practices( from timber management, lack of fur trade, feeders, etc). I too lament the crutches making it easier for "anybody" to increase their success...FB, etc helps them revel in it. I feel ya.

When the whole "predator" debate came along I said the same thing. The human population is the biggest predator that the wild turkey will ever have. From shooting them at 60+ yards, fanning, baiting, feeling the need to kill a limit of turkeys in every state, all the way to making new roads, subdivision, and building shopping centers where 10 years ago there was someone hunting. Do coons and possums and skunks eat eggs?, absolutely they do. But they don't go out hunting them down, they have a core range they travel in and when they happen upon a nest they'll eat it. But it's our fault for the hens having to nest in such poor habitat to begin with. I always get a chuckle out of the guys who say things like " killed my limit in 6 states so far and headed to the next one, hard to find a turkey in x state, more people need to trap nest predators". Or something along those lines, without ever stopping to think that himself and thousands of others are doing the exact same thing. We no doubt have a bigger impact on the turkey population than any natural predator ever has.


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I just spent about 10 days in Florida, I went down a few days before north zone opener to hang out with family (I'm a native Floridan who moved away) and do some turkey hunting. No one will ever convince me that I did more damage to the population calling a few birds to the gun for dad and I than the development. After killing a few birds over the weekend it was time for dad to get back to work (he works in the ever dying Florida citrus industry) we spent time criss crossing over central Florida. To say I was in shock was an absolute understatement. An orange Grove I had permission to hunt just 5 or 6 years ago as a senior in high school was now a swanky little apartment complex with a pool and communal gathering area. A cattle ranch I remember seeing sand Hill cranes and strutting turkeys in front the side of Florida's State road 528 was now a strip center with a Wawa gas station and a chipotle Mexican restaurant. An orange Grove we killed a turkey in had development creeping up from all 4 directions, it almost brought closure knowing that bird wouldn't have to suffer in a year or so when the pine trees he roosts in on the property border were made into a subdivision by some out of town national developer.

Seeing all this, and knowing this is going on in every corner of the state; Jacksonville is exploding rapidly, Orlando's suburbs keep growing into Florida cattle and citrus country, retirement communities being built in what I used to consider "the middle of nowhere", Tampa and Orlando will one day be known as "Orlampa" when the I-4 corridor connecting the 2 cities will one day be completely developed.

I was more saddened by my trip than anything, I'd read the book "A land remembered" by Patrick Smith which spoke on the old Florida that was destroyed by development. At 23 years old I didn't ever know the Old Florida he spoke of without the large cities and interstate highways and byways. But what I realized before my eyes these past few weeks is the Florida I grew up in is now a land remembered. Places I used to hunt and fish freely gone, by way of development.

I pondered what this would do for  hunting in peninsular Florida. Lease prices for locals will continue to rise, with an evergrowing demand from the exploding population. Outfitters who've lost properties due to development will have to search elsewhere to obtain new grounds and raise prices on the coveted Osceola hunts they sell. Public lands, oh boy. Public lands will continue to see more pressure as the population grows and people (like myself) lose opportunity to hunt private lands. I expect nearly all turkey hunting in peninsular Florida to be draw hunts in the next 15 years. And point creep in Florida is no different than for western big game, it's getting harder and harder to draw a good tag. Not to mention, the increased amount of users of Florida's public lands will put a strain on the resources. Disrupting ground nesting birds in the spring months, leaving trash and human waste seemingly everywhere with no care in the world for the enjoyment of the guy behind you, and eroding trails (and for the love of God people with 4wheelers and SXS in big cypress stay on the trails and treat it like it's your own land).

Like I said, Florida in my mind truly is a land remembered. I'm not sure if I wish to ever reside in my beloved home state again.

[Prospector]

You calling a bird to gun doesn't hurt the population... or me. The TOTAL yous and me's thought does. I've said this before; the explosion of Turkey hunting popularity has fueled the explosion of " tactics" making it " easier" to be successful. I remember when turkey hunters were a different kind of breed- wasn't many birds and wasn't many who pursued them. Decoy, blind, ammo, E-bike companies just respond to the demand... if these weren't legal tactics " hunter" numbers would decrease.
I also agree with urban sprawl. Here in my home state, timber management and wildlife management are two very separate issues as well.
As for nest raiders? They just doing what is natural, true. But our practices are allowing numbers to be unnaturally high. So as I've said: should be a bounty, should have to meet it to get tags.

[Burtwill]

Well I am a millennial and did not start turkey hunting until I was about 18. None of my family turkey hunted only deer so my dad and I started at the same time from scratch.

We are now both fairly obsessed with it. I hunt private and public but I simply dont have enough private to last me a season and keep hunting.

I also agree that these videos have made public cool and now it is simply saturated. But, what are you going to do? Make youtube illegal? I love watching the videos but also wish they weren't increasing pressure selfishly. I also think none of this would be much of a problem if our population wasnt decreasing. So population decrease plus pressure increase equals some tough hunting. To be real i don't ever remember learning that public hunting was a thing until i reached college. No one i knew did it? Now everyone knows about it so that has for sure changed.

Somehow the government is going to have to start subsidizing things like turkey habitat upgrades and trapping. That is the only solution.

What I can tell you is if you took every piece of technology from me and told me I had to walk to every hunting spot I had I believe I would still be doing it. So decreasing pressure isn't really a option therfore the only things we can do is regulate our own harvests within an area and promote habitat/trapping.

If you hunt an area and know there is only one gobbler there maybe you shouldn't kill it? Find somewhere else to go?