My observations have given me a glimpse of my turkey numbers here locally. Almost all of my hunting areas have the fields hayed recently, so we have been out a lot. Saw quite a few jakes, more than average, in some different places. Saw , we think, the same bunch of 4 hens and 14 poults all 3 days, which is great. But we only saw 1 other hen with a single poult in 160 miles of driving. We covered pretty much all of my hunting spots plus a bit more. We saw 9 hens with no poults in our core area and zero poults in the adjacent areas. Not 1 poult outside of the 15, plenty of dry hens, but no poults. We have similar reports from our outdoor activity friends, it is starting to feel a little panicky. We will do our thing and try to keep the predator and nest raider numbers down. But the thing that scares me is that the breeding season never really happened like it usually does. All the dry hens prove it. I wish I could understand why it was so different. Losing a nest is one thing, but never breeding seems like an anomaly that I have never seen before. Anybody else see this same situation? If so, where are you geographically, no exact locations, I'm not trying to steal your spots, lol. I am pretty much in the east central portion of New England. Locally it is a similar story. Just trying to figure it out, it hurts my last 3 brain cells. Z
