Harvesting hens

[AndyH]

What are your thoughts on harvesting hens? This is not a question about wether it should be legal or not. I'm asking in regards to how you think it can or cannot effect the population over a long period of time.

[captin_hook]

Not a big fan of killing hens. Hens=eggs=more poults= more gobblers=more longbeards for us to hunt. Yotes, coons, fox , possums eat enough eggs and poults, no need to kill the hens. In the area I hunt we started trapping coons and foxes a few years ago, I believe it greatly improved our turkey population, + it gave us something to do after deer firearms season.

[VaTuRkStOmPeR]

I think it's pretty dumb considering the natural predation rates on turkeys and the susceptibility populations have to weather during the nesting period.

In my simple little, demented mind, regardless whether it's a good weather year or poor weather year:

More hens= more poults
Fewer hens= fewer poults


Nothing about it is intelligent.

[earlybird]

I think you guys that are against killing hens are missing out on some very exciting and fun fall hunting.Busting up a flock of birds then trying to get one to come back in is a lot more fun than you can imagine.If the dnr thought it was harmful to the population the wouldnt have a season for them.

[Skeeterbait]

I think you guys that are against killing hens are missing out on some very exciting and fun fall hunting.Busting up a flock of birds then trying to get one to come back in is a lot more fun than you can imagine.If the dnr thought it was harmful to the population the wouldnt have a season for them.

No offense but politics effects DNR decisions as much as biologists.  If a large enough segment of the voting poplulation wants something changed and puts pressure on their representatives, the representatives put pressure on DNR and it is done, whether biologists think it is wise or not.  Insurance companies, equipment manufacturers, farmers coop's and many other organizations have lobbiests to pressure changes to DNR regulations.  The commissioner of DNR afterall is a politician himself.

[TRKYHTR]

Here is my take. If there is a large population of turkeys, then taking hens is OK. If the POP is unstable or down there shouldn't be any hens taken. Where I live there needs to be some hens taken. We have too many hens. I know thats an oxymoron but I can show you videos of 150 turkeys where there are over 100 hens to 50 jakes/gobblers. It is not going to hurt our POP of turkeys to kill some hens. When I first started turkey hunting back in the early 80's you could kill 1 turkey either sex in the fall, a day, for a 30 day season. You could legally kill 30 hens in the fall each year. That is ignorant. You could wipe out a small flock of turkeys in 1 year. Now we can only kill 1 turkey in the fall either sex. We can kill 3 bearded turkeys in the spring and I think it could go to 4 or 5 and not hurt the turkey POP. We have so many turkeys they are showing up in residential areas and are consistently causing problems each year. So I say if you have they POP of turkeys to handle taking hens go ahead. If not leave them alone.

TRKYHTR

[VaTuRkStOmPeR]

I think you guys that are against killing hens are missing out on some very exciting and fun fall hunting.Busting up a flock of birds then trying to get one to come back in is a lot more fun than you can imagine.If the dnr thought it was harmful to the population the wouldnt have a season for them.

Ask some of the turkey hunters in states or regions of certain states that used to be over run with birds that now have mediocre to sparse populations how beneficial hen harvests have been......

I could careless how "fun" it is when it has direct implications on the population sustainability or abundance of turkeys within an area.

Simply, hens are baby turkey factories and no one can predict when a poor nesting year will rear it's head, nor can they predict how many successive poor nesting years an area could have.  Given the uncertainty, why even consider allowing hunters to potentially destroy the resource we love?

[TauntoHawk]

I dont fall hunt but if I did I would still only hunt for longbeards.. I don't really even like hearing about killing of bearded hens, whats the point to killing a hen during nesting just because she's got a few "feathers" growing she's not supposed to

[mudhen]

Dead hens lay no eggs.

Cali went from a fall limit of 30 hens to 1 hen, in one season.  Anyone think they did that for a reason?

Huge flocks can mean nothing.  They are birds, and disease/harsh weather is hard on birds.  In Nebraska, a flock of 300 can dwindle to 100 in one winter.  SE Kansas is still recovering from years of ice, blackhead, etc.

A few years ago, I watched hens dies in the -22F of SW Iowa.  That area of Iowa has had a tough few seasons since then.

I kill hen ducks all the time, so I don't always practice what I preach.

But turks are different than ducks to me, I am no biologist, but I think a duck's brood survival rate is higher than the turkey's rate, which I think rarely goes above 2 poults per clutch making it past their first year...

mudhen

[jakebird]

If you have a high turkey population, unless you live in a state i'm unfamiliar with that has a liberal, multibird either sex limit in the fall, your harvesting one or two hens among your buddies isnt going to do squat as far as findind gobblers not so tuff next spring. So he has eighteen hens instead of twenty? It just didnt amount to much did it, and as was said they are the turkey factories, capable of recruiting over a dozen new birds each year of which over half are gobbler poults per clutch. Targeting hens intentionally is senseless. On the rare occasions i still hunt them in the fall, i seek a young jake or a longbeard. The young jakes eat best.  Light and infrequent hen harvest may not hurt your pops all other factors being equal, but i doubt you could ever prove it actually benefited you tangibly.

[Wingbone]

Wow! Very interesting opinions here. Hope none of you opposers have any direct influence on the so called politically influenced biologists allowing hen harvests. Joe, I'm with you bud. Hunting flat sucks when there are too many hens in an area.

[captin_hook]

I fall turkey hunt every year. I get into hen flocks with yearlings all the time. It's a very pleasant and educational experience hearing the kee kees and different sounds they make in the fall. That doesn't mean I have to shoot em. We shoot only redheads, even in the fall.

[DeWayne Knight]

Dead hens lay no eggs.

Cali went from a fall limit of 30 hens to 1 hen, in one season.  Anyone think they did that for a reason?

Huge flocks can mean nothing.  They are birds, and disease/harsh weather is hard on birds.  In Nebraska, a flock of 300 can dwindle to 100 in one winter.  SE Kansas is still recovering from years of ice, blackhead, etc.

A few years ago, I watched hens dies in the -22F of SW Iowa.  That area of Iowa has had a tough few seasons since then.

I kill hen ducks all the time, so I don't always practice what I preach.

But turks are different than ducks to me, I am no biologist, but I think a duck's brood survival rate is higher than the turkey's rate, which I think rarely goes above 2 poults per clutch making it past their first year...

mudhen

Your first statement, "dead hens lay no eggs", is what it is all about in my opinion, be it turkeys or waterfowl.  I just do not shoot hens on purpose; period.

[bird]

You can never have too many hens! Leave those hens alone!

[redrivergar]

I will shoot a hen in the fall with my bow. Maybe even two. They taste really great! According to the fall harvest in KY we didn't take too many. To each his own. I don't hunt just for sport.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk