Congrats! Love the tail tips coloration.
A consideration you and other northern states may not be facing that we face down here is cold spring rains post hatch. Not sure of your hatch times but suspect the type of weather I am talking about where we get cold rain, you guys would get a snow. Not entirely sure but again suspect it is easier for a poult to stay dry in a snow event rather than a rain event. We can and have nearly lost entire hatches due to cold rainy periods post hatch. Flooding is another significant problem in the delta from nest laying to pre-flight we can lose a spring if the rivers flood.Yeah we discussed the population explosion and subsequent numbers correction of reintroduced animals in the podcast. What’s making Wisconsin and some other northern states different is that their population “correction” is much less dramatic than many other states currently in crisis. Wisconsins population has now stabilized below the numbers from 10 years ago with no signs of continued decline at a statewide level.
On the other side,strong populations, high hunter success rates, and a target rich environment seems like anything but the beginnning of a problem.
Oh we get them up here aplenty as well. Unfortunately, we get wet snow rain mix sometimes up through early to late May if not later.
An example would be his insistence that the nesting date for southeastern turkeys is April 17. Doesnt matter whether you are talking GA turkeys or MS and AR, nesting date is April 17. That's like saying all deer in the southeast breed on Nov 29th. 100% of his credibility went out the window of a truck doing 95 when he said that. Our biologist that studied under him claims the same thing for here in AR even though he has only been here in the state for 3-4 years. Contrary to the fact that he has been told by multiple people from all over the state who have hunted turkeys here for 25 or more years that they nest well before then. He has been show video of hens with hatched poults by that date more than once. The answers so far have been to push the season dates back and they have gone to a rule where you if you kill a bird in the first week you cant shoot your second bird until the second week. That rule is based on their argument that it takes a couple weeks for dominance to be reestablished if you shoot a gobbler, meaning hens wont be bred. Sure ok. There is a plenty more like the use of turkey litter for fertilizer is spreading disease and killing off the birds. Between state and federal we have prolly 4-5 million acres that arent having chicken litter spread on them and the populations are not better to much worse there than they are on the private ground where litter is being used. Why are we not talking about management on smaller scales like county or at least smaller zones? Why are we not talking about going to a draw to limit take? Why are we not having discussions about how to address all of the issues effecting turkeys on private and public that we have some measure of control over and ways to build public/private synergy? Aside from all of that Chamberlain comes across to me as the turkey version of James Kroll, more concerned with building his brand than actual field results.
We are north of 30 inches of rain since the first of the year, we need that to ease up or this years recruitment may not be great.
I remember when you could hear 30-50 gobblers in a morning on 1k acres in the riverbottoms. Populations were unsustainably high at that point but went to dang near none and stayed way low for the last 20+ years.
Nice job! Congrats!! Looks like some decent spurs on him too!!
Thanks, about 1 inch spurs.
Happens to us all.
