OT: hunting land
- Thread starter ronpolk
- Start date
Haha yeah I don’t have high hopes… but I also know some people don’t like turkey hunting, so figured it’s worth asking
You must not be a turkey hunter.
You must turkey hunt in every county and know the Turkey populations. There’s over 250,000 birds in the state now.
I saw a flock fly across near my house on College Road yesterday morning. Not on my land though.
There are some good public land to hunt turkey in Mississippi. Before I moved to Texas, I used to hunt several different places along the Tenn-Tom Waterway & on Noxubee Refuge. There are tons of places. I will almost promise you there is a good patch of woods somewhere close by with a decent population to hunt. Yes you do have to compete with other hunters, but it makes it sweeter when you finally get one. One of the things I really miss is being out there on a March morning listening to the birds gobble at Day break.
The state turkey program coordinator Adam Butler would say that you’re both right. But he’s paid to be optimistic.
While we still have a healthy population by most metrics, it’s understood to be lower than it was in the 90s and to be declining. MDWFP’s words, not mine. Look for widespread season and reg changes to be announced after this season aimed specifically at addressing this concern.
Where is the decline? Everywhere up here there’s turkeys in every little patch of woods where there used to not be any.
I was not around here in the 80’s and 90’s when a lot of people act like MS had a lot more turkeys. But I tend to agree with you, when there is good turkey habitat, there seems to be a decent population. Again, I have no basis to compare back to previous times in MS. I’ve got a few public spots I go to and early in the season they are good. I typically see and hear turkey.
I hunt in North MS. It seems like if you have turkeys they are highly visible and may lead to the perception they are everywhere. If you are like me, it would seem there are no turkeys in the whole world, except for when I travel along the highways.
I’m just repeating what was reported to the commission a few weeks ago.
Not to be rude, but your observations may just not be consistent with the broader trend. I know some small places like that, too. Coincidentally, these places had no deer 25 years ago either and now have plenty. I do know that the people actively managing large tracts for turkeys still have thriving populations. I suspect the glut of poorly managed and unmanaged timber is largely to blame.
I’m sure there are places where there’s decline. I’m just speaking for my area where there’s birds all over the place where back in the 80s and 90s the only turkeys were behind the levee and my Facebook is full of pictures of people killing birds around here.
Been hunting turkeys since the 1970’s and it has slowly gotten worse and worse and worse. Used to kill my limit every year and then call up birds for others. It’s now reached the point where we have just about given up. Our place is in Noxubee County and between me and my sons we average killing one bird between the 3 of us about every 3 years. 3 birds total in the last 10 years. I used to help with a little guiding in the Spring on a large operation over in the edge of Alabama. They used to be covered up in turkey’s and now they are lucky to kill 2 or 3 total for the whole season. Poult survival rates have been bad to terrible for a long time. Lots of predators too. Big difference in seeing young turkeys along the highway and them surviving to be a mature gobbler 2-3 years later. I would completely support reducing the limit to 1 in our area for a few years. Also game wardens need to hammer people shooting them over corn. That’s not hunting. They should be ashamed.
Turkey hunting in my part of the state is strange to say the least. I hunt and live in the same county about 15 miles apart. Where I hunt there are turkeys everywhere, I’ve quit counting at 100 multiple times. The thing is that because there are so many, they can’t be called. Not just by me but professional Turkey hunters have tried and failed. I have some connections with Drury Outdoors and those guys have hunted and filmed this property and failed, they were amazed at the turkeys they saw but couldn’t call in close. I personally think we need to thin some hens but I’m not a wildlife biologist? Where I live which is rural and actually geographically the same ridge line as the hunting land I have seen exactly three turkeys in my lifetime.
I’ve been been turkey hunting for 33 years. The population in general is at its lowest levels across the state I’ve seen during this time. We did have a decent hatch last year which was refreshing. In the 80’s and 90’s you could see birds in dang near every field across the state. Now I’m traveling the whole state to hunt where in my earlier years (unless invited) I rarely left central MS. In my opinion there’s a number of factors affecting the population, habitat changes, increased predation including hunting efficiency, climate change (increases flooding in nesting areas), and change in farming practices. It’s going to be a long road to reverse the trend and I hope we can turn around. I miss the days of hearing 20 plus birds sound off in the mornings.
In our area fire ants are a huge problem on the little poults right out of the egg. That is assuming that the coons didn’t get the eggs before they hatched. If they avoid the coons and fire ants the coyotes are there to get the left overs. They really have a hard time successfully raising a bunch of little ones. Another overall big portion of the down trend over the last 40 years is the millions of acres of hardwood forest that have been cut and then replanted in pine plantations. Mature hardwood forests are really critical for flourishing turkey populations.
Many of the same factors that have hurt the turkey populations are the exact same factors that have destroyed our wild, native quail populations. There was some chemical that was very effective on the fire ants and when it got banned that was the beginning of the end of of the quail. It hurt them worse than the turkeys.
Predators have always been a problem with turkeys. I loved turkey hunting when I lived in Oktibbeha County, and I usually would bump elbows with our local biologist. We discussed their populations more than once and he told me that the population of turkeys in his area (East MS) seemed to fluctuated with the population of raccoons. When I asked if there was anything they could do to control those numbers, he said that they said eventually they will get a disease outbreak like distemper that will cut down the population. He said the skunks were just as bad, but nature took care of itself with their population control as well.
The one wild card that you cannot control are the fire ants. Fire ants don't have anything to control them. You spend all your time just trying to control them in the yard much less on your hunting grounds. Until they figure out a way to effectively control fire ants you're gonna have a problem with turkey. The only thing that concerns me is this is sort of the way things went with quail back in the 80s. Loss of habitat was the biggest contributing factor to cutting down quail populations.
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Just reading this post while I turkey hunt in Wilson County, Texas right now. Lol
Rain and colder where seem to have really changed things for me. Last weekend on Youth Weekend, had gobbles all day both days. Saw a lot of birds, no shots....this weekend, nothing
Rain and colder where seem to have really changed things for me. Last weekend on Youth Weekend, had gobbles all day both days. Saw a lot of birds, no shots....this weekend, nothing
On some of our land we are working to create ideal quail habitat. We have several large coveys on the place and we want them to have everything to thrive and grow. Already full of turkeys and deer.
You are very blessed. We have tons of deer, very few turkeys, and no quail. Last little covey of birds was probably 10 years ago. Haven’t seen a pair of spring birds or heard one whistle in at least 5 years. We are in a large agricultural area between Brooksville and the Alabama State line.
I was lucky when I was a kid I grew up down the street from a man who raised and trained bird dogs. As soon as deer season was winding down or finishing, we would start working dogs almost every afternoon after school from the middle of January to the end of February. I spent my entire allowance on 20 gauge shells, and had so much fun.
Quail, turkey, ducks, dove... I really loved to bird hunt over deer. I never join one of those clubs spent every day with hunter orange on. It was doing till I get older that I got a place to hunt deer and really got into it but I will always love bird hunting.
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