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one gobbler
Lamentations on end of spring turkeys
RAINER
The 2016 spring season may
have ended Saturday with a
bang or with a whimper for
Alabama's turkey hunters. For
some, it was the spring of
hope. For others, it was the
spring of despair.
“It just depends on who you
talk to,” said Chuck Sykes,
V about turkey hunting success,
and the veracity of that infor-
mation was always extremely
suspect. '
“If somebody kills a turkey
and posts a photo of it on
Facebook, and 15 of their
friends didn’t kill one, what
does that do,” he said. “It
makes them unhappy. Twenty
years ago, you didn’t know
numbers.
“It’s not 1,000 acres of big,
over-mature hardwood forest
that’s pretty and makes you
feel good. People tell me they
saw tons of turkeys in there
during bow season. I said,
‘Sure you did. There were tons
of acorns. What’s in there for
them to eat now? Not much.’ ”
Habitat diversity is crucial
amnrtab 12 Utter
Marengo Academy PTA recently
rewarded Mrs. Judy Etheredge's 2nd
grade class with an ice cream party.
The 2nd grade class sold over 200
ferns in the recent fundraiser giving
them the honor of top class in sales.
2nd grade students are front row (L to
a study on turkey dynamics in
Alabama. Sykes said the
researchers are smack-dab in
the middle of the study.
“We’ve got some turkeys
with transmitters that have
gone on the nest,” Sykes aid.
“We'll see how successful they
are. Hopefully, they’ll bring
broods off that we can watch
through the year. If something
Some of the people I’ve
talked to, like Dan Moultrie
and two-time calling champion
Larry Norton, contend there
are a lot more turkey hunters in
the woods these days, and the
turkeys are responding to the
added pressure.
“When we were growing
up, you had to learn how to
Thursday, May 12, 2016
R) Addison Griffith, Layla Moseley,
Samantha Parker, Bailey Trotter and
Peyton Gerald. Back row Madison
Gibson, Sealy Grace Martin, Landon
Bedwell, Raegen Averette, Morgan
Gibson, Anna Westbrook and Gabe
Stockman.
club. Now there may be four
sure-enough turkey hunters
and 10 that might just go sit on
a food plot every once in a
while. Those 10 turkeys may
have turned into 20 turkeys.
That’s a reality, but that’s not
the problem. The problem is
recruiting more turkeys, which
goes into proper habitat man-
agement with more brood-
Director of the Alabama about it. If you went turkey to maintain a thriving
wildlife happens to them, we’ll know. turkey hunt,” Sykes said. rearng
habitat. .
Wildlife and Freshwater hunting and didn’t hear any- population,
according to “This study is going to give “You had to learn the biology
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m
Fisheries Division. “Some thing, you went to work.” Sykes. us baseline
data that Alabama of the critter, what they needed glad there are more
hunters out
people are griping and com-
plaining. Some said it was the
worst season they’ve ever had.
Some said it was the best sea-
son they've ever had.”
Sykes said the condition of
the habitat appears to be the
driving factor in the success or
disappointment for the hunters.
“It just depends on the prop-
erty you were hunting,” he
said. “On one piece of proper-
ty I hunted, there were trail
camera pictures during deer
season and trail camera pic-
tures during the spring. But,
they just didn’t gobble the days
I hunted. That doesn’t mean
the turkeys weren’t there, that
disease had killed them or they
just disappeared. They just
didn’t gobble, and that makes
for an unhappy hunter.
“For the vast majority of us,
deer-hunting a turkey is not
something we enjoy doing. We
want to hear them gobble. We
want to play with them. We
want to make them call.”
The worst—case scenario is
when the property does not
support a huntable population
of turkeys.
“On some property, there
weren’t any turkeys there,”
Sykes said. “At other places,
turkeys gobbled their brains
out. So it was all site-specific.
Honestly, there may have been
more turkeys in the ’808, but I
don’t know that for a fact.”
Sykes blames social media
for much of the season of dis-
content. In the ’80s, very little
information was distributed
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'g’tiidé’ arid fimanage-
Sykes thinks social media
has had the same effect on
hunter satisfaction for turkey
hunters as trail cameras for
deer hunters. .
“There are a lot of unhappy
deer hunters because they can’t
kill that 130-inch deer they are
seeing from 11:30 (pm) to 3
(am) on their trail cameras,”
he said. “Twenty years ago we
just hunted. We thought there
was a good deer there. If we
didn’t see him, well, we just
didn’t see him. Now we get
upset because the deer is noc-
tumal.
“It’s the same with turkey
hunters. Some people are
going to kill turkeys and some
aren’t.” .
Sykes, wholeounts turkey
ment consultant as previous
vocations, said the ideal habi-
tat for turkeys hasn’t changed
in the last 30 years.
“It’s the same,” he said.
“It’s proper timber manage-
ment with burning and wildlife
openings. It’s also predator
control. But the biggest key is
brood—rearing habitat, Old
field-style habitat with clover
plots that produce a bunch of
bugs. You want a two—year—old
burn that has some understory
where hens can successfully
nest and bring off little ones.
You want roads connecting to
make it easy to get around and
pick bugs. Then if there’s a
problem, they can duck back in
the bushes. To me brood-rear-
ing habitat is the key to turkey
“A monoculture is not good
for anything,” he said. “For
deer, turkeys, quail, you need
that diversity. Places with
diversity had good seasons. I
know some folks who limited
out (five turkeys) in the first
two weeks of the season.
“As far as killing turkeys, I
had a terrible season. I killed
one, if that’s what you base the
whole season on. But I’ve been
on 10 other turkey hunts where
turkeys were killed by people I
went with and called for.”
Sykes said he has been
keeping meticulous records of
his turkey hunting for the past
20 years, and, while each sea-
son is different, the average
result ends up being about the
same. I I L i
“It has averaged 2.3 days of
hunting per turkey shot at for
the past 15 years,” he said.
“I’m not bragging, but if I hunt
for three days, somebody is
going to shoot at a turkey.
They may kill him or they may
miss him. That’s just the way
it’s averaged out.
“Last year, it was 3.3 days.
This year it went down to 2.2.
I’m rocking along where I’ve
been for the past 15 years. I
don’t get to hunt as much as I
did 15 years ago, when I was
calling up 25 turkeys a year. I
had 15 shot at this year. On a
ratio, the hunting was just as
good.”
Wildlife and Freshwater
Fisheries has contracted with
Auburn University to conduct
has never had. We’re trying to
look at nesting success, hunter
harvest and brood success.
There are a lot of things we
don't know. We’ve got a pretty
good idea, but we need the sci-
entific data to back it up. In a
couple of years, we hope to be
able to have some answers.”
and where they were going
during certain times of the
spring.
“Back in the ’805, you’d be
in a hunting club, and there
might be two people who hunt-
ed turkeys. Let’s just say it was
a good year and you killed 10
turkeys off your 3,000-acre
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334.295.5911 I
there. I hope we get more. But
people have to understand that
with more hunters and hunting
pressure, we have to do more
quality management. You’ve
got to have better data so you
can make season and harvest
recommendations so we’ve got
critters to hunt in the future.”
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