Gobblers

Help Support CattleToday:

Man, I wish we had turkeys around here. They are some kind of fun to hunt. They have turned some loose a fews ago in the national forest, but they don't seem to survive.
 
kenny thomas said:
Did you never have a good population of turkeys or did something happen to them. I bet the hogs get a lot of eggs.
Click to expand...
We had an alright population until pine plantation,that wiped them out. I had a small flock of 12 or so in my place until Rita.
Guy I know that still has hard wood bottom has twenty or so on his place.
 
Caustic Burno said:
We had an alright population until pine plantation,that wiped them out. I had a small flock of 12 or so in my place until Rita.
Guy I know that still has hard wood bottom has twenty or so on his place.
Click to expand...
If you have time find out what variety of oak is native to your area and determine if there are turkey at present and
the presence of feral hogs and their effect on the turkey population. The state conservation may have info on hand.
My guess is if you have oak you have hogs and an uphill fight.
.
 
My ranch in Coleman county has some turkey. We use to get them on game cameras quite often especially in the spring.
One of my workers hunted last weekend and didn't see or hear any.
It's awful dry out there, my 3 acre lake is almost dry.
That's a lot of the problem this year, not much water.
 

Attachments

  • B11276B6-8AC4-4FB4-A5EF-2978ED63C956.jpeg
    B11276B6-8AC4-4FB4-A5EF-2978ED63C956.jpeg
    3.5 MB · Views: 8
We have some. The neighbors a mile or so away have a lot more than me. There is a rumor that they are hard on the young rattle snakes so the wife doesn't let anyone shoot them. If I put a shotgun on the quad I could probably shoot one nearly everyday just shooting from the quad.
 
A turkey can fly through timber like S_ _ _ through a tin horn. maybe faster!
 
kenny thomas said:
Guess it's too thick in the Big Thicket also even though there is some hardwoods
Click to expand...
Not really in the native forest.
The pine plantations are just a saw briar and yaupon thicket for the first four years. It's almost an impenetrable wall.
Only thing that flourishes is rabbits and hogs until the pine smothers the briars. We don't have a third of the deer we had in the 60's. Most of the mast producing trees were cut and burned to plant pines.
I witnessed D9 dozers with shear blades wind row thousands of acres and burn the piles to plant pines.
Neighbor and I pulled a many a black walnut and cedar from te piles and had it sawed into lumber. I still kick myself I could have bought the 250 acres across the road for 400 an acre in virgin timber. Today it looks like Hiroshima for the third time .
 
6 or 7 years ago I could count 140 birds on my place not I got ZERO!!! and it's not cause of hunting either . Turkeys are way down in Okla. and they changed some stuff on the season and limit this year but not enough they should have closed it for 3 to 5 years
 
Turkey populations go back and fourth based on weather and environment just like quail or any thing else. Too much rain or too little rain at the right or wrong times will really effect them. Predators also can play a big role, especially if they don't have enough cover due to over grazing or what ever else.

We have had flocks of 60+ birds. I haven't seen a huge flock this year but there are tons of birds out and about right now.



 
If you want more turkeys and small game, help them flourish by reducing the predators. Coons and opossums are the biggest threat to a Turkey nest full of eggs. One coon or opossum can destroy the entire nest and eggs. Multiply that times however many Turkey hens you may have and you can see how an entire new generation of birds is no more. Of the few nests that survive, the raptor birds, owls, hawks, bobcats, coyotes, feral wild dogs etc hunt the newly hatched and young birds. Predators prey on everything out there. New laws and legislation enacted now protects many of the predators and/or limits their control. Other species then suffer when the number of predators increase. If you want to change the balance in your property and if you can't do it yourself, find an experienced local trapper to help out.

Davexx1
 
Davexx1 said:
If you want more turkeys and small game, help them flourish by reducing the predators. Coons and opossums are the biggest threat to a Turkey nest full of eggs. One coon or opossum can destroy the entire nest and eggs. Multiply that times however many Turkey hens you may have and you can see how an entire new generation of birds is no more. Of the few nests that survive, the raptor birds, owls, hawks, bobcats, coyotes, feral wild dogs etc hunt the newly hatched and young birds. Predators prey on everything out there. New laws and legislation enacted now protects many of the predators and/or limits their control. Other species then suffer when the number of predators increase. If you want to change the balance in your property and if you can't do it yourself, find an experienced local trapper to help out.

Davexx1
Click to expand...
I think feral hogs wiped out our small remaining population.D336E968-1500-4363-B1C1-36BB53E9525E.jpeg
 
Davexx1 said:
If you want more turkeys and small game, help them flourish by reducing the predators. Coons and opossums are the biggest threat to a Turkey nest full of eggs. One coon or opossum can destroy the entire nest and eggs. Multiply that times however many Turkey hens you may have and you can see how an entire new generation of birds is no more. Of the few nests that survive, the raptor birds, owls, hawks, bobcats, coyotes, feral wild dogs etc hunt the newly hatched and young birds. Predators prey on everything out there. New laws and legislation enacted now protects many of the predators and/or limits their control. Other species then suffer when the number of predators increase. If you want to change the balance in your property and if you can't do it yourself, find an experienced local trapper to help out.

Davexx1
Click to expand...
I agree that predators are the number problem.
Now with the drought going on it doesn't look good
 

Latest posts

Top