How did the birds act for you?
07-02-2014, 10:04 PM
#12
Typical Buck
Thread Starter
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Hatton, Alabama
Posts: 520
I hunt with a group of guys and gals on about 3150 acres of good habitat in SE Alabama near Eufaula. The "club" has had a hunting lease on this property going on 3 decades now. I have been with this group now for almost 15 seasons. This year's turkey season was good ..... but not as good as last. We killed 11 this season, missed 1 and were busted on 2 others. Last season we were at about 2X that. The one thing that stood out this year was the heavy weight of four of the Toms that we killed. While most were the typical 17#-19# range, 4 were huge by our experience.
It probably sounds like BS to most of the readers of this post ... but we weighed not that the scales were official by any means, but has to be dang close. We had 3 gobblers that weighed right at 25# and 1 that weighed right at 23#. Of the three big boys, 2 were double bearded and one was a 7"-9"-11" triple beard. The 23# bird had hooked spurs almost 1 3/4" long , with a wide, thick 14" beard. I think the heavy body weights are due to an adjacent land owner feeding deer pellets year round using covered, open troughs. Eitehr something like that or we have a pile of fat boys !! We do nothing special as far as feeding other than putting in typical food plots.
We did notice that the early part of the season was very quiet. Forst 2 weeks it was difficult for me to find early morning gobblers. About April 1-15 the early morning was typical, then tapered off late in the season.
Personally I did not see many Jakes. Only 2. Which is some what troubling for down the road. Last spring I saw probably 10-12 Jakes. And as of late the hens I have come across have had only a hand full of poults (4-5) in tow, though I did bump one group of 4 hens off a clover field that had what looked like 30+ little ones scattering into the woods as they fled.
The property owner is thinning about 600 acres of 15 year old pines and clearing/replanging about 50 acres that were damaged in an arson fire. Plus thre are plans for about 1000 acres of control burn. The burning and thinning should create additional better habitat. I just hope the new crop birds do OK in this super wet spring/summer we have had.
One concern of mine is that we used chicken litter for our food plot fertilizer last fall as a cost cutting measure. Based upon info we have come across as of late, which I wish we had researched before, that will not be done anytime in the near future due to the risk of introducing chicken bourn parasites that adversely effect the turkeys. I just hope we have not screwed up already !!
It probably sounds like BS to most of the readers of this post ... but we weighed not that the scales were official by any means, but has to be dang close. We had 3 gobblers that weighed right at 25# and 1 that weighed right at 23#. Of the three big boys, 2 were double bearded and one was a 7"-9"-11" triple beard. The 23# bird had hooked spurs almost 1 3/4" long , with a wide, thick 14" beard. I think the heavy body weights are due to an adjacent land owner feeding deer pellets year round using covered, open troughs. Eitehr something like that or we have a pile of fat boys !! We do nothing special as far as feeding other than putting in typical food plots.
We did notice that the early part of the season was very quiet. Forst 2 weeks it was difficult for me to find early morning gobblers. About April 1-15 the early morning was typical, then tapered off late in the season.
Personally I did not see many Jakes. Only 2. Which is some what troubling for down the road. Last spring I saw probably 10-12 Jakes. And as of late the hens I have come across have had only a hand full of poults (4-5) in tow, though I did bump one group of 4 hens off a clover field that had what looked like 30+ little ones scattering into the woods as they fled.
The property owner is thinning about 600 acres of 15 year old pines and clearing/replanging about 50 acres that were damaged in an arson fire. Plus thre are plans for about 1000 acres of control burn. The burning and thinning should create additional better habitat. I just hope the new crop birds do OK in this super wet spring/summer we have had.
One concern of mine is that we used chicken litter for our food plot fertilizer last fall as a cost cutting measure. Based upon info we have come across as of late, which I wish we had researched before, that will not be done anytime in the near future due to the risk of introducing chicken bourn parasites that adversely effect the turkeys. I just hope we have not screwed up already !!
Sounds like you noticed some of the same things I did. I was hoping it was just an isolated thing but it sounds like it wasn't. The guys that I know that hunt southern Tennessee said the birds acted weird. I have never seen so many heavy birds killed in Alabama. Lots of really long spurs. Very few jakes.
Chicken litter is thought to introduce blackhead disease when it is used on pastures or green plots. Turkeys are much more susceptible to the disease.
07-06-2014, 05:13 AM
#13
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location:
Posts: 2,186
bald9eagle ... Yep, we did not do our homework before using the chicket litter. The supplier swears up and down that it is not coming breeding or laying houses. It is coming from houses wehre chicks are being fed up to be transferred to fryer houses. Supposedly the idea being that the parasite does not have time to develop. We are not willing to take the risk. For sure the stuff worked great as far as fertilizing.
I am not one for more regulations but seems it woudl benefit the poutlry business if there were parasite free litter abvailable.
More than any thing else it was the lack of Jakes that surprised me. This spring, I bet I saw a hundred hens, probably 2 dozen long beards but only a few Jakes. Last fall there were groups of hens running in the 20' - 30' count seen all across the property. I had one string of 37 ease by me early one morning. The largest group of Tom's I saw last fall numbered 9 .... but they were all studs. I am 99% certain the big double bearded one was the same one I called up for my buddy.
Next spring may tell. We'll see.
I am not one for more regulations but seems it woudl benefit the poutlry business if there were parasite free litter abvailable.
More than any thing else it was the lack of Jakes that surprised me. This spring, I bet I saw a hundred hens, probably 2 dozen long beards but only a few Jakes. Last fall there were groups of hens running in the 20' - 30' count seen all across the property. I had one string of 37 ease by me early one morning. The largest group of Tom's I saw last fall numbered 9 .... but they were all studs. I am 99% certain the big double bearded one was the same one I called up for my buddy.
Next spring may tell. We'll see.
