That's too bad. It's been awhile since I have seen wild turkeys. Thanks for sharing, warrior.

interesting, but who opens a seed bag like that? Did he chew it open?

That’s what happens when you mess up the string pull to open and then the language get foul and you get it open however it will.

Our idiots in fish and game blame habitat loss flooding and predators for the decline. They dont seem to want to look for any other reasons. We have had several years of wet weather but this year has had very little flooding. I have seen multiple hen turkeys in the past couple of weeks and zero babies. Maybe it's time they look for another reason.

I can see predators playing a big role with the current fur market. But I also wonder if past numbers weren't skewed somewhat as the big boom in turkeys numbers following restocking efforts occured at the height of the last major fur boom. But that's not to say numbers aren't down now and I don't think we can hang it all on neonics as numbers are also down in the pine belt areas of the southern states where the only cash crop is timber. That may be habitat and predators though.

Noticed this summer i don't see hens with chicks, only seen one such hen all summer. Only seen two doe deer with fawns also. Last summer was totally opposite, hen's with chicks everywhere and does all had a fawn if not two with them.

Seeing triple the amount of coons and coyotes on game camera's though. Heavy forest area so no agriculture reason for the decline. It's raining again now and has rained all spring and summer so that may have some affects also.

Is the decline of the turkey numbers related to the drop in fur prices maybe?

Our population was declining when fur prices were high.

You started it so I’ll add my uneducated opinion…
1. Predators, predators, predators! Just pick a WMA and walk the roads, firebreaks, etc. I walked one 300 yard stretch where turkeys were present within the past few years and not the first turkey track, not one! Not new, not old, none. But I did find 6 piles of cat scat with 3 still within a couple of hours old. Now one kitty cat ain’t taking a crap every 50 yards or so. Cat tracks and coon tracks were everywhere along this road. Another half mile stretch I filled up 3/4 of a gallon bag with coyote scat. I saw what y’all actually mean by predator trails. I believe even I could catch a coyote or 10 on that road alone.

2. Going to upset some folks with this one, but make decoys and fanning/reaping illegal. They’ve done it for ducks with spinning wing decoys in other states, so let’s do it with turkeys. Please don’t take this wrong, but I can take a person that’s never even seen or heard a turkey and set a couple decoys in front of them and all of a sudden they are turkey killers. I can give a turkey fan to anyone capable of holding one and kill 90% of any field turkeys you have. There’s no SKILL involved in any of this. It’s basically the same as baiting to me. Throw them out and they will come. Heck I saw a guy that needed a cart to get his “essentials” to the field. And he brags how he kills his limit every year. I don’t think he could make a turkey sound if he tried, I don’t even think he owns a call. He’ll tell you straight up he doesn’t need one. In the past the only way you was going to kill a bird was to either have the patience of Job or know how to call. Not any more.

3. Habitat. I will say this about my corner of GA, our DNR folks are really really improving our habitat on our WMA’s. They’ve adopted a quail management program and if you manage for quail, everything seems to prosper.
I’ve “heard” the northern WMA’s are pretty much screwed due to no timber management. If there’s no sunlight to the forest floor, there’s no food. No food means no turkeys. It’s finally coming, but limit your hunts on WMA’s and limit the amount of birds taken. Yeah, I’ve been guilty in the past of easily taking a limit of birds off one 20K acre WMA. About 6-7 years ago, I realized there’s no need to. I can take just one bird from 3 different WMA’s. Over the last few years I only take one public land bird and kill the rest on private. Even with private land we only take one bird each (3 hunters). Just this evening I was resetting a couple of traps and topped the hill on our “hopefully” dove field and there stood 3 very long bearded gobblers and 5 jakes. I knew about the gobblers already but opted not hunting them because if I shot one I would have felt obligated to put it on the wall, lol.

I’m passionate about turkeys and trap to make money to pay for turkey trips…plus it gives me views like I saw today. I truly believe by just implementing #2 above that our population down here would explode. Also, this is just my opinion, and we all know what are opinions are like.

Warrior
Thanks for that.
There's lots of ignorant people out there most wouldn't care if they read the label or not. There's folks out there that can't wait to mix there next batch of poison up to kill a weed or two or a bug or two. This no till that Monsanto came up with is a joke and has poisoned our country.

Growing up we had no turkeys and hardly any deer where i lived, it was all old growth big hardwood hills and holler's. In the 90's they came through and clear cut about the entire county and not only did turkeys and deer appear but also bobcats and of course the coyote population exploded when it was all a cut over.

I miss the big hardwood hills of my youth but that type habitat won't support much of anything except squirrels.

My dad always insisted that the bags had to be cut open. He was always worried about that string getting into the planter boxes and messing up the works.

Lots of conspiracy theories without any common sense being used. Turkey numbers peaked 15-20 years ago, and there were the same seeds being planted then as now. Not to mention numbers are down all over the east, sometimes hundreds of miles from ag fields. So that video is nothing more than clickbait garbage. I doubt there’s one single reason for the decline, but I also doubt there are many areas that DON’T have an abundance of nest predators. I personally haven’t seen a poult for several years and I live where I can see about 100 acres of fields at any given time. I do see hens grouping back up every late May, which means they lost their nests. This has been repeating for years.

Ours goes up and down from weather mostly one year 150 then 30 a few years later just a roll of the dice.

I talked to our area biologist about this back in the fall, he said it was partially due to nest predation, partially due to extremely wet springs, but that it also appeared that there was some type of disease that was also causing significant mortality and that they were going to start a study on it this spring. This is the most plausible answer to me as the area I live in has no significant row crop agriculture and there were birds everywhere 4 or 5 years ago and nothing else has really changed, I am sure there are more predators but it certainly isn't because of crop seeds.

Interesting. I have thought about this before but once again some areas have no crops. For years our population have been nose diving and I have thought that there is some reason for it but do not know what. Predators have been around forever. One problem with the habitat reason is that there are spots around here that held turkeys and now have zero. One spot held a flock of 15-25 for 10 years and then within 2 there are none. No habitat difference. Something has been going on for the last 10* years and neither I nor anyone else has figured it out.

Turkey populations are healthy in NC. We feed sunflower seeds to a gobbler at our door twice daily. He is a dandy too.

Where do I get some of that seed?

They sure aren't declining up here. They are now an official nuisance animal around here with actual attacks on people.

I see them on my dead pile quite often, along with pecking along on the shoulders of the roads in town.

How they sell licenses to "hunt" these tasteless buzzards is one of the biggest scams in recent history.

Some farmer left a field of corn out on winter a few years back. I counted an even 100 turkeys in there after the 1st snow. Bet he didn't even bother combining that come spring.

Totally agree! Especially with 2, never used and won't use a decoy. It's become to easy to kill turkeys parked on a green field with a spread of dekes.
I was taught by old timers back in the days of no turkeys. They had a set of rules the main one being if you didn't call it you didn't earn it. Green fields were unheard of as well you got into the woods and actually hunted for them.
Back then only a handful of dedicated folks chased turkeys there just wasn't enough birds for it to be popular for the masses. For that matter there were far more squirrel, rabbit and quail hunters as there just weren't the deer and turkey numbers for it to be as big as it today. One of my grandfathers was pretty much quail only the other was mostly turkey only. Today nobody chases strictly small game and every body is a deer and turkey hunter.
But I don't blame it all on just the number of hunters though because there's definitely other factors in play. One thing I strongly suspect is habitat management. Not lack of but to much. Food plots complete with liming and fertilization plus the requisite corn feeders has not only created predator sinks but it has also increased the carrying capacity of predators. I remember nights of coonhunting where treeing three coon was a great night back when it was all big woods with no green fields or feeders. Today I can ride the roads at night in some places and shine up dozens of coons on the feeders. Combine that with removal of the big hardwoods and conversion to monoculture pine and you got problems. We need to figure how we can spread the birds out like they had to back when they were scratching up acorns in the big woods rather than putting all our eggs in just a few green fields.