June. June is prime time for first renest. I have found turkey nests in July

Agree.

Coons are the worst around here for turkey nest robbing.

Generally, coons come out number 1 as turkey nest predator. My opinion - that is probably due to researchers putting telemetry equipment on hens and being able to find the nest after the hen starts nesting. Probably not many crows steal eggs from a setting hen. However, when a hen is just laying and has not started setting yet - researchers are unable to locate that nest to determine cause of predation and also the hen is not setting to ward off crows. Artificial nests composed of chicken eggs have very high predation rates by crows.

I hatch out huge numbers of eggs. I also throw out huge numbers that don't hatch, plus shells and some chicks that don't make it. When I have several full incubators going, sometimes I dump a nearly full wheelbarrow load a week. Crows definitely crack and eat eggs. I usually have 6 to 8 crows' nests on the back of my property, with around 35 crows in the murder. They check out the egg dump multiple times a day. They build their nests in honey locust trees. Opossums are the most common visitor to the egg dump, followed by coon, skunks fox and coyotes. The fox and probably the coyotes, carry off the bigger eggs and bury them with the top of the egg flush with the ground. Sometimes I find a patch of 20 plus eggs individually buried like that, a few inches apart from each other. I have found eggs, that came from my egg dump, over 1/2 mile away. I can tell because they had hatch dates written on them.

Keith

I sure do like watching those crows come apart in the scope.


Me Too. My passion!!

Exactly

Are those the ones doing damage or the ones about to do damage?I love that law

To this day, I’ll never understand how turkeys and feral pigs coexist. Pigs are notorious for rooting up and eating everything. I’ve seen area where they dug freshwater mussels. I figured they’d eat up every nest they came across . And I’m sure some do. And, yet, we still have a healthy turkey population. Same with other states with them. I don’t get it.

When I worked for Delta Water Fowl, I would find duck egg shells out on mud flats in the open. At times there were shells from 20-30 eggs. I got to where if I saw a crow I set up and called them and shotgunned them. We have a spring season. On the mud flat it was easy to see what hauled the eggs out there.

Dad killed a bear last year, when I gutted it I opened up its full stomach to see what it had been eating. It was full of almost fully developed turkey chicks and eggshells.

I dont know for sure - I would say coons, possums, yotes, etc actually search out the nests. I have always heard one of the many reasons nesting success goes down during wet weather is due to “wet hen syndrome” - hens give off more scent when they are wet and are more likely to be discovered by predators.

No doubt, hogs would destroy every nest they find, but they may be more opportunistic nest predators than coons, yotes, etc that actually search for nests.