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Post by greghopper on Feb 28, 2019 21:20:00 GMT -5
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Post by tomthreetoes on Feb 28, 2019 23:36:16 GMT -5
I think a lot of folks would like to know the answer to that question also. Is it nest predators, bad hatches, or increasing bobcat populations. I do know the turkey numbers on our property have dropped considerably in the last 8-10 years. I would think the NWTF and state wildlife agencies would be working hard to figure out what the problem is but there doesn't seem to be much research being done just lip service.
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Post by esshup on Mar 1, 2019 5:07:50 GMT -5
My bet is on nest predation and predation in general, (nest, poults and adults) due to the low fur prices since the late '70's has a lot to do with it. I also think that the increasingly clean farming practices have slowly reduced the habitat areas needed for successful turkey nesting. The more woodlots you see cleared out to make room for crops reduces their safe roosting areas too.
I don't think it's a single solitary thing, but a combination of things that is causing it.
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Post by parrothead on Mar 1, 2019 6:22:41 GMT -5
I know Auburn U. Is doing a study in Alabama to try and figure out what is doing on. There have been talks of dropping the limit from 5 to 3 and a shorter season.
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Post by MuzzleLoader on Mar 1, 2019 6:27:24 GMT -5
Agencies are often under pressure to open seasons early because hunters are scouting and hearing toms. They’re afraid the birds will ‘be done’ by the time the season opens. But seasons that open too early probably disrupt the breeding process. Ideally, you want to time the season so that more than 50 percent of the hens are sitting on the nest by opening day.”
Post that ahead of all the complaints before our season opens.
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Post by jjas on Mar 1, 2019 7:29:30 GMT -5
My bet is on nest predation and predation in general, (nest, poults and adults) due to the low fur prices since the late '70's has a lot to do with it. I also think that the increasingly clean farming practices have slowly reduced the habitat areas needed for successful turkey nesting. The more woodlots you see cleared out to make room for crops reduces their safe roosting areas too. I don't think it's a single solitary thing, but a combination of things that is causing it. I agree it's a combination of things, and the number of very wet springs we've had (at least in the southern part of the state) have to factor in as well.
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Post by Pinoc on Mar 1, 2019 7:48:30 GMT -5
Our farm had very few turkeys until I started trapping. Two years after taking 30 raccoons and several opossum the flock flourished. Then I stopped and now we are back to only seeing a few. Definitely a connection there.
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Post by featherduster on Mar 1, 2019 8:05:13 GMT -5
The numbers are way down by me.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2019 8:41:12 GMT -5
The last two years my neighbor and I have taken dozens of raccoons and the numbers of chicks and hens with chicks have increased. So many coons have been trapped within the cities and towns and then released out in the country.
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Post by esshup on Mar 1, 2019 9:27:48 GMT -5
Just received a text from a buddy in W. Va. this morning. He walked out of the house to go to work and there was a 'coon next to the front door on his porch, looking at him as he walked out of the house, and didn't run off. In broad daylight.... A .22lr solved that situation.
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Post by jman46151 on Mar 1, 2019 11:48:03 GMT -5
Just received a text from a buddy in W. Va. this morning. He walked out of the house to go to work and there was a 'coon next to the front door on his porch, looking at him as he walked out of the house, and didn't run off. In broad daylight.... A .22lr solved that situation. I call those "daytime raccoons". They tend to not live very long around my place.
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Post by coaldust on Mar 1, 2019 17:11:44 GMT -5
I didnt read everyones posts & Im not an expert. That answer is easy. Loss of habitat & the explosion of Bobcats in the midwest.
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Post by HillBillyJeff on Mar 1, 2019 22:43:51 GMT -5
I am seeing a lot of turkeys here. Doesn't seem to be a shortage at all.
Knock on wood for the upcoming season.
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Post by esshup on Mar 1, 2019 23:53:09 GMT -5
Found a turkey carcass while I was pruning hardwood saplings today. Had spurs about 1" long. Legs were attached to the skeleton, the scaly parts of the legs were still there, the main body was just bones, no head/neck, and the wings were mostly still feathered. No meat on the skeleton to speak of. No tail either.
It was in a WSG area where I've seen feral cats moving around, right next to a tree line.
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Post by lawrencecountyhunter on Mar 2, 2019 10:10:40 GMT -5
Found a turkey carcass while I was pruning hardwood saplings today. Had spurs about 1" long. Legs were attached to the skeleton, the scaly parts of the legs were still there, the main body was just bones, no head/neck, and the wings were mostly still feathered. No meat on the skeleton to speak of. No tail either. It was in a WSG area where I've seen feral cats moving around, right next to a tree line. You think a house cat would take on an adult turkey? I'm sure they destroy some poults, I can't imagine them taking anything more than a couple months old though. I could be wrong though, even your typical barn cat is a pretty finely tuned killing machine.
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Post by esshup on Mar 2, 2019 10:20:10 GMT -5
Found a turkey carcass while I was pruning hardwood saplings today. Had spurs about 1" long. Legs were attached to the skeleton, the scaly parts of the legs were still there, the main body was just bones, no head/neck, and the wings were mostly still feathered. No meat on the skeleton to speak of. No tail either. It was in a WSG area where I've seen feral cats moving around, right next to a tree line. You think a house cat would take on an adult turkey? I'm sure they destroy some poults, I can't imagine them taking anything more than a couple months old though. I could be wrong though, even your typical barn cat is a pretty finely tuned killing machine. I don't know for sure. When I raised pheasants for dog training I had a feral cat kill a number of them, but it covered up the dead bird with debris once it was done feeding. This wasn't covered. But you are right, a full grown turkey could very well be too big for a house cat. I honestly don't know what did it. It was maybe 50-75 yards off of a gravel road, but near the end of the road, and cars would only be going 15-20 mph there. Thinking about it, maybe it died when it got so blasted cold here a month ago and just was scavenged clean? The carcass or should I say skeleton was still held together by ligaments or whatever they are called when I picked it up by one wing and threw it into the small ditch. But there wasn't any meat per-se left on the bones. Still moist enough to be a little flexible, so I honestly don't know when it died. It wasn't near anywhere they roost. I'll be back there this weekend and I'll take a picture of what's left.
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Post by moose1am on Mar 2, 2019 11:16:05 GMT -5
I think a lot of folks would like to know the answer to that question also. Is it nest predators, bad hatches, or increasing bobcat populations. I do know the turkey numbers on our property have dropped considerably in the last 8-10 years. I would think the NWTF and state wildlife agencies would be working hard to figure out what the problem is but there doesn't seem to be much research being done just lip service. It takes money to do all that research. I can tell you that the current Director of IDNR F&W is a hunter and targets Turkey and Deer himself. So knowing Mark Reiter for over 40 years I can tell you that he cares about the wildlife and is very smart. Mark said that the IDNR F&W is trying to work to improve the HABITAT so that more wildlife will flurish here in IN. Unfortunately his retiring in May of this year. So we are going to lose a very talented, smart and dedicated wildlife biologist. He said he has some property now that he will built a home on and go hunting and fishing a lot more during his retirment. He started out as a property manager for IDNR F&W at Glendale F&W area back in 1977 or close to that time. And he worked his way up though the IDNR F&W. I told him on the phone last Sunday that we need more fish habitat in some of the older reserviors and he said that was already happening. The IDNR F&W Fishery guys are putting in more fish attractors in older lakes in IN. Mark and I both took the same class at Purdue University with Professor Weeks. And we learned about how important it is to improve the wildlifes habitat. Without new habitat it will be harder to increase the numbers. And with fewer hunters buying hunting license the funding for the IDNR F&W is going down. We need to get the legiislature to fund the improvement of wildlife Habitat so that we hunters have more land to hunt on. We need more public lands as not everyone can afford to buy land to hunt on or farm. Unless you are a family member or friend of a land owner it's hard to find land where you can hunt things like Turkey. On a side note: My parents purchased an acre of ground right next to a medium sized farm land. We had corn or beans or wheat growing behind the house in a 30 acre farm. I use to walk thought the field after it was tilled up for the spring and look for arrow heads and anything else that interested me. We never saw a turkey when I was a kid growing up. Once we have a peacock in a tree in our back yard but that guy escaped from Mesker Park Zoo and was a runaway that ended up in our back yard tree. We never saw White tailed deer either. Ironically the farm was sold and developed into homes. The hill behind my parents house was purchased by a neighbor and they built a new house on three acres of ground. My days of being able to shoot my 12 gauge shot gun out in the back yard was no more. Now there is a house with people running around playing where I use to shoot my gun. We lost habitat that was ideal for wildlife. What was once a wheat field with food for wildlife is now homes and grass lawns and 30 year old trees. The farmers must have had to cut down many trees to make the farm land and now the home owners are planting those trees and allowing them to grow to maturity. Now we have fox and gray squirrels running around in our yard. And a few years ago I saw a wild turkey in the back yard. I've not seen them lately but I hope that they are still around in the woods on the other side of where the farm field used to be. And we see 4 to 6 female White Tailed Deer in the area all the time. There is a huge herd of deer which cross the road and use the yards to feed on the grass. They live on the North Side of the Road and cross this road to get to the area that used to be the farm I talked about above. They are very active and exciting to watch. They are very active at dusk. When it snowed the last time I found their tracks in the snow showing where they cross over the road and went through the year to the area behind my parents home. There is an apple tree on the North side of the road and one behind my mom's house in her next door neighbor's yard. So in the fall the deer like to feed on the apples. But I'd like to see more Wild Turkeys. Now the woods that is just to the East of the old farm land is still there. But a home was build in the middle of that woods with a narrow lane that winds off the main road into the woods. So the deer have a lot of places to roam in the woods to the South of the parents house. And to the North across the road there is a big woods where the deer and wildlife can roam. Habitat is what we have right in the middle of a subdivsion. But my point is that we have more Wild Turkey now than we had before. And the wildlife habitat has been deminished. We use to have huge 10 ft tall 8 ft wide rose bushes surrounding my parents land. They were ideal to harbor snakes and rabbits and birds. But they are long gone and the land is more sterile now. Fence rows have gone the same as the parents rose bushes. And with the fence rows with the wild life. We need more fence rows not less. We need more land that sutible for wild life to grow and thrive. But we have less habitat now. We also have more people and more development that takes away the habitat that the wildlife need to thrive. So we need to get money into the IDNR so that they can buy more land. As the coal companies finish digging the coal out of the earth and put that land back into production though reclaimation actions the IDNR needs to swoop in and buy up that land and turn it into Fish and Wildlife areas for the hunters to use again. I'm sort of lucky in that the area where I live has many lands owned by coal companies and these lands are full of wildlife. Turkey, waterfowl, deer and maybe a few bobcats. And then there is the climte change that's going on. Anyone with eyes know that it's been wet more lately. The last few years have been very wet springs. And the summers are getting hotter. I'm sure that the wet weather has had some type of impact on the wild Turkey's ablity to bring up more turkeys. If the nest gets wet and or flooded then the clutch won't hatch. And I know that we have more bobcats now than we had in the past. I see them crossing the roads in Warrick County. I see red fox also. And then there the increase numbers of coyotes. We have them in our yard too. They too eat other wildlife like rabbits and maybe even Wild turkeys. We just need more habitat and that's the key. Well just have to add this to this post. Last night I had 10 (Ten) White Tail Deer in my mom's back yard eating the grass in what used to be my dad's garden. Dad used a lot of phosphate rock on the soil in his garden. The garden is about 1/3 of an acre. He started gardening back in 1958 and continued until 1993. And he would drive to Owensboro or Rockport to buy bags of this phosphate rock and put tha ton the garden. Even to this day I can get on google earth and look at the property from space and see how much greener the grass is in the area that was once his garden. I had that garden tilled up for the last time and planted grass on the area. That is the richest and thickest grass in the neighbor hood. I guess the deer like to eat that grass as there were ten of them out there last night. It was just too dark to take a picture of them with my smart phone though the double pane window. They are growing the heard. This is the most deer I've seen every at one time other than one time up in Cades Cove in the Smokey Mountains. They have a lot of White Tail Deer up in the Cades Cove area. I could buy a cross bow and sit on the roof and shoot deer all night long is I could see them in the dark. I've never hunted deer in my life. I've been chased up a tree one time while camping out with the boy scouts during the deer rut. A big male came into camp and chased everyone out of their tents. Well the camp leaders woke us all up and warned us about the big deer in the camp grounds. I see a lot of deer in the Blue Grass Area when driving around at dusk. And I've seen a big buck just vanish after seeing it cross the road in front of my car and go off to the side of the road. There was only a small amount of ground before the water's edge at the North End of Loon Pit. That deer just laid down and vanished. He didn't swim away as I was only about 10 seconds away from him by Truck. I was going about 40 mph on Boonville New Harmony Road heading East and got to where the Deer cross the road in less than 10 seconds. I first saw him about 100 yards out in front of my truck. He went South off the road into the little land area between the roadway and the water. I'm not sure how he got away so fast. I've seem them on the Hillside out off St John's Road when parked at the top of the Hill on St John's Road. Little Ditney Hill is what they call it IICR. Anyway they can lay down in the grass and just vanish from sight. And I was using 10X binoculars and still could not see them when they layed down in the tall grass.
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Post by moose1am on Mar 2, 2019 11:23:33 GMT -5
The last two years my neighbor and I have taken dozens of raccoons and the numbers of chicks and hens with chicks have increased. So many coons have been trapped within the cities and towns and then released out in the country. I live trapped and relocated several raccoons from the wood deck on my house. I was feeding the birds with a bird feeder filled with sunflower seeds. I didn't realize that raccoons were eating the sunflower seeds out of the bird feeder at night. They were nesting in a tree next to my house in Warrick County East of Evansville, IN. I also caught my next doors neighbors cat one time in the Havaheart Live Animal Trap. I caught and moved a few fox squirrels too. And a few oppossems. I stopped putting out sunflower seeds now and the nuasence critters are gone now hopefully. Now the birds will have to find another bird feeder.
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Post by parkerbow on Mar 2, 2019 19:40:53 GMT -5
I say the population is trending downward due to predators. We have raccoons, coyotes, foxes and now a boom in bobcats and they all have to eat. I also think hawks and owls take out a lot of the poults when they are young. The hawks and owls are protected and the fur prices are in the toilet so not many trappers around anymore.
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Post by tomthreetoes on Mar 3, 2019 8:06:46 GMT -5
I hope to start a coon trapping project next season. Conditions on the home front wouldn't allow it this winter. I've been researching the different trap types and will probably order several dog proof traps this summer.
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