Surely not?

[WOODIE13]

WV was down by 7.6% this spring, but the first two days were raining and snowing, the numbers were over 50% below the previous years, the 2nd day had 4" of snow and wind screaming.



MD had its 2nd highest harvest this year.

Here's the podcast with Dr Chamberlain

 

[bird junkie]

Tennessee dropped to 2 birds for next spring(2023), down from 3 this spring (2022) after going down from 4 for the prior decade plus. Interestingly the number of hunters who reported 4 bird kills in a season in the old TN seasons was very very low.

This spring Va reported the fourth highest harvest in history. Yet Ky, TN, WVA , Ga all reported lower harvest by perhaps 10% or so off the prior Ten Year harvest averages.
The great noise in the room about reducing the limits comes from public land hunters, and the impacts of the Chamberlain turkey biology theories .

Some astoundingly low harvest numbers in some states with huge national forest of mature hardwood and pitiful harvest numbers considering the acreage. Like less than 1000 birds from public lands in close to 2 million acres of public land in Virginia in 2022 .

The turkey hunting in the national forest started to decline many years ago with the stopping of real timber management. Also hard to take into account how many birds are killed on private land adjacent to the national forest many hunters hunt the national forest through private ground which can cut off miles of hiking. I also believe that you could add another couple thousand poached into that number the Hill jacks start hunting them in March here.

 

[WOODIE13]

The turkey hunting in the national forest started to decline many years ago with the stopping of real timber management. Also hard to take into account how many birds are killed on private land adjacent to the national forest many hunters hunt the national forest through private ground which can cut off miles of hiking. I also believe that you could add another couple thousand poached into that number the Hill jacks start hunting them in March here.

Hunted the NF in VA off Rt 55 on Cool Springs Road in the mid 90s, birds everywhere, went there again in 2002, no gobbling or sign of a Turkey.