I weeded these pictures out of about 15,000 just this winter of turkeys alone, there is a flock of over fifty that come in almost twice a day. I only seen a few beards, I thought that someone said that they could freeze of if the winter was bad is this true?
You're seeing hens and jakes, most likely a bachelor group of toms somewhere. You have the ladies, they will come!
Good lord man.........I'm not sure it safe to be out there! You better call for reinforcements. Surely some of us would come protect you.
I sure hope your areas not like some I have hunted we would see Turkey all fall and winter roaming all over then they would move off our property to spring somewhere else. That looks like its going to be a fun spring if they stay! Oh Yeah and I'll help sit a watch of guard duty for that protection detail
Covey master, I have turkeys stealing in the spring and raccoons during the summer, I just ground feed right now but thinking about getting some feeders I don't think the deer even get 25% of the corn.
Mine take turns, lol They all roam across the field every morning grazing on wheat then eat at the feeder and continue on grazing wheat , out of the field on the other side.
Do you manage land just for deer? I seen the pics of your controlled burn was that for regrowth or Fire prevention?
No, I manage the ranch for quail, deer and turkey with an emphasis on reestablishing healthy quail populations. The quail and deer are dear to my heart, the turkeys I love but I'm not a turkey hunter and they are a happy by product of the quail and deer focus. That burn on the other property was management for native warm season grasses. It keeps the woody stemmed invasives and cedars down and removes the thatch for quail chicks to forage under the clump grass canopy. We rotational burn 1/4 of our native every year. We light disk a portion of it, burn a portion and leave a portion untouched for cover and then start the rotation over again.
Awesome what kind of dogs do you run for your birds? I currently have a job that I can retire at 50 and my ideal retirement job would be to manage or help manage a game preserve or a large tract hunting club but I need to start learning farming and game management practices, the farming I'm surrounded by the game management not so much.
I like Weimaraners personally. I've had one for 11 years and couldn't be happier with her, unfortunately she's getting a bit old and out of shape for very long hunts now but I'll likely go back to that breed at some point. My landlord doesn't even have a dog yet, have not asked him what he's going to do for a dog when we open up quail hunting on the ranch. We'll probably be building a kennel and I imagine I'll be adopted as a caretaker/trainer for the ranch dogs too, lol. We've not had the management program going long enough to have a safely hunt-able surplus of birds yet. Our whistle counts have indicated about a 300% increase in quail since 2012 though. That's an encouraging gain but starting from a decimated wild quail population, there's still a ways to go. I'm anticipating if 2015 is as good as 2014 that we'll probably have the first annual ranch quail hunt this fall though I imagine it would be a short hunt and few harvested birds. I feel like we have about two more years of crop rotations and trapping and habitat management before we'll have bird numbers to a comfortable level. Deer and turkey are relatively easy to manage for...the quail are damn rough being on the bottom of the food chain.
