buckpasser
Senior Member
I help manage a 2500 acre tract down the road from my house. We burn religiously on that Tract and it has plenty of turkeys. The turkeys are about gone everywhere else though.
When and size/percentage of area burned?
I help manage a 2500 acre tract down the road from my house. We burn religiously on that Tract and it has plenty of turkeys. The turkeys are about gone everywhere else though.
We've burned about 1000 acres so far this season. In stands with heavy hardwood understory we do a spring burn. Once we get the understory species we want we usually revert back to winter burns. It just depends on the stand and the situation.When and size/percentage of area burned?
I'm talking about the NPS, the don't do any here, had some big fires back in the fall.Not burning regularly is bad, but burning, especially large scale, during nesting season might be worse. How about just burn properly? It’s no more work to do it right.
Turkeys renest very often!Poorly performed burns do in fact hurt turkey populations and there is no excuse for it. All public ground could be burned ahead of turkey nesting. Burned over nests are almost always destroyed. Renesting odds are crap. There’s no way to justify this and like it or not Bartram ain’t here no mo.
@C.Killmaster, the rub is the late burns on public ground at the same the government is telling us they want to help the “population problem” by starting season later and limiting opportunity. If I don’t have a “problem” on well managed private property (that’s burned before 3/7 of each year), it hurts to see the state guys destroying nests and nesting cover. Surely you can see the issue from our side, right? It’s dumb and should be addressed to keep the state employees from looking like idiots.
And renesting success is much lower than the initial nest, plus it’s added stress on the hen.Turkeys renest very often!
Not if the original nest is kaput. I think its good to have nesting spread out, at least here. If they were all hatched at the same time and you have a week or so of cool, wet days, you are could lose most of them.And renesting success is much lower than the initial nest, plus it’s added stress on the hen.
Not if the original nest is kaput. I think it’s good to have nesting spread out, at least here. If they were all hatched at the same time and you have a week or so of cool, wet days, you are could lose most of them.
I wasn't talking about renesting after fire but I guess renesting after poult loss to other reasons are similar. I see a lot of different age group poults in the summer. Someone is renesting.Look up the stats. After the first clutch the odds are right at zero for poult recruitment. They will try, but burning over a hen’s nest is a BIG deal.
Oddly enough, all the new fangled crazy notions are beginning to look, well, crazy. Meanwhile, “science” is showing us what we should already know——burning animals or their eggs is generally bad for them. Lol!!!
I wasn't talking about renesting after fire but I guess renesting after poult loss to other reasons are similar. I see a lot of different age group poults in the summer. Someone is renesting.
Who conducts these “late season burns” that y’all are talking about ?
I’m speaking about burning on a 1-2 year interval. A 3 year interval will not successfully eliminate sweet gums and other mid story trees. 1-2 year intervals however, do.I’ll ask myself a different question. “Do I want more turkeys or less?”
If we’re top killing sweetgums on a three year fire interval and burning zero nests, but never achieving Bartram’s wiregrass ecosystem, am I okay with that? Why yes, yes I am.
I saw a video awhile back about turkey nesting and burning and these researchers were tracking hens. I don't remember the number of hens tracked but they said the loss of nests was low, if I remember correctly. I'll look for the video, probably won't find it.Not burning regularly is bad, but burning, especially large scale, during nesting season might be worse. How about just burn properly? It’s no more work to do it right.