LBL Quota Hunt And Youth Hunt Cancelled .

[deerhunt1988]

Or go back to half day hunts. Those are scientific based.

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please post the scientific evidence of half-day hunts

You can Google : Proceedings of the National Wild Turkey Symposium. https://www.google.com/search?client=ms ... 0Symposium

Part of the jist is that 40 %-60% of nests are destroyed and 6%-20% are abandoned, furthermore the harvesting of hens (legal or illegal) ran 5%- 20%. 20% was high in one segment of a Virginia study. As turkey populations expanded harvest rates went up in states allowing all day hunting and the % of hen harvest went up as well. Missouri was noted (& more studies done in Missouri) that the population increased but harvest remained pretty constant. A correlation was made and noted in the Connecticut and a Missouri study between human disturbance and nest abandonment. The study in Missouri looked at the feasibility of All day hunting. The outcome was that because seasons are set for Median nesting dates , in the middle to later part of the season more hens are nesting and on the nest longer, by taking human disturbance out of the field at noon/1pm there was less chance of flushing hens off of the nest or hens being poached and therefore loosing the hen and the nest. Also the research shows that only 6%-10% of hens that loose or abandon their nests, renest.
Furthermore, in states that went from half day hunting to all day hunting, they're was a marked Spike in harvest. Unfortunately there was no research that tracked time of harvest, so was it the increase in population or hunting hours available or both.
So by reducing the hunting hours available you reduce the harvest and reduce the abandonment and harvesting of hens. If you look at harvest numbers for individual states, keep in mind the # of hunters and weather conditions for that season, as well as estimated preseason populations.

Https://northernwoodlands.org/outside_s ... urkey-nest

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... cpc6ugFv5Q

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... 1952594240
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3802192?seq=1

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... 1952594240

You could run around in circles all day on this. But really, you could point the blame more to season-timing and length rather than all day hunting. As far as evidence on all day hunting leading to increased flushed hens and nest abandonment, the research is still lacking. Of course if you reduce hunting hours, there will be less human-turkey encounters. The same thing could be accomplished by shortening the season. Besides, there are far fewer hunters afield in the afternoon than mornings. Do you really believe timing of day is related to illegal hen harvest? It'd make no sense that more hens would be killed in the afternoon than morning.

If there was sufficient evidence that afternoon hunting was really hurting populations, more states wouldn't be legalizing it. If it wasn't for the recent string of bad hatches in MO, it wouldn't have surprised me if they had went to all day hunting. They were highly considering it. But given the current circumstances, I don't see it happening. They'd catch too much flack. And for the record, I'm glad MO didn't go to all-day hunting. I figure there will be an influx in hunting pressure now since eastern KS went to a 1-bird limit.

The good news is many states across the southeast collectively have a ton of GPS'd birds right now. Hopefully in a few years we can get some more definitive answers to a lot of these questions.