doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Turkeys in Grouse habitat?

In this discussion, the verdict has been passed on the guilt of turkeys (and the sloth of turkey hunters, cf. ed good's post on the despicable turkey hunter vs. the REAL hunter).

As I have said before, getting data to make those sorts of claims is darn hard. It is also expensive. If it exists, I'm unaware of it, but I have not looked hard for it either. In the meantime, it seem extremely unlikely that turkeys could or would be a significant source of mortality for quail for a whole host of reasons.

Seems like it wasn't too long ago that coyotes were The Problem for quail decline. What happened to that? Now it's turkeys. Tomorrow we will be back to whitetails.

That's what you said last time. In fact you also stated you had posted that "data" numerous times. Turns out that was an outright lie.

https://www.fws.gov/midwest/eagle/population/chtofprs.html

Here it is so you can ignore it once again. By the 1991 ban on lead shot the eagle population was well on it's way to recovery. There was no statistical change in recovery after the ban. In fact, the rate of increase actually went down.

Can we see "your" data again?

No, what I said was DDT - remember that hot topic, and keith throwing it at it was the chief downfall of raptors including eagles. This, of course, went against keith's agenda, and so the discussion progressed. Lead shot certainly contributed to that, and ingested lead shot (and more, lead bullets) are certainly killing eagles today, just not enough to slow the population's growth significantly.

Then there was the role of ingested lead and ducks and ANOTHER long diatribe from the "believers" that again went against published data and primary research. But hey, science can always be dismissed.

Or proven wrong, Brent.

Was it "armchair acrobatics" to actually read a bunch of the so-called science cited by Brent and Larry Clown in last years "Lead and Condor Deaths" thread pertaining to their outspoken belief that lead shot and lead bullets are a significant cause of lead poisoning in eagles?

Was it "armchair acrobatics" to notice that the numbers cited in these so-called scientific papers contained glaring discrepancies and huge variations in what they claimed to constitute a lethal dose of lead in eagles blood systems, and waterfowl too?

Was it "armchair acrobatics" to question the insane and dishonest assertions that most hunter killed deer left the woods littered with gut piles containing hundreds of lead bullet fragments that were then consumed by eagles?

Was it "armchair acrobatics" to catch Larry red-handed doing selective editing of the Audobon Society mission statement where he intentionally excluded their position on lead ammunition bans and sport hunting?

When repeatedly pointed out to Brent and Larry, they didn't say, hey you may be right... these can't all be true and correct. Instead, they chose to shoot the messenger, and they chose to ignore the significance of many other sources of environmental lead contamination that are much more bio-available, and much more likely to cause elevated blood lead levels in birds and animals.

Brent thinks I have an agenda. Brent is correct. My agenda is to ferret out the lies and fictional data that have been used by anti-gunners and anti-hunters who use both junk science and useful idiots like Brent and Larry (and King and Grouse Guy, etc.) to advance their own agenda of making hunting and shooting prohibitively expensive and eventually illegal.

Of course, Brent and Larry are obviously much smarter than the rest of us because only guys like them are able to respond to people they claim to IGNORE.

Yes. Yes I do.

What you actually said when discussing the lead for waterfowl ban:



And when it was I who pointed out it was the banning of DDT that had the most significant effect on the recovery of the bald eagle, your reply was:



When pressed to present that mythical literature, which you mistakenly claimed to have posted many times already, it was nowhere to be found for some strange reason.

I'm sorry, but your credibility on this topic is zilch.

I've noted before that things began a downhill slide shortly after they took the rocks off the moon during the Apollo missions.

Habitat has a whole lot to do with the numbers on any game bird. I own a 400 acre tract of land in AL. My father bought the first parcel in 1965 and I have been able to add other parcels through the years. We had a good turkey and quail population the first 15 years.

A big section of it was clearcut in 1979 and replanted in loblolly pine. The quail thrived until the pines got about 10' tall, and by 1985 they were gone. I haven't shot a single one on the place since then. We got a few turkeys around the edges for a few years after it was cut, but from 1983 til 1990 we didn't get a turkey either.

We started killing turkeys again in 1991 and have killed at least one on the place every year since. Once the pines got tall enough that the ground under them was fairly open, the turkeys moved back in, but the quail never have.

I have managed the land much differently than the way it used to be. I've got 50 acres of open land and 80 acres in longleaf pine that is burned often and looks more like a field than a forest. I burn all the rest of the timber land on a 3 year rotation, providing every kind of cover that game birds should need.

It has worked very well for the turkeys. We have taken a total of 10 gobblers off it in the past 2 seasons, and that's the most ever in the more than 50 years we've had it. But the quail still aren't there, even though it looks like great quail habitat. The land that surrounds is paper company land and poor quail habitat. My theory is that they just can't survive in isolation on small tracts. There was a lot of cutover land surrounding us in 1980, and we had 5 or 6 coveys; now I don't think I have a single one.

I don't believe that the presence of turkeys on the place is in any way keeping us from having quail. There are large areas 100 miles to the south where both are doing well on the same properties.

It may be different with grouse, but this is my experience with habitat change being the primary driver of population change of our game birds.

well, first we need to close all grouse hunting seasons...then, lets exterminate all of the varmints, including turkeys, that are known or suspected to affect grouse populations...say for 20 years...then, if by that time, the grouse have not recovered, then we really could blame hit awl on moon rocks...

Post hoc ergo propter hoc