Too many hens????

[TRG3]

In Southern Illinois, turkey season doesn't come in until the first Monday in April, so my buddy and I went coyote hunting this morning. While nothing came to our calling, in the distance across a picked soy bean field we listened to three groups of gobblers and several hens, all in the trees before fly down. After fly down, there was nothing more to be heard from the turkeys. For the future of shooting gobblers, I hope there were a bunch of hens over there. I still fondly remember my first gobbler in my home county which was over 10 years ago. I had the truck door open and was ready to slide in the seat when I barely heard a gobble some 400 yards away. It was after 11:00 a.m. and I debated as to whether I wanted to go after this tom. In addition, it was starting to sprinkle and I had no rain gear. Remembering that you can't kill them from the couch, I started slowly easing through the woods toward his occasional gobbles until I was about 100 yards away. My calls mimicked what she did, but only louder. By then, the skies had opened up and it was becoming difficult to see through my glasses. In very short, a vocal and irritated hen came my way with a gobbler some 10 yards in tow behind her. Giving him a load of #5 shot made me forgot about the cold rain running down my crack! Hens? I love 'em!!

[TauntoHawk]

No...that's a too few gobblers problem.

Isn't that always the problem, never enough gobblers

[REBELYELL]

Makes it tough for sure.

[catman529]

No such thing as too many, if you want as many gobblers as possible. There is still a pecking order, and some toms won't have any hens while some will have whole flocks of hens. They will still gobble


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[kyturkeyhunter4]

Never to many hens.

[Marc]

In a "natural" (think unhunted) or very lightly hunted population, you should expect to find more gobblers than hens. This is due mostly to hens being more vulnerable to predation during incubation and brooding.  Skewed numbers of hens might affect behavior but that really isn't a problem except in rare instances where hunting pressure is high and hunting begins before hens mate.

In view of this, some states start their seasons later and try to keep gobbler harvest to less than 50% of the tom population.

I do not know about this...

I have been lucky enough to be the first one to hunt a couple ranches, including one ranch I currently hunt...  The ranch is loaded with hens, and when I see toms they always have multiple hens...

The property holds far more birds in the winter, with a group of about 10 toms/jakes, and about 50 hens...

Turkeys have a Polygyny breeding system (1 male breeding with multiple hens).  It is my understanding that such species often naturally produce more hens than males, and that hunting pressure of the males can actually lead to more males being hatched...

As to the OT...  I certainly felt that I was dealing with a tough hen-to-tom ratio last year...  Killed one tom on a property with two other toms, each having 15-20 hens in tow with them.  Seemed the hens took turns sitting on the nest and staying with the toms...  There were always hens with those toms, until the last couple days of the season.

As mentioned, seems likely nature has a way of correcting itself though...  When gender populations become askew, breeding populations of the following cycle will often address such (i.e. too many hens, more toms will be hatched on the next breeding cycle).