I was fortunate enough to start hunting turkeys in the mid 70's in Newberry and Fairfield county. Back in the 80's and early nineties you could just go out just about any morning and hear at least five or more. To kill a turk was pretty damn easy as they were so abundant. The landscape and habitat were really in pretty good shape. A lot of fields, oaks and pine/harwood mixtures were the norm.

Contrast that to today. The state of SNF seems to get worse year after year. Not only habitat wise but turkey populations as well. I killed a turk last week on private land and decided to venture out and check out the SNF. It didn't take long for the realization to set in just how bad things were. After riding round the two counties, the habitat for the most part seemed deplorable for turkey utilization. Matter of fact I would guess, just a guess, that about 80% of what I saw was mostly pine stands with heavy sweet gum infestation along with other undesirable plant life. It occurred to me that the only decent habitat still left is limited to creek and river bottoms. A very small percentaqe of available land mass.

Of course, I just am seeing a relatively decent size of the forest and not the majority. However, if the rest of the forest is like what I have seen, turkeys from a habitat perspective are in a world of trouble. Instead of fields and open pastures which were quite common, now those are for the most part gone. Instead, unmanaged pine plantations dominate the landscape.

With a tremedous increase in hunter pressure over the last decade, combined with loss of habitat, things aren't looking real good for the turkeys future. I pray I'm wrong as fixing the landscape is something which will take major changes and a huge change in land management, which I'm not sure will ever happen.

The worst part of it that eats at me is I don't know how in the hell you fix it. Even if it were possible to control predators over such a vast area, you still have the habitat issue. Maybe one day the U.S. forest service will step up but that's like dreaming for Ronal Reagan to be president again.