You dont understand my point. My point is, all SCDNR ever does to tackle anything is regulatory. Hardly ever is the discussion about, "what can we do to improve brood habitat," or "this year we purchased 1,000 additional acres of WMA and intend to create quality turkey habitat." All I ever hear is, "now the Francis Marion can only be hunted Wednesdays and Saturdays for waterfowl," and "now you can only shoot 1 turkey in the first 10 days." Increased regs can help, but if all you do is regulate, in three decades there wont be any birds left to regulate. Regs dont increase recruitment. Ive been to alot of different states to hunt and fish, and this state has to have the most poorly managed DNR Ive seen.
The data has stated poult mortality has been down for the past decade or more. So now everybody wants to look into the issue? The turkey is not at the forefront on this states agenda.
"George Washington didn't use his freedom of speech to defeat the British, he shot them."
If people from 34 states came here to turkey hunt this year maybe it should be....wonder what we could do for turkeys with all he money spent to buy that piece of property on Charleston Harbor, if that went through? I’m sure that’s having a positive impact on our resources.
\"We say grace and we say maam, if you ain\'t into that, we don\'t give a damn.\" HW Jr.
That's exactly right. The result of these meetings will be more regulations to take away from our hunting opportunity with absolutely nothing done to increase poult survival.
We'll still be averaging less then 2 poults surviving per nest, but at least we get to hunt less!
Basically it'll be FMNF/SNF Waterfowl Reg Change 2.0 and some of the people in this forum will applaud them for doing so. It's a real head scratcher.
And I couldn't agree more with your last sentence. There's a lot to like about South Carolina, but SCDNR isn't one of those things.
Well SCDNR is a regulatory agency so naturally that's what they're going to do. They're not a land management agency. If you have a land use or land management concern you need to work with the governing bodies that have the authority to tell a landowner he can't cut wood all the way to creeks bank.
You can't ask scdnr to do something that the legislature hasn't given them the authority to do.
"Hunt today to kill tomorrow." - Ron Jolly
DNR can’t manage private property which is where the majority of turkeys are in SC. They can regulate season dates and bag limits so that’s what’s happening. It’s up to the landowner to manage their nesting and brood habitat and predator populations if they want higher poult production/survival.
Last edited by Coastal Woodie; 07-13-2023 at 05:20 PM.
But they manage WMAs. Why can't we push for them to do so in such a way that results in more poult survival?
There are plenty of states with thriving turkey populations despite plenty of hunting pressure. Why can't SC be on that list?
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For anyone bitching, go buy some land and manage it! Y’all are the same ones bitching about govt yet you expect the state to manage lands like you are hunting on a private plantation. Can’t have it both ways!!
That’s exactly what I did. I manage the shit out of my property for turkey. Because I live 5 miles over the state line I pay more for my license, get one fewer tag (and pay more) and have y’all wanting to further limit my opportunity. So that one of y’all can sit across the line on a timber company lease and benefit from all my work
Out of all the Midwestern states that have healthy turkey populations, which ones have a bag limit of more than two birds?
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