RE: henned up toms
Most seasons won't fall in correspondence with peak breeding. If they did the henned up gobbler scenario would drastically reduce success numbers. I believe the objective of season dates is to kind of hit it in the middle. You're still going to have breeding going on but nesting will start as the season progresses. This will result in hens leaving toms and they're late season gobbling picks up. Gobblers will now be out looking for more receptive hens as the bred ones have hatched and they are sitting on thier nest. That is why I like hunting the last week as much as the first week.
So yes , Dr Andy that would be correct and the reason why. They try and manage success numbers of hunters as well as managing the turkey numbers.
If you're season starts March 24th then I would not think it is oddor necessarily early if the Toms are starting to get harems and hope to be be breeding soon. We start 1 month later but they will start far sooner than that.
If you check out nythunter post called "out my bedroom window" I put a pic of a Tom with hens. This was takenlate March up here in Ontario. As I said our season is a full month behind yours so it would be comparable to what you saw.