2016 Expectations
What are your expectations for the year?
The last few I kinda had a feeling for what the season might be like. I'm not sure this year. I have had this theory that the extremely warm Feb. we had 4 years ago led to a very early hatch. The next year I heard tons of reports of gobbling jakes with 5-6 inch beards. Last year I heard of more huge birds than I had ever heard of. 18-19pounds is an average Alabama bird but I heard of LOTS of 21-23 lb birds. Most had 1.25+ spurs. My theory is that these were the early hatch birds of 2012 that due to very favorable conditions were able to outgrow normally hatched birds.
Not sure what I think I'll see this year. Didn't hear just a bunch of jakes last year but that's nothing abnormal. Very mild winter. I'll be hunting some new ground again this year. Last year proved to be very good on some new ground. I'll be hunting the same area but this year I have a few more hundred acres to explore. The only bummer is that I have a cold mill outage the 3rd week of April and I won't have any vacation to use due to an elk hunt in September.