Bill Cochran

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Virginia’s fall turkey kill has been in a tailspin, and don’t expect that to change significantly this season.

The fact that hunters are registering only about one-quarter as many fall turkeys now as they did in 1990 often is credited to unfavorable nesting conditions in the spring, but that explanation appears to be wearing thin. There is no scarcity of turkeys. They are showing up everywhere except at big game checking stations.

What’s really behind the trend of fewer turkeys being checked?

The hunters I talk to blame it on four basic factors, and you will note that none has anything to do with there being fewer turkeys.

“I think turkey numbers are pretty stable, so I don’t think that is a problem,” said Freddy McGuire, who hosts the popular turkey Web site, vaturkeys.com.

Here are the theories:

>Hunters who once pursued turkeys in the fall have switched their interest to the popular early muzzleloading season, which puts them into the woods at the peak of the deer rut. Muzzleloaders now kill about one-quarter of all the deer checked. That kind of interest is bound to distract from the turkey season. The muzzleloading deer kill most likely will increase next year, the result of an extra week being tacked onto the beginning of the season in the west. That week will clash with turkey season.

>Young hunters, especially, are attracted to the spring gobbler season as opposed to their grandfather’s fall season, so they save the three turkey tags on their license for use in the spring. For a number of years, only two turkey tags could be used in the spring, then the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries changed that, providing for a three-bird limit in the spring.

“I basically quit fall turkey hunting because of that, and many of my friends did the same,” said McGuire. “Not that I don’t enjoy fall hunting, but I love the spring more.”

If the DGIF wants to boost the interest in fall turkey hunting, it easily could do so with an extra “fall-only” tag, McGuire said.

“I would start hunting again in the late season and try to fill that tag,” he said.

But McGuire would be opposed to deer hunters taking incidental shots at turkeys with rifles just because they have an extra tag. This could be avoided by separating turkey and deer hunting dates as much as possible, such as starting the turkey season a couple weeks earlier in October or extending it deeper into January, said McGuire.

> Many of the turkeys killed in the fall aren’t being reported as required by law. In some cases, hunters are unlawfully saving their tags for use during the spring season. In others, they just aren’t willing to take the time to search out a big game checking station where they can register their bird.

Fall turkeys are one of the few game species that still must be checked in person. Deer and spring gobblers can be checked via phone or computer. This extra effort demanded of fall turkey hunters no doubt has lowered the number birds checked, although there are no statistics to confirm this.

>Just over a decade ago, DGIF officials removed turkey hunting from some of the most intense deer hunting periods, because so many turkeys were being blasted by deer hunters who just happened to come across them.

The change came with a promise that the new regulation would protect hens, sending more into the nesting season. The result in time would be a higher fall kill.

That hasn’t happened. Kill figures have gone the other direction.

What did happen, hunters like Richard Pauley believe, the new regulation resulted in fewer new -- especially young -- hunters being recruited into turkey hunting. Pauley asks: What good is it to have more turkeys if there aren’t hunters to enjoy them?