Thursday, March 20, 2008
Have we made fall turkey hunting too restrictive?
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
Hunters got excited the other day when the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries announced that the 2007-08 fall turkey kill came in at 4,759, which represented a 15 percent increase over the previous season.
Gary Norman, DGIF wild turkey project supervisor, declared it “good news for our turkey hunters.” Norman has been concerned that the growth of Virginia’s turkey population has slowed, the result of poor reproduction in recent years.
As it turned out, the 15 percent increase wasn’t as much to gobble about as first thought.
A few days after the season’s tally was available, data from feathers collected at check stations reached Norman. The age and sex ratio of turkeys can be determined from feathers, and what Norman saw wasn’t good. The feathers revealed that production last year was blow average. The ratio of young turkeys per adult hen was a scant 1.7, one of the lowest on record. The 10-year average is 2.2, which isn’t that good, and the 25 year average is 3.2.
So where did that 15 percent increase in the kill come from? According to the feather data, you could argue that it didn’t come from a jump in the turkey population.
“I think the over-riding factor was the mast crop, which was spotty,” Norman said.
The turkey kill generally increases when the mast crop is low because turkeys move around more to find food and are likely to be forced into fields and openings where their vulnerability increases.
Last year was the third year in a row when figures have pointed to below-average production and recruitment of new turkeys into the flock, something often credited to the weather, food supply, predation and the condition of the hens.
The poor reproduction doesn’t bode well for the April 12-May 17 spring gobbler season, Norman said.
“I do not expect a significant change in the upcoming spring season, perhaps a decline,” he said.
Yet how do you account for so many people, including me, who have been seeing huge flocks of turkeys during the late winter, like the 70 in one bunch I recently spotted from a rural road. Could it be there are other factors, in addition to poor recruitment, keeping the fall turkey kill only about one-quarter of what it was in 1990 when it reached a record 16,861? Maybe the low kill says more about the scarcity of fall hunters than it does about the scarcity of turkeys.
Wildlife officials appear to be coming around to that possibility. A special fall youth hunting day has been set for Oct. 18 to address the recruitment of new hunters.
Do we need to open the door even wider to fall turkey hunting opportunities? Did we become too restrictive when more stringent regulations were applied in the mid-90s? Those regulations have been embraced by many hunters, but they haven’t boosted the fall or spring turkey kills to the degree that had been predicted. Last week in this space was a column about how the new apprentice hunting license will make it easier for newcomers to try hunting after years when we made it too difficult for people to get into the sport. Are we now making it too difficult for newcomers to hunt once they get into the sport?
One final question: Are those bleak recruitment figures being skewed by the fact that we have more turkey than we think and accomplished hunters now are pursuing mature gobblers in the fall rather than just blasting young birds?
I have a friend who hunts with family members and friends on land in Botetourt County that joins the national forest. During the past fall turkey season, his group killed 12 turkeys. Ten were adult gobblers that weighed 17-1/4 to 23-1/2 pounds, the kind of birds you’d expect to kill in the spring. Only one hen and one immature male (jake) were in the bunch.
There are so many turkeys that you can pass up the young ones, my friend said.
I don’t know how often that is happening across the state, but when it does it knocks out of whack the data gathered from feather research.
Norman acknowledges he is getting mixed signals.
“I realize that this year’s poor production estimate does not agree with many reports I had about great production,” he said. “But thus far, the feather data from the check stations has proven pretty reasonable.”
